Each fall the daunting task of educating a generation of children stands before today’s teachers. Each new generation demands that teachers give their highest creativity, utmost talent, extensive time, and individualized attention. Every year’s students are marked with a fresh mixture of cultural experiences, learning styles, and educational strengths. They embark upon our classrooms screaming with expectations that we, the teachers, equip them with the tools that will enable them to reach their hopes and dreams. Basic educational principles and curriculum have been developed and prove reliable tools that meet the needs of most. It is a daunting task that lies before teachers and yet within each year’s mix of children lay another group whose demands may be less noticeable. They are the students who stand just beyond the reach of “normal education”. They are individuals who do not learn in a conventional way and are often unintentionally slighted because of their differing educational needs. Although smaller in number than the average learners per classroom, their demands are just as worthy and require our immediate, active attention. So it is with a student named, Rita.

Rita is a third grade learning disabilities student who displays several areas of weakness. She displays strengths in vocabulary and phonics, yet struggles with reading comprehension. Her organizational and perception skills are weak and still she excels as an auditory learner and listener. Most concerning is the fact that Rita is struggling relationally. She has distanced herself from peer level relationships and appears to have low self-expectations. She has met new challenges with failure one too many times and as a result she no longer looks to learning as a joyful experience, but she meets it with a sobering resignation that knows failure all too well. She and her teacher stand here gazing upon the new year realizing that a huge gulf lies between them and educational success. By employing a specifically individualized program designed to build on Rita’s strengths while under girding her weaknesses, a teacher can provide scaffolding that will bridge the gulf of confusion and fear and carrying the student on to educational success.

 It is important that careful consideration is given to Rita’s strengths as well as carefully identifying her struggles. Perceptual weaknesses, lack of organizational skills, and poor motor skills are three to be addressed. It is important that no one teaching approach be seen as the sole solution. For Rita to become successful as a learner her evaluation and teaching strategies must cover several areas that can then lead her to develop new and strengthen existing learning skills.

Perceptual difficulties plague Rita. She struggles with small tasks like lining up numbers in addition problems and her lack of fine muscle skills only adds to her troubles. Rita’s assignments must be designed to aid her success in these situations. Curriculum analysis should be addressed. The teacher must analyze the skills to be developed and adjust the curriculum accordingly. Worksheets could be designed with a limited number of problems written in larger than normal size with specific boxes for the answers. Direct instruction by the teacher with designed progression from simple to more complicated problems would press this student towards success. Instruction and practice could use tools like a magnet board and numerical magnets to practice individual problems. This would help the student perceive each problem independently from the previous. As success at this level is mastered the student could move toward paper pencil tasks.  Each success would strengthen the scaffolding structure and by eliminating the possibility of organizational failure and messiness the student can become more confident and possibly move on to a designed peer-tutoring experience where a classmate could serve as Rita’s scribe. This could strengthen both students’ abilities and possibly aid Rita in strengthening her interpersonal relationships. In the end, a careful evaluation of curriculum and direct instruction by the teacher could be embellished with peer tutoring so that the process of addition is mastered. As Rita displays mastery of the concept she can be moved on to higher-level problems or multi-step problems.

Reading comprehension has also challenged Rita. She tested two years below her grade level even though her word recognition and phonics skills were on grade level. Reading comprehension is especially important for students as their success in the upcoming years depends so heavily on understanding the messages of written text. Rita needs a chance to succeed at reading. After carefully evaluating the designed curriculum, a teacher might opt to have Rita read some high interest grade level material. If she showed more interest in this area her reading instruction could be tailored from that material. She needs practice locating basic components of a story as mastery of these basic skills added together make up the building blocks of comprehension.

Moving Rita to one-on-one reading sessions would be a good alternative here. With reading discrepancies of two years she would easily qualify for special services.  She already feels inadequate and displays signs of low self-expectation. In a special classroom she could practice reading and then listening to stories. This makes use of auditory learning, as this is one of her strengths. She could then be prompted to verbally give the basic components of story comprehension. With success at the auditory level she could be moved to writing the elements of the material and then work at the board with a teacher. This would allow for movement during repetitive activities to help eliminate boredom and keep Rita on task for longer periods of time.     

A teacher would model the process using prompts and then guide Rita through the process. This activity could move from evaluating other material to creating her own. Rita could choose characters and scenarios and then develop her own stories. Students show more attentiveness to self-created material than to evaluating existing material. Teacher adjusted worksheets with specifically designed places for one or two word answers would support Rita in reading skills as used in her mathematics lessons and again reinforce some organizational skills. Worksheets using these same prompts would help Rita create a pattern for evaluating material and hopefully end in internalization of the process creating a cognitive strength.

Parents that model good reading habits raise better readers. It would be essential that Rita find some avenue to read and be read to at home. A careful evaluation of the home environment and the ability level of parents would determine options here. It could be suggested that Rita read to her little sister. The relationship with her little sister is one of Rita’s only successful peer-relationships and therefore a strength that we could build on.

Finding success reading to her sister might then precipitate successful reading to younger schoolmates with the goal being finding success in her own classroom whether that be inclusive or in her LD classroom. Rita could help a lower level student with their sight words as this would build on one of Rita’s strengths and help boost her self-esteem. Strong parental cooperation and interschool cooperation would make this option successful.
 Motor skills are challenging to Rita. She seems to aid in her own failure simply by the lack of neatness she displays in her writing. Several activities can be used to strengthen her motor skills. She can be given activities that require cutting with scissors or coloring with certain criteria. Almost anything where dexterity is practiced, like playing with play-dough, will aid in her continued development. She can gain much help from modified paperwork where her writing is kept to a minimum and she can easily see where specific information goes.

These types of written organizational helps can be paper and pencil or computer related. There are many quality curriculum based computer games that practice concepts with only the use of a mouse. This almost entirely removes the influence of poor motor skills and messy papers from the practice and mastery of a concept.

 It would be remiss to expect Rita to participate in any of these strategies without the influence of a “great” teacher. The rapport that a student and teacher have will make or break the success of any student. Students are quick to sense the insincere and uncaring, but a student will respond almost beyond measure to a teacher who carefully gains their confidence by truly being excited about their ability to be successful. Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, stands as a striking example to all who teach as one who gulfed the abyss of confusion and despair and provided one “special” student with the tools necessary for success.

 Many Ritas exist in our classrooms today and no one philosophy or method will meet their needs. Striving for flexibility that is generated by continual evaluation of daily learning processes will help teachers create lessons that are practical and productive. Keeping our eyes on the cultural changes around us and embracing new ideas will help us, the teachers of today, make a difference for the students of tomorrow. So as fall rolls around each year and we identify those students who need just a little more than the “normal” instruction it would do us well to rest in and remember the words of one great American teacher who for one student successfully bridged that gulf of confusion and fear and one day was able to pen these words;

“My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened!  
The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil’s mind,
and behold, all things are changed!”
     Anne Sullivan