Thinking Differently by David Flink

Author:David Flink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 6

WORK SMARTER

One reason I have confidence in my writing is I have confidence in my stamina.

—John Irving, author, dyslexic

Many kids with LD/ADHD want nothing more than to excel. They simply don’t know how. Schools assume that everyone knows how to work hard and that if you do, success will follow.

Unfortunately, we all know this is not always the case. As parents, you may need to help your child discover what it means to work smarter—by knowing how her brain works and using her accommodations—to bring her closer to her goals.

Take the Chairlift When You Can

When I decided to get my master’s in education, I chose Columbia’s dis/Abilities Studies Program for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the defiant way they spelled dis/Ability. My hope was to find a group of like-minded people interested in exploring the state of education; specifically, what was disenfranchising smart students in our schools at an alarming rate.

With that lofty goal in mind, I set off for northern Manhattan every morning from my Brooklyn apartment. It was a long train ride, and I made sure to use the time wisely, working on reading assignments and doing my best to stay ahead of my classes. The good news was that I no longer faced a stream of distractions as I had in college—no late-night pizza parties, no noisy friends stumbling into my room to pull me away from the reading that took me twice as long to finish anyway.

As with most schools of higher learning, Columbia did things in a very specific—and very traditional—way. Despite the fact that I was in a program progressively titled dis/Ability Studies, in order to pass my classes, I was still expected to read, write papers, and take tests. Although I had mastered that way, I knew it wasn’t the best way for me to learn because it took so much extra effort. It didn’t actually deepen my learning.

It was as if I was at a great ski resort whose tradition maintained that skiers walked up the hill, and everyone obliged. I wanted to take a chairlift. Walking would have been harder, not smarter, because the goal was skiing, not walking up the hill. At Columbia, my goal was to learn, not to trudge up a hill to get to learn. I loved learning and knew I could do it the hard way—by walking up the hill—or the better way, by taking the chairlift. For me, that meant learning interactively with teachers who would challenge and engage me.

One reason I chose Columbia was that the authors of the textbooks we used in the classroom were actually on the faculty. As much as I could, I tried to enroll in classes taught by teachers I’d have face-to-face access to. I ignored “tradition” and the read/study/write paradigm and jumped on the chairlift as much as possible.

To me, the most compelling professor at Columbia—perhaps the single biggest draw to me as a student—was a woman named Maxine Greene. I’d been reading her work since I was eighteen and couldn’t wait to study under her.

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