October 31st, 2011

The F.A.T. City Workshop

part one of two

Over the past two classes we, the students, have been watching a film from 1989 called "How Hard Can This Be: The F.A.T. City Workshop". The F.A.T. stands for: frustration, anxiety, and tension.. which is what children with learning disabilities feel every day not only at school, but in life as well. And, in this film people from all walks of life (an engineer, a special ed. teacher, a mother... etc.) were guided in activities which were meant to make them feel as if they had a learning disability. 

One "vicious circle", as I would like to call it, that stuck out in my mind was:

Pressure creates anxiety.. and anxiety hurts academic performance. So, if a child feels pressure over let's say.. a test, that child may become anxious. Studies have shown that anxiety can hurt a child's academic performance .. so, if that student does, in fact, do poorly on the test it could result in the student feeling even more pressure on the next test.. and so, the circle continues. 

A fact/quote that stuck in my mind was:

"Learning disabled children take longer to process an answer, 

because they first need to process the question." 

This, to me, means that teachers need to be sensitive to the specific needs of children with learning disabilities... actually, to the needs of all children, not just those who have been specially "coded". If a student needs a little extra time to write a test, or a few extra minutes to answer a question.. what's the harm in giving him or her that time..? I don't see a downside, I see better test results which would in turn give the student more confidence in future test situations... nothing wrong with that!

Sadly, the fact is.. that is not the case!

When a child, learning disabled or not, gets an answer wrong he or she is most often scolded in front of the class and made to feel stupid. And, when that same child responds with a correct answer he or she gets no positive reaction from the teacher, merely a "that's right" or "correct", and the teacher then moves on to the next question. This obviously isn't always the case, there are many teachers who understand that doing something like that can be devastating to the student's confidence, but in the film this situation is emphasized. 

to be continued......