WAIT! I HAVE A CHEST OF DRAWERS IN MY HEAD?
Children who are struggling with learning often believe they have no control over how or what they learn.
They sometimes think, and feel, that learning happens to them by magic.
They think they learn new things magically or magically don’t learn new things.
They begin to feel frustrated when they realize that even though the magic doesn’t work for them all of the time, it seems to be working for their classmates all of the time.
Their feelings of frustration and disempowerment build as they realize their friends are reading so much more smoothly than they are reading. They often sit in class wondering how their classmates know words so quickly when they struggle with each word.
Their answer is – “The magic just doesn’t work for me. I’ll have to deal with that.”
When children come to me for tutoring, they’re struggling to learn to read, write and spell. Their confidence in themselves as a learner is at rock bottom! They are sure there is something wrong with their brain—they are stupid and dumb. (Their words, not mine.) They are certain they will never learn to read, write and spell like their peers.
It’s painful to watch them approach my front door the first time they come for tutoring. Their heads are down. They shuffle their feet up the sidewalk while being prodded by their parents, “Hurry up!” They begrudgingly sit on a chair or on the loveseat in my office. They barely (if at all) make eye contact with me.
Luckily I have a golden retriever named River. He is my service dog, so I begin our first tutoring session showing the children all of the tricks River can do and all of the tasks he does to help me. We talk about their pets, animals they know personally, and/or animals they wish they had for a pet. River breaks the ice for us. I can visually watch my kiddos beginning to relax.
After meeting River and learning about his job, we share our favorites: favorite color, favorite healthy food, favorite snack, etc. When I broach the subject of their favorite subject in school, I watch nervousness and shyness creep back in.
I return to subjects of ease as we continue by sharing our interests and hobbies: sports, music, art, animals, and outdoors. My kiddos begin to relax again.
Then I ask, “Do you like to read? Do you like to spell words? Do you like to write?”
Their nervousness immediately returns. They’re mostly quiet—not wanting to share their struggles. But a few have told me they like to write, and they love when someone reads to them.
Within the first weeks of tutoring, I begin talking to my children about how they learn—how their brain works. I share that their brain began working while they were still inside of their mom. They could see, hear, smell, taste, and feel touch before they were even born! Once they were born, their learning continued as they gathered more and more information using their five senses. We talk about their senses and how wonderful they are.
I share that our brain receives messages from our senses and interprets them by finding commonalities, patterns, drawing conclusions, sequencing, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating. I share that our brain just naturally finds connections. In other words, through our senses our brain is finding meaning in our world. Our brain then stores these meaningful messages in an organized manner in what we call our memory.
At this point I begin to use an analogy to further teach them about their brain and how they learn. All struggling readers benefit from using stories and/or developing images in their mind that help them make connections and understand concepts.
In the next blog post, I will share with you exactly what I mean when I say, “There’s a chest of drawers in your head!”
If you are questioning whether someone in your life is dyslexic and you’re not sure what to do, feel free to contact us.