Week 1 Open Topic

My school has now completed the first three weeks of class, and everything is beginning to settle into a pattern. In addition to my music classes and administrative duties, I am once again the reading and math resource specialist for the 5th grade. In this role I have "inherited" an adorable young man who has an official diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. In addition, he has exceptionally low short term operating memory. This little fellow is as sweet as can be. The only time the defiant qualities come out are when faced with testing situations. He participates well in class and can generally express the concepts that are being studied. When faced with a test, however, he totally falls apart and frequently will refuse to even take the test. Such an incident occurred this week. The students were to take a test on the summer reading selection, "Brian's Winter." When I saw my little fellow shutting down, I removed him from the class and we went to my resource office. Once there, I turned the test face down, and asked him to tell me about the book. As he talked, I wrote down everything he said. The longer he talked, the more excited he got about the story. When he finished, he was all smiles. It was easy to praise him on the excellent job he had done.

I then asked him if he would like to use the notes he had just created and take the standard test everyone else was taking. At first he felt like that would be cheating. We discussed the fact that everything in the notes came from his own brain. I did not ask any questions or prompt him in any way. Once he was sure that this was fair (he is very literal and extremely fair-minded) he turned over the test and began to fill in the answers. He was very proud of himself upon completion of the test, and even chose to answer the bonus essay question. My goal for this student is to work on strategies to reduce his test anxiety, and increase his ability to order his thoughts.

This week's reading on The Art of Possibility could have been tailor made for working with this student. His anxiety level when faced with any traditional measurement system creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster.