The Reluctant Learner...

"How will you handle the reluctant learner? This week, we talked about the learner and learning styles. We addressed the fact that there are many different ways to reach students. For this week's blog, I want to give you a fictional situation. You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?"

First of all, putting an attention deficit disorder child in a group with the class clown is a really bad idea. Josh, the class clown, will most likely distract Renee and make things that much harder for her. Renee also may be intimidated by Liz, who is obviously a better worker than she is. Although Liz may be able to supplement/aide Renee, Renee is to much affected by other people to find that helpful. Instead, she probably sees Liz as not only intimidating, but a constant reminder that she is inadequate. It is important for Renee to experience teamwork, but it is especially hard to make her work with others at this time. Renee has not felt kindness or love from other people, so she will probably feel that nobody cares and the everybody is against her rather than helping her. Renee also has a hard time understanding what you say to her, so it would be very important that you supplied her with a written copy of the instructions. A bulleted list of what she needs to do to accomplish the project might help her see the big picture.

I think a better idea for Renee would be for her to work independentaly on her own work, and then when she is done she can present her work to the other members of the group. To provide some socialization/team work, she can discuss with her group how she can incorporate her own independent work with the work of the other two members. Renee has a strength in math, so instead of presenting the material using a bulleted list or paragraph summary like the other kids will do, it might be easier for her if she did something like a timeline or graph. Its essential to find some way to incorporate her strength of math into the project to make it less challenging for her to do and to get her more engaged. By allowing her to do something that she is good at instead of something like a Keynote presentation which will further show her ADD and speech/language disorder, she is more likely to be engaged and enjoy doing the work. Also, when she finally completes the work, she will feel more proud of herself for doing a good job then she would if she provided a project that wasn't up to par. Instead of working with Keynote, Renee could design a timeline of events over the four chapters or create a graph that shows specific parts of each chapter. For example, the graph could contain categories like characters involved, setting, conflict, resolution, and exciting events. After doing the graph, either by hand or using the computer, the members of her group could incorporate it into the Keynote presentation. This allows Renee to be a participant of the group without being distracted by them or having to communicate verbally a lot to with them (she can communicate visually instead).

Lastly, you need to be extra sensitive with Renee. She has been neglected and she has a hard and unstable home environment. You should take into consideration that the content material might be too much for her to handle at the moment, or that some of the things that Huck Fin may be going through in the book rings too close to home for her. It's important that you give her extra support with the project, maybe providing extra time outside of class for her to come in and work on it together with you. You should be sensitive and understanding, and never ever get impatient with her.