Learning Disabilities

Well, it's always fun to be on the radio. Last week, on March 23rd, while staying in baby land, I took a break from making baby food and changing diapers to make a call to CBC radio's Ontario Today show. The discussion that day was entitled, Why are schools not following plans for learning disabilities?

It's too bad they started with that negative slant but it certainly generated an interesting discussion. As a mother, grandmother and retired special education teacher, this is a subject that I care passionately about. I wish I could say that in 2015 we have made great strides and that students with learning disabilities are getting the best service ever. Sadly, as the radio discussion confirmed, that is not the case.

Today's great gadgets: the smart boards, laptops, chrome books and cell phones, all provide wonderful advantages to LD students. However, technology alone does not solve every problem. There is still a great need for individual attention and instruction which is simply not possible in today's classrooms, in spite of many teachers' heroic efforts. I won't go on and on about this here. If you're interested, you can listen to the program.

My main point is that students who are experiencing difficulty need to be given a complete assessment early - by grade one. People with a learning disability are of average or in many cases, above average intelligence. A few famous folks with LD are: Jamie Oliver, Whoopi Goldberg, Albert Einstein, Daniel Radcliffe, Steven Spielberg, Keira Knightley and Richard Branson. Many people are identified as both gifted and LD. If they do not get the help they need at an early age, their self esteem often suffers, as they see their classmates achieve milestones that they find impossible. LD students require intensive assistance in the primary grades. If they can master the basics by the time they hit the junior division (grade four) then they will fit in much better with their peers and feel so much better about themselves.

Elementary school years zoom by very fast. I was recently in a grade five classroom and there was a student there who could hardly read or write. When I spoke to his teacher about him, she told me that the spec. ed. teacher was currently in discussions with the parent, trying to persuade her that her child required testing. That mother was still in the denial stage - "There's nothing wrong with my kid."

What's really sad is when you have the big discussion with parents of grade eight students. They have to fill in their option sheets for high school and that's when some of them finally realize that their child may not be capable of following the academic stream. So much heartache could be avoided if we poured pots of money into testing, early intervention and intensive assistance for our primary grade students. In Ontario, where would we get these pots of money? Scrap the EQAO testing! But that's another discussion.