“Because if we think learning is sitting in the classroom and listening to a teacher, and they can’t do that, we make this huge assumption that this child can’t learn, which is nonsense.
Because if we follow the child, if we follow them and see what they’re doing, we will easily see that these children are able to learn because they are curious. And they pay attention with their eyes. And they lean into things that they think are interesting, which means they have a propensity for learning, which means they are learning, they’re just not learning in the way that we might think they are learning looks like…”
Podcast Transcript
I think that responsiveness is a key component of all remedial teaching and approaches. Because if we feel like we are right, in our diagnosis, when we start to work with the child, and then put them on a particular plan, given the rightness that we feel that diagnosis is, then I think we’re heading for an approach with a child that is more about the approach than the child.
So I know we are needing diagnoses for various reasons. That makes sense medically. But from a learning and Scholastic educational point of view, that doesn’t make sense at all, because first of all, the diagnosis is not contrived.
It’s not the same in every child, it’s typically a potential list of symptoms. And in order to get the diagnosis, you check off an appropriate amount of those symptoms. And then we fail to look at what we checked off. And if those symptoms get worse, get better go away change, because children are malleable, and their brains are plastic, and they train on a daily basis. And that human beings, are they responding to their environment all the time, which is changing all the time because their environment is populated with people.
So to be responsive, and to teach into the child you have today, without bouncing all over the place, you want to have some kind of trajectory you want have some kind of structure and plan. But to not be responsive into that structure is to dismiss the child for who they are and what we’re trying to achieve.
So I started something, I’m calling it the Green shelf project, because literally, we have this big green shelf, and what better name to name something than then the tangible object that we are using.
And the idea behind it is we have two boys a similar age, they’re about a year and a half difference. They both have an autism diagnosis. And they both have a nonverbal diagnosis, along with with other things, potentially ADHD and other things. But these two boys view learning a particular way rather than differently.
But I’m getting very curious about how they feel, or what they feel learning is, because we can’t make assumptions, we can’t think that they know what we think learning is we’ve got to get into their heads and figure out what they think learning is.
Because if we think learning is sitting in the classroom and listening to a teacher, and they can’t do that, we make this huge assumption that this child can’t learn, which is nonsense. Because if we follow the child, if we follow them and see what they’re doing, we will easily see that these children are able to learn because they are curious. And they pay attention with their eyes. And they lean into things that they think are interesting, which means they have a propensity for learning, which means they are learning, they’re just not learning in the way that we might think they are learning looks like.
So we’ve got to meet the child where they’re at. And then we got to target those edges, we’re going to pull out those strings to figure out how we go. Not from their model of learning to our model. That’s not the point. The point is to develop their understanding of learning develop their inner model of learning to a point where they are more productive as learners, not as students in a school, not as quite little kids at a desk, but as a human being that is able to learn.
So in starting the green shelf project, what we’re doing is for about an hour, three days a week, we are enticing them into a different space of learning. So they get an element of one to one teaching that is teacher led, we want to introduce topics to them. And we’re very curious within that space.
Then they have the only other alternative they have, besides this intensive sort of teacher led thing is to escape into the playground and they only have sort of this black and white approach to learning. But that’s not completely true because these children are actually self learners and self starters.
So we want to tap into that and give them other alternatives where learning can occur. Rather than being I’m either doing this that somebody’s telling me to do, or I’m doing nothing which is not the case it just looks like it How do we create a continuum of learning in the space?
And talking to my teacher this morning, just to reinforce what we’re trying to do is, there’s a saying, if I can figure out who said it, I will give credit. But I’ve said it is that if I’m teaching something, and the child is not learning, am I really teaching because without the learner, it cannot be called teaching.
So then you’ve got to understand, we’ve got to think more about what then does teaching look like. And to be quite honest with you teaching shouldn’t look a particular way. Teaching looks like a child learning. So if a child is learning something, if they are engaged in it, and they’re developing their understanding their ability, their their skill, if they’re developing their thinking skills, and using their thinking skills, if they focus paying attention, if they’re doing all of the things that we want them to do, and the teacher is sitting by, and it looks like the teacher is doing nothing.
That is the misconception, the teacher is teaching. Because in that space, in its space between the teacher and the learner, learning is happening. And she is using various skills in order to get the child to learn, she might not be using the skill of standing up lecturing and writing on a board. And we need to get away from this idea that that is the version of teaching that works for everybody. Because it certainly doesn’t, especially not with children with a diagnosis of both autism and, and nonverbal communication.
So our green shelf project is intended to broaden the the scope of learning in terms of the practicalities of it at school, that learning can look like one on one teacher interaction, it can look like self paced learning, it can look like escaping and taking a break, because the child in that moment is learning that he needs a break. And that he can take it he’s empowered enough to take it. And then he’s learning that I’m now when he’s regulated, and he’s had enough of a break, he’s empowered enough to come back to the learning.
But if the teacher is not available in that moment, where is the learning that he comes back to. And the idea is he comes back to the screenshot this independence. And in that process, he’s also starting to learn the full idea of toss concept from initiation to conclusion. And we teaching that skill of get curious, find something to do, initiate their task, understand it, work with it completed packet away, be satisfied with that work, and then literally put it back on the shelf.
So we are toying with the idea of how a child specifically a child with nonverbal autism, how he learns and develops and grows away from the norm of what teaching and development and growth looks like. But more hooked into what is the actual outcome that we’re trying to achieve for a child. We’re not trying to normalize them, we’re not trying to let them make them fit in anywhere, we trying to develop who they are, so that they can own who they are. And they can understand it. And when they’re adults, they can ask for what they need. And they can get what they need in order to be productive, successful, happy adults.
So it’s a long term process, it requires quite a bit of bravery, I think, because we’ve got to be comfortable with the very, very many ways that teaching happens, and the very, very many ways that teaching looks. Because if we think teaching is just standing up and lecturing, or even speaking, then we missing what teaching is actually about teaching is about is the child learning and growing and developing.
So we as teachers need to be awake and regulated and considering all the time and changing how we approach all the time, and driving towards an outcome. And that’s why from a school’s point of view, it’s very important that I don’t measure a teacher success based on the number of worksheets that have been completed, but rather the development of the child and where they are now compared to where they were.
Yeah, so I will give you more information on a green shelf project as it develops and morphs. I might share more details and and the intention behind it and and the teacher that I’m using to integrate it and how it’s, we’re only on our second day and I’m already seeing results because we’re hitting this these two kids at the right time. And all of this came out of just being able to sit back and observe and think. Yeah, I hope to share more
