Learning Disabilities (Social Issues Firsthand)

First of all, know this — you’re smart and can learn! You just learn differently. This guide will help answer some of your important questions about having LD, such as “Why is it hard for kids with LD to learn?” and “What happens when you grow up?” It will also provide suggestions on how to deal with issues in school and take some of the mystery out of what having LD means (and doesn’t mean). Includes resources for parents and teachers.

Christopher Lee was the author’s student at The University of Georgia, and Faking It: A Look Into the Mind of a Creative Learner is the story of his struggle to come to terms with learning disabilities. Using modifications and accommodations and putting in lots of hard work, Christopher graduated in 1990, and this book was published in 1992. Christopher looked forward to graduating because he thought his major struggles with LD would end with school. However, he quickly realized that the world of work offered a whole new array of challenges. He has spent the last eight years reframing his disability into something positive and has learned how to use assistive technology to compensate for problems with reading, writing and spelling in the workplace.

Teamwork is essential in helping a child with learning disabilities. This book is the product of parents and professionals sharing years of experience to help you understand and cope with L.D. Champion your child’s team by directing your time and energy to success, with Understanding Learning Diabilities: A Parent Guide and Workbook. Easy-to-read, quick to access and overflowing with helpful information and advice, this one-stop guide will quickly be one of your most trusted supports for helping your child succeed in school. Whether your questions about learning disabilities are few or many, this tool holds the answers you seek.

How and when does a child begin to make sense of the world? Why does a lively preschool child so often become a semiliterate and defeated school failure?

Developmental psychologist Margaret Donaldson shows that much of the intellectual framework on which we base our teaching is misleading. We both underestimate the astonishing rational powers of young children and ignore the major stumbling block that children face when starting school.

Given a setting and a language that makes sense to them in human terms, very young children can perform tasks often thought to be beyond them. The preschool child learns everything in a human situation. Only in school is he asked to acquire skills―reading, writing, arithmetic―isolated from a real-life context. This transition is difficult.

The author suggests a range of strategies that parents and schools can adopt to help children. She argues that reading is even more important than we have thought it to be, since learning to read can actually speed children through the crucial transition.

Besides being a football coach at his Michigan High School, Mike Kersjes taught special education classes, dealing with children whose disabilities included Tourette syndrome, Downs Syndrome, dyslexia, eating disorders and a variety of emotional problems. One autumn Kersjes got the outlandish idea that his students would benefit from going to Space Camp, where, in conjunction with NASA, high school students compete in a variety of activities similar to those experienced by astronauts in training for space shuttle missions. There was only one problem: this program had been specifically designed for gifted and talented students, the best and the brightest from America’s most privileged high schools. Kersjes believed that, given a chance, his kids could do as well as anybody, and with remarkable persistence broke down one barrier after another, from his own principal’s office to the inner sanctum of NASA, until Space Camp opened its doors, on an experimental basis, to special ed students. After nine months of rigorous preparation, during which the class molded itself into a working team, they arrived at Space Camp, where they turned in a performance so startling, so surprising, that it will leave the reader breathless. A truly triumphant story of the power of the human spirit.

This book provides information about the different kinds of learning disabilities, the common signs of learning disabilities, what causes learning disabilities, how they are diagnosed, and other disabilities and chronic conditions that affect learning. It provides information on academic issues, living with a learning disability, and legal rights available to people with learning disabilities. Resources for additional help and information are also included.