Monday, May 19, 2014

Square Pegs, Part 4


Charlie, our square peg from last week, used non-compliance to demonstrate how he felt being out of place. His grades suffered dramatically. Unresolved grievances led him in a downward grade spiral. He certainly was bright enough but his growing madness compelled him to stop trying. David, on the other hand, was growing as mad but as an authentic genius he always came away with good grades. Actually, he drove his middle school teachers nuts as his intelligence, grades, charm and good looks made it difficult for them to punish him for his antics.



David and I started our friendship at the start of his seventh grade. Conversations on the finer points of history, or politics, or media, with the young collegiate adults I taught were fully energizing and enjoyable. However, as you might expect, it is very difficult to have that level of conversation with seventh graders. But, David brought that kind of energy and enjoyment to our talks. The disturbing fact was that most of time when he was talking I was instructing the whole class. Shortly after the period started, he would rise from his seat and slowly tour the classroom making his way in a grand circular fashion. He would stop to stare out a window but for only a moment, then he was on the move, again. He would engage me in conversation during these sojourns. We had many chats outside the classroom, but unfortunately his favorite moment for conversation was about ten minutes into a lesson.



When he saw he couldn’t stop instruction he would quietly leave the classroom, always without permission. He roamed the halls landing in either the computer lab or the library-in this school they were located one next to the other. There he would make himself busy with whatever he chose. He was quiet and well behaved disturbing no one. He would return a minute before the bell rang to collect his belongings.



David had disgraphia, an inability to write by hand. His hand writing was painfully slow. He had developed an aural compensation so all he had to do was listen for a minute to know the intent of instruction for the day, and his genius allowed him to quickly learn the content of that lesson. As it turned out no one took seriously his troubled hand writing because there is this crazy notion in some of the education profession which believes that if you’re intelligent you have no problems as problems come only to those less gifted. In the end David’s antics were an avoidance technique to cover his hand writing deficit. For me, anytime I needed him to write I excused him to the computer lab, where he was going anyway, to do his composing on the computer. More, exams I gave which required writing were given orally and, of course, he “Aced” them all.



David continued his antics in the eighth grade but his genius did little to protect him when it came to the eighth grade state tests which he passed, barely, and protected him no longer as he moved into the uniform high school where daily full period attendance and serious pen and paper testing trumped all need for computer lab time and oral examination. I moved on from the school as David was in the middle of ninth grade. I saw he was on the verge of either dropping out or of being severely punished for his continued avoidance of being in the classroom and for his continued inability to write by hand.

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