In a recent post, I wrote about my frustrations with Khawar, who has serious difficulties with logical thought and essay organization. After an initial attempt at tutoring that didn't satisfy him, he has refused to take steps to remedy his problems and has instead tried to insist that I change his grades, give him extra chances, etc.
Last week, students submitted a draft of Part One of their final assignment. Part One is a narrative essay or fictional story about a childhood relationship; Part Two will be a literary analysis of their own story.
Khawar's story was good. He wrote about a trip to the beach with his best friend when they were both stung by jellyfish; the story was both entertaining and fully comprehensible (if a little melodramatic - the friend dies of the sting, a detail which is fictional.) Reading it, I began to think that perhaps I had judged Khawar a little too strongly. He knew how to tell a story.
But his abysmal performance on the previous assignment was still bothering me.
I had arranged for each student to come see me for about 10 minutes to discuss his/her story, and this would be an opportunity to discuss the previous assignment with Khawar as well. However, I felt that I needed to do something more about this than just have another conversation with him. So the day before his appointment, I called the Learning Centre and asked to speak to one of their specialists.
I expressed my concern that Khawar might have a learning disability. The specialist told me that we have no testing facilities at our college and so there is no way to "diagnose" students, but suggested that I send Khawar to her for general tutoring and she would see if she could help him.
When Khawar came to see me, we discussed how pleased I was with his story, and this made him happy. "So it's good?" he asked me to confirm three times.
"Yes, Khawar," I said, "you did a good job on this. But I want to talk to you about your last in-class assignment, because that DIDN'T go so well." I pulled it out and handed it to him. "In fact, it's the weakest assignment you've submitted so far. It was very difficult to understand, and you had more errors in your sentences than you've ever had before. When I finished reading it, I was frustrated. You're having the same problems you've had since the beginning, and I've been trying to insist that you go get help, but you haven't done it, and things are just getting worse."
If I'm not mistaken, he looked a bit sheepish. "But, you know, did you understand that I just wrote the same things that I had in my notes? And you told us we could use our notes."
"Yes, and that's exactly the problem - you just copied down a bunch of stuff from your notes without relating them to your main idea. That's not what an essay is - an essay is about explaining one thing with a number of examples."
I told him that I'd called the Learning Centre and spoken to someone there. "I didn't tell her your name or anything about you," I said, "but she specializes in the kind of difficulties you're having, difficulties with logic and making connections. She said that it would be fine with her if I sent you directly to her so she could look at your work and give you some help. Here's what I'd like you to do: I'd like you to bring this essay to her so she can go through it with you. Then, when it comes time for you to prepare the analytical part of your final assignment, I want you to work on it with her, every step of the way."
"Will she help me more than the last guy did? Because remember, I went to see that first guy, and he didn't help me."
"She has said that she is more 'hands-on' than him. That's how she described her approach to me. And Khawar - I think it's really important that you don't just go to her for this assignment. You need to keep seeing someone throughout your time in CEGEP if you're going to make improvements. Will you go see her?"
He picked up his papers and nodded. "Well, yes. I mean, I've been trying hard and there's no improvement. I have to do something."
Hallelujah, I thought. "Yes. You have to do something. Let me know how it goes with her."
The next day, as I was holding office hours for other students, he skittered in between two appointments and dumped a pile of sheets on my desk. "Look," he said. "We did everything together, we corrected everything." He showed me a sheet in someone else's handwriting, covered in scrawls and arrows and headings. "We went through it all together and corrected it all."
"This is great," I said. "Are you going to go back to her to work on your final assignment?"
"Yes! Yes! She really helped me."
"I'm very glad to hear it, Khawar. Now take these away; let me know how you progress with that final assignment."
Ok! I thought. Taking that step to call the Learning Centre was a Good Teacher Move. Maybe he'll get some real help. Maybe there will be something there that will push him in the right direction.
And then, the following Monday, he did his oral presentation, and it was a train wreck.
The focus of this course is childhood relationships in literature, and for their oral presentations, they needed to research either a famous childhood relationship or an organization that promotes childhood relationships. For this final group of presentations, the topic was childhood friendships (as opposed to parent-child or sibling relationships, which were presented earlier in the term).
One of the possible topics was the history of the Mickey Mouse Club, and Khawar had chosen that one. But his oral presentation was not about the Mickey Mouse Club - it was about Walt Disney and the creation of Mickey Mouse. He read, in a loud, unnatural voice, a few paragraphs of information from cue cards, passed around some pictures of Mickey Mouse, and finished his presentation far too quickly.
The class sat there uncomfortably, as if they thought applause might be an insult.
Then he handed in his annotated bibliography, which...well, I won't even get into it.
After reading Khawar's entertaining jellyfish story, and seeing how encouraged he was by his tutoring session, I was holding out hope that, although he has a few challenges, the help of a kind and patient and knowledgeable tutor might be all he needs. After watching him present his oral, however, it's clear to me that Khawar's learning problems are really serious. I can't help him. The Learning Centre specialist can only help him to a certain point. And, as she explained to me, testing for learning disabilities is difficult to get and very expensive, so most people don't go that route.
How did Khawar make it to college? Why hasn't someone done something for him before now? Has he has assistance in the past that he hasn't told me about? Have people tried to help but been brushed off by him and his parents?
As college teachers, we tend to think of semesters as chapters, little stories that begin in September and December and finish fifteen weeks later. But semesters are not narratives, and this semester is not going to have a tidy and satisfying ending.
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That said, I encourage you to continue to encourage your student to take advantage of the help provided at your college. Also, please don't be discouraged that his learning disabilites don't seem to go away quickly. There are skills that "neuro-typical" students may need to fumble through and practice a couple times until they get it right, but students with LD may have to do it twenty times. They'll still get there with their own tenacity and the ferocious support of good teachers. It might be easier to give that support when you comtemplate what it means for a student with LD to make it to college, to stick to it even though it takes more effort on many levels. They deserve our respect and admiration as well as practical support.
"I have to say Siobhan, why all the fuss?"
Because I'm a teacher. The day I stop caring about this stuff, I will resign.
"He is clearly not college material. How did he get admitted? Doesn’t your university require an essay on the application? Is his family rich or well connected?"
In Quebec, "college" and "university" are not the same thing. Colleges are (usually) publicly funded, and are required before university but also offer professional training programs. For more info on the Quebec college system, you can look here:
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/what-is-a-cegep/
Admittance is based on a complex formula, but no, application essays are not required.
"I’d be pretty miffed if I was a “C-” student, that was turned down for admission at your college, only to read this account."
Many, many C- students are admitted to my college. Believe me.
"Let’s face it, colleges are out to make money."
Public CEGEPs do not make money. The women's bathroom on my floor hasn't worked for 5 years. Our classrooms are full to bursting and we don't own enough desks to seat everyone. Our classes are over-enrolled because we get government funding for every bum we put in a seat, and we desperately need as much government funding as we can put our hands on. If we had money, we might have some learning disability specialists on hand to help Khawar.
"I hope your University [sic] has the integrity to tell this kid to go out and get qualified to handle this material and not to come back until he’s ready."
If Khawar fails enough of his courses, he'll be put on probation, and if he continues to fail, it's possible he'll be kicked out. I very much hope that before that happens, the roots of his problems will be identified, and he'll get the help he needs so that he doesn't fail out.
"My fear is that they’ll walk him through and then he’ll come to the U.S. and I’ll end up working for him."
Possible, but not something I'd worry about if I were you. Most Canadians aren't particularly interested in moving to the U.S.
Thank you very much for these insights. As I was writing these posts, I was very aware that I was seeing this problem from a limited perspective. I know that parents with LD children struggle a lot with the education system (I could tell you some stories from my own family, but I'll save them for another time...)
That said, the thing that troubles me most about Khawar's situation is that he doesn't seem to have any inkling that he might have a learning disability. It's as though no one has ever suggested the possibility to him. I don't know what age he was when he came to Canada, but I know he spent at least some of his high school years here, yet he is absolutely convinced that his troubles are not due to unusual difficulties he might have, but are due to my instructions, the nature of the assignments, etc.
I've worked with a number of students with diagnosed learning disabilities in the past, and despite their hardships, they are often a joy to work with, because they know that they have extra challenges and work hard to overcome them. Although we don't have learning disability specialists at the college, we do have professionals whose job is to gather information from LD students' doctors and parents and the students themselves and make whatever special arrangements need to be made and provide students with whatever support they can. If only Khawar could take advantage of these accommodations, I feel he could really benefit from them, but unless he is diagnosed, it won't be possible.
Rated - both for the post itself and for taking the high road when responding to someone without a clue.
I don't know what the legal requirements are, but my college does indeed provide extensive accommodations for students with learning disabilities. The problem is that these disabilities need to be diagnosed and documented, and getting the diagnosis and documents is the responsibility of the student and his family. Khawar does not seem to have any inkling that he might suffer from a disability; I'm hoping a tutor can make a better judgement on this than I can, and can perhaps find a way to suggest the possibility to him. (It is always tricky for college teachers to make such suggestions, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we have no professional qualifications for doing so.) Even if this happens, testing for learning disabilities is expensive, and many families, especially at this late moment in a student's schooling, refuse to go that route, insisting that the problem lies somewhere else.
I also really feel for the student, who has to be frustrated as well. It is one thing to not progress, but it is another to have a half-step forward after getting some assistance from the Learning Centre, only to take several back when the same problems arise.
Good luck to you both. Hopefully something falls into place for this lad.
I have a suggestion about how you might be able to help your student. We are trying this with my child who has only recently been able to directly think about his learning disabilities (there are many reasons, including negative stigma, that encourage denial.) Our son has demonstrated some nascent ability in the area of critical thinking in his areas of interest (which are not necessarily academic areas.) We have identified this to him and given him a lot of positive feedback and tried to teach him to relate this skill to academic achievement. We also have tried to help him see that self-awareness, self-analysis, and metacognition are key parts of critical thinking. We're working on figuring out how to train him to do this.
So, the suggestion: talk to the learning center person about helping your student learn to evaluate himself and seek out help in self-evaluation in terms of the skills he needs to develop. The learning center person can encourage him to come to you (as well as other professors) for specific feedback on skills. Hopefully, he can be won over to the idea that this is what any college student needs to do (it's a life skill, too.)
Good luck to you! Good luck to your student!
I can only imagine what that's like for you. The thing is, you recognize it, and I expect your kids are getting at least some of the special attention they need. My impression is that Khawar's problems have been ignored or swept under the rug, and that's what's making me crazy here.
What great suggestions. I will definitely contact the LC professional about implementing some of these practices for Khawar. My time with him is now limited (unless he decides to sign up for another of my courses), but I will do my best to keep tabs on his progress.
What is odd in this story, for me, is that he did write one fine essay and then fell down again. LD is better MUCH better caught when a kid is young. My dd was diagnosed at about aged 7 and immediately I enrolled her in a School for the Disabled. It was really hard, that name. But as soon as I got there, I know that is where she belonged.
In USA, the most popular method for learning disabilities is the Orton-Gillingham program. It is very very slow and so are the kids re: reading/writing. She was in dyslexia-land from the start of her school years till end of 8th grade. At 14 to our mutual surprise, it was as if she woke from a coma, and started doing so well that she went to a good high school and her English teacher actually called her "an original scholar." That said, college has been harder fo her because ? I do not know. But because she is documented as being dyslexic (though one might not believe that if there wasn't such extensive history) she does work harder than most and manages to make dean's list, probably by a hair.
To help your student might mean that he takes off a year or more to catch up. I am sure that he feels that he is not up to par, and though he sounds like occasionally hopeful, if he is LD then he is way out of his element. I'll only add that among the 8 other kids also tested for LD, no other parent would accept the diagnosis, thinking 'o it was just a tired day," and I'm very proud that I did something about her LD the day after testing. Since I very much identify with the dyslexic/ ld community, I know there are tons of success stories and I wish the best for your student and if he has parents, woudn't that be the best place to start the process? You sound like a wonderful teacher. r
Thank you so much for this comment. It's really important for teachers to hear about these things from the perspective of parents. I have a feeling that, if Khawar's troubles have been brought to the attention of his parents, they have probably reacted similarly to the other parents you describe: "No, no, there's nothing 'wrong' with my child! There's something wrong with the test!" and so forth.
Khawar is originally from the UAE, and he went to a French high school here in Quebec. However, although he has some small second language issues, language problems are not, I don't think, at the root of his difficulties. (Our college is hugely multi-ethnic, and many of our students did most of their schooling in French, not English; we're used to coping with second-, third- and fourth-language issues.) It's clear to me that his problems are to some degree cognitive.
That said, the fact that he grew up in the UAE might partly explain why he wasn't diagnosed as a child (I have no idea what the attitudes and resources around learning disabilities are like in the Arab world.) What puzzles me is that no one caught the problem while he was going to high school here in Quebec. Or maybe someone did, but nothing was done...
I would agree that Khawar needs to see a psychologist, but unfortunately, there is no way to compel him to do so; he has to decide on his own that that is what he needs.
Also, today I calculated their grades, excluding the final assignment they will hand in next week, and right now Khawar has a barely passing grade, mostly due to the fact that he did well on the major paper (because he got help) and because he has come to all classes and handed in all work, so gets full marks for participation. If he passes his final assignment (and he might, if he gets help), he will pass my course. This happens a lot - students in difficulty who work hard get through. It's often assumed that teachers "pass" students because failing them is too much trouble, but sometimes the numbers just work out that way.