It was a very cozy and pleasant gathering. We had the talk (without the slide projector due to technical difficulties!) and a very stimulating discussion afterwards. Of course, there was the delicious Black Forrest cake and pastries and tea too. In short, we all enjoyed ourselves very much. Even my co-workers felt the same way despite of the huge amount of planning and work that went into putting on an event like this. We really do wish that more educators could join us for tea and “shop talk” at Hycroft. It was just so much fun! However, we do know that this is a tense time in our public education system and teachers are overworked and they really do not have that much time to spare. For this reason, we felt really honored to have the number of guests that we had.

So, here is the slide show that was actually not shown on the day of the talk. Yes, “yours truly” (me) brought the wrong projector for the occasion and my guests had to listen to me speak without the slides. In fact, I was so flustered about the absence of the slide projector that I must have been incoherent when I spoke! So, I hope the slides will make up for my performance than evening.

(Please click “HERE“ for the slides.)

The message we want to get across is simply this: LD children do not necessarily have to be in a special school where all the students have LD. With proper support, they can do very well in a regular school setting. The school-based team, working together with an intermediary special education service such as us, can produce some very encouraging results.

Summer is a good time to jump-start LD intervention. Teachers should encourage parents to take advantage of this time to help their children move ahead!

We are having Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-speaking parents on May 26^th, 2010. Chinese-speaking parents who find it hard to access special education services due to language barriers should make it a priority to attend this event!

Email us @: events@Learn2ManageLD.com to RSVP.

Dr. Winnifred Tang & Associates Learning Management Inc. is organizing a talk for Chinese-speaking parents which will take place on Wednesday, May 26^th, 2010, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Hycroft, home of The University Womens’ Club of Vancouver. There will be a tea reception afterwards so parents will have a chance to chat with all of us from the office of Dr. Winnifred Tang.

Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-Speaking parents is intended to be a cozy and leisurely event. We want parents to feel comfortable talking to us about their children’s learning problems. The beautiful setting at Hycroft, hopefully, will help us to achieve this purpose!

Interested parents should contact us as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. All the information is on the flyer.

We have opened an account at HSBC specifically for Tea & Talk @ Hycroft. Parents can go to HSBC directly and make a payment for their tickets. Before they do so, they should email us at events@Learn2ManageLD.com to ensure that the seats are still available. We will send out the HSBC account information upon confirming seat availability.

The registration procedures were designed to reduce unnecessary paper work and communication. We hope you will find this method of registering simple and convenient.

See you at Tea & Talk @ Hycroft on May 26^th at 7:00 p.m.!

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Professor Mary Ashworth taught in the Department of Language Education between 1967- 1988. I was fortunate enough to have been under her supervision when I was working on my M.Ed. degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). I will always remember Professor Ashworth for her frequent allusion to a saying from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible – “There is nothing new under the sun.” I actually put this verse on the front page of my M.Ed. graduating paper! I guess, this was the observation from a “seasoned” veteran who had fought the “system” time and again for the sake of ESL children in British Columbia.

I am particularly grateful to Professor Mary Ashworth for the sage advice she gave when I was her student at UBC. She was always helpful and practical. I still remember how she used to tell us not to treat our master’s thesis or M.Ed. major paper as “the writing that will change the world.” Her admonition was: be sensible, do what you need to do, graduate, and then you can change the world!

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Professor Ashworth is probably smiling down at all her former students now from heaven above. I hope I am one of these students!

We love you, Mary! And we are so proud to have been you students.

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As I sat in my office thinking over the details for my office dedication ceremony tomorrow, I couldn’t help thinking about the words of St. Augustine…

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

It was back in 1998 that I had a direct confrontation with some school administrators because of my friend’s son. The vice principal of the school basically told me that “even if the boy had dyslexia – whatever that was – there was nothing they could do about it.” I was angry about the attitude displayed by this vice principle. In fact, I was so angry that, years later, I ended up with a Ph.D. from UBC specializing in learning disabilities.

I honestly hope that mis-diagnosed cases of ESL children with a language-based learning disability such as dyslexia will be more and more rare in future. There is a lot of work ahead of us. My friend, Dr. Susan Kwan, a board member at SUCCESS, is a supporter for educating the public about dyslexia. This April, I will be speaking at the Dyslexia Conference organized by Dr. Kwan for the Chinese speaking public. I will share more details here at my blog as the information becomes available.

I love books and I love reading. I feel very bad for those who cannot read because their inability to read prevents them from being able to obtain and assess information for learning. It seems that the more “basic” the skill, the more crucial it is for us to master it. Perhaps that is why, for computer programmers, the more basic the programming, the more they get paid. Without the basic processes in place, the computer cannot run the more sophisticated processes. At least, that is how my friend and colleague, Cecil, explains the work that his wife does! Similarly, without mastering basic reading skills, one cannot go on to learn content in the various branches of knowledge. It really sets one back as a learner when he or she cannot read.

If 21st century students are to take advantage of George Siemens’s connectivist ideas in learning, they must be proficient readers. True, there are educational podcasts available, and one can take in information by hearing; however, text-based information enables one to glance and quickly “get the point,” so to speak. This made me think that we, those who are involved in doing research in the science of reading, have an important task. Without the ability to read, making “connections” in the academic world would be extremely difficult if not next to being impossible.

The meeting area in the office.

One of the things that came up in our conversation was that many ESL parents are unaware that they are entitled to participate in the Individual Education Plan (IEP)process for their children who are exceptional learners. That means, these parents are passive receivers of the IEP and often, they do not know what the IEP is supposed to do and what their roles are in their children’s education process.

I would like to see more ESL parents take an active role in the IEP process. Parents’ involvement in their children’s education is vital, especially when the ESL children are exceptional learners requiring special education services. That is why when we planned for our office space, I made sure that we have an area where we can host IEP meetings and have all parties meet comfortably in an environment conducive to open and constructive discussion. Those who have visited my office know that I keep a selection of fragrant teas on hand at all times. I’ve always known that a nice cup of tea can do wonders to calm nerves. Parents who need to deal with their children’s learning problems often lead stressful lives. It is not unusual for parents to shed a few tears at my office while recounting the difficulties that they encounter on a daily basis; and I am perfectly at ease with it because I understand what life is like living with children who have a learning disability. A cup of tea and some kind encouragement means a great deal for these struggling brave parents!

Given the information glut that we are facing today, there is an urgency for researchers like us, those who are consumers of information in large quantities, to turn to our friends, the academic librarians, for help.

A competent academic librarian is a “gift from God.” Until we get to heaven and have the capacity to see God face to face for direct answers, academic librarians are the next best source for reliable information for now. They seek and do actually find, answers to research questions, that is. It’s their job! However, matters of life and death, of course, we would have to refer them to the Almighty. Mortals have their limits. Otherwise, we would be asking too much from our friends, the academic librarians.

Academic librarians have played an important part in both my academic life and in my personal life throughout my years at UBC. Allow me to indulge and share with you some fond memories of my librarian friends.

During my first year as an arts undergrad, my “prayer partner” and spiritual “big sister” was Winifred Ho, now the University Librarian at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She gave me advice on everything from biblical knowledge, “boy problems,” to practical life matters. She even brought me food and drove me around when I was down with the flu and working alone in Hong Kong. Winifred Ho was the “sister” I wished I had at home.

It was also at UBC in a Continuing Education photography class that I met the late Ann Smith who served as Acting University Librarian at UBC once upon a time. She was an extraordinarily kind person and she took an interest in me, a neophyte at the bottom of the “food chain.” She asked me “what I wanted to be when I grow up” and took me to the Faculty Club for lunch just to see how she can help me get to where I wanted to be. At the end of our lunch, she told me she would give the Fine Arts Librarian a call. Before I knew it, I got a job shelving books there for the next few years until I finished my undergrad degree. This was a job that other students had to line up to apply for and I was “in” with only one phone call from Ann to Melva Dwyer, the Head of the Fine Arts Division at the UBC Library. Perhaps Ann was eyeing me to become one of the library school recruits. Who knows? I love books. I love to read them, buy them, and give them away as gifts to friends. I am not sure I like to take care of them, books, that is, as a life long career, admirable though that be as a profession.

It was from Melva Dwyer that I learned how to scrutinize a book. She taught a course in the bibliography of fine arts. It was a rather “dry” course but we truly did benefit from learning a thing or two about how to judge a book beyond its cover.  Of course, the highlight in that class was that, at the end of the year, Melva would always take her students to the Faculty Club for a fancy lunch. That was a treat we all looked forward to.

When I went on to do graduate work in the Faculty of Education, LERC (Language Education Research Center) became my “home.” Because I did my M. Ed. In less than 2 years, I practically “lived” in LERC and as a result, I got to know Dorothy Sharrock, the librarian there, very well. My most memorable experience at LERC had nothing to do with books but it had everything to do with a dead deer! I still remember how Dorothy told me to look into the garbage bin outside the library with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. What came next was a big scream from “yours truly.” I was frightened out of my wits while Dorothy and Dr. Margaret Brown looked on with amusement. Those were the days at UBC, a much gentler time when people were more relaxed and playful.

Many years later, when I returned to UBC to do my Ph.D., I was really blessed to have Jo-Anne Naslund’s help at the Education Library. Jo-Anne is amazing. She seems to know everything. Jo-Anne is really devoted to her job but I know that the changing landscape at UBC is wearing her out at times. We love you Jo-Anne! Keep up the great work.

When I finally finished my Ph.D. (still alive and breathing, thank God!), my mind turned to the inescapable fact that if I don’t want to teach at UBC, I will not be able to enjoy the  same library privileges I had as a student. Without being connected to an academic library, I cannot keep current. So, I spent the next six months after graduation, before setting up my private practice, getting to know the library system at UBC to find a solution to my problem.

During this period of intense “searching” for a way to keep current when my UBC library card runs out (The analogy is Cinderella in a hurry to go home before the coach turns into a pumpkin!), I tried many things and consulted many people. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that with the technological advancement of today, there must be a way that I can be alerted to new publications and new developments in my professional field. My academic librarian friends are probably laughing at me right now for being so ignorant, but honestly, struggling to stay alive during those miserable Ph.D. years left me with little energy to extend myself beyond my thesis work. I actually thought that “literacy” is only restricted to learning how to read and write, which is my area of professional specialty.

The breakthrough came when I, by chance, sat next to Dean Giustini, academic librarian of Google Scholar fame. Dean is the Biomed Branch Librarian at Vancouver General Hospital and he specializes in health and hospital librarianship. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Canadian Hospital Librarian of the Year Award.

It so happened that Dean was the person who wrote the library instruction sheets on how to set up RSS feeds at UBC.  Of course, I went to the originator of the instruction sheets and the rest is now history! Currently, I have several hundred RSS feeds streaming into my Google Reader. That is how I keep up with my field! I hope my clients appreciate the efforts I make to stay current in my field of specialty.

For the last year, I followed Dean’s work on the web and learned his techniques on the blog. Now I know that the blog is a really useful educational tool.  Inspiration for my current blog and podcast on my website actually came from Dean’s work. Indeed, Dean became my Google Scholar teacher and a friend by default, thanks to the Open Access movement. The best things in life are, well, free!

I have extended an invitation to Dean Giustini, my Google Scholar teacher, to be a guest blogger here at some point in the future. As you know, wading through the glut on the internet is a problem for today’s information consumer. One of the concerns I have as a special education professional is that I have known desperate parents who have “googled” themselves into a commercial trap set for them by advertisers of unhelpful and expensive interventions.

I would love to see Dean give teacher, parents, and the general public, some pointers on how to evaluate information on the internet. Teaching “information literacy” is an important aspect of an academic librarian’s work and Dean does it with flair and finesse. It would be great to have Dean enlighten us on the art of “search” and how to avoid being mis-informed. Too many innocent parents have gone astray before us.

And so, I say, “Come save us, our dear academic librarian friends. Deliver us from the booby-traps set by evil advertisers of false interventions for dyslexia. God loves academic librarians!”