Being left-handed, I have a tiny window into living in a world that is structured for the majority, and I am used having to make the little compensations, like changing gears with my wrong hand, almost every day. I am also inured to a culture where "right" means correct; and a left-handed compliment means an insult. I grew up understanding that the Romans saw the left hand as "sinister" because it might be holding a knife while the honourable right was shaking hands. I have even read the research that indicates that "southpaws" such as myself have a shorter life expectancy due to the decades of physical attrition brought on by a host of minor accidents caused by a world that was organized backwards. That is my very tiny window into the giant challenges faced every day by the majority of my students. They live in a world, and more specifically have come from a school system, that marginalizes them, not by intent, but by neglect. The world of school belongs to the majority. It is a world, in the words of Malcolm Gladwell in his new book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the art of battling giants, that is designed for people to capitalize on their strengths. He notes that most of the learning that we do is capitalization learning. It is easy and obvious. If you have a beautiful voice and perfect pitch, it doesn't take much to get you to join a choir. He equates this concept to learning to read. Virtually every teacher, in every school, capitalized on their own natural capacity to learn to read. They were read to as a child, began to recognize words and understand their meaning, and by the age of 4,5, or 6 were reading more or less fluently. They moved quickly through the "learn to read" stage and began to more seriously "read to learn." As educators, they try to replicate their own learning path for their students. They employ strategies and tactics that worked for them and, if they don't have the same effect on their students, they then try the same things over again. After all, practice makes perfect!

But, as we all know, there are students who learn differently. They gradually stand apart from everyone else at school, because they can't do the thing that school requires them to do. School is set up for natural readers. They capitalize on this ability and go with the flow. Students who cannot develop this easy fluency gradually fall behind, are marginalized in subtle ways, and eventually, in the words of Gladwell, "stand apart". The result tends to be a major assault on their feelings of self-worth. They feel less competent, less able, and definitely, less bright. As Nadine Gaab, a dyslexia researcher at Harvard, comments: 
Maybe you were the cool kid on the playground when you were four. Then you entered kindergarten and all of your peers suddenly started reading, and you can't figure it out. So you get frustrated. Your peers think you're stupid. Your parents think you're lazy. You have very low self-esteem...It's because you can't figure things out. It's so important in our society to read.

So, if students with learning differences can't capitalize on the same skill sets as their peers, what can they do? At our school we explore alternative pathways with our students. New ways of making connections, new strategies to replace the standard ones that simply don't work. It is often difficult, and frustrating, and always time consuming. But eventually it pays off. Gladwell calls this alternative to capitalization, learning by compensation.

Compensation learning...(needing to scramble and adapt and come up with some kind of strategy that [allows the learner] to keep pace with everyone around him)...is really hard. Memorizing what your mother says while she reads to you and then reproducing the words later in such a way that it sounds convincing to all those around you requires that you confront your limitations. It requires that you overcome your insecurity and humiliation.

This, if successful, says Gladwell, actually might force you to develop skills that "might otherwise have lain dormant". The fact of the matter is, that it is not only the outcome of blazing new pathways to learning that is important, but it is also the the process of trial and error; of failure and success; and of resilience in the face of seemingly daunting challenges that can change a learner's life. 

Our students learn by compensation, and in doing so, they open up a world of different possibilities!
 

I think that it is a Canadian thing. Before discussing politics, religion, or even hockey, it is obligatory to talk about the weather. Last night I attended the opening session of a national educators conference here in Vancouver. It was an opportunity to catch up with old friends from across the country and to meet a new generation of Heads and Chairs from a variety of shapes and sizes of schools. After awhile, it occurred to me that no matter how the conversation started, at some point the person I was speaking with was bound to say something like "it must be wonderful to live out here, and not have any real winter". While this might sound to you like a nice pleasantry - in reality, it is actually a bit of a put down. You see, Canadians pride themselves on suffering through every extreme of climate. So in the lower mainland, we are kind of seen as wimps! Even in my years living in relatively temperate Toronto, we all felt justified to ascribe to the great national pioneer myth of "roughing it in the bush" (with apologies to Suzanna Moodie!). Forget about our climate controlled homes and schools, our air-conditioned cars, and, high tech protective clothing, we are Canadians, and we have it tough! Having said that, in actual fact, the greatest thing about complaining about the weather is not in focusing on its actual effects, but rather in speculating on how bad it is going to get. As soon as the first flakes start to fall there there are moans about upcoming driving hassles, expected delays in ploughing streets, anticipated flight cancellations and, of course, shovelling! Spring means flooding; summer blisteringly hot and humid days (unless we are able to gripe about the unseasonably cool weather - "will summer ever arrive?); and, in the fall, "this good weather can't last"! The only time that you hear your friends speak positively about the weather is when they are reflecting on years past - "what a great summer that was!" or, "last winter I never even took my snowblower out of the garage!" or, "why can't we have another spring like that one!"

In fairness, weather in Canada is all pervasive and unpredictable. During the 2002 Winter Olympics - I watched the quarter finals of the men's hockey in 20C weather on the patio of a pub in Toronto; the semis in a minus six chill in Winnipeg two days later; and the finals, two days after that, insulated by layers of down and glasses of wine in a minus 35C deep freeze in Calgary. Exigencies of weather are part of time honoured regional bragging rights. So when my Maritime, Central Canadian, and Prairie friends find themselves enjoying a beautiful day in Stanley Park in mid-October, no wonder that they take the opportunity to imply that I have a climatic soft touch!
What they don't know, is that obsession with the weather is universal, and not just restricted to the imagined extremes of climate. When I first arrived in Vancouver to a sunny warm summer and balmy fall, virtually everyone commented to me what a tough adjustment the weather on the North Shore must be after living in Bermuda. When I answered that so far the weather here was pretty much the same as there, I would get a knowing - "you'll see"! 

So, why do we talk this way?  I think that the answer is simple. Weather is the ultimate "neutral" topic of conversation. It is something that everyone feels expert on, and that no-one has to follow-up with any commitment to action (as in "everybody talks about the weather, but no-one ever does anything about it.") There are as many opinions, predictions, and truisms about it as there are people willing to comment (and that, it seems, is just about everyone). Weather gives us the chance to drag out the lamest cliches and use them with abandon. ("It's raining cats and dogs", "It's blowing like sixty"; "It's hot as blazes"; "It's like the Arctic out there"). And here, in Canada's rainforest, we can even parse the precipitation down to a specific volume (mist, sprinkle, drizzle, shower, downpour, etc.)

Ultimately, it is our collective favourite conversational gambit. Always timely, and never offensive. Yesterday, after listening to all of my visiting friends comment on the great weather, I mentioned to a Vancouver colleague about what a beautiful fall we were having. His response? 

"And then it rains!"

Is it my imagination, or sometimes does it seem to you that the education system has it backwards? The other day I had a mom come in to see me about her son. She was potentially interested in enrolling him with us but was waiting to see what services might be provided by his local school. Given the fact that it was almost October, I asked what I thought was the obvious question namely, "surely they must know what he needs by now?'. Her answer intrigued me. She told me that after they had read his psych-ed assessment, there was complete consensus about what needed to be done. Now, she was told, the school had to wait until after the September 30th special education grant submissions to the Ministry to find out if they had the additional money to provide the necessary support. The implication was, no extra grants, no service! 
Now here's the thing. This scenario gets played out all across the country. The Ministry is trying to divide the pie fairly, the school district is trying to deliver the best possible services with limited resources, the school is waiting for potential extra staff, and the child is sitting, probably until the end of October (with 20% of the school year gone), hoping for help that might never come. It would be nice to think that the Supreme Court decision last year in the Jeffrey Moore case (a former student at our school) would have opened up the floodgates of individual and school district funding. That has not been the case. It would be equally nice to think that, having been slapped on the collective wrists, all school districts were going to ramp up their level of service. That is also, highly unlikely. The reality is that most school districts and probably the Ministry would assert that the quality of programmes and services have improved significantly in the last fifteen years and that they are doing the best that they can. Two key issues that have framed this response were the fact that the Supreme Court did not find “systemic” discrimination – in other words, funding cuts by the province were not deemed to be automatically responsible for what was perceived to be uneven and discriminatory service reductions at the school district level; and, the ruling really zeroed in on “quantitative” issues not qualitative ones. The range or “intensity” of service was the core issue, not its quality or effectiveness. If the benchmark was set on how well the programme met the needs of each child then we could expect class action suits on behalf of every student in the mainstream who ever failed a course or dropped out without graduating. The SCC decision was about inputs, not outcomes. 
That brings us back to the conversation between mom and the school. Mom is talking about outcomes ("I want my son to improve his reading and writing".) and the school is talking about inputs ("We hope to get another Special Ed resource teacher".) The reality is that no matter what level of funding the District and ultimately the school get, this young boy will still need help. Help with his academics and help with his self-image and his mindset about what he can and can't do. So, if the current approach is backwards, how can we flip it on its head? How can we disentangle student growth and achievement from its dependence on the provision of additional specialized personnel? What do we need to do so that we can jump into action on the very first day that a child walks into our school and not make her or him wait, fingers crossed, for support that may be forthcoming weeks or months down the line?

The fact is, we need educators and schools who can envision a goal for each child and then work out a plan to help them get there. The key is to focus on measurable, attainable outcomes. It doesn't take a lot of extra money or staff, it just takes time and perseverance. Our school is filled with skilled educators who do it every day. They backcast from where they want the students to be, through reverse steps, right to where they are now. The result is the creation of a "micro" curriculum through an individual education plan for each student. Along the way the teacher establishes benchmarks and assessment criteria to measure progress (and help with mid-course corrections) and then when it is all in place, they can reverse direction and begin to move forward to the preferred future for each child.

It is grunt work for each teacher and each student, but they can do it. It doesn't take a special room or special resources. It just takes that special person to work with your child. And, the best part is, no matter where you are, they can start tomorrow! Maybe then we can stop worrying about what inputs we have coming into the school and put our energy where it belongs, on student outcomes.