I prefer the term
disengaged/disconnected/shut-down students to dyslexic students. The term
dyslexia is being misused by people with vested interest to include many
conditions that would be best excluded from the dyslexia definition. For instance kids with auditory
processing difficulty, kids with acuity problems, kids with neurological
problem and kids with sight problems should all be excluded from the dyslexia
umbrella.
I have reasons for wanting to differentiate between individuals
who are said to be ‘dyslexic’ and students who are disengaged. Problems faced
by disengaged students can be 1) prevented and can be 2) overcome as disengaged
students are a result of schooling caused teaching problem. Disengaged students
form, I believe, a majority of kids who leave school as illiterates.
I
believe that too many teachers know too little about how best to support and
guide students who are disengaged.
In saying this, I am not
teacher-bashing. I have the highest respect and empathy for all teachers who
are passionate about teaching kids. As you all know I am not a qualified
teacher but I am passionate about teaching kids who are disengaged. This blog
was created for parents and teachers who may benefit from my experience
teaching disengaged kids.
The problem
is that teachers are not being taught the fundamentals of how to teach kids in kindergarten. As such many kids who come to school are not ready and able
to learn.
Teachers know
that some students seem disengaged from learning in the classroom. However, most
teachers do not seem to want to know why
these students are in the first place disengaged. Perhaps it is because they
already have a very tight schedule.
Most
teachers seem to choose to ignore
what they already know. I have posted many articles in my blog and I have also
written many articles in the internet and also commented in many magazines (you
may make a Google search on Luqman Michel to see the comments and articles I have written
over the past 5 years).
Only a handful of teachers and parents who read my posts take their
time to comment in my blog.
All and any comment made by my readers is posted in my
blog automatically. In other words, unlike in many other blogs, your comments
are not moderated. You may also comment anonymously.
I would be grateful if you could take
a few minutes to give your views so that parents and teachers of disengaged
students who read your comments may be enlightened. Please also take some time
to read comments by parents of ‘dyslexic’ kids who were very encouraging when I
first started posting articles in my blog in 2010.
The real difficulty in changing the course of any enterprise liesnot in developing new ideas but in escaping old ones.
John Maynard
Keynes
No comments:
Post a Comment