"Slow Learners"

As I think back to my college years, which evidently weren’t all that long ago, I find myself wishing I would have had more training on identifying and helping children with disabilities. One of the conundrums of the village schools is that each class is overcrowded, holding at least forty children, and inevitably some of these children have disabilities. The problem here arises. The teachers were never taught about different disabilities or how to facilitate learning in students that do not fit the norm of children their age. In addition, the district provides no support in identifying learners with specific disabilities or to create separate classes for these students who fail in a mainstream classroom.

Here is where the cycle begins. Teachers already feel overstressed and overworked by their abundance of learners. Add disabled children and the teachers reach a heightened level of feeling overwhelmed. There is not enough time to give individual attention. There are no resources for assisting children who have difficulties, and there is no education regarding the disabilities of children. This leads to one thing: all learners who are not performing with the rest of the class are labeled as “slow learners” regardless of whether they are simply behind due to problems at home, learning difficulties, physical difficulties, dyslexia, autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, etc. It is in a state of utter frustration that teachers approach me regarding their “slow learners.”

Now I know enough, through my education, to guess at certain problems. I can almost guarantee that two boys in grade 3 are dyslexic. I can guess at retardation and fetal alcohol syndrome but I can’t be sure. So I am left with this puzzle: I don’t really know the problems of different children so I guess at them and ask around trying to find possible ideas to work with these children. For example, I have my possible dyslexic children observing letters with colored plastic placed over them and practicing their writing by tracing dotted numbers and letters. The teacher is frustrated because she wants this to solve the problem and cannot comprehend that this will be a life long struggle for them and that sometimes she has to have separate assignments and expectations for the boys than for her other students. This is frustrating when she already thinks she has too much work to do.

So I am stuck. I need to find someone to come to my school to diagnose children so that we can work towards overcoming their disabilities and give them a chance. Yet, being in a rural area is not exactly conducive to this need. Hopefully I can throw my weight around to accomplish this but for now I will continue to guess and hope I’m helping students that are otherwise disregarded.