My first week at 44 sounds was wonderful. Aside from not having to wake up at 6AM every morning, 44 sounds so far has been a pleasantly unique experience from the long practicum. At 44 sounds, tutors use the Orton-Gillinham approach to teach the 44 different sounds of the alphabet. The OG approach is a multi-sensory and multi-modal approach to teaching the different sounds through a more direct and explicit way. It helps students who struggle with reading and writing because they gradually become better are organizing, sorting, and recognizing different parts of the English language.
Students usually come during the afternoon—typically around 2PM—during or after school. Most of these students are diagnosed with a learning disability and many of them have dyslexia. Dyslexia is a term generally used to describe the lifelong condition where students struggle with processing written and spoken language. It wasn’t a surprise to learn that many of theses students suffer from mild levels of anxiety, low self-esteem issues, and frustration. However, as my week went by, I learned that every student was pretty much a typical kid—silly, curious, creative, and carefree. However, one aspect really stood out to me, and it was amazing to see that every single student was so eager and motivated to learn.
Prior to my CFE, I’ve never had experience working with students with exceptional needs. Nonetheless, it is without a doubt that it’s really important to see each child—labeled or not labeled—as having great potential in his or her learning. Every child has a different learning curve in his or her life and every student learns through different mediums. That’s why I think multi-modality and differentiated learning become key focuses in my teaching pedagogy—finding students’ interests and enlightening their sparks will be my most rewarding challenge as an educator.
I am really looking forward to the next two weeks during my stay here at 44 Sounds and I can’t wait to get to know the students even better. It’ll also be a very interesting experience to hopefully carry on one of the lessons myself!
This sounds like a wonderful experience and perfect community partner, Michelle. I think any educator would really benefit from training and experience with exceptional learners, myself included! I believe that this experience will most definitely inform and support your future work as a teacher in the most positive ways.
I really appreciated your comments about the children you’ve met so far and how they are typical: silly and creative! I also thought you made a thoughtful observation about the learners and the connections between their learning challenges and then how they can also suffer with anxiety, low self-esteem and frustration. It’s a constellation of issues and so challenging for these young people, to be sure.
I’d love to know more about the OG approach you are learning at 44 Sounds and the ideas and strategies that you could bring back to your classroom teaching.