RE: An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"

[Shannin Schroeder <smschroeder@saumag.edu>]

Suzanne--

I want to thank you for your response here.  I, too, want the list to
understand that I do not doubt this student's sincerity.  I also want to
flesh out my own, original, terse response!  I see where my comments may
have been misunderstood, and I believe myself to be at fault ...

I in *no* way see this as a case where the LD student is at fault!  In fact,
I believe the coordinator is faulting him!  I, too, have worked with LD
students and have in general found them to be the hardest working students
in my classes.  THEY are the students willing to use my office hours; THEY
are the students doing four and five revisions of their papers, on their own
time, in an effort to improve the version(s) their classmates and I see;
THEY are the students who might need a scribe in class for note-taking but
who are willing to re-read those notes carefully and fill in any missing
details or information they remember from the class discussions.  

As an educator, I hope that I make every attempt to help any student with a
learning or physical disability, just as I expect to carry this attitude
into the writing center when ours is up and running.  I guess what I lament
is the fact that the coordinator, in addition to doing this particular
student a disservice, is perpetuating those misconceptions that already
plague our centers!

Shannin Schroeder

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Suzanne Diamond [SMTP:diamonds@marietta.edu]
> Sent:	Tuesday, October 05, 1999 10:11 AM
> To:	wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu
> Subject:	Re: An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"
> 
> Dear All: 
> 
> One member of our community has written: 
> 
> I get concerned at perceptions of students with LD as trying to put 
> one over on the system and at assumptions that reasonable accommodations 
> will somehow cripple them for "real life."  In fact, people with LD often 
> end up working harder than others on the things that cause them 
> difficulties. 
> 
> I do hope it's clear that I certainly didn't doubt this student's 
> sincerity and that I hope to do my best for him.  I wonder, though, 
> whether sometimes it might actually *be* crippling for some students 
> to be dissuaded--that was the issue in the instance I mention--from 
> trying to produce what they might produce on the page if given 
> patience and the occasion to do so?  This student has been in to see 
> his tutor since I posted my original note, and she reports that he 
> told her "nobody has allowed him to write since he's been in 
> sixth grade." 
> 
> It seems safe to assume that most of us are doing our best as educators 
> in this community, and that when we somehow or sometimes are not 
> doing the best that can be done, enlightenment form colleagues helps 
> so much more than chastisement (however well-founded the latter 
> might sometimes be).  When we share our ideas, even our frustrations 
> and the limits these might betray, we are asking for help, affirming 
> our own community, right?  We are allowed to be limited or 
> baffled or just plain wrong sometimes.  The responses I am reading this
> morning are most informative, and I thank you all. 
> 
> Yours, 
> Suzanne 
>