I’m so glad that I continue to teach in the schools in addition to working with Florida State University, aside from the moderate financial benefits, I continue to gain new insights constantly that I’m afraid may not continue with such frequency if I were not “in the trenches”.
Recently with one of my students I’ve started hearing a lot of this really sad talk. Here’s an example: We’re working on balance beams and he stumbles and says, “Mr. Mickey, you know that blind people can’t balance right??” He’s in first grade! I asked him where he heard this and he replied with, “It’s just true.”
As you can imagine, being a “kid canner” that this type of talk was very troubling. Honestly, I would have had an easier time with it if he had said the F word. His parents,myself, along with his vision teacher have carefully sculpted the team surrounding him so that he didn’t hear this kind of garbage. What we didn’t take into account was a team member that I simply overlooked, and one that we have only a little control over, and that is his peer group. It took me a few days to notice this weak link in the armor of “can do” that we try to surround this child.
For years I’ve had to fight with his classmates to keep them from over-helping him, constantly saying things like “no, Jessica, he doesn’t need your help, he can do it himself.” What I didn’t realize is that Jessica and others in his class have been battering against the walls of his self-image. See, originally in Kindergarten if someone came to help him he’d fiercely declare his independence, “NO! I can do it myself!”
Way to go kid, but after only a couple of years of his peers literally leaping over desks to help him accomplish the most menial of tasks, coupled with his inability to observe what other people are doing, his walls of self-reliance have begun to crumble. He’s really beginning to think he “can’t” without the assistance of others and this is very, very sad.
Here’s another example, we’re walking on our orientation and mobility lesson. A little boy walking back to class with his friends that are also in speech says, “You can walk with me to class.” Sounds great right? It would be if either of these kids really understood “friendship”. So I tell my student, no you don’t need to walk with him, (which means guided by him) you can walk by yourself. Here’s how it goes:
Me: “You can walk by yourself, you don’t need to be guided everywhere”
Student: “But he’s my friend!”
Me: “Yes, he’s your friend, but friends don’t guide other friends around all the time, friends can walk together too.”
Student: “Well why did you teach me sighted guide then? If he can’t guide me, then what are friends for??”
I’m not kidding, that last statement is a quote. So not only is he gaining a greater degree of learned helplessness, but he is demonstrating a completely skewed understanding of what friendships are all about. He honestly thinks friends are just there to help him, and thus needing friends believes that he must be helped. His “friends” also demonstrate later on that they too do not realize what its like to be a friend to him.
So we have two forces here in action that I notice. Perhaps you’ve seen others?
1. Everyone always trying to help him do everything from pull papers from his backpack, to putting his jacket on, and guiding him everywhere.
2. Due to the visual impairment, he is unable to see that other people do not have this level of care offered to them, since he’s naturally and age appropriately in an egotistical state of mind, he cannot help but assume this happens to others as well.
This a very effective recipe for learned helplessness. In times past, its been gentle prodding of his peers to back off by me and sometimes his classroom teachers, but frankly, it’s just easier to let the kids help him, so the teachers soon let it slide.
The kids are responding to the “culture” that says blind people can’t, and they are also making themselves feel good by helping the poor blind kid. As a professional educator, I’ve always been a believer in educating the entire team. We have had talks with the students before, but its never really stuck. Until recently, I failed to realize the profound impact their “assistance” was having on his self-image. It is as if the rest of us have been bailing water out of this boat of self-confidence, only now realizing that there is a HUGE hole we missed, this hole is flooding the boat faster than we can bail.
We need to plug the hole. First, I talked with his classroom teacher, and a little girl in his class was listening in. She said, “But he’s like a BABY!” The teacher quickly, in her teacherly way, redirected this student to a task she was supposed to be working on, but I’m thankful for her comment. Why? Because it let me in to see how she, and probably his entire class really view him. They don’t see him as a peer, they see him as an object requiring care. They certainly don’t have an appropriate concept of what being a friend to him really entails.
So now, we need to rehabilitate this peer group. How do we do this? I’ve met with his whole team, minus the peer group, and we have agreed that there needs to be consequences for helping this student. We have to turn it off. He’s also not to be guided around school, he needs to walk independently. He has the skills for this, he knows the school front and back, no more guiding.
This may seem extreme, but trust me, this is an extreme circumstance. If we don’t get this peer group in line now, they will continue following this student throughout his academic career, poisoning his potential for true independence. It IS that serious. As he grows, he will gain a maturity that will allow him to consciously make the decision to be guided, but until that time, he needs to walk on his own. If we can get his peers onto a more healthy way of thinking, then they can also be his greatest asset, doing more work for him than they’ll ever do by helping him get papers out of his backpack, or guiding him someplace he can get to just fine without their arm.
Never forget, we are creating a future adult. This child is not a child, he is a seed, he holds within him the capacity to be a fully functioning contributor to society. Like any seed, if the environmental circumstances are not correct, he will not grow into the tree that he can be. Our job is to raise that seed into a tree, so he can play his role in the forest.
I’ll let you know how this latest intervention goes, I think the classroom staff are coming to understand the gravity of the situation. The student is acting out, he’s pushing back. Last week he refused to work. I was at conferences the whole week, but the classroom staff acted appropriately, and his parents supported it. The reaction? The same consequences any peer in his group would deal with for the actions. He missed out on Friday Free Day. He spent the day crying.
He learned something though, that at least in that situation, the same expectations that were held for his peers are also held for him. These expectations communicate to him in a deep way that he is capable, and on equal footing with his peers. This week, he’s a hard working kid, working much more independently.
That’s teaching.
~Mickey
I’d love to hear your reaction in the comments. Have you all experienced this? How did you handle it??