A lovely essay from my son's tutor

To those of you who have read my blogs recently, you may remember that I wrote about the wonderful neighbour who tutors my son each week. She is a former teacher, now retired, with no specific special education qualifications. But that doesn't stand in the way of her being a fabulous and rich addition to Michael's life. Each Saturday afternoon at a quarter to four, he rushes out the door, hops on his bike and rides over to Ann Lacey's house for his one hour tutoring session.

I'd like to share with you a short piece that Ann wrote about her experiences with Michael.
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Michael slips quietly in the door, holding a cellophane wrapped piece of carrot cake and a cold can of  Coke. He is early, as usual, by 10 minutes. There is a moment of confusion at the door as the musicians (who have been playing jazz tunes with my partner Dwight all afternoon) gather all their boots and clothes and instruments, and squeeze past him out the front door.
”Hi, Mike!”  they all say.

I catch Michael’s  eye and smile. We are glad to see each other, we like each other.

I am keenly aware that the mild chaos at the front door  is just the kind of confusion and overstimulation that I am not supposed to be providing for Michael when I tutor him. He needs quiet, predictable routine, clear goals; Michael has FASD (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder, brain damage caused by the alcohol his mother drank while pregnant with him). Michael is now 25.
   
My friend Linda has asked me to tutor her son Michael, who dropped out of school in Grade 9. Michael has told her he’s  interested in passing his GED, and maybe even obtaining a high school diploma. I know little of his school history, but know it has been fraught, and that his learning disabilities are complicated. While I have taught a wide range of children, I have no special education qualifications and no understanding of FASD. But I am interested and willing to give it a try. I tell Linda yes, I will tutor Michael.

Within minutes of the confusion at the door, Michael and I have slipped into my tiny teaching room and are immersed in our book, The Hunger Games. It is a dark story set in a not-very-friendly future, but Michael likes it, and I follow his interests as best I can. I take notice of whatever attracts him, because it gives me clues as I try to understand what makes him tick. There is a great deal going on inside this young man. But expressing it is difficult for him.

We take turns reading out loud, a few pages at a time, trying to finish one chapter each week. We pass the book back and forth when we feel ready. His reading has improved in all ways, and in the most important of ways: he expects the text to make sense.This is an important transition for a reader, and serves as an anchor for further reading development. He used to read through the punctuation, and then get into a muddle of misunderstanding. Now he reads until he understands, sometimes going back over it  more carefully, finding the meaning.

We have read happily through a number of books, including a long and text heavy (not many illustrations) book of Native myths, the Story of Erik the Viking and numerous newspaper articles I have picked out for him. When we finish reading our chapter, we talk and make a quick list of a few words to remind ourselves what is happening, so we can dive in again next week. Sometimes we talk about the chapter or new words or things we didn’t understand, or I give him a short writing assignment that involves going back into the text or making inferences or dictionary work.

When he began with me Michael said he wouldn’t write, that I wouldn’t be able to read it. But I just said, “Well, you can read it to me”, and that was that. His very first writing was done after the tragic death of his dog, Bear. I knew Bear meant a lot to him, and I found an old children’s book, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (a boy who loses his cat). When I finished I asked him to write 10 things about Bear. Here is what he wrote:

Bear was cute playful was always happy to se me funny loud excited soft cudely beutaful and stubern.

I was moved to tears, it was poetic! The way he listed all those positive attributes, then artfully chose the simple word ‘and’ to set apart the last, most troublesome descriptor of Bear -stubborn!

And what I learned through his simple response is that Michael has a great deal going on inside his head, but that it is difficult to express. When I ask him a question, there is  a space, a waiting, and then, maybe, nothing, or, a one word answer that is actually a profound observation. My first and clearest job was to help unlock the stalled place , to help develop some fluency of expression, some release of his knowledge and observations. This means starting every session with conversation.

Michael is away with his family this weekend, so our weekly session is cancelled. I miss him, I miss the stimulation of our sessions, where I am forced/urged as a teacher to really watch the learner for clues. What does he need next? Maybe I’ll try that game with him! My mind is ever churning with ideas. And, as MIchael continues to develop, new clues will emerge, and his needs will change. No teacher /student relationship should ever be static, but ever changing and responding to the world and others.

One teacher, one learner, facing each other.

Our teacher/student relationship is very much enriched by my collaboration and dialogue with his mother. If I were not able to report many of my experiences with and observations of MIchael with Linda, there would not be so much meat!! Together we ponder the meaning of developments, how we could help each other, and where to go next.

I don’t always know where to go next. Sometimes I try things with Michael, and they go nowhere. He lets me know when he isn’t interested. For instance, when I introduced practical word problems using math operations that we had been practicing (How many can I afford to buy? How much money was made at the sale?) Michael completed them, but was completely uninspired, and I dropped the activity. Many times I get discouraged and feel I don’t really know where I am going with him. And, what seems like progress can disappear the next week. Sometimes his reading seems markedly improved (reading with expression and for meaning), and then he may struggle some the following week.

I try to work with him where he is that day. What keeps me going is the simple fact that I like Michael, I enjoy his humour and interest, and that I  know that the story isn’t over yet.

My Son’s Success With His Devoted Tutor

Every Saturday afternoon, around 3:45, my son drops a bit of change into his pocket, hops on his bike and rides over to our neighbour Sally’s house, only a few blocks away. Sally is the local “bootlegger” on Toronto Island where we live, a 10-minute ferry ride from downtown Toronto.

There are no stores here, so Sally provides an important service to the children living on our island. Part of Michael’s weekly ritual is buying a candy bar and a can of coke from her before hopping back on his bike, now properly stocked, to ride a few more blocks to see another neighbour, Ann.

Ann is the real reason Michael runs out the door each Saturday. She is Michael’s tutor. Michael and Ann, a retired special education teacher, meet at her house every Saturday at 4:00.

Michael can’t wait to see Ann, and in the three years she’s been tutoring him, Michael has not only improved his reading, writing and math. More importantly, he and Ann have become friends. Real friends. Last week, Michael brought his private, treasured rock collection over to Ann’s house to show her. As Michael must have known, Ann went through each piece one by one with him, ooing and aahing over each one, from the pink quartz to Fool’s Gold. Michael doesn’t share his rock collection with just anyone.

Michael, who has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, dropped out of school when he was 16, almost completing Grade 9. We tried doing everything we could at the time to keep him in school, but we weren’t successful. Michael just shut down completely and refused to go to school one day, and that was that.

I can’t put blame any one thing to explain why Michael dropped out. He was in a special high school for children with special needs; most teachers were nice to him, and he was friendly with several kids in his classes, unusual for Michael who is normally shy and uncomfortable socially.

But something went wrong when Michael left Grade 8. Classes got bigger. Homework increased. No “homeroom” teacher to pay special attention to him. Greater independence was expected. Put all that together, and you get a kid, my Michael, who just felt lost, confused, isolated and unable to function in what to him, became “the big world.”

Of course I look back to that time now and think of all the other possible things we could have tried to keep him in school, but hindsight, and remorse, I suppose, are useless. And Michael may have experienced some bullying or other physically or emotionally damaging experience he never told us about, and therefore couldn’t address.  But, he dropped out with the words I will never forget, “I’m never going back to school, ma.” I knew he meant it.

For years after he dropped out we tried to get him back in school, or at least to take remedial courses. He refused. He wanted nothing to do with learning. It was particularly unfortunate, because Michael’s skills in reading, writing and maths were never good, and we naturally were worried that the knowledge and skills he did have would be lost over the years. To my great disappointment, he wasn’t a reader, so even buying him books about nature or animals or plants, things he’s interested in, didn’t work either.

The years moved on, and nothing changed. Then one day several years ago, I had a brainstorm. I was speaking to Ann, one of my neighbors, and asked how she’s spending her time since retiring from teaching. I had always liked her, and was always quite moved hearing her talk with such dedication about her students, many of whom had both learning disabilities.

After telling me about this and that, I blurted out, “Ann, would you be interested in tutoring Michael? He’s been talking recently about wanting to get his GED (high school equivalency), but I have absolutely no idea what grade level he’s at in any subject. We’d have to play it all by ear. My hunch is that he’s a long way off.”

Ann had known Michael since he was young and was willing to give the idea some thought. Eventually she came back to me, saying, “Let’s try it.”

Ann found teaching Michael to be a challenge. Besides being at a fairly low level in most subjects, Michael’s mind doesn’t work like most people. Poor executive functioning, poor memory. One week he’ll know something and the next week have absolutely no knowledge of the same bit of information. Sometimes his reading is good, sometimes the words barely come. Sometimes he can remember his multiplication tables, other times not.

We never got much feedback about the sessions with Ann, but we assumed lessons were going well because Michael never does anything he doesn’t want to (like most necessary activities of daily living). “How did it go, Michael?” was always met with a simple, “Good.” But he went each week without a murmur, a clear marker that something was going right.

As Michael has little sense of time and doesn't wear a watch, it was always necessary for my husband and I to keep close track of Michael on Saturdays so that he wouldn’t forget to go to Ann’s for tutoring. Sometimes we would get so caught up in our own lives or be out of the house, and Michael would wind up missing his meeting with Ann because we weren’t there to send him off.

One day, about six months after Michael began going for tutoring, we started noticing that the first thing Michael would ask when we woke him on Saturday mornings was “Is this the day I go to Ann’s?”  We’d say yes, and expect to start reminding him to get ready around 3:00. But we didn’t have to. Before we would say a word, Michael got himself ready to go and was out the door by 3:45, whizzing away on his bike, the change rattling in his pocket.

Over time, Ann began to share with me how special their sessions had become. She would light up when talking about Michael, thereby making me light up listening to her. Listening to Ann was a mother’s dream.

She talked about getting Michael to do a bit of writing. Though his thoughts and words were simple, often in list form, Ann found them revealing and poetic. Sharing that with him made him want to do more. They began reading books aloud together, talking about passages as they read. While helping Michael with his comprehension, it was an opportunity to bring Michael out of himself and to share thoughts and feelings. Ann shared hers as well. She cut out newspaper articles she thought he’d be interested in, providing more material for conversation and thought.  She invented games to play with him, always ending their sessions with a bit of fun.

I have no idea what grade level Michael may be in his reading, writing or math. He doesn’t mention getting his GED anymore. He still doesn’t tell me much about his sessions (so I’m fortunate that Ann does).

All I know is this: Michael runs out the door each Saturday now, usually without a reminder, arriving at Ann’s house early. And everytime I see Ann, she has a wonderful story to tell me about her session with Michael. The icing on the cake is that while telling me the story, besides grinning from ear to ear, Ann oozes, what appears to me to be strong feelings of fondness for my son. They have even made plans to go together to see the film version of the book they’ve been reading the last six months.

I can only conclude that Ann’s enjoying the sessions as much as he is.

If this isn’t a success story, I don’t know what is.