[NIFL-WOMENLIT:2764] Re: ADHD

From: Nicole Meiring (nmeiring@rrohio.com)
Date: Thu Oct 23 2003 - 14:04:55 EDT


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From: "Nicole Meiring" <nmeiring@rrohio.com>
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Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:2764] Re: ADHD
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Sylvan,
   Have you considered having your student tested for Seasonal Affective
Disorder (SAD).  Perhaps SAD is contributing to her problems...

Nicole Meiring
Student Services Coordinator
Columbus Literacy Council


-----Original Message-----
From: nifl-womenlit@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-womenlit@nifl.gov] On Behalf
Of Sylvan Rainwater
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 1:49 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:2763] Re: ADHD

You make some excellent points. In addition to the points you and others
have raised, I would add that the intersection with language learning
needs
to be considered as well. It's very difficult to find adequate testing
for
adult language-learners that's also free or at least low-cost. The
impacts
of culture shock and the difficulty of expressing one's self in a new
language need to be taken into account.

I know I have had students in my classroom with various sorts of
learning
differences. One student couldn't form letters reliably, and one time
wrote
the word "foot" backwards -- a perfect mirror image -- on the drawing of
a
body on the chalk board -- the foot was pointing left, after all.
Sometimes
the evidence is that unmistakable, and other times it is much more
confusing.

I have a student (entering her 5th year with us) who we've never figured
out
what the problem is. She's in a classroom where everyone else is making
more
progress than she is, and she's getting frustrated. It's not a question
of
intelligence -- we can see that she understands things at times (usually
in
a one-on-one session)-- but she doesn't always track what's happening,
and
often even when she learns something, she forgets it the next week. She
fakes it a lot, which is quite understandable, but makes it more
difficult
to teach her. At various times we've considered whether she is involved
in
domestic violence, but it's really hard to tell. She has some obvious
emotional issues from her own childhood. She obviously has more problems
in
the winter months (generally has more problems beginning in November and
gets better starting about March/April). So is this ADD? Other learning
differences? Emotional issues? Abuse issues? Some combination? We've
never
been able to figure it out for sure, and that's made it impossible to
address it satisfactorily. 

She has parenting problems as well. Some accidents she's had make us
wonder
whether she may be dissociating sometimes. Her oldest son exhibits much
of
the same behaviors she does, and we wonder how much of that is a
reaction
to/ reflection of her and how much might be his own issues.

So this stuff isn't easy. I think it's actually harder to deal with when
the
students are adults, language-learners, and may or may not also have
some of
the emotional issues you mention. I tend to look at my classroom and my
teaching to see whether I can make the environment better for her, but I
really think she needs individual tutoring on a consistent basis, and I
haven't been able to provide that. And I suspect that she needs more
than
that. The fact that everyone else is learning, many with similar
challenges,
makes me wonder what's going on. She *is* slowly improving her English,
but
doesn't seem to be able to make much progress toward her GED.

Sorry, didn't mean to get off on one student, but for me she illustrates
many of the issues we struggle with in this area.

-------
Sylvan Rainwater  mailto:sylvan@cccchs.org
Program Managaer Family Literacy
Clackamas Co. Children's Commission /  Head Start
Oregon City, OR  USA
 

-----Original Message-----
From: nifl-womenlit@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-womenlit@nifl.gov] On Behalf
Of
Heidi Silver Pacuilla
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:09 AM
<SNIP>

As a disability specialist, I'm not at all trying to say that
impairments
and neurological difficulties do not exist.  I am saying that how those
differences and difficulties are received, accepted, and talked about by
others is the basis for what we consider a "disability."  Too often in
education we rush to identify a learner's difficulty as an individual
deficit without looking at the whole context in which they are trying to
learn (which includes our classrooms and instruction).  
<SNIP> 



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