Learning is Hard

There are some times years when a student or two keeps me up at night. I wake up thinking about how they can't read or write or can't get along or need discipline or whatever the problem may be and I can't sleep. All I can think about is how much more they need and how I just don't know what else I can do to. It's exhausting.

I have two children who are in desperate need of help. After an entire year of Kindergarten, plus one quarter of first grade, they are still struggling to identify beginning sounds (making reading pretty much impossible), have no number sense, don't understand simple concepts like more than, less than, plus, minus, counting past 20, etc, and writing is pretty much impossible. They both have some behavior issues, some problems at home and immaturity that only hinders them. It's getting to the point where they are constantly frustrated because the concepts we are exploring are now so far beyond their abilities that they know as soon as I begin talking that they won't be able to keep up. It's heartbreaking.

The thing that bothers me the most is the hoops we have to jump through to get these kids help. After going through Student A's file, I found a two page letter from his K teacher about how ill-equipped he was to be in Kindergarten at all. I found testing that showed him well below average in all areas. I found evidence of several interventions that were tried with no improvement. And so I will meet with my colleagues to "put him on the radar". But you know what happens after that meeting? Nothing. He may get tested. But unless he shows significant discrepancies between achievement and IQ, or some sort of learning disability shows up, he's out of luck.

His teacher next year will go through the same process. And finally, when he is two grade levels behind, he will qualify for special education resources. By that time though, he will hate school, will feel like a failure and his self esteem will be completely shot.  I've seen it happen too many times. Due to the "system", the kids have to go through several official interventions (and fail to succeed) before they can receive an individualized education plan (IEP) and get help from the Resource Room. All I can do is start a paper trail so that by third grade, their teacher can finally get them into a program that will support their individual learning needs.

It's exhausting. It's disheartening. So all I can do at this point is try to help them feel successful at some level. When they read a book (that is at least one or two grade levels below their peers), I act like they just won the heavyweight title against all odds - because they might as well have. I clap and cheer and smile and hug when all I want to do is beat my head against the table and shout "This is simple! You should be able to do this! If you would just listen when I'm teaching you would know how to do it!"

But I forget how hard it is. I forget how much work goes into writing a simple sentence. First they have to think "crash... ok, I hear /k/. What letter says /k/? Oh, c says /k. How do I write a c? Ok, I wrote a c. What was I writing again?" Learning is hard. They are doing all they can to be successful, and I'm doing all I can to help them love school and not dread reading. But even then, sometimes it just doesn't feel like enough.