Trust Yourself!

So, in the last week, I have hung out with two people with disabilities.  One of them has Dyslexia and the other person has a Developmental Delay.  And I saw a very disturbing similarity between them.  I saw that they gave up on themselves as soon as any stress was put on them.  So, if the game required the gal with DD to remember the numbers, she would ask me to tell her what they were.  I told her to "trust herself" and she got it right in three more turns.

The gal with Dyslexia had to read the assignment on her classes website, and she asked me to tell her what the assignment was.  I told her to "trust herself" and read.

Too often today, students with disabilities, and students with no disabilities as well, give up on themselves before they even try.  They may feel that they are not good enough to even try, or that if they try, they will fail.  And this is a really sad example of respondent conditioning (Pavlov's dog).  Because every student can do it, I believe that with my whole heart, and they have been taught (conditioned) to believe that if they try, they will fail.

So what can I, as a future Special Ed teacher, do to help with this?  I can give the students who give up prematurely encouragement to "trust themselves."  I think the best way to teach that they can do it is when they ask a question, I guide their thinking to the correct place.

For instance, when I did my field experience last semester, a student asked me to help them with math.  I was not expecting her to keep asking me to tell her the answer, which is what she did.  I had to consciously think about how I could guide her thinking toward answering this math problem.  I only answered her questions with question.  The question was "Fill in the blank with the pattern   _, _, 15, 20, 25."  Understandably, she didn't quite understand this, she did the other question correctly, which was the typical of "2, 4, 6 _, _."  But she was having a difficult time with this problem.  I asked "Do you see a pattern in these numbers?"

She answered "No, I don't."  This made me think harder as to how to help her and NOT give her the answer.

So, I asked another question, "How did you solve this other pattern?"

"Well, 2+2 is 4, and 4+2 is 6, so 6+2 is 8, and 8+2 is 10."  I then used this thought process to help her answer the question that she was stuck on.

"Cover up the blanks."  And she proceeded to cover them up, and I continued, "Do you see a pattern in these numbers?"  Her eyes went wide when she realized that she knew the answer.

She hastily wrote down 5 and 10 in the blank spaces.  The next part of the question was "What was the pattern?"  and she wrote down -5.  I saw this and I asked the question, "Why did you put -5?"

I was guessing that I knew the answer, but I wanted her to think about her thought process for putting down -5.  She replied "Because 20-5 is 15, 15-5 is 10, and 10-5 is 5."

Again, I knew I couldn't just give her the answer, so I asked the question.  "Which number is first?"

She said immediately, "25 is the first number."

I replied pointing to the first pattern problem that she did correctly "Which is the first number on this?"

She replied assertively, "2."

I said, "Right, now using what you did, the very first number, what is the very number in this pattern?

She looked at the sheet again, as if trying to see an invisible code, and finally saw what she was looking for, "Oh, it's 5."

I smiled and said, "Correct, so is the pattern -5?"

She looked at me and smiled, "No, it's +5, not -5."

This story is an example of not allowing a student to manipulate you into making it easy to give up by giving them the answer.  This was one of those experiences that made last semester totally worth it, when you knew that the student understood it.

I admit that to do this for every student who do not trust themselves takes a lot of time, but isn't it worth it to give a student understanding in a subject that they don't trust themselves on?  It is so worth our time.