Tag: youmatter

YouMatter. I care.

4 Comments

I’m starting another series of posts here – gotta love blog tags – and I’m going to poach @AngelaMaiers’ hashtag. Well, at least I think she coined it based on her TEDx video (a must-watch) which I stumbled upon on @ShannonInOttawa’s  blog.  Incidentally, I stumbled on @ShannonInOttawa on an @edchat tweet on homework as deliberate practice based on @kathleencushman‘s work. and so on and on….

’nuff prologue!!!!

meet Tania

I’m a parent volunteer for the Literacy Program at my daughter’s school, run by an ex-primary school teacher.  It provides one-one-one help to targeted students on reading and writing, with plenty of grammar tossed in.

Today I met Tania (not her real name) who’s in year 8, visibly an ESL (English as Second Language student) student.  Her parents are also ESL-speakers.   She’s been in Australia for 3 years and speaks with an accent which I think makes her self-conscious.

She had to read aloud a couple of chapters and then answer a worksheet to test her comprehension as well as provide practice for writing.  I challenged Tania to read with feelings and proper intonation.  While she gave me a shy laugh, she actually did try and did rather well, I reckon. And, I told her so.

When she completed the worksheet, I commented specifically on how well she was doing with her tenses. She just smiled but seemed to grow with confidence with every question and answer.

Before resuming work after a 15-minute break (it’s a 2-hour session), we had this conversation:

me: Do you like to read?

Tania: No, not really.

me: Are you sure? There must be something you do like to read?

Tania (tentatively and quietly): Well, I like comic books. 

me: My youngest loves comic books. Do you know someone said that reading comics books makes you think what happens between the boxes.  It makes you more imaginative. That’s a good thing. (from @vormamim – see tweet)

http://twitter.com/#!/Vormamim

via @vormamim

 

 

 

 

 

Tania smiles. (priceless)

me: So next time someone asks you if you like to read, what do you say?

Tania: Yes.

me: And…?

Tania: I like to read comic books. (smiles again)

It didn’t end there.

Later on, one of the worksheet sections was obviously too easy for Tania.  I asked her to confirm and she did.  Well, I told her then to write so on the bottom of the page, i.e. “This is too easy for me. Give me something harder.”  And she did – with a cheeky smile.  I signed next to it because I believe it.

Wait there’s more….

As she moved on to the Auxiliary verbs, she struggled a bit.  When I seemed to be unsure myself (I’m ESL too and sometimes the vagaries of the English grammar escapes me), I suggested to sound it out.  That strategy helped and she tried this again in subsequent numbers.  She even thought it fun when I suggested she move beyond the verb”to be” and try using might, may, etc.   After that, she seemed more confident to ask for help and show uncertainty.

She gave me a big smile at the end.  I gave her a big smile back.  In fact, the smile lingered.

Reflection:

It was the first time I met Tania but after 2 hours, I felt like I’ve known her for longer.  I’d like to think that through my actions and feedback Imanaged to convey that #YouMatter and #Icare (I’d like to coin that one, if I may).  For those 2 hours, Tania mattered to me.  Beyond checkmarks, I gave her written feedback as well, i.e. what she was doing well, her progress and where she could improve.

Saying “I care”  closes the loop that “You matter” starts.  It forms a connection, a relationship, albeit temporal.

You matter to someone; that would be me. I care.

I wish the program itself was more exciting and differentiated. I wish we had better worksheets, if we were to use them at all.  But that is perhaps a mission for another day.

Today, I was very happy with the session.  As I was filling in for another volunteer, I doubt I would see Tania again though I have no doubt her literacy skills will continue to improve as she gains confidence in her improvements.  I hope that even for a little while she felt that she was not just another support student: She’s Tania, a girl who loves to read comic books. 

How much of all these came from Twitter?

If you ever doubted what benefit having an online PLN gives, this is proof enough.

Today was a good day for learning….and teaching. (Should an ESL-speaker teach English to ESL-speakers?)

Art to express dyslexia

8 Comments

A year 12 student approached me today for help on sound editing as part of her HSC major work for Visual Arts.  As usual, I started off with my question, “What do you want to do?”

As it turned out, Claire (not her real name) was creating a multi-media piece. She described how she wanted to layer audio tracks, edit those, add effects, etc. The point was to make multiple speaking tracks sound like noise (This is a digression but if you want to learn how amazing our brain actually works to split out concurrent sounds so we can focus on say someone talking while traffic goes past and music blares, watch this video).

I suggested Audacity.  I explained that this tool allowed her to import tracks, edit those separately and merge to make one joint sound.  And she goes, “like Photoshop for images”.  This is connectivist learning in action. By the time I got to saying you have to save the project file while working on it and then do a final export, she had already made that connection.

But that’s just the technical and pedagogical part of this story.  Here’s the human side.

I asked to see the video part of her work.  She showed me a series of Flash videos of basically moving text on different coloured backgrounds.  We went through pink, yellow and finally blue and green.   When the blue and green panes merged, the text stood still and she said that these videos showed how she sees text.

I then asked, “do you have Irlen dyslexia?”  She was rather surprised that I even knew of it before admitting yes.

I went on to say that I had a student once in my maths strugglers class who had it and how I had to create special paper copies for her, especially of quizzes and tests.  After a few months, it became clear that this kid was not a struggler in maths at all and I was able to recommend for her to move up and that’s where she stayed.

Claire appreciated that story and she said, “people think we’re dumb or stupid but we’re not really. It’s just really hard when reading is such a struggle.” She went on to say that she wants to raise awareness of her condition which is why her major work is on it.  Already, her peers are appreciating what she’s doing and the struggle she’s been through and still going through.

I had tons of questions and Claire happily answered them.

I found out that when she first got the right pair of coloured lenses in year 6, she literally jerked back.  When asked whether the colours were making the letters jump she replied, “No, they’re standing still”.  She said that was the first time ever that words did not literally jump at her.  She talked about struggling with letter recognition because a still “t” just did not look like the squiggly “t” she’s grown to know, for example.

She also explained that it’s not so much a problem with text as with contrast.  The higher the contrast, the bigger the struggle.  This was why black text on white paper was the worst possible combination for those with Irlen dyslexia.  Coloured paper and lenses help reduce the contrast and therefore keep the text still enough to be read.  For computers, she uses a screen guard.  She also talked about some of her own strategies to compensate such as developing something on coloured background and transposing on white ready for submission or sharing.

By then, I felt bold enough to ask “And you chose Visual Arts?” (Being a frustrated artist, I know the challenge a blank canvas brings) What bigger contrast is there than the first stroke on a blank canvas? You know what she said?

“I love colours so I just persevere until I get beyond those first strokes and get to apply the colours I like”.

I can tell you, I learned more in this encounter than this kid did….and she came to me for help!  She left extremely grateful for my help, nonetheless, and I think it was more than just Audacity.

Thank you Claire. Good luck with your major work.

The world needs more people like you.

Keep sharing your story.

Be proud of your journey.

UPDATE

Claire was really happy to see this post and even more when I mentioned she has touched many more (this is one of my most popular posts).

With her permission, I’m embedding here the video mentioned above (sorry for the big logo overlay as it’s all I could do to convert her Flash swf to a movie – had to convert for technical reasons).

This video is only part of her Visual Arts work. If you look closely, there are some of her other pieces included in the movie – the colourful artworks and the text that looks like barcodes.  Currently, her colour is blue-green, i.e. the colour she sees clearly with.

DyslexiaArt from Malyn Mawby on Vimeo.

DyslexiaArt – click to view if embed doesn’t work on your browser

Here is another story of how art is used for self-expression and ultimately social connection.  Read about Steve by Tomaz Lasic.