Reflections on “F.A.T. City Critical Review”

Reflec­tions on “F.A.T. City Crit­i­cal Review”

            This video was inter­est­ing to watch, as it showed some now out­dat­ed atti­tudes towards teach­ing.  I was first tak­en aback with some the out­dat­ed lan­guage the pre­sen­ter used such as the word “retard.” (Clear­wa­ter, 2018) The video also demon­strat­ed how cer­tain aspects of teach­ing stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties (LD) have still not changed, in par­tic­u­lar where a stu­dent with a LD is blamed for his or her lack of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess (Clear­wa­ter, 2018). I also found the man­ner in which the pre­sen­ter demon­strat­ed the style of main­stream teach­ing was rather hos­tile and anx­i­ety induc­ing.  Par­tial­ly, this was inten­tion­al to show how stu­dents with LD can get lost in the class­room. How­ev­er, I remem­ber this style of teach­ing being the norm dur­ing my days as a stu­dent in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, we are far more mind­ful of emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, ADHD and ASD are more com­mon­ly diag­nosed, and we have become far more aware and sup­port­ive of stu­dents that need extra insti­tu­tion­al sup­port to have equi­table learning.

            One of the first chal­lenges the pre­sen­ter told the group was the notion of being “fair” in the class­room.  This high­lights the impor­tance of inclu­sion and equi­table learn­ing.  In his exam­ple, he men­tioned how some teach­ers argued they could not pro­vide addi­tion­al sup­port for the stu­dents with LD because it would not be fair to the oth­er stu­dents.  He argued that way of think­ing is actu­al­ly “the same moral lev­el as a ten year old child” (Clear­wa­ters, 2018). It was also shock­ing to hear how at the time of the video, that the num­ber of stu­dents who were diag­nosed with some sort of LD was from “6 to 10 per­cent” (Clear­wa­ters, 2018).  While the pre­sen­ter con­sid­ered this to be high, I con­sid­er this to be quite low. I believe that many chil­dren were severe­ly under-diag­nosed in the 1980s.  From my lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence as a teacher, I can see a much high­er rate in our class­rooms today, with the num­ber of stu­dents hav­ing with some sort of LD or in need of addi­tion­al instruc­tion­al sup­port at about like 25 per­cent or higher. 

            There were a num­ber of inter­est­ing pit­falls that I think teach­ers and par­ents might fail to avoid when work­ing with chil­dren with LD. The first was ask­ing the stu­dent to “look at the prob­lem hard­er” as if it was moti­va­tion issue. The sec­ond was offer­ing a reward to do the task, again assum­ing it is a moti­va­tion issue. The third way of deal­ing with an issue is neg­a­tive rein­force­ment by tak­ing some­thing away, and then final­ly vic­tim-blam­ing — assum­ing the stu­dent is just not try­ing hard enough (Clear­wa­ter, 2018). 

The irony, of course is that is the teacher or par­ent that is not try­ing hard enough.  Now it might be a lack of knowl­edge, ener­gy or even sup­port, but in no way is it sim­ply a lack of moti­va­tion on the child’s part. The child is strug­gling and we as edu­ca­tors need to find where they need help and how we can make learn­ing equi­table for them.

            One kind of learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty is dyslex­ia, but regard­less of the type of LD we know that the num­ber of stu­dents who suf­fer from lit­er­a­cy and numer­a­cy defi­cien­cies is grow­ing.   While the video stat­ed 6 to 10 per­cent at the time, it is now sug­gest­ed that “18.5% of Amer­i­can Chil­dren under age 18 have spe­cial needs.” (PBWS Law, n.d.) Look­ing at the exam­ple in the video at the 53 minute mark, the pre­sen­ter sug­gests that stu­dents with LD may not be visu­al learn­ers so they would strug­gle when read­ing inde­pen­dent­ly ver­sus being read to.  Scarborough’s Rope states that good read­ing com­pre­hen­sion is the result of lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion and word recog­ni­tion com­bined (Real­ly Great Read­ing, 2022).  Indeed in the video the pre­sen­ter shows how back­ground knowl­edge and under­stand­ing plays a cru­cial role in under­stand­ing text.  In the video’s exam­ple we saw how the par­tic­i­pants could rec­og­nize all of the words but not actu­al­ly com­pre­hend the pas­sage unless they had a sci­en­tif­ic or math­e­mat­i­cal aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground (Clear­wa­ter, 2018).  How­ev­er, thanks to the Sci­ence of Read­ing (IMSE, 2021) , we now know when a per­son can’t read well does not mean that he or she is just not a “visu­al learn­er” and needs to learn­ing through audio-books. Rather, the issue is like­ly a decod­ing one and lies in poor word recog­ni­tion.  Poor word recog­ni­tion could be because of dyslex­ia, some oth­er LD, but it can also be because of how a stu­dent learned how to read, such as rely­ing too much on sight word mem­o­riza­tion rather prac­tic­ing decod­ing, sys­tem­at­ic pho­net­ics and phone­mic aware­ness. Work­ing mem­o­ry issues also play a role in retain­ing and recall­ing learned words, and lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion is equal­ly impor­tant to suc­cess­ful read­ing, and this requires skills in back­ground knowl­edge, vocab­u­lary, lan­guage struc­tures, ver­bal rea­son­ing, and lit­er­a­cy knowl­edge such print con­cepts.  An immi­grant Eng­lish learn­er maybe able to decode words per­fect­ly but lacks the lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion skills to under­stand what he or she as read.

            In the video, the par­tic­i­pants strug­gled with decod­ing the exam­ple text because the words that had flipped let­ters, used sim­i­lar sound­ing vow­el sub­sti­tu­tions, syl­la­bles were sep­a­rat­ed and writ­ten at var­i­ous lev­els on the page. As there was no clear way to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly decode the words while read­ing, post par­tic­i­pants were at a loss until the pas­sage was read to them.  Once the pas­sage was read, then some of the words could become sight words as long they were repeat­ed in the text. Essen­tial­ly, the dic­tat­ed speech helped them to decode and guess what was writ­ten on the page. Part of the rea­son why the words were not eas­i­ly able to be decod­ed was the let­ters “b, d and p” were swapped and had no clear sys­tem­at­ic map­ping. For exam­ple, the word “big” was spelled “qip” and the word “put” was spelled “qut” (Clear­wa­ter, 2018).  How can any­one eas­i­ly decode what the p, b,q,d mean if they are all used inter­change­ably. The pre­sen­ter stat­ed that,  “Until I gave you some audi­to­ry input it wouldn’t have made any sense … That’s why it is impor­tant that some kids have their books put on tape, so that they can get the infor­ma­tion through their ears they can under­stand it that way, they can’t under­stand it  when they get it through their eyes.” (55:34) I am a pro­po­nent of sup­port­ing var­i­ous ways of learn­ing, but I think teach­ers must redou­ble their efforts in help­ing stu­dents with LD in lit­er­a­cy by help­ing them prac­tice and improve their weak­ness­es rather then rely­ing on an alter­na­tive means of pre­sent­ing the information. 

            To be clear, I think using mul­ti­ple ways of pre­sent­ing at the same time can be ben­e­fi­cial.  It is why sub­ti­tled visu­al arts works well. I think teach­ing visu­al­ly through info­graph­ics can pro­vide visu­al­ly engag­ing learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.  How­ev­er, we must con­sid­er the focus of what were teach­ing or the skills we are help­ing the stu­dents to prac­tice.  I am espe­cial­ly mind­ful of ensur­ing that stu­dents with LD have the time they need to process infor­ma­tion, and I am not sure yet how best to do that in class­room.  I liked the mentor’s approach of work­ing with the stu­dent to give visu­al clues as to when they will be called on. 

Ref­er­ences

Clear­wa­ters, J. (2018, August 29). How Dif­fi­cult Can This Be — The F.A.T City Workshop.[Video]. YouTube.
           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3UNdbxk3xs

IMSE. (2021). “What is the Sci­ence of Read­ing?”
            https://journal.imse.com/what-is-the-science-of-reading/
PBWS Law. (n.d.) “Spe­cial Needs Chil­dren – Know the Types and Know Your Rights.”
            https://pbwslaw.com/special-needs-children-rights/

Real­ly Great Read­ing. 2022. “What is Scar­bor­oughs Read­ing Rope?” Website.

            https://www.reallygreatreading.com/content/scarboroughs-reading-rope