The Right Side of Normal

A great thing about homeschooling is being able to let your children teach you how they prefer to be taught and then helping that unique process unfold. It is so worth the time to figure out how your child and you can best work together, particularly if your child is not ready to fit in a conventional classroom. An observant adult who is not feeling rushed to make a child do things at certain times can see that learning is something that can be caught, not just taught, and this leads to all sorts of reconfigurations about what children can and can’t do. However our school-based conceptions of learning are increasing teaching time in class and students who don’t take instruction well while sitting still—or who simply can’t sit still—are finding themselves to be second-class educational citizens.

This blog post at the Washington Post by an anguished father, who has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) himself, notes that even in the best schools in the United States children with learning differences are not treated well. He concludes:

In the meantime, my kids will struggle through school, battered along the way, and, like their father, be forced to discover most of their talents and passions on their own, outside of school.

This family feels deeply wounded by school though education experts often claim that children such as these, sometimes called right-brained learners, need even more costly processing and highly trained teachers than other students. However, just as homeschooling proves you don’t need to follow the conventional prep school route to gain admissions to Ivy League schools, so it is proving you don’t need to hire learning specialists to help a special needs child.

Cindy Gaddis, a homeschooling mother of seven, is an observant, caring adult to a variety of right-brained learners and she has shared her knowledge and experience at conferences and through articles for many years. She, her children, and the many others she has helped show that it is possible for ordinary parents to work with right-brained learners. Outside help is sought when needed, but Gaddis inspires you to see how much you can accomplish with your right-brained learners in your home and community.

Cindy Gaddis has distilled her experiences into a fantastic book, The Right Side of Normal: Understanding and Honoring The Natural Learning Path for Right-Brained Children. I urge you to read it no matter what type of learner you or your children are; you will find many examples of how to approach topics from different angles for different learners, how to find and develop your patience when your children learn in fits and starts, and lots of genuine work samples that show you how to provide useful feedback to your children and to others who care and work with them. This is a marvelous, empowering book that supports parents and children to think about special needs education through a different lens.

Cindy is making a limited time offer: if you purchase a print copy she will include a free eBook copy for you to share with others.

Neurodiversity, Not Learning Disabilities

The current governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, caught my attention last year when the Associated Press ran a story about his dyslexia: “I’m embarrassed all the time about that,” Malloy is quoted, referring to his writing disability, and I was puzzled: Why would a successful politician feel embarrassed because of a lack of writing skills? After all, most politicians usually hire writers. Upon reading the story, one sees the school wounds that are still with Governor Malloy: his memories of the teachers and students who thought or said he was mentally retarded and his public embarrassment about his struggles as a late bloomer. It is clear these wounds still hurt, and it is inspiring that Governor Malloy is willing to speak freely about them, not only to the press, but to students labeled with learning disorders, too. Unfortunately, the governor is reported to commiserate about how, like him, the students are likely to be embarrassed throughout their lives by their inability to write well, rather than provide them with examples of his innovativeness for creating a niche where his strengths could take root and overcome his weaknesses.

This is what Dr Thomas Armstrong calls positive niche construction, and it is one of the many successful strategies that he describes in his groundbreaking book, Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences . Governor Malloy, and others like him, might not feel their dyslexia is a gift, and Dr. Armstrong isn’t trying to put lipstick on a pig. He writes:

By focusing on the “hidden strengths” of mental disorders, I am not attempting to sidestep the damage that these conditions do. I am not saying that these really aren’t disorders or that somehow calling them “differences” will make all the pain go away. It won’t. But there is merit in focusing on the positives. The term “neurodiversity” is not a sentimental ploy to help people with mental illness and their caregivers “feel good” about their disorders. Rather, it is a powerful concept, backed by substantial research from brain science, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and other fields, that can help revolutionize the way we look at mental illness.

By mounting a huge campaign on the strengths of people with mental disorders, some of the prejudice that exists against mental illness might be diffused. It also seems to me therapeutically useful for people with mental disorders (and their caregivers) to focus on the positives as much as, or more than, the negative. Seeing our own inner strengths builds our self-confidence, provides us with courage to pursue our dreams, and promotes the development of specific skills that can provide deep satisfaction in life. This creates a positive feedback loop that helps counteract the vicious circle that many people with mental disorders find themselves in as a result of their disabilities.

I wrote this book because I wanted to start a serious campaign to begin researching the positives among people who are defined in terms of their negatives.

I’ve had the honor of hearing Dr. Armstrong speak on several occasions, and in one keynote speech Armstrong noted that while modern science views the brain as a computer, he and others view it more as an ecosystem—a brain forest—a metaphor I immediately liked. Thomas expands this idea further with Neurodiversity:  “ . . . we need to admit that there is no standard brain, just as there is no standard flower, or standard cultural or racial group, and that, in fact, diversity among brains is just as wonderfully enriching as biodiversity and the diversity among cultures and races.”

Governor Malloy deserves lots of credit for speaking out about his learning issues, though it is clear he feels his brain is less than standard. However, as with the many examples Dr. Armstrong provides in his book, I think you will be impressed by how Governor Malloy used his auditory skills and “passions for public speaking and government, and refused to . . . be defined by his learning disability.” In doing so he provides us all with a real example of personal achievement, often despite of his schooling, and one he should not be embarrassed about.

NOTE: When Neurodiversity came out in paperback its title was changed to:

The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain (published in hardcover as Neurodiversity)

The Importance of Vulnerability in Learning

I often hear about the qualities needed for children to learn effectively and they are, sadly, often the same among most schools and homeschooling parents: for instance, children should sit still and follow instructions, complete their assignments every day, and get good grades. From a technical, school-efficiency view of learning these qualities are vital for providing detailed records of student performance in order to inform the school what they will do next to the student, but from a person-centered view of learning they are not nearly as important. This view, which I hold, places individual motivation, open questioning, and the singular ways in which each child learns to be far more important for nurturing learning than school efficiency. As John Holt often noted, “…little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning.” When I viewed this TED video by Brene Brown, author of The Gift of Imperfection, I understood, more completely, the importance of maintaining personal vulnerability, not just for learning but also for living a full life.

Dr. Brown presents herself as a hard-nosed researcher whose job is “to control and predict,” the essential task of research. However, as Dr. Brown, a social worker, applied hard science to her task of measuring the ability of people to feel connected to others, she learned that being able to feel connected to people also involved deep feelings of shame and fear, something she didn’t expect. As she explored the role of shame and fear in how we connect, or don’t connect, with others she also went on a fascinating personal journey that led her to change her ideas not only about social work but also about life, learning, and parenting. Brown initially follows her professor’s advice to “lean into the discomfort,” and she organizes the messy discomforts of her life and work into neatly arranged Bento boxes, but she eventually concludes that this is not how we can form authentic relationships with others, and so, applying her research to herself, she had to relearn how to be vulnerable, how to take risks in love and life, how to “lean into the joy.”

John Holt wrote at length, nearly 50 years ago, about how fear and shame inhibit learning (see How Children Learn and How Children Fail) and his observations are well supported by Dr. Brown’s research and stories. Though she doesn’t spend a lot of her time discussing children and learning, the overall message of this talk is so well presented and vital that you will easily make your own connections to parenting and education.



Helping older homeschoolers learn to read

Having children who learn to read at a later age than is acceptable in school is a common feature of many home schools, particularly if you are following an unschooling or Waldorf approach. As Dr. Raymond Moore noted in his work in the seventies and eighties, and as Dr. Alan Thomas noted in his work in 2007, homeschooled children who are late readers learn to read quite well when they eventually do learn to read. Once they decide to learn to read, they learn quickly, catching up to their age-mates reading abilities in months, not years. Further, children who haven’t been forced to read by 3^rd grade also appear to read more for personal pleasure and information as they get older than do those who were forced to learn to read at a particular age.

However, if one is a pre-teen or a teenager learning to read from the types of beginning reading materials that are usually available it can be disappointing, since these materials are all too often geared to 3^rd graders. A good solution I found is to use adult literacy and English as a Second Language (ESL) reading materials with late readers who feel Dr. Seuss, controlled vocabulary fairy tales, and other story books are too juvenile for their learning situation. A good source for these materials is www.proliteracy.com.

Check out their News for You Online program. This is a web-based weekly newspaper that features current news stories written at 3^rd—6^th grade reading levels. It includes audio for all the stories so students can listen to the entire story or read along, sentence by sentence. Key words are defined at the point of use by rolling over a boldface word and seeing a pop-up.

They also sell a four-book series called Novel Scenes that increase in reading difficulty, going from Introductory to Low-Beginning, High-Beginning, and Low-Intermediate levels. Each book tells the story of a single character in a situation where events unfold chapter by chapter and themes include work, family, money and housing.

So if your late reader wants to crack the reading code but is embarrassed by the beginning reader books that are available to them, consider using adult literacy and ESL materials instead.

Unschooling Math

Susannah Sheffer edited Growing Without Schooling (GWS) magazine longer than any of her previous or subsequent colleagues did, including John Holt himself. During her time at GWS Susannah created several small packets and booklets on specific topics that used material exclusively from GWS. I’ve been going through all my GWS documents seeking material that hasn’t been used before for the creation of some new books, articles and materials I have in mind. However, when I rediscovered this little pamphlet by Susannah I thought it could be immediately useful to people who are uncertain if math can be learned by children without formal textbooks, lessons, and wheedling and needling by parents to finish their homework.

I scanned the original booklet and am providing it as a free download in Portable Document Format (PDF), so you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it. If you would like to read it and comment on it, please visit my download page and click on “Unschooling Math.” I would appreciate your comments and thoughts about it, particularly if you would like to see or share more material on the subject of unschooling math.

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