“Every student can learn. Just not on the same day or in the same way.”
George Evans (American cartoonist)

This is such a true and important quotation.

It is unfortunate that some students receive the message – either directly or indirectly – that they cannot learn.

We are all different people and we don’t do most things in exactly the same way. Why should learning be any different?

Not every child is ready for the next step in reading or math or maturity at the same age. Yes, there are guidelines, but that’s all they are. 

I have seen students who apparently “missed the window” still have amazing results later with the right support and encouragement. One boy was supposed to have missed the mark for reading by a lot. The consensus from the school was that he would probably never be able to read. (This was not from one teacher but from several school authorities.) When almost a teenager, he suddenly started to read and then couldn’t get enough of it. My guess is that the lessons taught at school, by me, and his parents were, in fact, having an effect all along. The information was going in but the responses weren’t coming out. We couldn’t see the changes happening within his brain until he was ready. The sudden abilities seem to point in this direction.

Students need a variety of approaches to the same material. 

Just recently a high school student I was working with looked physically relieved after our hour of examining an “impossible” math unit. He was genuinely surprised that he was beginning to understand the concepts and procedures. 

We began looking at the problems from his teacher’s perspective but then we looked at the problems in different ways, using scrap paper, sketches, and humour to get there. Of course, we returned to the teacher’s method of showing the work once the student had a better understanding of the information. (Sometimes you have to work from left to right or right to left or backwards, etc. Then you can “show the work” when you understand it.)

Now, it still wasn’t easy, and there would still be bumps in the road on this unit for him, but the door opened.

Don’t give up!

If you are a student (and I think we all are), child or adult, there is always time to change and there are always alternative ways to learn. 

Keep searching, and keep trying.

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