Blog: School Struggles, Learning Disabilities & Other Kid Stuff

NJ ASK - Don’t Ask: (Standardized Testing Stress Disorder)

selznick — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:41:29 +0000

I know I am speaking into the Grand Canyon on this one (happens to me a lot), but I think our notion of testing is often misguided. There simply is too much pressure all around. Teachers feeling incredible administrative pressure to meet certain standards, pass this pressure down to the children. Some are losing sleep with worry over standardized testing.

Take young Kevin, age 10, a great kid, but prone to excessive worrying. For the past month or so his teacher has been spending a great deal of time “prepping” for the NJ ASK, New Jersey’s statewide assessment test. A week or so prior to the test, Kevin worked himself up with so much worry and anxiety that he started losing sleep. His teachers and parents needed to help him through his high level stress reactions. Maybe he has a new DSM disorder: STSD – Standardized Testing Stress Disorder

In the dark ages (my youth) we had standardized testing too. Children were given something like the Metropolitan Achievement Test. There was no preparation. We showed up on a regular school day and were handed the tests. Grade equivalent scores and percentiles offered some picture of where your skills fell in reading and mathematics. After the testing, we didn’t think twice about it. We were too busy playing outside.

What is the primary purpose of testing? It would seem that testing is supposed to be an indicator on how the child is doing in key areas of academic development so that instructional decisions can be made?

I don’t think the purpose of testing is to practice the test or talk about it continually with the kids so that the they become preoccupied and gripped with test anxiety to the point of losing sleep.

Well, back to the Grand Canyon! “Hello down there!!!!!!!”

"Bully:" Some Thoughts About the Movie

selznick — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:02:35 +0000

I saw the movie “Bully” yesterday which stirred some thoughts. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should. My wife and I were both moved by the stories of the various children who had become targets of ridicule, mockery and social shunning.

For me, as someone who professionally has met many children who have become targets for a variety of reasons, there was one take-away point. This point is the same point I have always felt from the early stages of my career (as a teacher) to the present day. Targeted, victimized or bullied (whatever word you are comfortable with) children need effective adult protection, support and intervention. From what I saw in the movie and have seen over the years, there are certain children who wear a large target on their backs and they become fodder for the aggressive ones. Expecting these children to tough it out and ignore the aggressive kids is unrealistic. It is beyond their capacity and may be inherently unfair to expect.

In the movie “Bully” there was only one brief moment where there was anything close to an effective administrative action against the bully types where they (the bullies) were effectively stared down and told that their behavior would not be tolerated under any circumstances.

In addressing bully types there must be sufficient backbone and clarity of message. From my view, nothing short of clarity of message will be effective. Putting too much on the targeted child or even the “bystanders” to deal with these types is asking them to confront levels of fear and intimidation that would be beyond most of us. They can’t do it on their own.

One more point, with our new bully consciousness, since bullying is the current hot topic in and around the schools, we risk having the word “bully” becoming marginalized and trivialized, just as the overuse of “ADHD” had similar trivializing effects. Every off task behavior is not symbolic of ADHD and every confrontation or unhappy childhood experience does not represent bullying. See the movie. The children depicted were clearly bullied and their lives were made miserable as a result. There was no doubt about it.

In sum, if you deal with children, the chilren being bullied need support and understanding. They need someone (beyond their mom) on their team. The bullies need to know their behaviors will not be tolerated.

12 Year Old Boy Truths

selznick — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:16:11 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a 12 year old boy not (or in that age range), but chances are if you are reading this you probably haven’t been since most of the people reading stuff like this are the moms.

Since I was once a 12 year old boy (in the far recesses of time) let me tell you some age-old truths that apply to most (not all) of those on the boy side of the equation:

1) We don’t care about homework.

2) We don’t like to write.

3) We mature very, very slowly.

4) We don’t handle frustration very well.

5) Our work habits are sloppy.

6) We hate to be controlled (I won’t mention by whom).

7) We can’t stand doing our homework as soon as we get home.

8) We don’t like our sisters who seem to not having any problem with this stuff.

9) We have a lot more important stuff to do, like saving the world or playing outside.

10) We’re not interested in “accommodations.” Please stop talking about 504 whatevers. What is a 504 Plan anyway???

11) We don’t respond well to study skill coaching.

12) We really don’t like you checking our grades on the internet every three hours (or every other day for that matter).

In spite of these truths, most of us grow up (sort of), albeit on very different timetables than the more mature members of our species.

Mark Twain had it down. Reread “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or “Tom Sawyer. “

Not much has changed.

Need A Little Dose of "Vitamin P"

selznick — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:25:03 +0000

A five year old boy I evaluated recently, Ari, seemed very sweet, although perhaps a little on the shy side. When I told his mom my largely positive impressions of her son after the testing, one of the things she was very concerned about was the fact that he was very bad at saying hello to people in social situations. “Do you think he has Asperger’s Disorder?” she asked me.

Those “disorder” questions always stop me in my tracks. I am hopelessly wired for seeing kids as kids and less as having disorders. To me under the big tent of “normal” there is a tremendous amount of variation. Here I had spent about two plus hours with her son and mostly what I saw was a boy who needed more time to mature and learn the difficult skill (for many)of saying hello properly among a few other things.

I didn’t see this boy as disordered as much as needing one thing from the adults around him – patience.

“Ah, he’s a great kid,” I told the mom. “It’s not easy for lot of kids to say hello or to be socially responsive when they are five. Give him time, reinforce him positively when you catch him doing the right thing and I predict the issue will be gone. Be patient. It isn’t easy being a kid.”

Was I right in my view? I’m sure there would be plenty of professionals out there who would be more than ready to put a disorder label on this boy and initiate a range of treatments (at parent expense I might add).

I just wasn’t ready to go there.

Listening to Dyslexia: "Heard, But Not Seen"

selznick — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:53:41 +0000

Recently I wrote a piece about defining dyslexia ( www.shutdownlearner.com/blog ), frustrated by the constant refrain heard by parents, “Well, we really don’t know what it (dyslexia) is.” What is puzzling to parents is the statement that they often hear, “I don’t see it with your child in the classroom.”

Diagnostically, one does not “see” dyslexia. The only way that I know to identify dyslexia is to listen to it, not see it.

Take Sari, age 17, a child I recently evaluated who was never diagnosed with dyslexia.

When I listened to Sari read I was struck how strained her reading sounded. Larger words such as, conspicuous, philanthropist, mechanic, represented hurdles in the text that she had to jump over. Every time she hit one of these “low frequency” words, she slowed down her reading to a crawl and either read the word correctly by laboring through or substituting some sort of nonsense word that altered the text. Either way, the reading was very tough sledding for Sari. She derived little meaning from what she read.

The problem is her teachers have never really heard her read. From early elementary school the majority of reading activities are done silently. Sari was never diagnosed with dyslexia because no one was listening for the signs and symptoms.

Unless children read words (real words and pseudowords) in isolation followed by context oral reading, no one would know Sari had a reading disability. She was simply smart enough (and well behaved enough) to fake it.

Let me leave you with this: If I ask you what’s “5 + 3” do you have to think about it or figure it out?

My guess is, no.

Now try and read these words:

· mechanic

· thrumblit (a made up word)

· Riconsetti (a name)

By middle school, adequate readers can read these words as easily as adding “5 + 3” – automatically and effortlessly.

With dyslexia, these words are a chore, resulting in much reading resistance.

To “diagnose dyslexia” listen to the strained reading.

It’s not something that you will see, but hear.

Deconstructing Dyslexia

selznick — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:12:46 +0000

Probably a week does not go by where I haven’t heard something like the following from a bleary eyed parent: “The school is telling us that no one really knows what dyslexia is and if anyone really does it has to be a medically diagnosed.”

We have talked about this before in different ways, but I thought that “deconstructing dyslexia” would be helpful.

The definition that follows from NICHD is very useful:

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.

OK…so far so good. This tells that the disorder is likely to have been passed down. 99% of the time in my work I find one or the other parent saying something, like “Yep, I was just like that as a kid.”

It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.

What??? Where is all of the [b/d], [was/saw] reversal business everybody always talks about? You mean that has nothing to do with it? Accurate and or fluent word recognition? I don’t know too many medical doctors testing that stuff.

These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.

You mean they aren’t even mentioning IQ? Why do the schools still hold to the sanctity of the IQ score?

Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge

Well, if you read a word like “prickopinny” for “porcupine” it certainly will affect comprehension, won’t it? Also, if you don’t read much, as dyslexic people usually don’t, then vocabulary and comprehension will suffer.

Now, doesn’t that make sense?

Boy Reading Scores Rise in UK – What About the USA?

selznick — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:43:11 +0000

I saw this news come across one of the feeds of the day about boys in the UK closing the gap on reading:

Boys are no longer lagging behind girls when it comes to reading ability, according to a new report. After examining the reading habits of over 210,000 primary and secondary school children from 1,237 schools across the UK, the What Kids are Reading 2012 report found that the gap between girls' and boys' reading abilities appears to be closing.

I’m not sure how the Brits are accomplishing this, but I don't see any signs of such changes here. What I am seeing is tremendous reading resistance from the boys, like they are wearing raincoats keeping them protected from reading.

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a boy captivated by a book (beyond “Captain Underpants”). How often do you see your boys engrossed in a book (even an ebook)?

Reading as it is taught in the USA seems not to be capturing anyone’s attention. As a teacher if you have to be so focused on a test score to protect your job or the school’s reputation, can anyone ignite a legitimate passion for such an “old school” activity like reading?

A teacher friend of mine grew disenchanted with teaching after being in the business for over 25 years. She wasn’t tired of teaching, she was fed up with the state of the art. She noted that in her school any reading of literature was strictly forbidden. Teachers could not veer one inch away from the “evidence-based curriculum.” Only the prescribed passages written for the text would be allowed with scripted interactions that the teacher had to follow to the letter.

If you take the oxygen out of the room, if you don’t ignite children’s passion with captivating literature then you get are bored, disconnected faces that could care less about reading.

Perhaps some reading scores will rise after the kids have been schooled on the test, but the boys’ passion and joy meter will continue to plummet, as they escape to the next video game.

Who could blame them?

Getting Clear on "Average"

selznick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:59:27 +0000

When a child is evaluated by the school’s special education team, frequently parents hear something like, “Your child’s reading skills are average, meaning he/she is not eligible for services.”

Upon closer inspection of the child’s report, I often see that the “average” is a standard score of 90, 91 or 92, meaning the score is in the lowest possible point of the “average range,” or about the 25^th percentile.

While it is technically true that the child may not be eligible for services, be clear on one thing. Even though your child is being called “average,” he/she will probably need help, but you will need to seek this help on your own.

I’m not suggesting the team is doing anything wrong, but watch being lulled into thinking your child is fine, when he/she is in that point of the “average” range.

Boy Disconnection to the Writing Process

selznick — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:20:30 +0000

I’m not sure what’s going on out there, but more and more I hear parents say that when their child (typically a boy) is resistant to school, the resistance is linked to anguish (hatred) of performing any type of writing.

Writing is painstaking. Trying to find the right words, revising your product, thinking about how your words sound, takes time. There is almost never instant gratification. That pencil in the hand thing can really make your hand ache.

At home, the average boy spends hours a day pressing buttons playing video games. Virtually nothing they are doing in the course of their day lends itself to being competent with writing. They have a very hard time tolerating frustration.

Last week there were two boys that I interacted with who stood out in my mind as typical of the legions of those who are writing resistant.

The first one, Holden, is 7 years old. Holden spends large chunks of his day on his iPad, playing Angry Birds or something. As his mother had told me, whenever Holden is asked to write, he has melt downs. When I greeted him and his mother in the waiting room, Holden could not bother to look up from his iPad. His mother was a bit sheepish when he didn’t look up, but said nothing to him.

In the second scenario, Alex, a 15 year old, tenth grader is a major video game player who has little interest in anything else. Writing (and reading) seem like activities from a distant century to him. Similar to Holden but in a much larger body, he has a teen version of a tantrum whenever he has to perform difficult academic tasks.

From where I sit, the boys are having a very hard time facing a reality that is not instantly gratifying. I know it’s their world, and iPads certainly trump pens and pencils (or even typing on the keyboard), but you need to carve out time to get them off their screens.

They need to start coping better with frustration. Make it positive, not a punishment. Find ways to reinforce good effort and not melting down.

Homework Shenanigans: A Play in One act

selznick — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:36:28 +0000

Players: The Mom and Miles, age 11

Scene: Family Office. Door closed. Miles & The Mom in the room. No One else is around.

The Mom: (Speaking very calmly with no edgy tones) Miles, I’ve been thinking about it. I realize that I’ve been really messing up the whole homework scene.

Miles: (Not saying anything but looks definitely interested with perked up ears.)

The Mom: Yep, I realize I’ve been too involved and too controlling about your homework.

Miles: (Still not speaking, looking very, very interested.)

The Mom: I know you don’t want to do your homework and from now on I want you to know it’s totally your choice. It’s up to you. But here’s the deal, though. Playing your video games and texting are going to be earned. It’s one way or the other. If you choose to do your homework, great. That’s wonderful. That means you have earned your electronics for the evening. If you give me a rough time and avoid like usual, that’s ok too. It just means you haven’t earned the electronics for the night. Either way is fine.

If you choose to not do your homework, I just have to write a note to your teacher letting her know about your choice. You'll just let me know.”

Miles: (Stunned at mom’s calm and objective tones is wondering when she’s going to erupt like she normally does. He’s feeling really worried that this time, she just might be getting it right.)

The Mom: We'll start tonight. Let me know what you choose. If you choose to do your work, let me know if you need any help with anything. I'll be in the kitchen putting things away.

Miles: (Walks out stunned wondering what happened to his mother. "I wonder if she really means this," he thinks to himself.)