Understanding Ourselves as Learners

The power of self-understanding is central to overcoming difficulties in learning. Listen to the thoughts of students who are willing to meet the challenges of learning because they have begun to develop an understanding of themselves and how their minds work.

Joe Dailey
Wisconsin

I understand my weaknesses and can easily describe them, because I dealt with them for 21 years. Growing up, I knew who I was as a student with weaknesses, I just didn't know who I was as a student with strengths.

My one obvious strength was in getting around things. I couldn't perform as a student, but I could speak my way out of things. I wanted to be a good student, but I ended up being a con artist, thinking I was fooling people. That wasn't the case.

I could tell that I was a visual learner. But how can a visual learner become more successful in school? What good are the visual learner's skills in learning to read and write? I wanted someone to teach me skills so my weaknesses wouldn't bring me down. I wanted someone to teach me how I could survive being me.

My strengths started to develop with my successes. In a study skills course I got the ideas that could really work for test taking and memory skills. Being a visual learner, I would draw a little picture with the important information represented by symbols. I would use my sense of humor to make it funny and easy to remember. Later, it was easy to recall the key information in picture form. If some technique works, you have to keep using it and relating it to what you do, so it becomes habit.

I definitely am a visual learner. I also enjoy active learning in a group discussion where I can ask questions and speak. I have the ability to speak and get right to the point.

I think my failures have made me tougher. And I think I have a better sense of what's important and what's not important in life...what to spend time on and what not to.

Once I started being successful, my whole life went up from there. When you've tasted failure and you've tasted success, the success is a lot better, and you head towards where they're serving that success.

For me, dyslexia is simply a problem or difficulty with words. You have all these ideas and thoughts, yet there's a problem expressing them. You may have a great understanding of what you're trying to express, but what you get down on paper may not even be close to what you were thinking.

In the future, I want to work with students with dyslexia. I'm majoring in psychology and special education. Where I will go with it is still uncertain because there are so many things I want to accomplish.

I don't see things backwards, but I had trouble, starting in kindergarten, learning to read. For a large part of my life, writing was a definite weakness. I have great ideas in my head, but they don't always come out on paper. When I did put them down, I had to make sure all the words were on the paper. I would write down sentences that I would read back over silently to myself. All the words would be there and sound great. But a teacher reading the same sentence wouldn't have a clue about what I was trying to say.

My tutor and my parents played a large role in how I came to understand myself. They made it absolutely clear that people liked Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were dyslexic. They told me, "You're not disabled in learning. You just see things and comprehend things in a different way. Sometimes your way is more effective." I think that noticing that there were these geniuses out there really helped me in my confidence. I actually felt kind of special.

I also have problems with attention, which wasn't really dealt with until now. I discovered I'm not like my friends in college. I can't wait until the last two days when all the pressure is on and pull something off. Now I've learned that I'm most focussed from 9-5, maybe 9-7. That's when I can get the most accomplished, almost like it's a job.

It was so helpful when people helped develop my skills. Then there are specific techniques that make such a difference. Like when I'm proofreading, if I proofread out loud, I catch 30% more errors than I will proofreading silently.

Now that I'm doing well, I feel how success does breed success. You want to add to it. It brings out a competitive fire so you don't want to give anything less than your best. I love to write, and I love journalism. I love to travel. I would like to be a political or sports journalist.

I still don't understand exactly what my learning disability is, partly because I really don't believe in it. I don't believe in learning disabilities because I don't see how you can classify certain groups and not others. We all have different thought processes, and we're all different inside. I get things that others don't, so what's the difference?

My learning difference has to do with auditory processing. I'm a hands on learner. I like to do things, construct things, and see an end product. I'm very independent. I like to do research on my own. I know I learn welI from discussions, and I can work well with others, but I prefer to work on my own.

Outside of school, I'm a pretty organized person, but when I was in school, I didn't really know what to pay attention to in my classes. There were so many distractions, and I missed a lot of skills.

I was always frustrated socially. I was not very fond of clicks and things like people talking down to other people. I think that turns a lot of kids off to school. I know it turned me off to school for a while because there was so much competition involved in it. The door was shut in my face so many times because I was just the basic or standard level student.

The way I see it, I have to make school like a game. And the goal is to accomplish something, and in order to score a point, you've got to finish a task, and then the next and the next... and if you don't, the other team gets the point, and you're one down, so you have to get back up and gain possession of the game.

There wasn't a lot of positive in high school, because nobody believed that I would make it. In my English class once, I asked my teacher to write down the homework assignment, and she said, "No. If you can't listen, if it's too hard for you, then you should just go to a lower level class." That was her answer and she said that to me in front of the whole class. And my economics teacher would say, "You're going to fail this class!" and "You're not going to graduate!" And I thought to myself, "You think I can't make it, but I will make it." The only person who believed in me was my advisor. My best experiences growing up were being successful in horseback riding and winning competitions.

My mom really tried to let other people understand that I had a learning disability and it was just not that I was slow. But my parents did not understand what was going on, because they still thought I was lazy in a certain way, even though they tried really hard to understand me. I think it was unconscious and I can't blame them. How could they understand me if I didn't understand myself yet?

Before I got diagnosed, I read "Driven to Distraction." I really recognized characteristics of myself in the book and things they were describing about relationships with parents. I really recognized a lot and decided to get tested. The testing was so important. It explained so much. A lot of pieces came together. It's not an excuse, but it does explain things. I hate using my LD as an excuse, because it's not. You are the same as everyone else. You just have some difficulties.

We were talking in my class about the laws and disability and I was thinking that I am not disabled. I just have difficulty with doing certain things, like homework·.starting it, keeping focussed on it, finishing it, and not getting distracted all the time. When I'm in class, auditory alone is not enough. I need a combination. Also it is hard for me to remember things. I learned this semester that I could remember visuals. I study for a test with them. I make up whole stories and I use pictures; it helps me remember. I didn't use that before. The most valuable things I've learned are study skills and organizational techniques.

I have always had difficulties with learning. Anytime I had to read and comprehend, I had a tough time. It took so much energy just to read, I could forget about comprehending. Whenever I had to prepare, review, or summarize material by myself and then take a test on it, it was a prescription for failure.

I have a problem with seeing words, mathematical equations or signs and symbols they way they are - it just doesn't register to me the way it registers to most people. I understand and process symbols very slowly. I have always had this problem, so I have always known it as "the way that I learn."

I will look at something, let's say the number 4 and the letter H, and not necessarily be able to distinguish between them right away. If you were to say, "What's thirteen times three?" I would have to put it on paper. I just don't have the faculty to do it in my head. My major weakness is not being able to think quickly with symbols in my head. I can talk about theory and about many other ideas and concepts, but when I have to process symbols, I'm as slow as molasses. But I'm as sweet as molasses too, and that's an important quality to have, I think.

I would describe myself as a learner by just saying that I am a listener. I learn ninety percent of the things I learn by listening and by asking questions. That gives me the opportunity to use my strengths and it also gives me an opportunity to·avoid is the wrong word·to manage· my weaknesses.

Because I learn very specifically by listening, I miss an awful lot by not reading a tremendous amount. If I'm going to read an article, I have to make sure I give myself plenty of time to understand what I am reading and to finish the job. And because that takes a lot of effort and a lot of time, I just prefer to listen to things.

My strengths are that I can articulate what I have to say in a precise way and that I can communicate so that people respond to me. That's a huge strength because I can tell you exactly what I need or exactly what I'm interested in. I have the voice to be my own advocate. I have met that many people who want to be their own advocate and don't know how to communicate to people what they need. I can and that's a huge strength.

As an adult, I can explain my learning differences to a teacher or friend. But as a child I didn't know that there was something unique about me, and so I would not explain it at all - I would just act the clown and the fool. As an adult, I can actually articulate to somebody what I can do and what I need to compensate for any challenges I maybe having due to a class, work, or social situation.

Being unique in the way that I learn really doesn't mean a lot to me in one respect. It is in fact who I am. It is the way that I have developed. It is a part of the plusses and minuses that go along with the package that we call "Keith Promisel." But in another way, it means a lot to me. When you identify with certain people around an idea like "learning differences," you begin to understand other people and yourself in a new way. You really begin to see that there are no real differences in every single person, and that people are really a lot more similar than dissimilar. Knowing that now at my age has been a great help to me.

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