My Child Can’t What???

A teacher’s duty is to learn each of their students’ strengths and weaknesses.  This helps them craft lessons that foster growth and development for the entire class.  Unfortunately, there are those moments when they encounter a child whose capabilities challenges their expertise.  An encounter such as this left me baffled at how to proceed in educating a student along with the rest of the class.

Each school year brought on different challenges.  With adjustments to schedules because of overcrowding and late starters, it normally took me about two months before I was completely familiar with each student and got into a rhythm teaching.  Of course, it was easy to remember the outspoken children and the exceptionally bright, but the quiet ones could elude you the longest.  We were coming upon our first parent-teacher conference when I discovered a learning deficiency with one of my students.  The student was extremely quiet in nature and well behaved.  She turned in all class work, or at least made an attempt to do so.

The first thing I noticed, she wrote in script or cursef (as some refer to it), which was unlike the other students in class.  While I was excited about her efforts with this lost art, I couldn’t understand her writing.  I love writing in script and I take pride in the fact that I can read most handwriting.  With this student, hardly any of her words were legible.  In fact, her writing mimicked the incoherent looping style of the teacher on the Peanuts cartoon.  I began to question her about her understanding of the work and even her verbal responses were incoherent.  I thought, “This is weird.  This is a ninth grade class, why am I having difficulty communicating with this child?”

With parent-teacher conferences coming up I needed a learning metric to convey to her parents.  This is when I began to sort through the pieces of the puzzle.  Her name sounded as if it could have been Spanish derived so, I figured maybe she’s not fluent in English.  Believe me I was grasping for straws.  Willing to try anything, I solicited the assistance of a Latinx staff member.  She agreed to speak with the student.  Unfortunately, our schedules clashed and she wouldn’t be able to intervene prior to parent-teacher conference.  Next, I spoke with the newly hired reading specialist and she too had to pencil this student into her schedule, but not before the conference. 

When parent-teacher night arrived I didn’t know what to expect from her parents and prepared myself for something extraordinary.  Instead, what I encountered were two well dressed, American born parents, who spoke English.  Nothing fell short within the realm of basic communication. At least, that’s what they presented on the surface.  When I told them of the problems I perceived with their child, they appeared shocked.  They claimed that no other teacher had ever told them that their child had trouble reading and writing.  Thankfully, they did not accuse me of foul play and agreed to my recommendation to have their daughter assessed by the reading specialist.

About two weeks passed and the reading specialist came to me with her assessment.  This student read on a second-grade level, essentially, she was illiterate for a ninth grader.  Amazingly, this child had created a defense mechanism that allowed her to go undetected.  It was her quiet demeanor and ability to speak in an almost inaudible tone with minimum dialogue that allowed her to be socially passed every school term.  The reading specialist took the initiative to remove her from all regular academic courses and appropriately placed her.  She could finally get the special learning attention that she required to succeed.  In the end, this was a lesson not only for teachers, but for the parents too. 

So, here is my question. How can you be so disconnected from your child that you do not realize they cannot read or write?  I would have had empathy for the parents if I suspected they functioned from similar capabilities, but that wasn’t the case.  Then again, their comprehension level may not have been significant either.  Like their daughter they may have developed enough verbal and social skills to interact on a functional level.  Hence the need to dress as if you are just coming from church when under public scrutiny.  Then that leaves me to the experts.  How could a teacher not recognize that student’s shortcomings, then proceed to burden her life further by socially passing her?  The blame here extends beyond one or two people.  It climbs a tall ladder with extra rungs.

I implore every parent to sit down with their child at the beginning and end of each school year and make them read out loud to you.  Ask questions about what they just read to test their comprehension. This way you can gauge your child’s reading level and whether or not they are improving every year.  If you are not comfortable doing this then find someone in your family or neighborhood who can do it for you.  Then, when you find cracks in the foundation, take it up with the school.  Find out how you can work together to improve your child’s education.  You cannot leave it up to the system alone.  Sometimes you have to monitor the monitors.  I know many of you are working hard to provide for your child, but their education should be built into that equation.  Besides love, food and shelter, let education be one of the things you don’t fall short on. 

By: Paige Adams