Pbs Video On Learning Disabilities

I am currently in the process of attaining my teaching credential in California, so I'm taking a course on Teaching Strategies. Last night we watched a video that really opened our eyes to the difficulties that Learning Disabled students face. Though "How Difficult Can This Be: The F.A.T. City Workshop" is obviously dated, gotta love those enormous 80s shoulder pads, the ideas and methods that Rick Lavoie demonstrated still pertain today and are, unfortunately, not implemented as widely or as thoroughly as they should be. The F stands for frustration, A for anxiety, and T for tension.
Rather than straight lecture, the workshop requires the participants to immerse themselves in a classroom simulation, taking on the role of a child with a learning disability. He says that if they don't want to role play or get invovled, that's too bad because learning disabled students don't get a choice whether they want to be in the classroom. He then went on to teach a lesson, shooting questions at a rapid-fire pace, questions that would be simple if given the time or a less hostile environment. The participants were all adults, including educators, counselors, parents, even an engineer. You would expect them to be able to respond, but within 6 minutes of the simulation, they began showing signs of shutting down.
I won't go into the rest of the video since nothing I say would be as powerful as seeing it, and I urge everyone to watch it. My husband was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child. Even though they had a name for his disability, no one at his school knew how to deal with it. This was the age before the world wide web, and information wasn't so readily available and accessible. So he grew up thinking that he was stupid and couldn't do anything about it, knowing that it wasn't his fault. His self-esteem has taken such a beating, especially growing up with a sister who is academically gifted and doesn't have to try for straight A's. Watching this video made me realize what he might have gone through and how difficult it must have been.
So check your local library or nearest college for Rick Lavoie's "How Difficult Can This Be: The F.A.T. City Workshop."

That sounds really interesting. I think someone told me something about this video before but I never heard the title. They don't have it at my local library so I'll have to have it transfered but I'm going to watch it. I'll post back again after I do or edit this post and tell you more of what I think of it. I'm sure it must be hard to have a learning disability. I take for granted that I don't struggle in school because learning has come easy to me all my life.

Edit: It appears they have it at my school library. I'll try to check it out tomorrow.

This post has been edited by Plenoptic: Jul 16 2007, 12:33 AM

I saw a video in class that sounded like this video. I was interested in purchasing it, but didnt want to spend $50 to find out this is not the film I was looking for...



Did this video have a story written about popcorn and the teacher took the letters: pdqb and interchanged them for eachother?



the story was also written on three different lines broken up in the middle of the words so you had to jump around when reading the story?



-SHSISCO