What happens when your struggling learner gets the news they’ve been waiting for
Last Wednesday, I was standing by the office copy machine trying to unjam a stack of midterm rubrics when Leo knocked on the half-open door of my classroom. He was 20 minutes late to first period, which wasn’t unusual, but he wasn’t slouching or staring at his shoes like he usually was when he got called out for it. His frayed gray hoodie strings were twisted around his wrist, and he held his phone out like it was something fragile. “I got in,” he said.
I’ve been teaching high school English at this small rural school for 12 years, and Leo transferred into my 10th grade class three years ago. He’s dyslexic, and by the time he got to me, he’d already figured out that the easiest way to get through class was to not participate at all. He’d turn in blank essays, skip reading quizzes, and never raise his hand even if I knew he had an answer. When I pulled him aside after he failed his third quiz in a month, he finally told me why: a middle school English teacher made him read a paragraph out loud in front of the whole class, and when he messed up three words, someone called him stupid, and he never wanted to read out loud again. He said he didn’t even care about high school anyway, he just wanted to work at the local climbing gym and eventually lead backcountry camping trips. “I don’t need college to tie knots,” he told me.
I’d looked into the outdoor leadership program at our local community college a few years earlier for another student, so I knew it did require a two-year degree, and to get in, you have to pass a basic reading and writing placement test. Leo said he wanted to do it, he just didn’t think he could pass the test. I told him we’d work around the school’s requirements as much as I could. Instead of making him read 20 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird for homework every night, I let him bring in his climbing magazine and read one article a week. We met for 15 minutes after school every Wednesday so he could read that article out loud to just me, no one else listening. When we worked on essays, I let him write all his ideas as bullet points first, and we’d go through them one by one to turn them into full sentences, instead of making him write a full draft from scratch. When he started studying for the placement test, I found old practice tests and pulled out all the questions about camping, hiking, and outdoor safety to practice first, because those were the ones he cared about, so he didn’t get bored or frustrated as fast.
That Wednesday, he showed me the acceptance email. Not only did he get in, he also got a $1000 scholarship for local students going into environmental and outdoor fields. I had a half-eaten peanut butter granola bar on my desk, and I split it with him, and we stood there for 10 minutes while he told me he’s going to start in the fall, and he’s already applied for a part-time job at the college’s outdoor recreation center.
People always ask me what the greatest news a student can get is, and a lot of the time it’s not what you see on Facebook – the full ride to an Ivy League school, the perfect SAT score. This was the greatest news Leo ever got, because it was his goal, not anyone else’s. A lot of parents and new teachers get stuck on what success should look like, instead of what success looks like for that kid sitting across from you.
If you’re a parent or a new teacher, one small thing you can do this week is ask your kid or student what they want to be able to do, not what they want to be. If they say they want to fix motorcycles, don’t automatically tell them they should aim for a four-year engineering degree. Pull out your phone after dinner and look up the local technical college’s program, write down what the requirements are, and work backwards from there, instead of starting with a generic plan that doesn’t fit them. Another small shift: meet them where they are with their struggles, don’t make them fit the standard. If your kid struggles with reading but loves video games, get them video game strategy guides, let them read those instead of forcing a classic novel you think they “should” read. Leo’s reading level went up two grade levels in 18 months just reading climbing articles, because he cared about what he was reading, he didn’t see it as a chore to get through. I don’t do extra credit for extra book reports anymore; I let kids earn extra credit by writing a review of something they love – a game, a climbing route, a new skate park – and that works far better than any assigned assignment I ever created.
It’s not all perfect. Leo still mixes up long words when he’s tired, he still hates writing long research papers, and he’ll probably need to use the college’s disability support services for his whole time there. That’s fine. This isn’t a story about a kid who overcame his learning difference. It’s a story about a kid who got the thing he worked for, when we stopped making him fit a box that was never made for him.
Next week, we’re having a small graduation party for the seniors, and Leo’s bringing his climbing magazine to show the other kids who say they’re never going to get into any program they want. I still don’t know how he’ll do in all his college classes, and there’s a good chance he’ll change his mind about what he wants to do a few years down the line. But right now, this is enough. He worked for this, he earned this, and that’s the best kind of student news there is.
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