Here is a teacher who knows how to use a test to maximize learning:

I was quite impressed by a certain science teacher in the Richmond School District. This science teacher teaches my client’s daughter who is in grade 8.

Why am I impressed? Well, whereas most teachers would just use a test to see how much a student has learned, this science teacher goes beyond that. Mr. Smart* actually asks his students to take the marked tests home, correct the mistakes, and then bring the corrected tests back for an “upgrade”— that is, if done right, the teacher would move the grade one notch up. If, for example, a student got a “C+” and he/she dutifully corrected all the mistakes and brought the test back to the teacher, the final grade for the test would be “B+” instead of the original “C+.”

This is very clever. By dangling a carrot before he students – promising to revise the marks for a properly corrected test— the students who didn’t do well the first time will be highly motivated to look carefully at their mistakes and to find out what the correct answer should be.

To me, that is getting maximum value from a test!

* The science teacher’s name has been changed to protect my client’s privacy.

Today’s special education students are blessed to have so many Apple products available to support their learning. For the dyslexic student who cannot read fluently, if he/she has a Mac that can do text to speech, then the obstacle to learning becomes less daunting. And for those students with working memory problems and cannot correctly copy from the board, an iPod Touch with a camera or an iPhone can do the trick — one click and the image of whatever needs to be copied can be captured.

The world has lost a brilliant star. We will miss Steve Jobs.

Too little too late -- small garden hose for a big fire!

So much of what we do in special education has to do with being timely. The earlier we detect the learning problems, the earlier we can do something about it.

Unfortunately, early identification and intervention is much talked about and not practiced enough. A non-intrusive and fun screening done at our office which takes less than thirty minutes will often do the trick in detecting “at-risk” young children. This is why we offer School Readiness Screening so parents with young children entering kindergarten can have a chance to be alerted for possible learning problems.

The cost of the early screening is negligible when one considers how expensive LD intervention services can be. If parents allow learning problems to go unchecked, the cost at the end will be far greater. And I am talking about the social-emotional cost which cannot always be measured in financial terms. Many LD individuals suffer from having a low self-esteem as well as other social adjustment problems.

The earlier the LD student receives attention, the more likely the learning problems can be reduced so that they will not suffer unnecessarily.

One of the nicest and most original comments I have received recently from a Chinese client was this: she said, “You offer your services with the fluidity of water and the smoothness of silk.”

Somewhat surprised and puzzled, I asked her to elaborate on what she meant by that.

She then explained, “Well, through your consulting and strategic planning, you help us go around obstacles – just like water. Nothing can stop water; it has a way of getting through somehow. That is what you do best!”

“What about the silk part?” I asked.

My client answered, “You always smooth things out, whether it is through “diplomacy” or “networking” – you achieve goals without ruffling feathers. The process is as smooth as silk – it feels good to have problems solved discretely, without creating too much extra work for us, the parents. That is important for busy folks like ourselves.”

Needless to say, I was walking on air for the next few days, thanks to the kind words of my grateful client. I am very happy that what I tried so hard to achieve in my work can be “felt” and appreciated by my client.

The goal that I set for myself in managing our clients’ cases has always been the same: aim for excellence. We have expertise in learning disabilities in our organization; we have a “network of excellence” to draw from when it comes to finding suitable subject tutors; and we are efficient in solving the student’s learning problems. We help struggling learners reach their targets in a timely way!

Incidentally, the analogy of “water” and “silk” is very Chinese – “fluidity” has a sort of gentle dynamics to it while “smoothness” denotes grace and diplomacy.These are highly valued qualities in the Chinese culture.

Wiki-technology has served my work with LD learners well. The ability to collaborate with tutors on teaching assignments in “real” time has benefitted my clients in ways not possible, say, a few years ago.

Let me explain:
Our comprehensive learning management service for parents of LD learners involves my managing a team of tutors. I recruit and train high caliber individuals to serve as “tutor-mentors” for my client’s children. And I am using the word “tutor” in the classical sense here because the duty of the tutors is to cultivate minds and instill a love for learning.

The tutors I select for the clients have to have a heart for LD learners, and the flexibility and creativity to customize instruction to individual student’s needs. Our clients’ LD children deserve to have the very best to work with them. Often struggling learners are undervalued by conventional academic measures and they need to be “awaken” by master-tutors who can breathe life into their learning.

Most parents of LD children will tell you that, in addition to academic problems, low self-esteem and repeated failures can create behavioral/emotional problems in these children. The ability to be a few steps ahead of these troubled learners who are trying to challenge their tutors is crucial. My effectiveness depends on my ability to trouble shoot — that is, avoid learning and behavior problems before they happen – and provide timely advice for the tutors so they can be at their best in teaching and mentoring the learners in their care. After each lesson, the tutors enter detailed comments for me. Thanks to wiki-technology, I am able to respond instantaneously to the tutor’s comments most of the time or, at least, within a twenty-four hour time frame.

For parents taking the “inclusion” route – that is, opting to have their LD children stay in a regular school setting – they have to make sure that there is an infrastructure available to support their children. Our comprehensive learning management service does precisely that. Of course, we also work very closely with the school personnel to make sure there is not gap in the service delivery. It is a team effort and a very intentional one!

This past weekend, I attended A Festival of BC Science Writers for Kids and Teens at Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC.

It was a delightful experience. I was able to meet some of the authors who wrote the books that my client’s children are using!

The speakers were excellent and I came away inspired. The hard work that we do as educators is for this end: to facilitate “Aha!” moments in young budding scientists. We need to nurture that sense of wonder, that joy, and that ability to experience the thrills in discovery.

It was wonderful to have a group of science writers for children gathering together for a time of sharing expertise. A big “thank you” to Jo-Anne Naslund and her colleagues for making this event possible!

Can dyslexics excel as writers? A good question! The quote above is taken from the report card of one of our clients’ children who has a language-based learning disability. With some coaching from her tutors, her weakness has become her “trump card.” Because her vocabulary is relatively limited, she has been forced to learn how to express herself with simple words, using simple sentence constructions. As she has matured, and her ideas have become more complex and nuanced, the growth of her vocabulary has not kept up.This situation has repeatedly forced her to perform the impressive task of communicating the very complex with the very simple; in other words, saying the most with the least!

This skill – of communicating the complex with the simple – is required of poets, philosophers, book reviewers, teachers, and even scientists. Our client’s child may be behind her peers in the size ofher vocabulary, but she is ahead of them in this analytical and compositional ability. In twenty years, she may not author novels (she may, like Agatha Christie), but she may well compose poems or tutor others in scientific theory.

Time and again, we have seen children’s “disabilities,” or areas of weakness, turn into strengths.  With encouragement and proper guidance, even a dyslexic can develop his or her unique style of literary expression!

Admittedly, our fees are comparable to those of lawyers and Chartered Accountants — we are an exclusive consultancy service catering to a very sophisticated clientele. These clients are looking for service that is beyond “standard” Orton-Gillingham tutoring, and they are definitely not part of the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) crowd. Our clients are usually busy business people or professionals who appreciate the value of expertise and are willing to pay for it. After all, these folks became successful by doing what they do best, and in the same way that they are well-rewarded financially, they understand that they have to pay for professional expertise and high-quality service.

That said, I have to say that my greatest reward is not from my fees; it is from the children who are transformed by our work with them!

Last October, I sent one of our clients’ children (with both reading and arithmetic disability from an ESL background) to the psychologist — a gentleman whom I blogged about earlier because he is an icon in our field, one who is marked by high professional standards and integrity. The Ed-Psyche report that came back was not good. I have never seen such low scores. The term used to describe our client’s child was “slow learner.” Very discouraging indeed!

What followed after the official Ed-Psyche report was a great deal of work: observation sessions, designing intervention, recruiting tutors, training tutors, managing the client-tutor relationship, going to the school for meetings, and very intense monitoring and reviewing to ensure a high level of “seamless” service delivery. Of course, from time to time, we also had to deal with the psycho-emotional aspects of the child’s struggle; it is not unusual for LD children to exhibit problematic behavior. With a “damaged” self-esteem from being a chronic low achiever in school, LD children often resort to very unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to “survive.”

Fast-forward to a year later. I am happy to report that our “slow learner” who didn’t have friends now has self-confidence, popularity amongs peers, and good grades (all As and Bs with the exceptions of a C in English and a C+ in Science). The parents of the child are thrilled, of course, and they are very appreciative. But my greatest reward came in the form of a “thank you” note.

Let me tell you the significance of this “thank you” note. For someone with a reading/writing disability, writing a note is equivalent to, well, going to the dentist to have one’s tooth extracted. This child had painstakingly written a note to thank me! I was so overcome with joy that I was walking on air the rest of the day. See the “thank you” note? I am so proud and happy for this child.

Because of cases like this one, I want to emphasize that when we look at a child’s Ed-Psyche report, we should always keep in mind the words of our psychologist who assessed this child: he wrote, “the overall results of this assessment should be seen as only providing an estimate of the child’s intellectual abilities at this point in time. His/Her true intellectual abilities may be higher.”

The socially inept “slow learner” of last year is today’s athletic, popular, and successful student!

Posted by Dr. Winnifred Tang

The logical thing for us to do was to arrange for a full scale assessment by a registered psychologist. If it was purely an academic concern such as reading and/or math, I could have easily done a screening in my office, but the “problem” that was being described had a “behavioral” dimension. So, I called up our trusted psychologist friend who agreed to help me out on short notice. Most psychologists would make you wait for a long time, so I did my prospective client a big favor by lining up an assessment for her immediately!

Unfortunately, all my efforts came to naught. In the course of our first meeting with the prospective client, it became apparent that this mom was not looking for a diagnosis — she was looking for a confirmation from us that her son is, indeed, an “angel” and that the problems were, in fact, the teachers’!

Sorry! I am not “Dr. Feel Good.” So I insisted: the first step to take was to have the boy go for an assessment by our psychologist friend. If the mother’s certainty of her boy’s “angelic” status was valid, then the psychologist’s report would more or less confirm that.

In today’s China, many couples only have one child…and, it is usually a son. This has created a host of societal problems in China. Unfortunately, when people emigrate to Canada, they also take their social problems with them.

The story of “sunshine boy” will surely not end here. More drama will likely follow, featuring irate teachers and a defensive mom and dad.

Ah, what can I say? May God bless the hardworking teachers in Vancouver! Defend them, I plead. Amen.

Posted by Dr. Winnifred Tang