The Curious Case of Student #4464
Background
In my career, I've seen a lot of things. I've worked with probably every type of learning disability out there. Dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, ADHD... you name it. I'm a born teacher with animal-like instincts when it comes to kids. I know how to work them and I actually care. (Something I found is quite scarce in the education world.)
Recently we wrote progress tests at our school in Abu Dhabi and I discovered a paper of a student in the 6th grade. It immediately caught my attention. I posted it on Facebook and asked my teacher friends what they thought of it. I did in no way try to break student/teacher confidentiality, but really tried to figure out what happened here.
I call him Student 4464 only to keep him safe and not to expose his difficulty in learning. This is what he wrote as a narrative. You can click on the picture for a bigger display.
The question was: "Write a narrative about an adventure/trip to Dubai with your family."
This is what intrigued me about Student 4464:
He was able to shape letters. It is much more uncommon in this part of the world than you think. Even students who are able to write English paragraphs, find the shaping of letters difficult. Keep in mind that Arabic flows from right to left, so it's quite hard to learn the other way around.The letters that he did shape was clear and from the handwriting, it suggests that there is some confidence here. Students with low self-esteem barely touch their pens down onto the paper. This one did. He was on a mission to get his thoughts across. He wanted to answer this paper.Although no punctuation, there was a clear knowledge of paragraphs and he was aware that good writing should contain paragraphs. Look how neat he tried to make them.This child snapped the concept of vowels. Although he didn't write any sense (in English or Arabic), he somehow knew that his own language should contain vowels. It's not just random consonants flung together.
The feedback from friends
Here was what some of my friends noticed and suggested:
Good friend, Gerlene is a therapist in Ireland and she feels his visual perception is "spot on". He has "good letter formation, writes on the lines, differentiates between capital letters and small letters" and the "space between words and letters are correct". This is exactly what intrigued me about him in the first place.
Debra was a fantastic sleuth in her questioning. Where was he from? What language does he speak at home? Is there a nanny involved?
Most of the friends suggested we get him to read what he wrote to us. By doing this, we could see where the problem was.
The investigation started
I approached his English teacher and he explained to me that 4464 was always absent. The few times he did come to class, he seldom had a pencil with him. He is Emirati and he's from the Ras al Khaimah emirate. The teacher called him "careless" which - from his experience with the student - I understand. My issue was this: why would a kid who is this "careless", actually go through the trouble to write gibberish for a whole period? If I don't care, I would just write my name and lie on my arms for the rest of the exam. Why did 4464 pick up his pen in the first place?
His Arabic teacher said that he's a sweet boy. Quiet. Reserved. But also said he was absent a lot. Unfortunately students aren't always followed up here like in Western systems. If you're absent, you're absent. That's it. He said the boy wasn't great in Arabic, but he wasn't poor either. He can however write his first language and his handwriting is also clear and crisp.
Mission : Finding 4464
This is not student 4464.
After looking at his other work, I felt so sad for this boy being in a system for almost 8 years that didn't really care about him. He's failed twice and no teacher has ever really tried to 'fix' this problem. I would never allow for this to happen. What's even worse is that the parents most probably have no clue that their son has this issue. Here you can't blame the teachers only. How can a parent not realize that their son can't read or speak or write a subject he's been learning for 8 years?
I finally got hold of 4464 on Thursday morning. He had been absent for 2 days and couldn't really tell me where he was. I brought him to the office where we had a chat with a translator. This is what we found:
4464's mother is Iranian and his dad is from the UAE. His mom basically then speaks Farsi which is different to Arabic, but not in such a way that he would be totally lost in class. His father speaks Arabic to him.
He can't speak any English. He can answer with one word and it seems that he does understand basic questions. He could not make a single English sentence of his own, though.
When we showed him his test, he looked at and said it wasn't him that wrote it. Shocked, my mind went through every possible reason and I realized that somebody might have written the test in his name. We asked him to write down a few things and luckily I recognized the handwriting. It was indeed his writing. He said that he just can't remember doing the test. Interesting.
He was not able to read his gibberish. Not even in his own language. This suggested he just wrote random letters. But why was he repeating some words? Why did he write so confidently? The second I'm insecure about what I write, I don't push my pen down that hard. We still can't figure this out.
This is what he wrote the 2nd time around:
He tried to write 'Abu Dhabi' and 'Khalifa Complex'. It's evident that he has got some phonics background, but not much. He doesn't know when a letter should be capital or not (which is very common here as Arabic doesn't have capital letters).
He also wrote this:
Obviously 4464 has learnt how to shape letters and how to write the alphabet. It's not perfect, but he's fully aware of the existence of the sounds and letters. I have to note that we have kids here in school who can speak English, but can't shape the letters to express themselves. 4464 is exactly the opposite. Why has no teacher ever realized his problem? Why does no one care? Why is he absent so often? He's a good kid. He needs someone to care about him.
Finally I asked him to read this sentence from a storybook:
"The three Billy Goats Gruff lived on a farm at the bottom of a mountain."He was only able to read the "on" and "of" with help from me. "The" was foreign to him. He didn't even attempt to pronounce it.
The plan
It's impossible to lay a foundation here and 'fix' the problem in a few months, but I'm going to get the social worker to call in the parents and decide on an action plan. My advice is to get 4464 a first language English tutor who could teach him phonics and basic speaking skills. My heart goes out to kids who 'want to' but can't. I will only be at this school for a few more weeks, but I will try everything in my power to help him. All we can do is hope and pray that he will have teachers on his future path who care about him the same way I do.
Your thoughts?
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave them in the comment box below. I'd love to hear what you think about this.
In my career, I've seen a lot of things. I've worked with probably every type of learning disability out there. Dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, ADHD... you name it. I'm a born teacher with animal-like instincts when it comes to kids. I know how to work them and I actually care. (Something I found is quite scarce in the education world.)
Recently we wrote progress tests at our school in Abu Dhabi and I discovered a paper of a student in the 6th grade. It immediately caught my attention. I posted it on Facebook and asked my teacher friends what they thought of it. I did in no way try to break student/teacher confidentiality, but really tried to figure out what happened here.
I call him Student 4464 only to keep him safe and not to expose his difficulty in learning. This is what he wrote as a narrative. You can click on the picture for a bigger display.
The question was: "Write a narrative about an adventure/trip to Dubai with your family."
This is what intrigued me about Student 4464:He was able to shape letters. It is much more uncommon in this part of the world than you think. Even students who are able to write English paragraphs, find the shaping of letters difficult. Keep in mind that Arabic flows from right to left, so it's quite hard to learn the other way around.The letters that he did shape was clear and from the handwriting, it suggests that there is some confidence here. Students with low self-esteem barely touch their pens down onto the paper. This one did. He was on a mission to get his thoughts across. He wanted to answer this paper.Although no punctuation, there was a clear knowledge of paragraphs and he was aware that good writing should contain paragraphs. Look how neat he tried to make them.This child snapped the concept of vowels. Although he didn't write any sense (in English or Arabic), he somehow knew that his own language should contain vowels. It's not just random consonants flung together.
The feedback from friends
Here was what some of my friends noticed and suggested:
Good friend, Gerlene is a therapist in Ireland and she feels his visual perception is "spot on". He has "good letter formation, writes on the lines, differentiates between capital letters and small letters" and the "space between words and letters are correct". This is exactly what intrigued me about him in the first place.
Debra was a fantastic sleuth in her questioning. Where was he from? What language does he speak at home? Is there a nanny involved?
Most of the friends suggested we get him to read what he wrote to us. By doing this, we could see where the problem was.
The investigation started
I approached his English teacher and he explained to me that 4464 was always absent. The few times he did come to class, he seldom had a pencil with him. He is Emirati and he's from the Ras al Khaimah emirate. The teacher called him "careless" which - from his experience with the student - I understand. My issue was this: why would a kid who is this "careless", actually go through the trouble to write gibberish for a whole period? If I don't care, I would just write my name and lie on my arms for the rest of the exam. Why did 4464 pick up his pen in the first place?
His Arabic teacher said that he's a sweet boy. Quiet. Reserved. But also said he was absent a lot. Unfortunately students aren't always followed up here like in Western systems. If you're absent, you're absent. That's it. He said the boy wasn't great in Arabic, but he wasn't poor either. He can however write his first language and his handwriting is also clear and crisp.
Mission : Finding 4464
This is not student 4464.After looking at his other work, I felt so sad for this boy being in a system for almost 8 years that didn't really care about him. He's failed twice and no teacher has ever really tried to 'fix' this problem. I would never allow for this to happen. What's even worse is that the parents most probably have no clue that their son has this issue. Here you can't blame the teachers only. How can a parent not realize that their son can't read or speak or write a subject he's been learning for 8 years?
I finally got hold of 4464 on Thursday morning. He had been absent for 2 days and couldn't really tell me where he was. I brought him to the office where we had a chat with a translator. This is what we found:
4464's mother is Iranian and his dad is from the UAE. His mom basically then speaks Farsi which is different to Arabic, but not in such a way that he would be totally lost in class. His father speaks Arabic to him.
He can't speak any English. He can answer with one word and it seems that he does understand basic questions. He could not make a single English sentence of his own, though.
When we showed him his test, he looked at and said it wasn't him that wrote it. Shocked, my mind went through every possible reason and I realized that somebody might have written the test in his name. We asked him to write down a few things and luckily I recognized the handwriting. It was indeed his writing. He said that he just can't remember doing the test. Interesting.
He was not able to read his gibberish. Not even in his own language. This suggested he just wrote random letters. But why was he repeating some words? Why did he write so confidently? The second I'm insecure about what I write, I don't push my pen down that hard. We still can't figure this out.
This is what he wrote the 2nd time around:
He tried to write 'Abu Dhabi' and 'Khalifa Complex'. It's evident that he has got some phonics background, but not much. He doesn't know when a letter should be capital or not (which is very common here as Arabic doesn't have capital letters).He also wrote this:
Obviously 4464 has learnt how to shape letters and how to write the alphabet. It's not perfect, but he's fully aware of the existence of the sounds and letters. I have to note that we have kids here in school who can speak English, but can't shape the letters to express themselves. 4464 is exactly the opposite. Why has no teacher ever realized his problem? Why does no one care? Why is he absent so often? He's a good kid. He needs someone to care about him.Finally I asked him to read this sentence from a storybook:
"The three Billy Goats Gruff lived on a farm at the bottom of a mountain."He was only able to read the "on" and "of" with help from me. "The" was foreign to him. He didn't even attempt to pronounce it.
The plan
It's impossible to lay a foundation here and 'fix' the problem in a few months, but I'm going to get the social worker to call in the parents and decide on an action plan. My advice is to get 4464 a first language English tutor who could teach him phonics and basic speaking skills. My heart goes out to kids who 'want to' but can't. I will only be at this school for a few more weeks, but I will try everything in my power to help him. All we can do is hope and pray that he will have teachers on his future path who care about him the same way I do.
Your thoughts?
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave them in the comment box below. I'd love to hear what you think about this.
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