On Milestones, and Verbal Stones
A while back, one of the Tutees was working through a story problem; she needs to read them out loud to catch all of the details. It was slow going, but everything ended up on paper, and then in a calculator, letter perfect. (The answer even contained an appropriate label.) I grinned, because I'd noticed something that had slipped past Tutee. "How 'bout that--you used percents all over these problems, and you didn't even have to think about it!" Tutee actually gasped. "I did! Finally! I've been working on that for years."
Tutee has a learning disability, an unusual one that doesn't have catchy label. It's hard to explain while protecting anonymity, because you absolutely don't notice it at first and probably don't notice it at all in casual contact. The best I can do is this: if Tutee were a Muppet, she'd be Big Bird's brainy older cousin, kind and intuitive but gangly and, upon reflection, quiet young for his age. (You know that song where Big Bird reads the entire alphabet as a long, complicated word but never connects the string of 26 letters to the ABCs? That's Tutee.) We do more repetition than I would normally do, and less variation of problems. Once she's got something, it's fine and she'll adapt the skill as needed, but she'll need more tries than the average bear to truly have it down. I worked percents in everywhere in a geometry course, sneakily and often stretching, because it was a skill she hadn't mastered and that clearly caused her distress. It took six months on top of the years of work she'd done with a specialist, but she finally had them (and still does. Holiday sales have been very satisfying for her, this year). It was a real achievement, one that I refused to have diminished by the older man giving us the stink-eye from the next table. I felt a little bad that we were disturbing his magazine-reading, but we were definitely not the loudest folks in the joint.
When her mother picked her up, Tutee cheerfully reported her triumph. I tried to telegraph to the mother that I thought this was for real, and she also smiled. "You've been working at that for a long time!" They left the coffee shop, and the man at next table grumbled while looking at me, "That's not hard. She should have known that years ago."
Look, I've been on that side of that kind of statement. The difference is, I've thought things like that after hearing students who refuse to try, who dismiss knowledge they don't have as unimportant. The great luxury of what I do now is, when a student really wants to learn, I get to take the time that kid needs to have success. What that man said? It pissed me off. You could not overhear that exchange without knowing that Tutee had just won a war.
(Not to mention, so what if she hadn't learned it? Surely you've heard my story about the college senior who didn't know long division--she'd had the chicken pox for the wrong two weeks of fourth grade--and was terrified she'd be found out while student teaching? We had her up and running in an hour, but she had to fight through a decade of statements like that to ask for help.)
We're working on fractions now, in much the same manner. I have to admit I'm ambivalent about this; Tutee is fraction-avoidant, and she has a pretty good case for using her calculator for such arithmetic. I know, though, that she'll need to work with rational functions by the end of this year, and she won't be able to do that if she's unsure about (2/5)*(15/4). I also worry that someone at the next table will note that such manipulations are part of the grade-school curriculum, and what is wrong with her?
Yes, something is wrong. (I'm not going to sugarcoat it with different. In her particular circumstances, with her particular strengths, the challenges she faces are unfortunate and frustrating.) But why is a stranger in a coffeeshop so sure he knows exactly when a kid is supposed to learn a particular skill? And even if there's a deal, why is it so frustrating in complete, and still clearly childlike, stranger?
Throughout all of this, I always flash back to BestFriend's daughter, whose triumphs ended at telling time and making correct change, which she learned in her high school years. (Never mind the part where her high school transcript proclaims mastery of basic geometry and algebra II. Educational policy in this state makes me tired.) I know how often she hears the sort of comments that man made; because she is now trying to function as an adult, those kinds of folks don't always wait until she leaves the coffee shop. A is aware of many things she cannot do, and that's frustration enough; unlike Tutee, A perceptibly has challenges. The tiniest bit of civility and decency would spare her a lot of pain. Why is it so hard for so many of us?
Tutee has a learning disability, an unusual one that doesn't have catchy label. It's hard to explain while protecting anonymity, because you absolutely don't notice it at first and probably don't notice it at all in casual contact. The best I can do is this: if Tutee were a Muppet, she'd be Big Bird's brainy older cousin, kind and intuitive but gangly and, upon reflection, quiet young for his age. (You know that song where Big Bird reads the entire alphabet as a long, complicated word but never connects the string of 26 letters to the ABCs? That's Tutee.) We do more repetition than I would normally do, and less variation of problems. Once she's got something, it's fine and she'll adapt the skill as needed, but she'll need more tries than the average bear to truly have it down. I worked percents in everywhere in a geometry course, sneakily and often stretching, because it was a skill she hadn't mastered and that clearly caused her distress. It took six months on top of the years of work she'd done with a specialist, but she finally had them (and still does. Holiday sales have been very satisfying for her, this year). It was a real achievement, one that I refused to have diminished by the older man giving us the stink-eye from the next table. I felt a little bad that we were disturbing his magazine-reading, but we were definitely not the loudest folks in the joint.
When her mother picked her up, Tutee cheerfully reported her triumph. I tried to telegraph to the mother that I thought this was for real, and she also smiled. "You've been working at that for a long time!" They left the coffee shop, and the man at next table grumbled while looking at me, "That's not hard. She should have known that years ago."
Look, I've been on that side of that kind of statement. The difference is, I've thought things like that after hearing students who refuse to try, who dismiss knowledge they don't have as unimportant. The great luxury of what I do now is, when a student really wants to learn, I get to take the time that kid needs to have success. What that man said? It pissed me off. You could not overhear that exchange without knowing that Tutee had just won a war.
(Not to mention, so what if she hadn't learned it? Surely you've heard my story about the college senior who didn't know long division--she'd had the chicken pox for the wrong two weeks of fourth grade--and was terrified she'd be found out while student teaching? We had her up and running in an hour, but she had to fight through a decade of statements like that to ask for help.)
We're working on fractions now, in much the same manner. I have to admit I'm ambivalent about this; Tutee is fraction-avoidant, and she has a pretty good case for using her calculator for such arithmetic. I know, though, that she'll need to work with rational functions by the end of this year, and she won't be able to do that if she's unsure about (2/5)*(15/4). I also worry that someone at the next table will note that such manipulations are part of the grade-school curriculum, and what is wrong with her?
Yes, something is wrong. (I'm not going to sugarcoat it with different. In her particular circumstances, with her particular strengths, the challenges she faces are unfortunate and frustrating.) But why is a stranger in a coffeeshop so sure he knows exactly when a kid is supposed to learn a particular skill? And even if there's a deal, why is it so frustrating in complete, and still clearly childlike, stranger?
Throughout all of this, I always flash back to BestFriend's daughter, whose triumphs ended at telling time and making correct change, which she learned in her high school years. (Never mind the part where her high school transcript proclaims mastery of basic geometry and algebra II. Educational policy in this state makes me tired.) I know how often she hears the sort of comments that man made; because she is now trying to function as an adult, those kinds of folks don't always wait until she leaves the coffee shop. A is aware of many things she cannot do, and that's frustration enough; unlike Tutee, A perceptibly has challenges. The tiniest bit of civility and decency would spare her a lot of pain. Why is it so hard for so many of us?