National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD):
How do the teaching methods employed at the Lab School differ from those of more mainstream schools?Sally Smith:
We bring art or some type of art form into almost everything we teach. For example, if we're teaching science, we'll teach it through art; if we're teaching history, we might be doing it through drama. The idea is to have the children involved in a very direct sort of way in the subject we're trying to teach, have them do things first and then discuss them later.My whole theory is that when you demand involvement you ignite the learning process, you capture excitement and interest, and counteract passivity. A lot of kids with learning disabilities have been tutored and given this type of help and that type of help and after a while they start to wait for someone to do the teaching for them; they've become passive learners. The kind of teaching we do at the Lab School demands that the students do the learning for themselves, that they get involved. We also want to get the kids to ask a lot of questions and also to learn by reflecting back on an experience.
NCLD:
Why do you find these methods particularly effective in teaching children with LD?Sally Smith:
Many children with LD have terrible problems with language; they're visual thinkers. We've found that, through the use of art forms such as drawing, painting, photography and drama, students can express themselves far better, can connect to ideas much quicker and can get involved with learning much faster. For kids with LD, this won't happen if you lecture to them or have them read something out of a book.The whole thinking process is different for our students. If someone without a learning disability sees, say, a chameleon, they're going to say "That's a chameleon; it's a lizard that can change colors." A child with LD isn't going to think in those terms. They're going to think in terms of the animal's movement, the texture of the skin, the colors, the size. And the next time they see it, they still don't say "That's a chameleon," but they remember the texture, the movement and so on. They image it, as distinct from other, non-LD kids, who will give it a word, a symbol. We'll have a category and a label for it, but a child with LD is dealing with the object very concretely.
NCLD:
Are the backgrounds of the teachers at the Lab School substantially different from those of other special education teachers and, if so, what types of backgrounds tend to make for a more successful educator?Sally Smith:
Many of our teachers have come from an arts background, though all are required to have a masters degree in special education. But because almost all of our students are unorthodox learners, it helps if you're a bit of an unorthodox learner yourself or are interested in unorthodox approaches and diverse methods of teaching. With many of these kids you've got to keep trying and trying to find a pathway. They don't learn traditionally at all, so the faculty members really have to be comfortable with exploring unusual and alternative methods of teaching.NCLD:
Many of the activities at the Lab School revolve around what you refer to as the "Academic Club Method." Could you please explain what this teaching method is and how it works?Sally Smith:
It's a way of taking non-readers and immersing them in a specific world of history, having them become knights and ladies of the Middle Ages, for example, or a Renaissance counselor, or an industrialist. We have some of our students studying the robber barons of the 19th century, and each one of them becomes a robber baron"Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, DuPont. And they find out through the teacher, who's called the "chairman of the board," and through aids such as films and pictures, where their robber baron families were during the American Revolution, the Civil War and up into the Industrial Revolution. They learn what contributions they made, what terrible things they've done (which the children love) and what legacies they've left.Another example, for teaching anthropology and human history, we have a Cave Club. The teacher is called "wise elder" she addresses the pupils as hominids, and they have a whole set of rituals to chart the progress of evolution from Australopithecus to Homo Erectus to Homo Habillus to Homo Sapiens. To test what the students have learned, the teacher might give the student a handful of seeds and say, "You're in the Old Stone Age; what do you do with these?" and if the student tries to eat them, the answer is correct. And if the teacher says, "Now you're in the New Stone Age," and if the student tries to plant them, that's also correct.
They have to show us that they understand the material, because most of them can't write and can't read. But they can deal with the material, even though it's difficult and very complex. When our kids go back to a regular school or go on to college, they're often complimented on how well schooled they are in civics, history, or geography, and on how they can relate this knowledge so well to other subjects.
NCLD:
Are certain types of creative activities particularly effective for teaching children with specific types of LD? For example, are there certain types of activities that would be effective for teaching a child with dyslexia but that would not work well for teaching a child with auditory-processing problems?Sally Smith:
Let's take a child that's very non-verbal. In their wordless world, they see shapes and colors and movement and think in terms of textures and shapes. Now, with that type of child, any kind of graphic arts, ceramics, and so on, would be wonderful. But they'd probably hate drama. There are other children who are athletes and dancers, who learn everything kinesthetically. For example, some of them learn telephone numbers by moving through them. We can find ways to teach them history and historical connections and so on, through movement.The thing is, you can't generalize; some of the students we have here are marvelous athletes and the other half trip over their own feet. The same with math"half are phenomenal at math and the other half see numbers and their eyes glaze over. Sometimes what will work is obvious; a lot of times it's not. Our class sizes are small, however, and the teachers can personalize a lot of the instruction; the teachers also take a lot of notes and there's a lot of sharing of information among the faculty.
Children with LD usually have trouble with order and with sequences; one of the benefits of using the arts to teach is that each art form has its own discipline, and you have to know a certain amount in order to even begin work. There's a recipe, and it lets us teach the very important ideas of beginning, middle and end. These are things someone with LD won't learn naturally.
We teach film animation here and, in order to put together a project, the students really have to analyze what it is they want to put on film. They need to have a main idea"what the film is about"they have to formulate the sequences that will express that idea and then they have to put it together and shoot it. And when they've done this successfully, we'll try and remind them of the process and how they navigated it when they're doing something else, like a paper for a literature class.
NCLD:
It sounds as though there's a great deal of interdisciplinary study at Lab School.Sally Smith:
There is, and there are a lot of teachers teaching each other. For example, a first class in geography might begin with a teacher bringing in a cake, and at first glance it looks like a whole cake, but it's really been cut into seven pieces and the plate it's sitting on has also been cut into seven pieces. The teacher might say, "There's a theory of how the continents were formed. Can anyone tell me what a theory is?" And they might talk about what a theory is in general, then the teacher will tell them about the original supercontinent of Pangea and how the continent broke up into seven sections and demonstrate that using the cake. Then the class will talk about it.Afterward, the teachers will talk to each other about the method and how each of the different pupils reacted. They'll share with each other regarding what worked well with which kid. They want to know, "Did he or she make the connection? Did the glue go into their head?" It's a very creative and very multi-sensory approach.
NCLD:
Say I'm the parent of a child with a learning disability. What are some of the types of creative activities that I can engage in with my child to both help them learn and to have fun?Sally Smith:
For reading, you can take a story or a myth and have the family act it out; it helps the child understand far more about the text. "How bad was that dragon? How could he turn into such a kind creature in the end?" The child can see it happen.Making up or adapting games that kids already like to play can be very good, too. For example, in our Secret Agents Club, kids earn ribbons for listening carefully, for hearing differences in sounds or when sounds are the same, for seeing differences between pictures, letters and symbols, for smelling, tasting and touching, for using all the senses. What we're doing is taking a game kids like to play"Secret Agent or Detective"and using it to teach readiness skills.
Or if a kid is having trouble with money, a family can play store, where someone buys things and the child has to make change and count it out. And a parent might want to throw in some intentional mistakes"kids love to catch their parents making mistakes, and we encourage parents to make as many mistakes as possible.
NCLD:
There are a number of working artists who are supporters of Lab School, such as Chuck Close and Robert Rauschenberg, who have learning disabilities. Can you point to any artist you know of whose work you consider to be a direct outgrowth of, or at least influenced by, their learning disability?Sally Smith:
Chuck Close has always said that his art is driven by his disability. He draws these tiny boxes and puts them together on a grid to make a huge portrait, much in the manner of a mosaic. But that's the way he says he can do it. He's dyslexic, and he says he's always had to chop things up into little bite-size pieces in order to understand them.Chuck says he had a lot of trouble in school. He could barely read and write, but he was always trying to find ways to get his teachers to realize that he could understand the material, even if he couldn't verbalize it or write it out. And he would do projects to show them that he knew the lessons; some teachers would give him an "A" and some would give him an "F." He said once that for a history test on Lewis and Clark he completed a 20-foot mural that showed the Lewis and Clark trail, with every stop fully illustrated. It showed the teacher he was interested and cared about what they had covered, even though he had done poorly on the written test. He also had trouble remembering what he read; in order to remember difficult words, such as "plankton," he might make up a story like "Pigs Leaping Around Nearly Killing Ten Old Neighbors."
NCLD:
Do you feel that an inclination toward and proficiency in the arts is more characteristic of children with LD? Why or why not?Sally Smith:
Well, we certainly see a lot of kids go into the arts and a lot going into the theater who have learning disabilities. And I think it's that they have different intelligences. They see differently. They have another pathway to the world that they use in everyday life. That's what makes their work fresh. They don't follow the mold, and they don't fit the mold.Most of the children we have here at the Lab School have very good minds; it's just that they're different minds. They don't learn the same way as others. And different isn't bad. Different is fine. For these children to be successful, however, we have to teach them to be very self-aware. Much more so than other children, children with LD have to understand how they learn. They have to pay attention to which things are difficult for them and which things are easy, because they're going to have to advocate for themselves when they go on to college or into the workplace.
We're using the arts here not only to teach but also as a confidence builder" "I made it. I did it. I can do it again." It shows children with LD what they can do well, what works for them, and what they might have trouble with. Having the answers to these questions is critical for their success in the real world.
Sally Smith was director of the master's degree program in special education at American University in Washington, D.C., and founder of The Lab School, a school for teaching children and adults with moderate to severe learning disabilities also located in Washington, D.C.
Her best known books are No Easy Answers: The Learning Disabled Child at Home and at School (Bantam 1995) and Succeeding Against the Odds: How the Learning-Disabled Can Realize Their Promise. (Tarcher/Perigee 1993).
NCLD interviewed Ms. Smith in January 2003.
