Over the Mountains and Through the Woods

There is a special education teacher at the school where I work, but her class is reserved for students who have severe learning and/or physical disabilities. Although this is a great first step, I feel that more needs to be done. Other students who may need extra help don’t receive it because they are mixed in with other students in the regular classes. Typically these students are given different activities to do, or a teacher will simply do work for them. One boy who I taught today in my first grade English class has yet to write a single word the whole time that I have been here (over one month!). I asked the other teachers about him and they explained that he cannot read or write, although his peers can. Before I had basically been told that he had some type of learning disability and consequently should be treated how I previously described for students in his situation. Today though I found out that he lives very far away from the school, perhaps more so than any other student. The further away someone lives from the center of town, generally the poorer they are; thus, he certainly isn’t being driven in his family’s car, but most walk to school by himself. As a result he is usually late, today by about two hours. They also told me that he missed out on a majority of kindergarden because of his predicament, which is why he never learned to read or write. But no one really knows if in fact he does have a learning disability. Nevertheless, he is being treated as though he does and no one expects him to read or write, so he doesn’t. I still have no idea wether or not he is fully capable of catching up with his peers, but because he is not learning and lives so far away I could easily imagine a situation where he is forced to drop out of school to help earn money for his family before learning how to read, write, or perform simple math. Unfortunately, I think this pattern is the norm in some areas.