TippyCanoe
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Posts posted by TippyCanoe
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Why aren't parents of 2E kids participating both here and on the Accelerated Learning forum? I thought twice exceptional meant accelerated in some areas, struggling in others.
Yes, but those areas are not always easily differentiated and separable; they can be completely interwoven.
It's my understanding, from onelmichele who used to post here, that the previous request about this board was to sub-divide it, to provide a space for posters with 2e kids who can sometimes feel that their kids' issues and strengths don't fit tidily into either SN or accelerated, and that the kinds of answers they get on either one board or the other are often not able to address the way the two aspects are inextricable from one another in many kids.
The issue of "different learners" also seems problematic. Some people on these boards definitely see visual, kinesthetic, or "right-brained" learners as having LDs; others see them as perfectly typical in their own way, with a different but completely legitimate and academically rigorous scope and sequence of their own.
It's a mixed bag. Sometimes a group of posters will dominate a particular board for a while and slant the content of a lot of threads one way or another; it happens on the other boards too, often with certain curricular bandwagons or definitions of what is adequately rigorous.
I think a bigger issue is that there can be a lot of harsh and sometimes unfair or inaccurate criticism leveled at those who present a different point of view. Perhaps more people would feel free to post here not with a name change but with an overall environment of acceptance that people differ: in how they see an LD affecting their kids, what is an LD and what is not, whether or not classical education is a good fit for their child at any given time, whether or not they choose to seek evaluations, what their long-term goals are for their children, whether or not "different learners" need to conform to a traditional scope and sequence, how others have seen their kids develop and change in a particular pattern that makes them question common educational practices, what treatments or therapies they seek and why, etc.
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My views and my understanding of my child and her way of learning have indeed changed over time, very much so in the past year as she has become much more mature, academically independent and totally self-motivated, and any remaining academic issues from her younger years (dysgraphia) have completely disappeared -- thus my response on this thread which began as a discussion of whether and to what degree some LD labels result from a misunderstanding or incomplete awareness of how some children, who can be generally spoken of under the category of right-brained, learn. I have finally come far enough along the path with dd that I can look back and see her earlier development as a pattern rather than a series of crises.
I consider being able to search out new ways to understand what my dd does, to look at her past from new angles, and to constantly acquire new knowledge about neuroscience as it may pertain to her, as a benefit and strength rather than as a weakness or hypocritical inconsistency. I consider it part of this search for understanding to question whether and where any specific educational philosophy or approach can be tweaked to the point that it departs from its central tenants, or is inappropriate for my particular child. Not everyone's search is going to include exactly what mine did, or have need to question in the ways I have. My changing views or my evolving use of categories and labels are a story of my own growth in understanding. I don't think I know it all, for myself much less for everybody else! And let me say I envy those who think they do know it all or who have never battled through the process to understanding in all its byways and detours and obstacle. It's exhausting.
It is also, equally, the highest privilege to try to see learning through my dd's eyes, to truly enter into one another's different neurology as much as possible. It's a lifelong task, the most exciting one I've ever undertaken. I don't at any point consider I know her completely, or know once and for all a single way to work with her that is going to be our pattern from now on or that explains every single unique aspect.
Only someone unfamiliar with the complexities of Cindy's writing can claim that seeing someone as right-brained is putting them into another box or playing fast and loose with labels. From what I've seen so far, Cindy's forthcoming book deals with different subgroups or variations, with ADHD, dyslexia, spectrum disorders, and more. It also deals with individual variations within and outside of these groups. It fully acknowledges the range of characteristics and learning profiles these kids can have, as well as laying out their common qualities and developmental time frames. Her book is not an instruction manual for one single method to teach these kids. It is a call to awareness that left-brained methodologies and practices can be inappropriate for many of these kids, particularly very creative, self-driven, and/or kinesthetic kids, particularly in grades K-8.
As I have a child who has been diagnosed with Asperger's and NVLD, I have a pressing concern in the fact that educational programs which stress early and frequent writing, downplay or discourage image-based learning, divide skills into separate, isolated categories, insist on teacher-made lists of content and skills to be mastered rather than integrating skills into a student's obsessive interests... all of these things have been shown to be disadvantageous for an Aspie's intellectual AND emotional health. A constant focus on remediating weaknesses, or inappropriate teaching to a learning mode that is not dd's natural one, would heighten the anxiety and lack of self-confidence that is an integral part of being on the spectrum. Research into the right-brained aspects of people on the spectrum is very much ongoing, but it is currently playing a large part in how professionals are re-imagining what an ideal education for ASD kids might look like. If professional knowledge and scientific research is in flux, even more so is my own understanding going to be an evolving process. Discovering a clearing house of information on right-brained learning profiles, both commonalities and differences, has been a hugely helpful step in that process and has for me come at a perfect moment.
The whole point of this thread, originally, was the proposal that some things that would be described as delays or deficits or weaknesses in a typical LB course of study or way of proceeding, are actually a reflection of the way that courses of study and methods are so entangled in a LB world view that they can't recognize a difference as a difference and not a deficiency. One result of presuming a left-brained way of learning to be universal is that for SOME of the apparent deficits in MANY right-brained kids, this wrongly presumes LDs or delays, when the child's abilities and performance will actually align more readily with normative timetables, without intervention or therapy, in mid to late adolescence. By working with dd's natural development frame and her visual processing in reading and spelling, by accepting the way she was clearly going to be a learner who waited until she had processed all instead of being able to work on parts and pieces, I've lessened her anxiety, made her confident about how she learns, and found ways to eliminate her earlier dysgraphia. I do not understand her as having been "delayed," because that assumes only those who develop in tune with a left-brained framework have a valid and perfectly normal, "on-time" if you will, development. I do not see her as needing accommodation or remediation (with the exception of the very physical visual and fine motor problems she has had) or tweaking or adapting. I see her as having a fundamentally different relationship to her education as that in WTM. I see this only after many years of thinking, research, evaluations, and working to understand her mind.
I'm not saying, here's the magic way to go for all right-brained kids, or "I knew this all along and look what we've accomplished," but rather, here's what I have learned and am still learning from my dd about how her mind works, what she needs and how she thrives. What I've discovered shares many core elements with what Cindy is suggesting about right-brained learner profiles and so has potential implications for others (surely not all) struggling to educate right-brained kids.
To call this musical boxes or label switching is a basic misunderstanding of the qualifications and careful discriminations Cindy makes among right-brained learners. It's also a misunderstanding of the total feeling of freedom I felt on seeing at last a coherent pattern that made sense of dd's early years, which seemed before this totally chaotic to me. I now see a pattern, a structure, an angle through which certain aspects of my experiences with dd fall into clarity and allow me to make sense of the wild and sudden way in which her dysgraphia seemed to evaporate despite little to no actual writing instruction. It also allowed me to see how the activities she freely pursued and still pursues, though they seem nothing like "school" in the WTM sense, uncannily developed her strengths, worked on her individual weaknesses (not LDs), and has aligned recently with a typical LB academic stage of development. The naturalness and ease with which this happened as we followed a different relationship between parent, child, and knowledge/skills was so utterly perplexing -- I couldn't understand how it could possibly have happened, because I still had a left-brained view of the need for incremental, steady, systematic methods and practice.
I did not set out searching for a way to critique WTM. I was looking for a way to explain why it didn't work for my child, no matter how far and furiously I tweaked; and to explain how on earth her utterly different way of learning DID work, because I certainly didn't get it. I was looking for other people who had experienced anything remotely resembling what I had, who had followed their child's lead, researched neuroscience and learning, and found any or all of the obstacles or the successes I did. This wasn't a one-stop process and it wasn't without a lot of confusion and fumbling on my part. I gradually realized that much of what I was seeing in dd was incompatible not just with methods, but with a certain relationship to content and skills that I saw in WTM. Again, that's not hypocritical inconsistency or a dedicated attack on WTM in its entirety. It's a history of my own evolving and never perfect understanding. I hope such histories have a place on this board, as it is exactly such stories from other moms whose children shared some of dd's learning characteristics that have been of such great comfort to me along the way. I don't expect everybody else's experiences to resemble my own, or their conclusions to parallel mine. But it would be nice to have a place to express them without attack.
I have been reminded so vividly of the impasse in Congress between Republicans and Democrats as I've read and written. What I say is clearly going to be continually misrepresented and reduced to absurdities, or pointed to as evidence of some kind of inadequate teaching or failure to figure out how to adapt instruction, or as inconsistency and loose use of labels. It would be pretty silly to try to continue from this point. As I said before, I envy those of you who have it all figured out and truly believe the lack of courtesy and of understanding is all on one side. It must be a very comfortable place to be. As far as I'm concerned, this thread is all yours.
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I can't tell you how many times I have read these boards with wonder that she still provides this forum at all. I know for a fact that I could not be half as gracious as she is. To have so many people come into my figurative house and criticize me and my...we'll go with cooking...at every turn? To have them tell others at my party how my recipe didn't work for them because it was this insult or that insult so, here, try this recipe? It's so much better! Right in front of me? Seriously?! Get out of my house! But she doesn't kick us out of her house. She keeps opening her door for us. And she has never, not once, said or implied that the WTM is a perfect fit for all children. Never.
If this is so, then why is it apparently such a hot-button issue when some of us say that it is not a perfect fit for ours? But I don't think the issue is actually whether it's a "perfect" fit. It's whether what constitutes the bedrock of classical education can be so endlessly adapted and changed and still be classical education. it's whether it fits some of our kids at all, particularly at certain stages, particularly K-8. It's whether a child who is struggling under WTM methods necessarily has an LD that needs intervention or accommodation (the original topic with which the thread began). Both Cindy and I have said that we see our kids becoming more able and suited to WTM methods at the high school level. Cindy has said that with her older kids she is doing some combination of classical and unschooling. But these classical methods -- and yes, WTM is about methods; the word was used by SWB herself in this thread -- were not productive at all in earlier years.
And I guess I have a different understanding of the purpose of the forums themselves. I don't see them as SWB's "figurative house," but more of a seminar-type virtual room in which people come to think about, ask about, praise and question the fundamental elements as well as the details of classical methods. I see them as therefore being a very appropriate place to question and think critically about WTM's structures of thoughts, as they apply to my child and other children I have met in real life and virtually -- much as one would think critically about any text or idea or topic or philosophy or methodology, in any subject, in the upper levels of a classical education, or as would happen in a college seminar course. A text, an idea, a philosophy and method of education, if they have value -- as this one clearly does -- can stand up to such questioning and analysis. It's not dishonoring them by doing so.
Yes, SWB pays to hosts these boards, and we're all grateful for that. But we've also bought her books -- I bought two editions of TWM -- and many have also bought her curricula, paid to attend her conferences, paid to download her lectures. We're also supporting her and enabling her to host the boards with our financial support of her enterprise. It is not a one-way street, and I think the whole economic interplay is mutual enough that no one is obligated to post only unqualified praise here.
It is also mischaracterizing my view, and Cindy's, and Michele's and that of others, to say we are trashing the entire WTM philosophy. We're not; we're saying it may be a poor fit for certain types of learners, in certain years, and particularly in the area of writing. We're saying that the book itself does not give even-handed attention to RB-friendly resources and materials. We're saying that there is not enough discussion of specific ways to adapt WTM to SN kids in general. We're attempting to extend that discussion. It may go in directions WTM does not. That is not a sweeping dismissal of WTM in its entirety.
What is more, if posters can't openly question, can't relate their experiences with their own children, both positive and negative, can't honestly and openly explore the ways in which WTM works or doesn't work for a particular kind of learner they see in their child, can't ask whether ANY educational methodology can not only work for every single child but can be the "best" way for all -- if we can't do any of this, then what we have is thought control, where there is only one kind of acceptable response to have.
Let me tell you something; I am not a suck-up. If only you knew me, you could really know how true that is. I guess my mother just taught me good manners. I know how to say something isn't going to work for us without disparaging the product or the purveyor of the product. Before reading so many threads on these boards, I didn't think that skill was as rare as it apparently is.This is your idea of good manners, implying that those of us who find WTM doesn't work with our child and are theorizing that there is a right-brained mindset or way of processing that is at the root of this mismatch -- while SAYING, REPEATEDLY, that it clearly has value for so many, WTM exerts a continuing pull on us, and we still share some of it goals -- were just badly brought up? To imply if WTM didn't work for my child I must therefore simply not know how to adapt as well as you do?
Cindy has also been attacked mercilessly on these boards, and in quite a personal manner. She has been explicitly attacked as a bad parent and a neglectful teacher for having an 11-year-old who is not yet reading fluently -- before anyone bothered to find out that she has four other children who have learned to read, at widely disparate ages. She has been attacked by people who have not read her archived blog posts, which address subtleties and complexities of her general overarching description of a RB learner. I fail to see how that is somehow okay because she's said it here.
But then, as I said, although I am deeply grateful for this space, I don't see it as requiring me to think in a certain way. I have tried to be respectful and acknowledge the many people for whom WTM works and who feel they have successfully found ways to make it mesh with their kids profoundest learning needs at all stages of education. I have not, but I refuse to think that's somehow because I, and all the other parents who have likewise come to this conclusion are inadequate teachers, incompetent adapters, and generally grouchy people who get their kicks from putting down WTM.
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There's a wise old saying to "begin with the end in mind". To me personally, the goal of classical education is to expose my kids to the greatest achievements of Western Civilization so that they can participate in what Mortimer J. Adler calls "the Great Conversation". In achieving that goal, I don't think it matters so much whether a child learns to read & write using the methods described in TWTM vs. a more "right-brained" way. That's what I mean about loving the philosophy of TWTM (at least as how I read the philosophy).
I'm a "big picture" kind of girl, however, so someone who tends to "miss the forest for the trees" could very well get caught up in the specific details of TWTM, find them problematic, and reject the whole philosophy.
While I know perfectly well that WTM is a template and not a specific instruction list, I find enough emphasis on parts-to-whole learning and "systematic" instruction (there's a whole long part in the book where teaching is compared to house building, and you start with the materials, their characteristics, etc. -- in other words, the parts, and only gradually move on to wholes), where systematic is defined in a very particular way; on formal grammatical instruction; on linear and incremental thinking/instruction; and on an authoritarian teacher-student relationship; to say pretty confidently that these are indeed fundamental aspects.
Yes, there are frequent comments about adapting, and how no one is meant to follow the book in every detail. However, to take outlining as an example that comes radily to mind: only one way to outline is described in WTM, in enormous detail. Now it may be that the classical method would be amenable to a whole variety of different ways of outlining and note-taking, including pictorial, mind-mapping, spider webs, etc. But there are no examples of other styles, no references, no resources listed. How is a parent relying on WTM as a major resource going to locate all these other methods, much less feel that using them fits with classical goals and methods, if they're not discussed? There are a lot of people on these forums who rely on WTM almost exclusively for their materials and pretty detailed teaching information.
And one more time: no one is tossing the whole caboodle. Both Cindy and I, at least, have been talking about how our kids' RB development is now becoming more even and they are acquiring academic skills, in their own ways, that put them more on a par with WTM in high school. I've talked about how my goals still have a lot in common with the original ones I started out with, when I thought WTM was going to be my guidebook. Cindy even describes what she does with her older kids as a mix of classical and unschooling.
ETA: Removing slight snark; sorry. Removing also myself from the conversation, as I am tired of what I say being oversimplified and mischaracterized.
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I've become a passionate advocate for right-brained learners because of the responses I receive from others who have benefited from what I've learned about the natural learning path for right-brained children. The response from my information isn't usually just "oh, that's a good new piece of information," but instead is an emotional, life-changing level of information.
This has been exactly the response I had to your writing, which I've just found lately, Cindy. I've ended up doing much of what you talk about over the years, but I felt perpetually anxious and isolated because it was so different from what almost everybody else I knew was doing, and there was no clearinghouse about right-brained learners, which is what you are providing.
To say that WTM is left-brained in its orientation and assumptions is not a sweeping dismissal of those things. It's a description of its underlying philosophical stance and thought structures.
That those do not fit my child or many other right-brained kids is not a criticism of anybody who is left-brained or of kids who thrive in that setting! Equally, nor is it a criticism of my dd because LB education does not fit her. And finally, it is a rejection of the idea that I have simply not tweaked enough or that I view WTM too rigidly. The whole idea is that no one is at fault, no one view is wrong-minded... but equally, no one view is best for all of our kids, without exception. It is a rejection of the idea that if your child doesn't fit into left-brained models and thought structures or ways of understanding and developing, that child is therefore SN and needs "accommodations," or must necessarily have an LD.
I've tried really hard to make these distinctions clear, to make it clear that if WTM works for any given child, that's great, but its LB bent might make it inappropriate for very RB kids; that yes, there is a distinction between right-brained normal and actual LDs or processing glitches or malfunctions -- some of which my dd also had/has. I don't think I can make it any more clear. I'm sure it is not perfectly said or described. But equally, I don't think that because someone else doesn't see these distinctions in their own child, or because someone might still be operating within the framework of a LB worldview and assuming that everybody else shares it, that makes what I'm seeing and describing, or how my dd has needed to learn, invalid or misguided or mistaken. (I'm not referring to anyone specific here -- I'm making general remarks.)
Help with dd and perspective
in The Learning Challenges Board
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