Re: An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"

[<snewmann@sfasu.edu>]

At SFA students with disabilities (learning or otherwise) register with
the office of disabilities services.  The director of that office
determines case by case based on documentation of the disabilitiy what
accommodations are appropriate.  The office of disabilities services then
assumes responsibility for seeing that those accomodations are available.
The "scribe" service you describe below seems to me to fall into the same
category of accomodation as an interpretor for hearing impaired students.
If the student with the disability wants to try your approach that is that
students right.  However, if the disabled student were (or felt he was)
coerced into trying your approach it would be appropriate for the dir. of
dis. services to step in and nix that approach.  Dysgraphia is not a
condition that people "grow out of" and the person who suffers from that
disability is entitled to accommodations in the work place as well as in
the classroom.  But that's something the person will have to "negotiate"
when the time comes.  

stephen

On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Suzanne Diamond wrote:

> Dear All:
> 
> I've got a new (to me) issue to run by you all.  How would you handle
> a student with a learning disability who came to your writing center
> asking for a "scribe"?
> 
> I'll give you the background.  A few weeks
> ago, our new learning center coordinator--an expert delegator, I have
> witnessed--sent me an e-mail recounting a meeting she had with a
> student whose learning disability entailed an inability to write. This
> student, she claimed, had used a "scribe" in the writing center in
> the past (he is a junior), someone to whom he dictated his papers.
> She "asked": Could he come over to the writing center and get this assistance?  I responded that no student had, to my knowledge,
> used the writing center in this fashion since I took over in the fall
> of 98, but that I believed that there was software out there that
> converted the spoken word into text in this manner.  (Her position
> and budget have been funded by a $150K Teagle grant for two
> years.)  I suggested that she invest in this software, especially if,
> in her judgment, there would be other LD students who might
> require it.
> 
> Two weeks later, the student was in my office.  He said that the
> learning center director had referred him to the writing center.
> We had a long talk about his past use of "scribes."  I wondered
> aloud what he would do eventually when he needed to prepare
> a report, say, on the job, or write a letter, say, to his local
> councilperson.  "As a teacher," I told him, "I feel I would be
> doing you a disservice to just offer you a scribe, and that is NOT
> because I don't want to help you; I very much DO."  We talked
> for a while longer, and I proposed that he put whatever prose he
> could produce on the page for us to look at.  Though he seemed
> intrigued by this option, his objection was odd and telling: "My
> grammar and spelling," he warned, "are awful!"  I told him I was
> not going to be focused on these at first, that many writers come
> to us with these concerns, and that I just wanted to see how he
> shaped meanings in his writing.
> 
> Because I have a policy of updating instructors about students
> who register for sustained help at the center, I left voice mails
> (without all the detail of my note above but basically) laying out
> the plan the student and I had agreed to for his upcoming tutoring
> session.  Wierdly, I had a voice reply on my own machine today
> from one of those instructors, stipulating along the lines of "no, no:
> that's not what the student gets at the center.  He needs to tell
> someone else what he's going to write and they need to write it
> for him."  I left a gentle reply back, saying that we should at least
> at first be guided by the student's own enthusiasm to try this on his
> own, and suggesting that we could regroup after his first two sessions
> or so to weigh results and strategies.
> 
> But I need some expert advice!  Am I right to find this a very
> troubling way to use the center, or am I just being blind to the
> necessity that we accommodate a disabled student?  I do not trust
> my own responses here, but these responses sure are strong! Any
> light any of you might shed on this would be most welcome.
> 
> Yours,
> Suzanne Diamond
> Assistant Professor of English and Director,
> THE WRITE PLACE
> Marietta College
> diamonds@marietta.edu
>