The Lion's Paw

I always wonder why some books resonate so much with a child and others don't. And as I look back into my childhood at the books that shaped me, I wonder what made them so important in MY life. One such book is The Lion's Paw, by Robb White. My fourth grade teacher read this to my class in Englewood, Florida, where I spent my childhood. The book was out of print for many years, and when I searched for it as an adult, even badly worn paperback copies on Amazon and e-bay ran $85. I was surprised and delighted to find a paperback copy in a thrift store for 50 cents after many years of looking. And I was even happier when Jen Mills Barabee, a former student, emailed me to let me know the book was back in print (did I talk about it that much, Jen, that you remembered it twenty years later?). I had my new hardback copy before the week was out. And yes, it was as good as I remembered it, although somewhat dated.

Originally published in 1946, White's book follows two orphans, Nick and Penny, who escape from an orphanage on the east coast of Florida. They join up with Ben, another orphan running away from his uncle, who wants to sell his beloved sailboat. The story follows them as they cross Florida on their way to Captiva Island, looking for a shell to complete Ben's collection. He is convinced when he finds this final shell, a rare lion's paw, his father will return.

The children battle bounty hunters, the Coast Guard, alligators, and hurricanes. The book is fast-paced, has interesting characters and a dramatic and satisfying ending. As a child, I was fascinated by hearing the names of places familiar to me: Lake Okeechobee, Fort Myers, Captiva and Sanibel Islands. For years I looked fruitlessly for a lion's paw.

But I think my love of the book was due to more than a good story set in familiar places. The three kids are fully aware of the possible consequences of their running away, but, unloved and unwanted, they band together and take responsibility for their own futures. I was inspired by 12-year-old Penny's inner toughness as she rowed in the night, her hands bleeding and her tears mixing with the rain. Ben's faith and trust in his father and his desire to live up to the faith his father had in him also inspired me.

This teacher seemed to like books with resourceful, resilient children who were unwilling to sit and take what life has handed them and who understood that it would be more hard work than fun. My Side of the Mountain was another book of this type this teacher read us. I think this need for resilience and ingenuity is one reason the Harry Potter books have been so popular.

Events in my life have forced me to call upon an inner toughness that I never knew was there until I needed it. I have not rowed for hours in the rain, but I have sat in doctors' offices, in emergency rooms and in school meetings fighting for my child. There are very few of us that lead such charmed lives that we will not need resilience at some point. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children and books such as The Lion's Paw are a good place to start.

I have never met anyone outside of Florida who has read or even heard of this book. Do any of you Florida folks remember it? For those of you outside of Florida, were there regional books that you loved? I'd love to hear in the comment section what books inspired you as a child.

Sequoyah, creator of Cherokee's "talking leaves"

Stories about Sequoyah, also know as George Gist, differ depending upon the source. Estimates of his birth date range from 1760 to 1776. He was born in Tennessee, the son of a Cherokee woman and an English fur trader. He died in 1843 in Texas or Mexico.

Sequoyah was a silversmith who became intrigued by the white man's ability to read and write. He spent twelve years developing a written language for the Cherokee. At first he tried a hieroglyphic system, assigning a symbol to each word. When he realized there were too many words for this to work, he switched to a syllabary, assigning a symbol to 86 different syllables. He endured ridicule, even from his family. One of his wives burned his early work, considering it witchcraft. Finally he had a workable system, which he taught his daughter, who learned it easily. Slowly it began to spread as people realized the potential. It was said that a person could learn to read within two weeks, and the literacy rate among the Cherokee soon surpassed that of the white settlers.

Today, Cherokee is the second most widely used Native American language and the only one that is growing. This is almost certainly due to the fact that this form of written language preserves the spoken language so that it hasn't died out as so many Native American languages have.

Sequoyah's feat is the only known instance of an individual creating a new written system of language. To learn more about the syllabary, check out this page.

Happy Thanksgiving

I have the best job in the world and today it's one of the many things I give thanks for. It allows me flexibility, a sane schedule, a feeling of accomplishment and a purpose. So today, Thanksgiving, I give thanks for my job, my wonderful students and their parents and schools.

I'm grateful for K., my little guy who "works for Legos". His mischievous smile, cut-throat Go Fish skills, and willingness to try and try and try at something that's very hard for him make him a student I always look forward to.

I'm grateful for A., who never fails to make me laugh. He regularly slaughters me in Blink, and he has one of the most original minds I've ever come across. His divergent thinking and imagination keep me intrigued and determined he WILL become a reader who can do whatever he chooses to do.

I'm grateful for J., and his interest in words and the world, a trait that makes him tumble through the sentences we read. He's incredibly intelligent and polite, and occasionally brings his bear to be tutored as well. This kid will do great things some day.

I'm grateful for E., and the joy he greats me with each session. Because of his autism, we sing much of his lesson and I'm so pleased with the progress he is making. I am convinced that any day now, this guy will read like a pro.

I'm grateful for F. and the pleasure of ending my tutoring day with her great attitude and hard work. I share her with another tutor and F. teaches me what Tracey has taught her. She has great taste in books and has introduced me to some good ones. She has made it to Wilson Book 8 and even likes worksheets!

I'm grateful for H., who told me he'd be my first failure and who is learning to read in spite of himself. He loves creatures like Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster, and will happily play games based on them. He's a great kid and I enjoy him thoroughly.

I'm grateful for G., my newest student, who finished Wilson Book 1 in two lessons. She has a curious mind and a desire to learn how the language works. She writes incredibly original stories and is an enthusiastic reader and learner. She is so much fun.

I'm grateful for I., a young lady who is unfailingly positive and cheerful. I love hearing, "SO, Linda, what are we going to do fun today?" She is aware of how she learns best and isn't shy about letting me in on the secret. She shows such enthusiasm for everything we do, and she is a killer Blink player.

Thanks to my tutoring partner, Tracey Powell, who is one of the most talented tutors I've ever seen and a joy to work with. Thanks to Carolina Friends School, St. Thomas More, and Jordan Lake School of the Arts for letting me tutor during the school day. Thanks to Beth, Cynthia, Leon, Nancy, Henry and all the other great teachers who work with me as partners in getting these kids to reach their potential. And thanks to the parents who have entrusted me with such joyful, precious gifts. Happy Thanksgiving!

Wazi-Wazi, part 2

Since I talked about wazi-wazi last week, I've tried to be more thoughtful about how to prevent it in my children, my students and myself. We are fast approaching a season that is especially stressful, and many of us will feel off-center and beside ourselves. How can we protect our true selves?

A prime cause of wazi-wazi is hurried transitions. The Christian Church, the tradition from which I come, has always recognized that transitional times are dangerous times, and thus many of their sacraments center around those: birth, marriage, and death primarily. Other religions and cultures also have rituals that celebrate those milestones, along with coming of age. Even losing teeth has rituals in cultures around the world. Think about the rituals you have around birthdays, adoption days, anniversaries, and holidays. Ritual gives us a way to make sense of transition. Perhaps we should look at the smaller transitions in our lives and create rituals for those. How many tantrums occur when leaving, arriving home, going to bed and getting up? A tantrum is a sign that a child is in a state of wazi-wazi. One of the principles of re-education, used at Wright School where D#2 attended, states "Ceremony and ritual give order, stability, and confidence to troubled children and adolescents, whose lives are often in considerable disarray." It's not just troubled children who need this.

For daughter #2, Sunday nights and Monday mornings are very hard. I didn't even recognize this until our upstairs neighbor mentioned it (she could hear it!). Once I saw how discombobulating this transition time was to my daughter, I created a small ritual: time alone with Mom while D#1 was at youth group, hot chocolate, and a scone. A more relaxed time talking about the week ahead has made Sunday nights much more pleasant. And since Sunday nights have gotten better, so have Monday mornings.

Giving up a crib for a "big kid bed", potty training, welcoming a new sibling, the death of a pet, starting or ending school, all of these deserve recognition in a ritualized way. This is more important for some children than others. There are kids for whom anything done more than once is a tradition. Those kids especially need the comfort of ritual. It could be as small as a song for getting in the car or putting on shoes, and as thought out and prolonged as a party for the older sibs before the new one arrives, helping to choose a name, going to doctor's appointments with mom, and a welcoming ceremony. New clothes, lunch box, backpack, and school supplies herald the beginning of school in our house, as it does in many. Many people have school ending rituals as well. I taught for seven years at a boarding school with a dress code; on the last day of classes, the kids raced to the campus pond and jumped in, coat, tie, and all. Kids will often create rituals if we don't and they aren't always helpful ones. Sunday night anxiety, having to have the TV on when falling asleep, and tantrums in the grocery store are all child-created rituals. If you see a difficult transitional time developing, beat them to it with a ritual of your own or one you both invent.

To most children, tutoring is a bit like torture, and so I ease most of mine in with at least two games of the card game Blink. It's a fast-moving game that takes about two minutes and most of my students beat me handily. We're both laughing at the end of it, and then tutoring begins. It's an enjoyable signal that it's time to get to work. For some of my kids, those on the autism spectrum especially, doing the lesson in the same order each time prevents anxiety. A Wilson lesson is highly ritualized; after the first few lessons, a child always knows what to expect. This is often a comfort when dealing with a difficult subject.

As the holidays arrive, think about the rituals you have in your family. Which ones cause stress and which ones bring comfort? It may be time to ditch the unhelpful ones. It may be time to pay attention to those you care for and figure out what they need to keep them centered and that impostor self away. And while you are at it, think about yourself as well. A parent or teacher in his own state of wazi-wazi is sure to create it in others.

In a state of wazi-wazi

It has not been a good couple days for daughter #2. Sunday nights and Monday mornings are always difficult, but this extended into Monday night and Tuesday morning. Tantrums, difficulties at school, difficulties with me and her sister, anguish . . . once again she's in a state of wazi-wazi.

I first learned about wazi-wazi from Gertud Mueller Nelson, a renown Christian educator and expert on family ritual, in her book To Dance with God:

Colin Turnbull, in his marvelous accounting of the Mbuti peoples of Zaire, passes along to us their understanding of the dangers in transition. The Mbuti see the person as being in the center of a sphere. In moving from here to there, the sphere moves too and offers protection. If movement in time or space is too sudden or vehement, we risk the danger of reaching the boundaries of the sphere too quickly, before the center has time to catch up. When this happens, a person becomes wazi-wazi, or disoriented and unpredictable. If you pierce through the safe boundaries of the sphere into the other world, you risk letting in something else which takes your place. If the Mbuti know of and guard against such violent and sudden motion—and that without the experience of automobiles or jet planes—what do we, the so-called civilized people of the world, know of our transitions in space and time? I think we are a whole society in a state of wazi-wazi, beside ourselves and possessed by impostor selves.

Many of my students suffer from wazi-wazi. One normally hyper and joyous student is taken over by a sullen and still impostor when he is faced with work that is too difficult or when he is pushed too quickly. Another suffers from a far more dramatic and long-lasting case. E., a child with autism, was speaking, reading, and writing when a new sibling joined his family. For a while he stopped all language. His sphere had been pierced in what to him was a violent and unpredictable way. But patient and loving parents and a great school are helping the real E. find his place back into his sphere.

Since I've come to understand this concept and its effect, I have tried to mitigate the jarring effect it has on my child and my students. Tonight, as she fell asleep, she held my hand and told me she loved me. My child was back and the impostor was gone, at least for awhile.

Why do students reverse letters?

When most people hear the word dyslexia, they think about reversing letters. While many dyslexics DO have letter reversals, so do many young non-dyslexic children. Why is this?

The explanation that has made the most sense to me, and the one I use when explaining to students and parents, is this. I hold up a pencil: "What is this?" "A pencil," the student says. I turn the pencil upside-down. "Now what is it?" "A pencil," he replies. I do this several times, rotating the pencil each time, and always the answer is a pencil. Then I hold a d letter card up: "What is this?" "A d," he says. I rotate the card: "Now what is it?" "A p." What worked for the pencil doesn't for the letter.

Up to now in a child's experience, an object remains the same object any way it is positioned. Letter and number symbols are the first thing a child encounter in which the positioning matters. It's a different object with each different orientation, or perhaps it's no object at all. A pencil can't be "backwards", but a letter or number can. So of course it's confusing, and most young children reverse their letters at some point. I gently correct and teach them how to "make their bed" (a way to hold their fists to make a bed and see the correct orientation of b and d). Generally this goes away with time and familiarity with the language. If it hasn't by second grade, it's time to take a second look.

Tell me a story

Stories are important things in our lives. Families are held together by stories ("remember the time we . . ." or "Dad always . . . "). It's only when we know and share people's stories that we can claim them as friends. Religions are full of stories. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share many stories; when the stories diverge, so do the religions. Stories can heal or inspire, and if we aren't careful, hurt. Stories are powerful. And every teacher needs to be a good storyteller.

Being a good storyteller is especially important for a tutor, who works with kids in their area of greatest weakness. Words are not my students' friends, and it's up to me to make those words friendlier. One way I do that is by telling the story behind the words. Knowing their backgrounds reveals fascinating tales. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Every word is a fossil poem." That is so true; you have to have the heart of an archeologist and dig until you discover the poem within the word. A great source is the Oxford English Dictionary. In the absence of that, a good online etymology dictionary works.

A great example is the word answer. This is a killer for students to spell. WHAT is that stupid w doing in there? I find the story fascinating (okay, so I'm a word geek!). It comes from the Old English andswaru, which was formed from two words, and (against) and -swaru (to swear). While now it simply means "to reply to a question", it once had the meaning of "making a sworn statement rebutting a charge". We see a vestige of that meaning in the phrase to answer to. Once students hear that story and can see the fossil of the word swear, I find most never misspell it again.

If your student is having trouble with a particular word, look for its relatives. Is your child having trouble keeping the to/too/two group straight? Teach to first. Next, point out two's relatives: twain, twin, twice, twelve, twenty. Even though we don't pronounce the w, think of it as two's family name. You can see it in the word between, which comes from Old English bi (by) and tweon (two each). There it is in twilight, in which the meaning seems to be "half-light", although we once also spoke of the morning twilight. Twine originally meant "a double thread", while twist once meant "to spin two threads together." Do you think your student will ever forget that two is the number word? Not after all those stories! Last, too can be added with "too many o's."

So go to it. Start digging—find those fossils, find the poems, and tell those kids a story!

I didn't plan to go THERE!

Today, one of my former students found out that her daughter has juvenile diabetes. It's always devastating to get a difficult diagnosis for one's child, no matter what it is. I was expecting my biological daughter to be dyslexic; with my genes, it would be surprising if she were not. And we cope with it fairly easily, although it did mean homeschooling her once she hit middle school. My other daughter's diagnosis of mental health issues was more unsettling. I had no idea what I was facing. I have many friends who have received difficult diagnoses about their children, be it cancer, autism (sometimes in multiple children), learning disabilities, or any of the other diagnoses that can turn one's world upside-down. They have all dealt with it with grace and courage. After the initial shock, they have rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work. Tiger moms (and dads) and activists rise from the ashes of dreams of an untroubled future. They have a new jargon, a new routine, and as one dad of a medically fragile child said to me last night, "It's old hat now." That doesn't mean it's always fun, but there is grace.

I've thought all morning about what to say to T. in response to her daughter's diagnosis. I've always been irritated by the well-meant words that God will never give you more than you can handle. First, I don't think God makes children sick. And second, you only have to watch the news to see that people often have more than they can handle. But I know that T. is a strong person, and I'm reminded of a story I heard at a dyslexia conference.

Imagine your delight. You are being transferred to the Rivera. All your life you have wanted to live in the south of France, and now you have your chance. In the depths of winter you will be eating wonderful French food and basking on the beaches. You've studied French for a long time in preparation; you have bought clothes appropriate to the climate. You climb on the plane and off you go.

The plane lands and you look out the window. Something is wrong. The landscape is blanketed with snow and, though it's just 5:00 pm, it's pitch dark outside. As you disembark from the plane, you are hit with an icy blast. You stand there in shock and your cell phone rings. There has been a change of plans and your new assignment is Norway.

You spend the next 24 hours in tears of rage and despair. It's not fair! Why did this happen to you? You don't have the right clothes. You don't speak the language. There are only five hours of daylight a day and it's freezing. The food is strange and you don't like it. You never had the slightest desire to go to Norway!! You go through the motions of finding a place to live, buying new clothes, starting your new job. Everything is harder because of the language barrier, the deep snow, the dark and the cold. Everything is a struggle and you are consumed with rage with the unfairness of it all.

Life goes on and you notice the days are getting longer. As spring comes, you start to look around. Oslo has many beautiful buildings that you never noticed before. The people are friendly and patient with your lack of Norwegian. As you sample more of the local cuisine, it loses its strangeness, and some of it is downright good. Summer comes and you visit the breathtaking fjords and enjoy the long hours of daylight and the temperate climate. You make friends and one day you realize you're okay with being in Norway. It's not where you wanted or planned to go, and you still feel a pang for what you are missing. But it's where you are and that can't be changed. You feel the anger dissipating. You know the winter and all its difficulties will come again, but you will enjoy the summer while it's here and cope with the winter when it comes. This is where you are.

So T., all I can tell you is that I'll pray for Abbey and hope for a cure. I hope your doctors are nice and knowledgeable. I hope you have a family and community that supports you. I can promise you that grace will come.

How long will this take?

Parents often ask how long tutoring will need to continue. It's difficult to know that. Three former students serve as examples of why it's hard to tell.

B.'s mother called me when B. was in kindergarten. An obviously bright child, most of her classmates were reading. She wasn't, and this was causing B. a lot of distress. The mother was not overly concerned that she wasn't reading; after all, this WAS kindergarten. But she was concerned about the child's anxiety over it. In my initial assessment, B. knew all her sounds, even x, but she couldn't spell or read a single word. As we began our first lesson, I realized although she knew the sounds, she didn't know why she knew them and what relationship they had to reading. Once I explained that we put letters together to make words, she excitedly began to spell cat and fat and bat. I helped her memorize sight words that couldn't be sounded out and by the second lesson she was writing sentences. About two months later we started on The Boxcar Children and she got hooked on the series. We'd start a book and she'd finish it before I'd return. I worked with her about a year and through her school career, she'd check in about once a year, usually with a grammar question. She's now a financial analyst with a masters degree from UNC.

C., an equally bright first grader, was a whiz in math but had great difficulties with reading and spelling. He had already began to label himself as dumb and was shy and withdrawn. It took six months before he was able to blend the letters in a three letter word. His mother had me tutor him every summer as well as the school year. I bribed him with M & M's to get him to read a simple sentence and we tried every trick I knew. Nothing in the written realm came easily to him.

He was in fifth grade when the Harry Potter craze hit, and all his friends were reading it. C. brought me his copy of the book and asked if we could read that. I knew that his skills were far too low for this book, but I took a deep breath and we started. He'd read a page with agonizingly slowness and a lot of help, and then I'd read two pages. In an hour, we'd get through maybe six pages.

One Monday he came in and said, "You're going to be really mad at me." "Yeah?" I said. "Why?" "I read ahead 116 pages," he answered and proceeded to tell me what I'd missed. "Oh, yeah, I"m furious," I replied. He grinned. Somehow that weekend, all the things we'd worked on for five years came together and made sense. I worked with him for five more years, continuing the reading but concentrating on the writing assignments that became increasingly more complex. He is now an engineering student at Purdue.

D. came to me in the 7th grade, with a diagnosis of autism and dyslexia. The school system had told his mother that he didn't have the cognitive ability to learn to read, but a savvy psychologist had prescribed a phonetic approach. When I started, he had to think every time he spelled his name. We marched through Wilson books 1, 2, 3, and 4, and his mother reported he was looking up things on Wikopedia at home. We began Mary Pope Osborne's three book series The Odyssey, which he loved. After three years, the school system tested him at 12th grade reading level and my work with him was through. His spelling still lags behind his reading and he uses an Alpha-Smart for his classwork. He has an A average in 10th grade English.

So when a parent asks me how long it will take, I can never answer that. Every child is different, and all I can say is that we'll know when we get there.

Which wolf?

Pete, D#2's unit coordinator at Wright School, realized I was a person who loved and needed stories, and at particularly low points in our time there would tell me a new one. Here is the most healing story he told me, one that guides my day-to-day interactions with my students, my children, and others I come into contact with:

An old Navajo grandfather was walking with his grandson. He looked down at the boy and said, "Son, inside you and every human there are two wolves. One is a good wolf and one is an evil wolf, and they are fighting to the death." They continued walking in silence until the boy cried, "But Grandfather, which wolf wins?" The grandfather replied simply, "the wolf you feed."

Here's hoping that every child has people in her life who feed the good wolf.

Learned Helplessness

One of my favorite quotes, and I can't remember or find who said it, is that to best educate a child, you should give him a book and get out of the way. I have found that to be great advice with Daughter #1, who is homeschooled. Schools are not set up for gifted dyslexics, and I finally stopped fighting and pulled her out. She neither wants nor requires much of my help. She takes a couple of enrichment classes, uses an algebra text with DVD lectures if she needs it, learns history through novels, and is reading lots of short stories. She also spends a lot of time investigating her interests of the moment: classic rock, photography, forensic psychiatry, sewing, harmonica, drama. She is truly an independent learner.

It's harder with D#2, who struggles with anxiety and has also missed a lot of school over the years. I find myself sitting with her as she does her homework, helping her through math problems that have her extremely frustrated. Part of it is due to an excessively wordy math text which makes things much more complicated than they need to be. But this week, her class is joining with other classes across with country in a math challenge, where the student does on-line math problems and earns points for her class for correct answers to problems that get progressively more difficult. There is very little explanation, but the student has the chance to try again on similar problems after being told the correct answer. Tonight, she sat for two hours doing math by herself. Occasionally she'd ask for help, but after I explained it once, she'd send me off, saying. "I can do it now." I had to bribe her with pie to get her to quit.

What an empowering experience for a child who is "bad at math"! It is so easy for those of us with special needs kids to push them into the trap of learned helplessness, with the very best intentions of course. Letting a child make his own mistakes and learn from them, letting him know you consider him a capable learner, and setting up situations where he can succeed on his own are incredible gifts to a child. Far too often we—teachers, tutors, and parents—rescue a child and end up doing it for him. As a teacher, I often saw homework, projects, and papers clearly done by the parents. That tells the student that he is not capable of doing quality work. Allowing mistakes and having reasonable expectations make a child feel he is able to do what is asked of him.

I am very grateful to D#2's teachers for setting my child up for success with this math program. She can't wait to get up and start in on math tomorrow. It also reminds me that I need to help her make homework more HER job and less OUR job whenever possible. She will always need more of my help than D#1 in academics, but her pride in her math performance tonight makes me think she needs less than she is getting.

SNAC: Special Needs Advisory Council

This morning I attended the monthly meeting of SNAC, the Special Needs Advisory Council of Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools. I represent Glenwood Elementary School, where my youngest daughter attends. SNAC is a group of parents, district staff, and community professionals working to improve the CHCCS Exceptional Children's program. Our purpose is to influence district policy on EC issues. Any parent of a child who has (or recently had) an IEP or a 504 plan, or is medically fragile, is welcome to find a place to contribute.

It amazes me that so many parents, all with special needs children and many in crisis, find the time and energy to attend a monthly 7:45 am meeting as well as subcommittee meetings. And these are not parents complaining about individual children's cases; this is advocating for ALL EC children in the district. I joined SNAC in its earlier stages, when it was angry parents on one side of the room and defensive staff on the other. Meetings were often hostile. Gradually it became less of an "us and them" group as we all realized we wanted the same things for our kids. I went off SNAC for two years and returned this year. It is a joy to see how it has evolved into a group of knowledgeable parents and professionals working together to truly influence district policy. As a parent who has had EC children in this district for ten years and as a tutor who has worked with many more, I can truly say that this group has improved education for all exceptional children.

And kudos to Shell Brownstein, one of our own, who was just overwhelmingly elected to the CHCCS school board. Shell saw that twice exceptional children (kids who are both gifted and dyslexic) were often underserved because of identification formulas and lack of understanding that a child could fall into both categories. She used SNAC to shepherd through some major changes that help 2E children before they get discouraged.

These folks are all heroes. Sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, often exhausted, they are changing a piece of the world.

I'm stuck

The advantage a tutor has over a teacher is that she can tailor a lesson to a specific child. Sometimes that's as easy as spending a little extra time on something or playing a learning game he loves. Last year I had a child with autism who became obsessed with manhole covers. With my handy Pampered Chef can opener (which leaves no sharp edges), I gathered a bunch of can lids, wrote words on the "manhole covers", and he read them happily.

Sometimes a kid gets really stuck on something that is very important and I want to make sure he has the concept before we go on. My student A. is having trouble with consonant blends. Because they are ubiquitous, it's important to have a good grasp of them. We've done workbook pages, played Go Fish and other games with them, dictated, used the magnet board . . . I've pulled everything I have out of my bag of tricks. He's getting better, but he isn't consistent and he certainly hasn't over-learned them. For instance, today he spelled spin sinp. It's almost as if he sees the word as a whole and misses the parts. And to make it worse, he refuses to tap the sounds out; that's just too weird for him. I'd love to find a substitute for tapping that he would do.

This guy has one strength that I very seldom see in my students. He loves to put things in alphabetical order and he's good at it, even when he has to go to the third or fourth letter. He also loves patterns. How can I use these strengths to help him with his weaknesses? One thing I will try next session is to write words on index cards, perhaps all with s blends, have him alphabetize them and then read them. To alphabetize he must first look at the letters in order. And then I'll try . . . hmm. I must admit I'm stuck. Is there a way to use his love of patterns to help him overcome this block? He likes sorting games, and that helped him master -ng and -nk.

So, master tutors, teachers, and generally creative thinkers: what would you do? I'd love to hear your best ideas. Helping a child learn in the way she learns best is my favorite part of tutoring. I'm just stuck, sort of like A. is. And it's my job to get us both unstuck.

You must be mistaken!

How many mistakes did you make today? I made quite a few. I forgot to take the books back to the library (fines building up!), I turned a street too early, I threw away something I needed, I left my dayplanner on the floor and the cat peed on it. And those are the ones I'll admit to. So where did we get the idea that our students' work needs to be perfect? When did we give them the idea that we expect perfection from them? Was it when we made a child copy a paper over numerous times until she "got it right"? Was it when a B wasn't good enough? Was it when we lowered the grade on a paper by a letter grade for every mistake in it? Was it when we corrected him in front of the whole class or called on him to read out loud? No wonder so many children suffer from anxiety!

I'll ask a child to tell me about an event and his story will be full of detail and rich, descriptive vocabulary. Then I'll ask him to write it down. "How many sentences?" he groans. And the product is a sometimes perfectly written, incredibly boring narrative with three or four word sentences, full of easy words he is sure he can spell. Wilson Anderson calls this "dumbing down". It takes a long time before I can convince him that I'd rather have a vibrant story full of errors than a snore-inducing paragraph with perfect spelling. I tell him about Oriental carpet makers who always include one mistake in their carpets because only God is perfect, and to produce a perfect carpet would be trying to be like God. I encourage him to make sure there is always at least one mistake for the same reason. I'll have him use Anderson's technique of underlining words he thinks are wrong and continuing on. And on every student's notebook is a sticker that says, "Every mistake is another opportunity to learn." As I pointed out an error to a child, she said, "I know, there's one of those opportunities!"

Seeing the mistakes a child makes is a large part of diagnostic teaching. I may think she knows those consonant digraphs, but if she writes about a mother hen and her chiks, I know we need to do more work on -ck. It's a lot easier to spell a word in isolation than it is when you are thinking of content. And just because I encourage mistakes, it doesn't mean we don't correct them. But we may not correct all of them at one time. Also, while invented spelling is great for kindergartners, we move children away from that by teaching the rules and structure of the language. Making the same mistake continuously hinders our ability to move on and means I need to find a different way to teach whatever is causing the problem. We're always moving toward improvement, but not perfection.

Thomas Edison had many failures before inventing the things he did. He did not see this as a problem: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Henry Ford said, "Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement." "If you can't make a mistake," Marva Collins teaches, "you can't make anything." But my favorite is this: "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." (Elbert Hubbard) We have so many opportunities to learn and try new things. Don't let the fear of mistakes keep us and our students from trying them.

Education at its best

I have two wonderful daughters, and my first was an easy child, leading me to the spurious belief that my superior parenting was responsible for her charming and easygoing personality. Then came daughter #2, who knocked me right off my high horse. I eventually discovered that she has mental health issues, primarily anxiety, ADHD, and executive function deficits. With severe anxiety and little impulse control, this normally sweet child can do the fight or flight reaction equally well. She was expelled from her first daycare at age two and regularly ended up in school situations that increased her anxiety and aggressive behavior. Mental health support for children is sketchy at best, and finally I made the decision to send her to Wright School. Sending my child to a state-run, residential mental health treatment center was one of the hardest decisions I have made in my life. It was also one of the best.

Wright School (www.wrightschool.org) is in Durham, NC, and works with 24 (at a time) of the state's most violent and troubled children, ages 6-12, for six to eight months. They go home every weekend to practice what they have learned during the week. The school is based on the principles of reeducation and their long-term success with a difficult demographic is nothing less than phenomenal. They serve about 55 kids a year at a low cost to the state and no cost to the parent, and they are a national model for a program that works. So how do they do it? Here is MY theory:

1) The staff is, across the board and without exception, both competent and passionate about their work. There are not only guiding principles, but a deep-rooted culture around those principles. For instance, they don't yell at children. Never. And they don't make those children or their parents feel like failures.

2) Following the principles of reeducation, the staff doesn't assume something is wrong with the child. The presumption is that the ecology of the child's environment is out of balance, and all elements have to change. I had to change, daughter #1 had to change, the structure of day to day living had to change, and the school had to change, all along with D#2. We had a parent-teacher liaison who worked with me in a very pragmatic way. I had SO much to learn and adjust, and she was there to help me do it. What worked with D#1 didn't with this child and I had to find new ways to parent. We also had a unit coordinator who inspired me by the stories he told me (which you will hear at some point) and who infused me with hope.

3) Structure and clear expectations are key. She got constant feedback about her behavior and constant praise for the things she did well. We continue to do these things at home. We now have schedules and posted expectations.

4) All kinds of competencies were addressed: tying shoes, table manners, hygiene, social skills, and academics. As a child became more confident in these areas, she became less anxious about her performance. She knew what was expected of her.

5) They address a troubled child's academic problems directly. I'll quote director Debbie Simmers on this:

Children in a clinical population, like those at Wright School, often have co-occurring learning and language delays and/or disorders, as well as significant deficits with processing speed and/or working memory. A thorough academic assessment for children with mental health needs can illuminate learning issues that suggest to trained educators needed positive academic supports, in addition to positive behavioral supports. Individual and small group remedial instruction that accommodates and supports learning needs with direct instruction and a reinforcement system that initially rewards effort, in addition to results, is an empowering formula to increase learner engagement. A pattern of celebrated success often brings the child sufficient confidence to use the strategies s/he has learned to take academic risks that they formerly refused. Successfully using a strategy to independently sound out an unknown word lights up a child's face with hope for the future!

Wright School uses the Wilson Reading System to teach reading and Saxon Math for the spiral drill that brings math proficiency. They follow the NC Standard Course of Study but in a way that is accessible for learners with special needs.

Many of the things done at Wright School are transferable to the home and other school settings. In fact, staff will do trainings for teachers and other groups. I wish that all children could have the chance to be taught by teachers who are this good.

D#2 graduated from Wright School in May, 2009. She is mainstreamed in our districted public school; it's the first time in three years she has not been in a self-contained classroom. She regularly points out kids who could be helped by Wright School, and she often asks to go back to visit the staff. Life is not perfect, but we all have strategies to deal with our difficulties. We have hope once again.

One of my heroes

One of the most important influences on me as a teacher is educator Marva Collins, who ran the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago from 1975 to 2008. She was driven to start this school because of the poor quality education that her children and other impoverished black children were receiving. Her teachers used a direct Socratic method and she believed every child could read if they were taught phonics and the structure of the language. Generally, all her students, even those labeled developmentally disabled, learning disabled, and ineducable, were reading by Christmas. Her book, Marva Collins' Way, was and is a great source of inspiration and challenge to me. She now does educational seminars, and more about her can be found on www.MarvaCollins.com. I've always thought she should be the Secretary of Education.

Two of her quotes particularly hit home with me:

—"There is a brilliant child locked inside every student."

—"Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed."