You caught me "MID"thought...

"Mild Intellectual Disability".

To me, the term "mild" sounds like something that isn't too bold or serious. You get mild cheddar cheese when you don't like a bold taste. You get mild hot chicken wings when you don't like it spicy. You cure a mild headache with some advil. 

Mild Intellectual Disabilities, however, NEED to be taken seriously, as does any exceptionality in the classroom. MID cannot be cured by a one-step system like advil or a change in wing sauce spiciness. 

Mild Intellectual Disabilities covers a wide spectrum, and the only way to accommodate for students with MID is to try to understand them individually and assist them on a daily basis.  In the same way that all students without exceptionalities are unique, so too are students with MID. I don't agree with grouping students into a category of learners for the sole purpose that students under this umbrella of MID will require different tools, be unique learners from each other, and will not benefit from living life under a label. I do acknowledge the fact that these categories help educators to assist students with MID by suggesting teaching strategies that might work. However, I hold strong to my belief that learning is largely individual, and we need to keep this in mind at all times.

MID is definitely a condition that requires extra attention, extra aid, and extra resources, however again, I'd like to reference my previous blog and state that this should not be viewed as a burden. Accommodating students with MID in our classrooms is no easy task, and it's crucial that future teachers be informed about it in order to provide the best possible learning environment for them.

It's astounding to me that in the past, MID was seen as something that the individual possessing it is responsible for.  I was pleased to hear that since then, the finger of blame has been turned away from the individuals with MID and towards the rest of us.  What makes learning difficult for those students? A large part of the time, it's burdens that society places on these individuals that makes functioning difficult. We need to know what it is that we're doing to limit students with MID and take active steps to avoid this and/or to accommodate our actions to include them as much as possible. 

I think working with students with intellectual disabilities would be a very challenging job.  Often, since students with MID have problems communicating,  there'd be a barrier between the student and the teacher.  This is a large part of the issue that arose between the cases of Ashley Treatment and the Rick Hoyt - if a student with MID can understand but not communicate that they understand, life can get pretty frustrating for both parties quickly. Special Education teachers who work with students with MID must be able to assess the needs of the student quickly and adapt to a case-by-case basis with each individual.  I bet that some days are really tough, but these angels in our school are unsung heroes for continuing on in the face of difficulty.  To know that they are making a difference in the life of even ONE exceptional learner is motivation enough to keep on working towards positive change in the future. I admire their willpower and dedication, and I can really see myself working in special education sometime in my career. 

The video linked below (although a bit dated) is a quick view into the life of a special needs teacher.  I realize that this video includes teaching students with a wide variety different physical and mental disabilities, however I believe that much of my discussion of intellectual disabilities transfers well to other areas of exceptionalities as well.

Special Education Video

ASD - a "Taboo" topic?

Last week's presentation on Autism was very informative for me.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but before that day, I really didn't know much about autism at all. I've never really had to deal with it before, and none of my family or close friends have been affected by it. I have a few friends with siblings who are classified somewhere along the autism spectrum, but I never felt comfortable enough to ask the questions that really needed asking.

When I say that I didn't  know much about autism, I mean that I really didn't know anything about it.  I think the reason I was afraid to ask questions was because I didn't know anything about it, and I didn't want to offend anyone by asking a misinformed question. That's why I was so glad that Susan and Greg did their presentation in Q&A format.  It's been a long time since we did the question box (maybe as far back as elementary school), but it's a great way to get the class involved. I was able to ask a fundamental question without having to feel embarrassed for not knowing much about it. 

I think what struck me right off the bat was that Autism covers such a wide range of functionality.  There were really only a few characteristics that categorizes a person as being autistic: that is, difficulties with social interactions (ie lack of eye contact, little interest in making friends), communication (deficiency or lack of speech) and repetitive behaviours (ie shaking wrists a lot, etc). The rest of it is very personalized and largely variable.  I began to think of one of my favourite shows right now, Community, in which one of the main characters has Asperger's.  It's very clear that he is high-functioning, as he notices nuances and is very educated about very specific things. He often has trouble knowing how to act appropriately in social situations and has difficultly making lots of friends. I brought this fact up to my housemate, who was surprised when I told her that the character had Asperger's. She must have missed the episode where his Autism was discussed, and had been assuming this whole time that he was just a "bit of an odd character", as she put it. 

                                          Abed, from the show Community

The main character  in Adam, a recent film about a man with Asperger's.

I thought that was actually a really interesting reaction! In our classrooms, a lot of students won't see other students with exceptionalities as being exceptional.  My question is, would it be better or worse for them to have the label stuck onto them? Is it important for peers to know about the exceptionalities of their classmates so they can act appropriately with them? Or is the assignment of the exceptionality only going to alienate the student? At first, my reaction was to say that definitely, it's important that all students be aware of their classmates, so that they can understand each other and work together in the best way possible. But then I realized that perhaps I am being a bit naive.  As much as I hate to admit it, students aren't always looking out for the betterment of each other. Sometimes, students can be really mean. And by an autistic student having that label so well known by the rest of the class, could mean that they are an easy target for bullies.

How should we get around this problem in our classrooms? As stated before, I have never been educated at all about autism, and I'm SURE I must have been in classes with some autistic peers (whether they were high or low functioning). Why did my teachers never talk to us about it? Is this a confidentiality issue? I think that if a student is high-functioning enough to understand their condition and to be willing to talk about it, it'd be a great discussion to have with the class. Inclusion, equity and exceptionalities are all issues that occur in every classroom, and what better way to understand your classmates (and students, for us as teachers) than for them to explain it to us?

I think it's great that autism is slowly working its way into media, so that people are becoming more aware of it. I realize that above I only targeted 2 examples, and both Abed and Adam are characters with Asperger's, only one type of Autism (and a very high-functioning type, at at that). But I say, we'll take what we can get. Hopefully with the slow integration of characters with exceptionalities into the media, sooner or later all students with exceptionalities will have someone to represent them on the big screen!

The thing that's the most difficult about learning about all of these exceptionalities is that I feel like I was so shaded from them during my elementary and high school career.  I never experienced special treatment myself, so it's often hard for me to imagine now what that high school experience would have been like. 

For this reason, I really liked the taboo activity that we did in class.  Because each group thought up the best descriptors for each word possible, it was extremely difficult to think of a new way to describe those words. I contributed 2 out of the 4 words to describe our keyword, 'transition', and agreed strongly with the other 2 contributions. Since that was the way my mind worked, when I was asked to describe 'transition' without using those 4 words, it was really tough. I know it was just a game, but I made special note of my emotions afterwards, and was really surprised at how I felt. As I was giving clues, I was hesitating and struggling quite obviously. A player on the guessing team was being quite competitive, saying things like "come on, give us something else!" and "Honestly, I just don't know what you're saying. Say something else!" After we lost the point (time ran out), I found myself getting quite angry at the critical person on the other team.  I was legitimately really trying hard to think of a good description word, and it was frustrating to be yelled at for trying. I knew what transition meant, but I just couldn't think of a proper way to describe it given the limitations. I think it's imperative that we put ourselves into these kinds of situations so that we are able to experience first hand, even just a taste of what our students experience every day. It's so easy (and so damaging) to forget this.

So how can we incorporate autistic students into our classrooms then? I do realize that oftentimes, autistic students will be placed in separate classes or change locations to participate in activities such as spending time in a Snoezelen room or learning life skills. But when they are able to be in the classroom, integrated with the other students (which I believe is very important to the development of any student), there are a few things I learned that a teacher can do to help that student feel more comfortable:

-Assign groups, so that they don't have to worry about being chosen last

-Assign roles within the group clearly so that each student has a particular role and is contributing to the group

-Assign visual, repetitive work

-Have a clock nearby

I'm sure there's many other small acts that a teacher can do to accommodate autistic students. I'm very interested in this field and am looking forward to learning even more about this in the future. It's truly fascinating to me to know about how everyone works differently, and I see it as a challenge; even better: a puzzle, to ensure that each student has the best learning environment possible, whatever that is.

Grief

The lecture on grief, depression and suicide was difficult for a lot of people in class, including myself. I imagine it was because we have all encountered these on some level throughout our lives, and it's difficult to return to the feelings and memories.  Today's blog will focus on grief in particular, as I have experienced this myself on a greater level than the other two topics. I was fortunate enough not to lose any close members of my family or friends during elementary or high school, however I know many, many classmates who did.  It's a horrible thing at any stage, but in my opinion, the instability of youth makes them one of the most vulnerable demographics to deal with these life occurrences.

Unfortunately, it's a well-known fact that grief is a part of our lives. It's not something we'd ever wish for; it's not something that's easy; and it's not something that can be dealt with and then simply forgotten.

Grief affects us all at some point or another, and we're rarely ready for it. That's why I think grief is so important to be prepared for as teachers. So often, death, loss, or other events occur outside of school which strongly affects a student.  However, because these incidents often happen outside of the classroom, it's important to be aware of the signs of these things so to be able to help our students get through the mournful period. 

It's difficult to always know what's going on at home or in the social lives of your students, so that's why it's important to take steps to understand them.  For example, I think it's a good idea to stay up-to-date with events in the community that could affect our students (by reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, etc), as well as international or cultural events that could be affecting students' families and loved ones (ie military events, wars, etc). Being informed of these events and being sensitive to the possibility of the impact on students helps teachers to be more empathetic towards our students' lives outside of the classroom walls.

Speaking of walls, I really liked the analogy that we went over in class about "breaking down the wall" that students dealing with grief, depression or suicide often put up. I truly believe that there's no such thing as a bad kid. I think that sometimes things happen that make us act a certain way, or react badly to situations.  So when a student is acting in a certain way, there's often an anterior motive.  The tough part about identifying students who are grieving is that a lot of the signals can be seen as other things. For example, loss of interest in activities, refusal to attend school and fear of being alone are all signals that could be misunderstood as simply being bored, unmotivated, or even rebellious.  Since recognition is the first step to helping a student, it's important for teachers to note these differences in behaviour and define what kind of "wall" they're dealing with.  Although not always identified, studies have shown that grief is prevalent in many, perhaps even all, of our classes.  It can occur as a response to a number of different things including death, divorce of their parents, loss of a friend, separation from a boyfriend/girlfriend, the student or a close relative/friend moving to a new city, or any other form of loss or void in his or her life.

I know that I'm on the path to teaching high school, so the differences between the way students grieve and the way adults grieve might not be as different as we were discussing  in class; however, I do think that there still are differences. While a child might say  “I want to be with _____” instead of saying “I’m sad”; a teenager might react to those same feelings in a very different way such as withdrawl or rebellion; and an adult in yet another way. It's important to keep in mind that grieving is necessary to deal with loss, and sometimes the best thing you can do is just be there for the student and listen.  I remember when I lost my grandfather a few years ago, friends were offering their condolences, and I accepted them. But sometimes I just wanted to talk about it, and just have someone there with me even if I wasn't talking. I think that relating to our students like this in their time of need is important to understanding what they're going through, even if it wasn't the exact same situation.

Grief, depression, and suicide are all VERY serious issues that need to be reported as soon as they are expected in students. There is a team of specialists in every school that can work with students dealing with these issues to help them get through it and provide them with resources to be successful.  I just think that too often these specialists, student counselors and support staff are seen as people responsible for taking care of these individuals. But these staff members don't see the students in the same way that a teacher would. We have the benefit of seeing each of our students every day, and being able to gauge a change in character, if we are alert enough to notice it.   Thus, I believe that connecting to our students and being able to notice these changes is a huge responsibility of the teacher, as recognition is the first step to identification and help.

Finally, I'd also like to raise the point that teachers also need to be aware of grief among their colleagues. Grief knows no age limit and so by being aware of the signals given by others in our every day lives, we are able to help those around us, whether they be colleagues, students, peers, family members, or community members. 

Teaching is a profession full of transferable skills, of which I believe sympathy, compassion and the ability to recognize behavioural changes are some of the most important. 

Body Image

In an occidental world constantly surrounded by media featuring 00-sized female and beach-bodied males, it's no wonder that so many of the rest of us are self-conscious. Who decided that thin is beautiful?  What happened to the days where beauty was defined by Marilyn Monroe and curvaceous was synonymous with beauty? How often in the media do we see beautiful acts by people instead of outer beauty? What makes a man a man and a woman a woman?

These are the types of questions that need to be addressed in high schools to make students really think about what is "accepted" as beautiful, and to change this generation's view of beauty before it's too late.  Body image is a very important issue to address in high schools, especially, as adolescents are experiencing a huge amount of physical change and have a particularly large need to feel accepted by their peers.

Having just been out of high school for a few years, I can clearly remember the pressures there were to look a certain way. I knew then, and I know even more now, that it's not okay to make students feel like they have to fit a cookie cutter mold to be accepted. Because in reality, everyone is different, and everyone, absolutely everyone, is beautiful in their own way - and I fully believe that. Students are being bombarded with these negative body image issues every day while watching tv, on billboards on the way to school, in magazines at the doctor's office, and in countless other ways, to the point where it's virtually inescapable.

How, then, can we as teachers overcome this massive collection of messages being sent to our students almost 24/7, when we only have them for a 60-minute class, 5 times a week?

We discussed some options in class this week, and I agree with all of those, but for me personally, I found it a bit tougher to incorporate this into my music classroom.  After class, I started brainstorming ways that might be able to help students understand that beauty exists in every one of them.  One of the ideas I thought of was to give students a role model of a professional player on their instrument. There's lots of professional musicians that are not typically what we'd see as 'beautiful' in today's society, yet they're still seen as not only popular, talented, and outstanding performers, but also beautiful. Take a look at Aretha Franklin. She wasn't by any means a small woman, but when she opened her mouth to sing, people listened. Dizzy Gillespie was a larger man, but he played trumpet like an angel. Or take Beethoven, for example, who was only 5 foot 3, and he's considered one of the greatest composers of all time. The list goes on and on. 

In music classes, I also feel like there's often a stigma surrounding instrument choice. In my high school, for example, I played trombone, a typically male instrument, and of 9 of us, there was only me and one other girl. The one male clarinet player was often teased for picking a 'girly' instrument and the opposite was true for my female friend who played tuba. Most of the time, the teasing was in good fun, and the players laughed it off, but after a while, the comments must have been discouraging, to say the least. So then, by providing the clarinet player with male role models like Benny Goodman, perhaps one of the best clarinet players the world has ever seen, students would be able to see that a good musician can look like anything. It's what comes out of the instrument/voice that makes great music. A parallel can be drawn between instruments and people, then: It's not what they look like, but what 'music' comes out of them that determines their beauty- their actions and words are larger factors in determining who they are than their outwards appearance.

I find it so disheartening that teens are so often very willing to change who they are in order to be accepted by a certain group of individuals. I hate to admit it, but it seems like every school has the "Mean Girls" who dress the same, wear the same makeup, talk the same way and are admired by the rest of the student body.  

Body image media affects us in to many ways, by assigning an hierarchy of beautiful based on age, skin colour, gender, size, hair/eye colour and more. When this affects students negatively and forces them to believe that if they don't fit this description, they are not beautiful, it is the start of a downward spiral. As soon as they begin to believe that they're not beautiful, their self-esteem lowers, and they become less confident. Lower self-esteem has been directly related to doing more poorly academically, and may lead to all sorts of other personal and psychological problems.  I think there needs to be some kind of program put into schools (or maybe there is already?) to address the many issues surrounding body image in high schools. I know there have been programs implemented that advocate healthy eating habits and physical activity, but what about being mentally happy? Students need to know that they are meant to be the way they are, and they are beautiful that way.

Giftedness - A Gift Indeed?

This week's class focused around giftedness, an exceptionality that I've been curious about since the beginning of this course.

Please no not regard this next paragraph as not being self-admiring, but rather as an example to illustrate some lingering questions I have on the topic. Since I started learning about giftedness in this class, I've actually started to reflect back on my high school years and do some self-examining. Quite often I would catch onto concepts taught in class more easily than other students and I'd be asked to help others understand.  I had such a wide spectrum of interests and took such a wide variety of classes that I could have chosen literally any program to go into in university.  I loved school (I even took summer school one summer to get extra credits) and was curious about almost everything. I participated in tons of extracurricular activities and school sports, was Senior Girl on students' council, and got frustrated when I wasn't good at something right off the bat.  I graduated with hundreds more volunteer hours than needed, earned the highest average in my graduating class 3 out of 4 years in high school, and also won awards for music and community work. 

I never thought I was gifted at the time, nor am I trying to suggest now that I was or am gifted - In fact, it's very possible (probable, even) that I was just a very motivated student with wide interests. I wonder, though, if I had been identified as "gifted", would my high school experience have been any different?

I was talking  to one of my professors this week who was identified during her high school years as 'gifted', and she told me that the gifted children were put into separate classes and were able to work on more abstract thinking skills together. My question is, how can one accurately determine which children are gifted, and which ones are just hard workers? (Or, can giftedness be a result of either nature or nurture?) In addition, there must be many different kinds of giftedness, right? Surely one can be gifted in music yet not spatial reasoning, for example? So then, is it not discriminating to choose only those students who are gifted in the area of abstract thinking and put them in a special Gifted Class?

All of these ideas bring up an interesting thought: Even if I would have been identified as gifted, had I taken some sort of test, I don't feel as though I was limited in any way by not having this identified. I didn't struggle in my courses, I didn't struggle socially, and I wasn't bored in class. -- which leads to my next question -- So often, it seems, being gifted is associated with being bored, getting distracted and even failing classes. People tend to jump back to "Didn't you know? Einstein failed out of high school!" But personally, I think this is only one side of the story. Yes, I believe it's true that if a student isn't being challenged in class, they may become bored and apathetic about learning and fail to complete course work because of this. However, I think that if a gifted student is also very motivated, he or she would be able to channel the giftedness as a very beautiful and beneficial skill instead of an inhibitor to advancing learning. 

The very word "giftedness" implies that the student has something special; a gift.  But, like many other exceptionalities, I believe that giftedness often goes unidentified, which very well may be detrimental to student learning. However, in the case of giftedness, this lack of identification may not always necessarily be as big of a hindrance to student learning as many other exceptionalities.  For example, if a student with dyslexia, went unidentified as having an exceptionality, his or her education would be much more difficult than an unidentified gifted student, given that they are one of the gifted students who channels their giftedness positively.  I'm not sure how to say this without generalizing or jumping to conclusions, but it almost seems as though the gifted students who fail classes, sometimes fail because they choose not to do the work, even when they very well have the ability to do it; whereas a student with dyslexia might fail classes because they simply cannot do the work, even if they wanted to.  I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure, but I'd assume that there must be some gifted students who do their assigned work quickly and use their spare time in other productive ways.

For this reason, I suggest that gifted students should, of course, be provided with the tools to help them progress in their learning in the best way possible -- but perhaps that the identification of these students is not always as pressing as is the identification with exceptionalities on the other end of the spectrum. In my experience, there seems to be such a small population being recognized as gifted - and I suggest two reasons for this:
1)  Since the identification is not always as necessary as it is for students of other exceptionalities, the gifted students may take a back seat to those students who require more attention to cope with their exceptionalities.
2) Recognition may be hindered because a) It seems as though every parent thinks their child is the brightest, smartest, most creative kid in school, and b) It may be difficult to decipher between hard-working students and truly gifted students.

I am a strong believer in equal educational opportunities for all, and in providing all students with the tools they need to succeed.  However I'm just throwing the idea out there that giftedness could be one of the most under-identified exceptionalities out there simply  because there's not always obvious signs.

In addition, I also have some questions regarding how teachers often deal with gifted students.  The first solution many teachers jump to, is to provide the gifted student with supplemental work or ask them to help other students. I'd be very interested in finding out other ways of challenging gifted students that doesn't alienate them from the rest of the class (ie pulling them out of classes to have "gifted" classes with other students) and yet doesn't simply provide them with more quantity of the same work or require them to help other students, which might not be the best option for them.

Finally, to finish off this entry with another question, I'm curious as to who drew the line in terms of what makes a child gifted? How do these identification tests separate the hard-working, motivated students, from a truly gifted student?  Or, as mentioned above, do these terms overlap?

I found the two quizzes we did in class very interesting, as they both looked for types of giftedness. The IQ test was mainly testing logic and abstract thinking, while the circle test apparently gauged creativity.  The main question I have, especially regarding the second test, is, again, who created this criteria to be met in order to be qualified as 'gifted'? Who developed the "if more than 10% of your circles are faces, you may be gifted" rule? At this point, it seems a bit arbitrary to me. Luckily, I've found myself becoming more and more interested in cognitive psychology, so hopefully in pursuit of those studies, I'll come across this topic again and be able to apply them to my future teaching!

A Class Divided

I just happened to be going through my hotmail email inbox this week and I came across something extremely fitting for my final prof blog of the term. I usually keep pretty well on top of my emails, but every now and then there's an email that looks interesting enough to keep, but I don't necessarily have enough time to look at it at the moment, so I keep it as "unread" in my inbox. But eventually, after other important emails start piling up, the unread emails slowly get pushed further back in the logs and are forgotten. I'd become pretty accustomed to the fact that when my inbox said "7 new emails", it really meant "1 new email" because the other 6 were old unread emails that I told myself I'd read one day. 

Well, yesterday was that day.

The email was from my mother, who had just completed some sensitivity training at her new place of work. She obviously knew that I was in school to be a teacher, and figured I would be interested in some of the material that they had gone over in their meeting -- and she was right. The study was done in 1968, in a grade 3 classroom shortly after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in an American school where racism was still very much alive. The teacher in the film, Jane Elliot, decided to take matters into her own hands, and to run a social experiment on her grade 3 students. The results are astounding. She begins the class by asking her students "do you know what it feels like to be made fun of because of the colour of your skin?". Most students reply that they think they DO know what it feels like, to which Miss Elliot made them question their statement. She begins a daring experiment for the time period, where she makes her students believe that blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. She uses facts about the students to 'prove' her point, and gives the blue-eyed children special privileges. I won't go on and explain the entire study, but the point is that the students became discriminating, bullying, "vicious little third graders".  This isn't unlike the situation we simulated last week in class, when I had to try and read the jumbled article from the perspective of a student with a language learning disability. I didn't understand what it felt like to have a reading difficulty/learning disability until I was put in that situation and found myself hiding from the prof's eyes and thinking "please don't choose me". I think it's SO important for teachers be aware of what it feels like to be discriminated against, so that they can work even harder to advocate against it.

Here is the link to the video I was talking about above:

A Class Divided (Link)

It's scary to think the students were so easily manipulated, and I think it really brings to light the power of authority figures. Parents, teachers, elder siblings and older students really are idolized by younger students. That is why it is so important for teachers to be sensitive to racial and cultural differences in the classroom, and to be accepting of all students.  If a child sees a teacher choosing favourites or picking on a certain group, the students think that this behaviour is acceptable.  

I have an experience from my first year practicum that has really stuck with me, in a negative way. I was put in a grade 3 classroom with the same teacher who taught me at that age. It was interesting at first to be in the same classroom, but in a totally different role. Things went pretty smoothly until one day, a little boy came up to her and showed her the new clothes he got for his doll. She promptly told him to put it away, and later confided in me that she wanted him to put it away as soon as possible so that he would avoid ridicule from other students. She made it clear that she was concerned that the boy was gay and that he would be persecuted by his peers for it. She said "I won't let him put himself in that position". 

I was shocked. I honestly didn't (and don't) know what to say. First of all, I think it's horrible to ever encourage a child to hide who they are, unless it is harmful to someone else by being so.  Secondly, the fact that she assumed that, if he was gay, that he would be ridiculed by his peers, says a lot about the lack of tolerance education in schools. If there is no trust in students to be tolerant of their peers regardless of age, sex, gender, culture, race, religion, etc, then there is something wrong with the way children are being taught. 

I have always maintained that I will be encouraging tolerance in my classroom at the high school level, but I feel that if this isn't instilled in students at en even younger age, it will be much harder to form then.  Teaching acceptance in the classroom has to be a joint effort by all teachers of all grades - not just a select few. I can say that whole-heartedly, I hope that this is something that is implemented with greater efficiency and greater understanding in the future.

Doy noha vedy sxelsia?

Can you really imagine what it would be like to have dyslexia? Or perhaps dispraxia? Or for that matter, any other kind of language incompetency? I can imagine. Because, in fact, today, I had one.

In today's class reading exercise, I was one of the few who were given an incorrect version of the reading - some letters were upside down or backwards, so b's, p's, d's and q's were easily confused; some words didn't have spaces between them, or the spaces were in the wrong places...and all in all, it was very difficult to read. I tried my best to decipher what was going on and make sense of the reading, but my brain had a hard time getting around the oddly-paired consonants and vowels.  Greg was the first one to get picked on, and I tried to follow as he struggled to read his paper, which I'm guessing was just like mine. What caught me off-guard in our little role-playing game was when he was told to "try harder" and "concentrate more". He was scolded for trying his best and, frankly, he was doing a better job than I would have done. I found myself thinking 'please don't pick me, please don't pick me, PLEASE don't pick me' and tried to look away so I wouldn't be chosen to read next.

In retrospect, it was good to know what it feels like to be centred out.  It's good to know the pit-in-your-stomach feeling, and to be aware of the anxiety that picking on a student with a LD can cause, so that it can be avoided. 

Another interesting fact brought up today was that learning disabilities shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing.  Learning disabilities are not the fault of the student or the teachers, and in my opinion, should be viewed as a challenge and an opportunity for improvement as a teacher. Accommodating students with learning disabilities also gives us the chance to practice differentiated instruction and to explore possible modifications in the class.  Learning disabilities, therefore, should be embraced, not shyed away from.  By doing this, hopefully the students will feel less alienated and more included in the class setting. Inclusion is very important, as it makes students feel comfortable and as if they are contributing to a term. In addition, for some of these students, the classroom 'team' is the only peer group they are involved in, so it's very important to foster a healthy, inclusive classroom.