Hi,
My name is Jenny and I am a student at Eastern Michigan University and studying to become a high school English teacher. I’m doing a report on LD and was wondering if people could help me. The question that I have to answer is “As a teacher how can I help my LD students to have successful educational careers?”
Any and all help is most appreciated.
Thanks.
Re: How to make a successful LD student
Sara has made an excellent point about being flexible and being willing to make needed accommodations. I would add that, to give such students the best chance of academic success, there needs to be a mixture of accommodations such as Sara described and intensive, daily, one-on-one remediation of their deficits. In many cases, a pull-out program will be necessary to successfully remediate. Too often, schools emphasize one or the other. Both are necessary to help the LD student succeed.
Yours truly,
Kathy G.
Re: How to make a successful LD student
A future teacher asking that question makes me so darn happy! I agree with the other folks who talked about flexibility. I agree that is #1. This willingness to try to do things a little differently to allow a child who learns differently to pick up on something is just so vital. You don’t have to know everything about all LDs, but willingness to learn something when you have a kid with a specific one is important. Parents know their kids better than anyone, and if you have involved parents to work with, they will be able to fill you in well from their own experience. ALSO - you may be the first teacher someday to notice when a kid is struggling somehow and it would be helpful to know the signs of an LD so that you can help get the child on the right path toward getting some testing and help. Don’t forget that social skills problems and/or acting out in different ways are often the symptoms of a stressed child who is struggling to keep up. By son was punished and punished some more before he was finally, in the 5th grade, tested and shown to have ADD and NLD. One teacher (4th grade) put him in isolation during class, with boxes stacked all around him and separating him from his classmates because he couldn’t pay attention well enough. We, the parents, were never informed that our child was having that bad of a problem paying attention. If a kid is having that hard of a time, PLEASE tell the parents and have someone suggest testing for LDs. Don’t punish kids for things they can’t help.
This is a great question for a future teacher to ask. It’s also a fairly easy question to answer. You can help your LD students to have successful educational careers if you are willing to be flexible. Many teachers sadly are not willing to be flexible or to question themselves or their teaching practices. Ask yourself, what is the point of being in school? If the point is to learn, then anything you do to help them learn should be good practice.If the point is to learn, then anything you can do to smooth the path for a student to demonstrate what they have learned should also be good practice.
Too many teachers seem to forget that learning is the point and instead they direct the teaching practices to “policing” students, including their students with learning differences. If a student has a reading based learning difference, you should be be accomodating that with alternative readings or books on tape. If a student has a reading or writing based learning difference or an attentional issue, you should be willing to accomodate that with unlimited time on tests as it will take those students longer to do a test. If a student has a reading based learning difference, memorization becomes hard for those students and you should be willing to accomodate that difference with projects rather than memorization based tests.
The specific list of good accomodations provided by the good teacher to students with learning differences can be long. Get hold of Dr. Mel Levine’s Educational Care book and it will fill you in on the rest.