Another
typical story involves a 40 year old man who was in charge
of the meeting room I was teaching in. I noticed he would
hang around in the back of the room listening very intently
to the learning strategies I was teaching.
At a break, he came up to me and said "What you are doing
is very important. If I could just spell and read better,
I could manage this motel instead of delivering coffee and
cleaning up the room. But I can’t spell so I can’t
write memos or letters--I get embarrassed because so many
words are mis-spelled. And, since I can’t read very
well I wouldn’t be able to read memos or letters either.
When I was in school I was told I had a learning disability
because I couldn’t keep up. So they put me in LD classes
all through school. And I still couldn’t do the work.
I remember one day in the sixth grade, I was at the board
working fraction problems and couldn’t do it and the
teacher screamed at me ‘Just go sit down. You are just
dumb and you will never be able to learn.’ That happened
a lot to me and I dropped out of school in the 10th grade
because it was no use to go to school. Then I got into trouble
and served time in prison. Now I am out and have a family
and am trying to take care of them. But I am limited because
I can’t spell or read very well."
The class I was teaching was on my book "Rediscover
the Joy of Learning" and I invited the gentleman in to
tell his story to the class. My comment to them was "This
is what we are about. What you are learning can help keep
this kind of thing from happening in our schools." The
good news is I invited the gentleman into the class and had
some of the students teach him learning strategies. He was
able to learn them very rapidly and easily and was very excited
about these "new skills!"
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