“How can you make a world for
people to live in until you’ve first put order in yourself?”
Thornton Wilder, The Skin of our
Teeth
Early in my teaching career, my
headmaster called a faculty meeting and had us watch a documentary about
learning disabilities. Most of the students in our small school struggled with
a disability of some kind, from mild dyslexia to almost total aphasia. Some of
their parents were caring and concerned; many were frustrated and exhausted.
The video, called “How Difficult can This Be?” showed us a workshop during which a facilitator conducted
a variety of activities to make participants feel as though they had all sorts
of learning challenges. He gave them mangled text to read or fuzzy pictures to
look at and then barked at them to “look harder” at things they could not
possibly see, no matter how “hard” they looked (whatever that meant).
Even without participating
directly in the workshop, we learned a great deal about what it felt like to be
our students—students who had spent a lifetime being told to sit still when
they were already sitting as still as they could. How heartbreaking it had to
be, to be yelled at for not being able to control a twitching hand or a tapping
foot. How enraging it had to be, especially by the teen years, to be scolded
for not reading things that were physically unreadable. No wonder our students
had been in and out of every school in town.
To many teachers, the idea of
“differentiated instruction” is a ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky idea dreamed up by
out-of-touch authors or professors who don’t understand how difficult it is to
plan and execute a single lesson, much less several options per class. But to
many students, differentiated instruction is the difference between success and
failure in school. For many students, instruction that isn’t adapted to meet
their needs is instruction to which they simply have no access.
Identification of learning disabilities
and a well-implemented IEP or 504 plan can make all the difference for these
students. But what about students whose problems do not fall into the establish
categories of problems that will lead to legally-mandated accommodations? What
about students for whom years of poverty, neglect, or trauma have so stressed
the neural circuitry that they have not developed levels of executive function
at the same pace as their peers? When
they don’t have a medical label to explain away their problems, they simply get
labeled Bad and are punished rather than helped. And yet, their experience of
school may be no different that the experience of students with identifiable
disabilities: it doesn’t work, it doesn’t fit, they don’t know why, and they
get yelled at for it.
This is tragic for all sorts of
reasons—not least of which is the fact that, in the words of author, Eric Jensen,
“Brains can change.” Neuroplasticity, the ability of a brain to adapt and
change over time, even beyond childhood, means that a student’s past doesn’t
have to be his future—that with careful and planful work on the part of the school,
even a student with severe behavior issues can learn to control himself and
succeed in the classroom.
But what does “careful and
planful” mean for such students? It doesn’t mean medicating them into a stupor,
and it certainly doesn’t mean threatening them with suspension if they take a
wrong step. For students who can’t control their impulses or their aggression,
it means providing a safe and orderly environment where they can actually,
finally, learn to control their
impulses and their aggression—where they can regularly practice a menu of self-control
strategies and demonstrate increasing levels of self-control. At Philadelphia’s
Anthony Wayne Academy, one of our SESI schools, I have seen how even the most
behaviorally-challenged students can take control of their behavior and earn increasing
levels of autonomy and authority. I’ve seen students who were once sent away
from their schools becoming leaders: running meetings, modeling correct
behavior, and acting as role models for younger or newer students. They learn
how to tame the chaos within themselves, whatever the cause of that chaos may
have been, and gain enough self-control to return to their schools, earn their
diplomas, and pursue their dreams.
That shouldn’t have to be seen
as a miracle, or even a gift. It’s simply what those students need. Yes, they
need Algebra. Sure, they need World history. But if they can’t tame that inner
chaos and take control of their lives, what meaning or use can Algebra or World
History ever have?
Our democracy is built on the assumption
that people can govern themselves and manage their own affairs—that we are not forever
children, searching for a strong parent to obey. But not everyone is ready and
able to take control of their lives—even at age 18. And a person who is unable
to manage himself is a person who will eventually be managed by someone
else—often the police or some other mechanism of the state. That is not exactly a gateway to the “pursuit
of happiness” that was meant to be our birthright as Americans.
We are supposed to be giving
our students the tools they need to succeed in life beyond the schoolroom. But if we can’t see the world through their
eyes, how can we possibly know what tools they need?
