Abel's Story

 

Abel reported that he had done well in public school--mostly A’s and B’s on his report cards. He had been able to go to good schools with high academic standards. His mother was a school counselor. His father was a successful businessman.

When he started going to Purdue University he almost immediately started getting behind. The professors assigned a large amount of outside reading which the students were responsible for on the tests. Abel found that he was unable to keep up the reading regime and could not pass the tests. He had no prior problems in high school like this. His parents thought he was doing the typical freshman thing of being on his own for the first time and was partying too much and not spending the necessary time with the books. Abel vigorously denied this. They put pressure on him to study harder and party less. He flunked out of Purdue his first year.

His second attempt at Purdue was more of the same. He had even more pressure on him to do better. Nobody could figure out what was going on so he started to doubt himself. As the pressure increased (from others and self), his anxiety and stress levels increased which made it even harder for him to study. He started doubting his abilities and his self esteem was being eroded. He flunked out again. His mother had him tested for learning disabilities and he was found to have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

His mother found out about my "Rediscover the Joy of Learning" workshops in Oklahoma City and called to inquire if she and her son could enroll. After she told me his story, I agreed to let them come and suggested that I use her son as the demonstration for how I worked with students who had been diagnosed with ADD. She agreed.

During the beginning of the workshop, Abel introduced himself as an upcoming third year freshman at Purdue. I found him be very bright and personable. When I was demonstrating how I checked out the mind of those who struggle in school, I reminded them of my belief that the critical element for working with students (even ADD students) was "can they control the pictures in their mind?" The way I check it out is give them a spelling word, which they know how to spell and which is sufficiently long, and have them image it and spell it backwards. The word also has to be long enough to force them to hold the image steady. Abel could do this task with ease. He could then spell tougher words which he did not previously know how to spell backwards. Words like Albuquerque or Saskatchewan. In fact, later on Abel was finding rare and long words and spelling them backwards quicker then anybody else could.

This feat lets me know if I have to teach them how to control their mind or can I proceed in checking out their learning strategies to find which inadequate ones are causing the problem. I now knew that Abel could control his mind. The question was "Which learning strategy was at fault?"

Since Abel was having trouble with reading comprehension, I decided to check that one out first. I found in him the classic case--Abel was reading really well but was not retaining the material. The reason was that he was sounding the words out okay but the words were not connecting with internal sensory experience. When I checked out how he had done so well in high school, I found that he had been so intelligent that he could just listen in class and pass the tests. The high school teachers lectured over the material which they tested over. So, he did not have to rely on outside reading comprehension. At Purdue University he needed a good reading comprehension strategy but he had never learned one. His own high intelligence had allowed him to succeed without learning to read the proper way.

I immediately proceeded in teaching him how to learn visually--including a visual reading comprehension strategy. He was able to learn the strategies very quickly and his motivation and drive kicked in immediately. His self esteem was also greatly boosted by the experience.

He left Oklahoma City immediately after the workshop to go to the new fall semester at Purdue. After 2-3 months his mother called and reported that not only was he making A’s in all his classes but that he was setting the curve in some of them.