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Keeping Focus October 1, 2009 |
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by Regina Steiger 
This was not an issue I'd ever anticipated. A former writer and television news reporter, I grew up LOVING to
read. I began homeschooling 10 and 1/2 years ago when my eldest daughter turned four. We started marching through
"Sing, Spell, Read and Write" with nary a problem, earning stickers and blue ribbons along the way.
I expected the same ease with my second daughter. After all, why should there be any difference? The variables were the same --same parents, same food, same learning environment, same books. But, and this is a big one, different kid. At age 4, it was clear this child could not remember three letters of the alphabet from the beginning of the week until the end. After some increasingly exasperating attempts, I decided to delay her formal schooling until she turned five, or maybe six. I learned a couple of things fairly quickly. My youngest was born in November. She makes developmental leaps according to her birth date, not the calendar year. It doesn't matter that a new school year with its promotion to a new grade begins in September. My daughter's natural development leads to her promotion after her birthday. Do you remember when public schools allowed some children to begin school in January and matriculate all the way through to the twelfth grade by advancing to the next grade in January? They even graduated in January. I began to understand the rationale behind that system. I learned something else right around the time I wanted to throw "Sing, Spell, Read and Write" out the window. Some kids just WILL NOT get hooked on phonics! But I still didn't understand why not. Phonemes are the building blocks to language are they not? Learn to decode them, learn to read. That's how I did it. It's how my older daughter did it. Why couldn't the younger one do it? Something was going on with this child that I just couldn't comprehend. There were clues, but the big picture remained out of reach. And school became a horrible scene of me losing my temper, my daughter in tears and treading water academically year after year. It took a while for anyone (including my husband) to believe we had a problem. I was told my daughter was just "young" and needed time to develop. But I knew that wasn't the issue. When I finally convinced my spouse that I couldn't continue with the way things were going, we sought a tutor. But the tutor was teaching phonics and the lessons didn't stick. Next we had our daughter tested at a sensory integration clinic. She participated in scheduled activities there for almost nine months. They didn't help either. My daughter is not stupid. She has a natural ear for music and composes complex melodies on the piano. She is also a budding visual artist and can see things in pictures (even those broadcast on television) that I have missed. What she struggles with is a learning glitch that did not have a name, until I learned about Dianne Craft. I don't remember now if I first read of Ms. Craft online, or if someone put an article in my hands. What I do know is that she was the first (and so far only) person to point out one of my daughter's clues and the first one to use my phrase, 'learning glitch.' When my daughter was struggling to read or spell a word, she would look up, towards the ceiling. Initially I scolded her, telling her the word wasn't in the air and ordering her to look down at the written page. It happened enough though that I began to recognize the behavior as a clue, but again, I didn't know what it meant. Dianne Craft specializes in teaching strategies for the "right brain thinker.” In a (very small) nutshell, the right brain thinker sees the big picture. They learn things in wholes rather than parts. And most often, they need to picture what they're trying to learn. That's why my daughter was looking upward when she was trying to decode information. She was literally trying to picture it! Ms. Craft offers consultations to help identify right brain learning issues and provides teaching strategies for dealing with those issues. I desperately wanted to set up an appointment with her, but she lives and works in Colorado and I do not. So I kept struggling and praying. Finally, two years ago, she offered a full-day workshop about ninety minutes from my home and I tried to be the first one there. What I learned that day was nothing short of miraculous. I returned home armed with DVDs, handouts and a yellow legal pad full of notes that would show me how to turn my linear approach to teaching into the visual approach my daughter needs. I learned how the right brain thinking pattern differs from the left brain pattern and what might have caused the "glitch" my daughter struggles with in processing information. I learned about vitamins and supplements that can help heal an injured gut lining and how my daughter's gastrointestinal tract affects her brain. And most importantly I learned that just because our educational models are set up for left brain thinkers, that doesn't mean those models are the "right" or for that matter, "only" way to teach and to learn. My daughter isn't a "slow learner". On the contrary, her mind is working a mile a minute, making pictures for what she needs to learn rather than processing symbols. She's not sailing through her academic subjects yet, but she is doing much, much better. And in many ways, I think it is I who have work to do to catch up with her. For more information about Dianne Craft and help for struggling learners, I urge you to visit www.diannecraft.com. 982 words |
