"From Where I Sit" Video Series

Gloria B's Story – Faculty Response Video Transcript

Dr. Don Gailey:
This is an interesting challenge I've seen many times in a classroom and that's an older student coming back. So, it's a compounding issue, apart from any kind of learning disability. And so, if she let us know when the pitch and the volume of her voice came up, if there's no communication on the first day of class, I'm out of there. If things aren't right, I'd let somebody know. So it's important to have an interaction between student and instructor. And it's a reminder of that. So, and I think that's almost, it captures a larger issue than learning disability itself. So the focus was more on the dynamics between instructor and student than it was on this particular disability per se, I thought.

Dr. Hank Reichman:
She said that thing of, 'I see early on it's not a match.' I like that phrase, not a match, because it's not judgmental, it was just like not every instructor is good for every student and sometimes doesn't work.

Dr. George Station:
Yeah, what I'm getting kind of across the board is that essentially, if faculty members are aware and thinking about such things from the get go, and then that can help a lot of students that they'll never know about.

Dr. Alan Monat:
These stories can be reminder that we all have had difficulties. We've all had our own struggles, and some how we've dealt with them and we need to help others deal with theirs as well. And this particular story, she, at one point, talked about difficulty in absorbing what she was reading. And this came out of another story as well. And I immediately recalled there were times I was in college studying and I would stare at something, for it seemed like days and I wouldn't get it. [Laughter] And so these things do happen and how can you constructively deal with it?

Dr. Hank Reichman:
People have to understand what we're working with too, you know, the disabilities in a certain sense. That our budget makes for us. But there's also other factors, you know, you get new instructors or instructors teaching a course for the first time. To say everything should be done in advance, for people is to ask heck of a lot, you know.

Dr. Donna Wiley:
Yeah, but the norm is that you've had the class before, so...

Dr. Hank Reichman:
Right, but not always.

Dr. Donna Wiley:
Yeah, not always, so...

Dr. Hank Reichman:
And then once again, you know, in many departments have or more of our classes are taught by part-time lecturers, many of whom are hired at the last minute.

Dr. George Station:
Putting notes online with the fear that students may not attend class, I think is less of an issue if you structure the class so that things happen in the class that aren't available online. Offering alternative presentations, using different formats, not using just all lecture all the time, if you will. That's something I've been trying to work out of for a few years because I was a very traditional lecturer in the sense that I did lecture and then provide a class activity. And then lectured again and provided another class activity. And I've learned from a wide range of students, for a lot of different reasons, that that's not always the best way to go.