To Amara

For roughly a year and a half now, you have patiently come into our home once each week to provide Tony’s occupational therapy. Since that very first visit I have been grateful for your positive attitude and your willingness to meet Tony where he is at. You have a wonderful way of listening to and applying feedback about our son’s needs. You have put up with all of my crazy, listening kindly when I have described some of the personal happenings that have been going on as they impacted Tony’s emotions.

Thank you– for being so good to him and so understanding with me. I feel like this note is long overdue, and I am so sorry for that. I am very grateful that you returned to working with our family after your maternity leave. I deeply appreciate your willingness to work with scheduling changes we have needed for Hannah’s schooling. I see your passion for helping others every session, and anybody who works this well with Tony is truly a special type of therapist…the kind the family of any developmentally disabled kiddo would be lucky to work with. For all you have done, and everything you will continue to do, we are profoundly grateful.

*Please note that an OT update will be coming later in the month. Between Tony’s recent illness and Ariana being out of town for a few days this past week, we are still working on getting pictures for all the different targets we are working on

Reading To Consider

The Element, by Sir Ken Robinson, PhD

This book, written by educational consultant Ken Robinson and published in 2009, weaves together multiple themes related to learning and individual talents that I think need a wider discussion in our community. The general underlying theme is that our educational system favors mainly one type of thinker, and is geared towards delivering a “fast-food” approach at educating future workers. And, as the author points out, generally the food at many fast-food restaurants is not of the same caliber as establishments enabled to use more creative culinary processes. More than 10 years have passed since this book was written, and much remains unchanged about the approaches used in many of our schools.

The author highlights the stories of many highly successful individuals that were seen as either problematic to deal with in the school system, or deficient learners. He starts by citing the case of Gillian Lynne, whose teacher felt she had significant problems that needed diagnosis and treatment because she could not stop moving in class. After observing the girl twirl around the room, the psychologist informed her concerned mother that “Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to dance school.” She went on to become a world famous dancer and choreographer, but as the author noted, in our modern school system she would have been prescribed a medication to inhibit her movements and sent back to her original classroom.

Some of the medications used to treat behavioral differences such as hyperactivity are often used to allow for the maximum number of students to be taught by a single adult. However, they don’t always address this concern enough to achieve even that and they frequently ignore individual differences of talent and learning. For our son, his current ADHD medication has reduced the intensity of his hyperactivity a fair bit, but certainly not enough for any teacher under our current system to view him as instructable or manageable without a one-on-one aid. We still spend a huge amount of our day running, and he still can’t sit for longer periods of time. If Tony could run at least five miles a day, he would honestly be a lot calmer, and it might even have a similar overall effect to the medication he’s currently taking. (If you’re wondering why we haven’t tried that, I have a history of Achilles tendon ruptures on my right ankle and that’s a bit more running than I should be doing).

This leads into another theme of this book, which is that different individuals have different ways of thinking and processing the world. As the author points out, our current educational model favors mainly one way of thinking, and many of the standardized tests used to evaluate a person’s intellectual abilities are skewed towards that end. These tests also have roots in the eugenics movements, which has had a very dark history in America that is frequently glossed over- especially for the developmentally disabled. My recommended reading choices for next month will expand a bit more on that subject.

The author goes on to cite some examples of redesigned teaching approaches that have been used to successfully deliver improved outcomes in some communities and schools. One of the main themes I saw in each of these approaches was that they were often more personalized to the students. One solution discussed in this book was a school that paired its early readers with volunteers at a local nursing home. The students ended up with reading scores well above grade levels. I think the magic ingredient there was that this program allowed them to have more extensive time with one-on-one guidance tailored to their specific learning needs.

He wraps all of this around a message about how each of us has a dominant gift or skill that brings us joy. He states that oftentimes tapping into what this is can allow higher levels of individual happiness and success. To a certain extent I feel like the book toggled back and forth between this message and his thoughts on ways to improve learning in a manner that made it difficult to determine exactly which one was his central message.

While I think this is interesting reading for anyone involved in educating a child, I believe some of his recommendations are invaluable when it comes to teaching a child with developmental disabilities. There is no “one size fits all” approach that can produce quality outcomes within this community, and I believe that achieving the highest quality outcomes for these individuals truly involves understanding their interests and looking for their own unique gifts and skills.