Communication is everywhere, especially for educators. It is quintessential to successful learning and acts as the first stepping stone to education. Teachers communicate with their students, who go on to share their learning with their parents and peers. This chain raises the question: Do I effectively communicate with my child with a learning disability?
Why can’t parents teach their kids effectively?
Part of the reason is that we as parents forget that we must communicate, not command, our children. Quite often, we lack consideration for their point of view. For example, when we see the dining room table, we see it in its entirety from above. But a toddler, will always be looking up at it, seeing the underside and edges more than a surface. Regardless, we are looking at the same table, but from different angles. To communicate effectively, we need to bend our knees and align our view with our kids. Then we are able to understand why the kids are screaming at the table when they see a spider crawl under the table.
An aspect we find crucial to our learning environment is our teachers’ ability to understand our students – in particular, being able to understand what background information the student has. In order to answer what the student is missing in their overall learning. And what is holding them back from grasping certain concepts, we start by really understanding who they are, as in what do they like, dislike, in relation to their learning styles.
Case Study for Learning Disability:
A prime example is one of our long-time students, David, who has a learning disability with a high on the autism spectrum and currently enrolled in grade 8. One day, David was working on a reading comprehension activity. A question asked: “What are the important events that help Helen change her mind about Jake?” Like most teachers, I started to guide him in finding the relevant information in the passage. While I was trying to help him identify the relevant information, I could see he was visibly confused. Having worked with David for over a year. I began to wonder “Does he know what ‘important’ is?” I suspected he didn’t and my suspicions were confirmed when he couldn’t provide me with an answer. Thus, instead of helping him with the comprehension question, I started to explain the concept of importance to David.
To effectively communicate this, I related the definition to what he personally finds important. For instance, David loves playing math games on the iPad before he starts studying. In fact, it is the thing he is most excited for when he arrives at our center after school. To him, his iPad time is important to his day and his happiness at our learning center. It is also important to him that he works hard enough to be able to have that iPad again after his study period is over. By relating to his likes and dislikes, I was able to help him understand the meaning of importance.
Conclusion:
Since David is autistic with learning disability, he would not be able to follow the explanation for “importance” as used for another eighth grader. Instead, I used the knowledge I had of his likes and dislikes and related to him in a way he could comprehend. To achieve a successful communication with our kids and students, we need to continuously ask ourselves, “Do I have enough understanding of the person in front me” before we begin to engage with them.
Check out the complete guide: visualized-learning-order-of-operations
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