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Jan
11
What’s going on with my underachieving students?
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Special Education
photo by Dan Zen
I’ve been thinking a lot about the underachieving students I support in and out of my classroom. Some of these underachieving students have been identified as having a learning disability, some of them have been identified as being gifted learners, but many of them are neither learning disabled or gifted learners. They are simply learners who are underachievers- if I can use the word ‘simply”. There’s nothing simple about an underachieving student.When students are underachieving, we try to determine the cause. Often our investigation will involve some sort of testing. If it turns out that a student has a learning disability, we develop an Individual Education Plan or IEP that outlines the accommodations the classroom teacher needs to make so that the student can achieve his or her potential. ( I’m using the term learning disability rather than the term learning difference because learning disability is the legal term here in the province of Ontario. It may be different in other jurisdictions. I would be interested to hear if it is.) If testing reveals that an underachieving students turns out to be a gifted learner, this student is placed in the enriched program so that he or she can be with peers in a program that meets the specific needs of the gifted learner. Despite appropriate support in either of these programs, some students still don’t achieve to their potential. Something else is going on here, something that may have little to do with their learning differences.
I remember reading an article ages ago by psychologist Sylvia Rimm that helped me better understand what might be going on with my underachieving students. Mike, not his real name, is one of these students and like so many other underachievers is failing many of his subjects despite being a really smart kid. He has extremely poor work habits, can’t concentrate, is disorganized, daydreams a lot, and is a perfectionist. Mike does very little school work in or out of the classroom and has lots of reason for this -doesn’t do homework, doesn’t know what his home work was, lost his agenda, doesn’t record his assignments and test dates in his agenda, didn’t have time to finish etc. The list goes on and on.
Dr. Rimm explains that under achieving students believe they can’t do well at school and spend all kinds of time and energy manipulating their environment at school and at home to hide this fact. Underachievers really believe that they can’t succeed even if they did their best because their best isn’t good enough. So there’s no point in doing the work. Now, Dr.Rimm is talking about students for whom there is no neurological or biological explanation for doing poorly at school. I’m thinking about my underachieving students who despite the appropriate support still don’t achieve to their potential. Why do some students who are identified as learning disabled or gifted and get the appropriate support become underachievers while some do not?
Related Posts
Related posts:
- Nine things I’ve learned about students who underachieve
- Helping dependent underachievers achieve their potential
- Nine ways teachers and parents can work together to help the dependent underachiever
- There are lessons to be learned about dependent underachievers in the most unlikely places
- Helping kids with learning disabilities change negative habits of mind
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Edublog Awards
Toronto Reading Council
Nice blog.
Will be following you.
BTW, my school library media center is such a magnet for my challenged students. They love the change of scenery and lower level of stimulation.