General Description / Introduction

Picasso is a 6-year-old 1st grade boy. He was born in Egypt and his first language is Arabic. He has a sister who studies in another class. He is a cute, easy-going boy and does not have problems in social interactions with children or adults. He is good at bodily motion such as running and acting. However, language is a very big obstacle for him. Since school only provides support to ELLs who are not fluent in English, he doesn’t get any help from the ESL teacher. Although he can speak fluently in English, there are a lot of words that he is not able to comprehend very well. His academic performance is lower than the majority in the class.

Picasso’s school is called Sunny School, an university-assisted, K-8 public school. It was named one of the top 10 elementary schools in the state. The school set greatly higher standards for students and teachers than the average level. Students here achieved higher academic performance than district average.

The head teacher, Mrs. Nice, is an experienced teacher who has been teaching for about 17 years. Mrs. Nice is always well prepared for the class and doing a good job on behavioral management. The classroom is very organized and efficient. Students have a series of learning tasks to do and normally don’t get time to take a rest before moving to the next activity. Mr. Real is an assistant teacher who is good at preparing learning materials and facilitating students to finish tasks. The overall classroom atmosphere is harmonious but intense. Students don’t have much peer interactions; rather, they do their own work.

Understanding the Child

Picasso was thought having ADHD by his ESL teacher (ADHD: an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). My question regarding Picasso’s functioning difficulties is what happened on Picasso, beneath the surface of “easily distracted”. The ESL teacher believes that he is easily distracted because he might have a learning problem. Is it true? Is there any other reason that could explain his behaviors?

Child Analysis

The primary dysfunction of Picasso is “low academic productivity”. He seldom completes assigned exercises or is involved in class discussion. The lead teacher and I were thinking that he has a problem of distraction. However, distraction is the appearances that result from a vicious cycle (see the chart below).

The cycle starts from Cognitive Disconnection between Picasso and the knowledge that is supposed to learn. As I mentioned in the last section, Picasso has a problem with English literacy and gets a lot of trouble understanding the teacher’s words.

As a result, he is cognitively disconnected to the teacher’s words and couldn’t learn progressively as quickly as non-ELL students. As a result of the cognitive disconnection, he has trouble completing exercises and other learning activities since he doesn’t understand what to do (because doesn’t absorb knowledge as much) and how to do (the instructions of learning activities).

Because of low academic competence in major subjects, he had a low academic self-concept. When he compares his empty work with completed works of his peers, he knows that he doesn’t do as well as others. When new tasks are assigned, he begins to think, “I can’t do this” or “I can’t do that”. Gradually, he gets a negative image of his academic ability. Then, negative emotions appear after every failure, such as anxiety, fear, disappointment.

To avoid these bad feelings, he doesn’t want to give it a try anymore.He begins to “purposely” not pay attention to teachers or the class, and withdraws from the mainstream classroom. As Mrs. Nice and I observed, he is easily distracted because he doesn’t really want to concentrate, which answers the question I proposed at the very beginning. If he doesn’t make an effort on schoolwork and has a bad academic performance, he won’t be guilty as much as he makes efforts.

The withdrawal disengagement links back to the cognitive disconnection: less attention on class, more things couldn’t be understood. The vicious cycle runs again and again, becoming more and more severe.

Hypothesis

Instructions from teachers are not tailored to match with Picasso’s language comprehension ability. Expectations, instructions and exercises are outside of his Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and thus Picasso doesn’t get opportunities to reach his potential for learning. These mainly contribute to his cognitive disconnection with teachers/instructions/schoolwork and low completion on schoolwork.

In addition, there are some factors in combination to lead to these results. The above part talks about “what” the teacher needs to teach inside of ZPD. The following three factors might focus on “how” the teacher could teach for more effective learning. Although learning materials are of variety, such as photos and videos, the teacher seldom uses any bodily movement to gain Picasso’s interest and participation. As Picasso likes physical movement rather than visual and audio things, lack of enough bodily movement lead to his disinterest in the class and get disconnected to teachers/instructions/schoolwork.

Moreover, the instructions are designed too general to meet Picasso’s special interests. Most elements he likes don’t appear in the instructions, such as hot wheels, scorpion, and things related to Egyptian culture. Lack of encouragement and affirmation is another factor that leads to cognitive disconnection and low completion. During the class, the teacher rarely provides encouragement to Picasso when he gets trouble on learning. Rather, she just ignores it or gets him to go through the task as quickly as possible. Lack of the above three factors, it’s hard to get Picasso interested in the instruction and get him actively participate in the class.

The last factor is close to his low academic self-concept. The teacher is unresponsive to providing extra assistance to Picasso in terms of his language needs. Without help from adults, Picasso might feel isolated and useless, which damages his self-efficacy/self-esteem/self-concept.

Influential Factors

Scaffolding

When the teacher ignored problems Picasso had in English comprehension, She could hardly provide appropriate scaffolding inside of his ZPD. Sometimes Picasso didn’t really understand what the teacher asked him to do without explaining it to him. There was a time the teacher asked all students to pick up a “problem” the character had to solve from their books. Picasso didn’t get what he was supposed to do. The reason was that he had no idea what the “problem” meant. After I assisted him to understand the meaning of “problem”, he successfully finished the task. It is obvious that he needs extra help on English comprehension, although he can speak English fluently. The ELL teacher at school assessed him and reported that English wouldn’t be the primary obstacle in his learning since a) he can speak English fluently, and b) he has a wide range of vocabulary. However, the level of speaking English doesn’t necessarily represent the level of English literacy.

Because of the language problem, he couldn’t catch up with the teacher’s words unless the teacher slows down his pace for him. For example, when the teacher was teaching the whole class math and asked students to calculate 5+6, Picasso didn’t write down anything related to the addition, which indicated that he didn’t know how to calculate. Without the extra attention and help from the teacher inside his ZPD, Picasso couldn’t learn anything new. However, there was a time when the teacher was doing the small group instruction to students whose math achievements fall behind the class, including Picasso. They are learning additions and subtractions. A sample question is like “There are 7 red and green beans in total. There are 3 red beans. How many green beans?” After the teacher instructed Picasso, using a board with lattices and 3 red toys to visualize the problem, he was engaged and asked the question correctly. The small group instruction is a kind of scaffolding where the teacher could provide personalized assistance that matches with the level of the ability of Picasso.

Lack of scaffolding is one of the most important variables related to the dysfunction of the Picasso, since it touches Picasso’s specific problem: language comprehension. Without appropriate scaffolding on language, it is impossible to achieve highly for ELL students like Picasso. Moreover, the learning materials and drills need to be tailored according to students’ specific levels.

Variety of Modalities & Student Interest

I put these two factors together because they are both related to students’ interest. Mrs. Nice usually used visual and audio materials to attract most students’ eyes. However, Picasso showed little interest in photography, sound or video. Rather, He was interested in movement. He was good at bodily movement such as running and acting. Obviously, his brain runs quickly through movement. Almost in every tutoring, he loved to move, running around the table or touching windows. When he was learning concrete nouns, I came up with the idea of asking him to find the vocabulary that we were learning in the classroom. For example, “can you find three squares in this room?” I said to him, He then touched a square chair, a window and a piece of paper in the square. He reported that this was more interesting than just reading aloud vocabularies. Similarly, I would sometimes let him draw things that we were learning to attract his interest.

He also loved using bodily language and was full of imagination on acting. When he was learning vocabulary, I asked him to act out the vocabulary we were learning, and he was very excited and engaged in this acting activity. After that, he could remember the vocabulary and was able to use them in daily life.

In addition to modality of movement, there were some topics that he was interested in, such as hot wheels and scorpion. He was more engaged in instructions where I mentioned them than instructions where I didn’t. I would also show my interest in Egypt, his mother country, and asked him how to say XXX (some vocabularies that we were learning) in Egyptian. After connecting with his mother tongue, he was getting much more impressed by what we learnt.

Encouragement & affirmation

Although Mrs. Nice is good at building an effective and harmonious learning environment, she doesn’t pay much attention to providing encouragement and affirmation to students. It is common for her to assign tasks to students and then to prepare for next tasks. When students complete tasks, they just move to another task. Two teachers seldom praise how well they completed and how much improvement Picasso made. There was a time when the teacher asked a question and let students share their answers in pairs. After sharing, Picasso was asked to report the answer. Seeing that he was not that confident in his answer, Mrs. Nice said, “I heard your partner told you the answer (during the sharing)”. A more nurturing way to encourage him might be, “Just give a try. I heard you talked about the answer.” The former one indicates that even though he got the right answer, it was all credited to his partner’s efforts and he had no contribution to this. It might be possible for Picasso to not engage in further discussion any more.

Besides, from the data collected, I am pretty sure that he needs adults’ encouragement to strengthen his academic self-confidence. When I was asking him to read aloud the book, he got distracted and talked about an animal. Then he acted out and was imitating the animal for a while. Then I was amused and praised him as “cute”. Then, he turned to be shy but happy, and said “Am I cute?” This was the first time I felt I touched something important, that is, his soft self-esteem. It has been proved that the encouragement works on him well. After that, he liked to show him his handmade bookmark and other masterpieces. He wanted me to affirm his competence that his teacher rarely said yes to.

It is obvious that he needs more encouragement and affirmation than other students to get involved in class and be persistent on tasks since the language problem is a big obstacle for him to build a positive academic self-concept. In my first tutoring, he showed interest in my mother tongue. I think this is his way to say, “hey, we are bilingual people” and indicated the beginning of the awareness about his bicultural identity. Actually, as an ELL, it is possible to get a low sense of belonging in another culture, which might lead to low self-concept as well. I usually encouraged him as an ELL, and told him how I learnt English. I think that might help as well.

Without encouragement and affirmation, the vicious circle won’t stop. As his academic performance got lower and lower, he would keep assuming he couldn’t do anything on math and reading and finally give up.

Responsiveness

Two teachers didn’t realize Picasso’s trouble with language, and were too occupied to actively provide enough individualized assistance for him. The head teacher usually prepared materials for following activities when she was not busy, seldom actively coming to students who were looking for help. Assistant teacher didn’t either. Two teachers even didn’t realize Picasso’s problem with instructional comprehension. Mrs. Nice knew Picasso had passed the ESL exam and thought his English level wouldn’t be an obstacle for learning. She thought it was his parents who were unresponsive for his after school learning that caused Picasso’s low academic productivity. This is not true. As I just discussed in the scaffolding part, he does need help on language comprehension. The issue is that they were supposed to correctly identify his problem. There were many times that Picasso showed his low literacy skills. He was usually not sure what was supposed to do and asked teachers for help. After the teacher explained to him, he could start the tasks. In other words, the teachers were not responsive on identifying what Picasso’s trouble actually was, although they got evidence that suggested he couldn’t understand the language as well as native speakers.

When students worked on tasks, teachers were busy making materials for next tasks and seldom cared about what students thought about. They did a good job on teaching, but not as much on educating. Sometimes Mrs. Nice did small group instructions for students to fall behind. In the small group instruction, Picasso could master more knowledge than he did in regular class. He learnt subtraction, addition, and some basic English words after the teacher’s personalized instruction as I mentioned above. However, the assistance is not offered consistently. I saw she only did two small group instructions of my eleven visits, which is obviously not enough for Picasso to catch up with other students.

In the last 3 times of tutoring, Picasso showed increasing interest and couldn’t wait to study with me, which was totally opposite to his disengagement from regular class. This indicates how much he needs someone to come to him and give a hand.

Significant Background

School

The Sunny School is the only one public school that has a partnership with a local university, and has a strong record of student achievement compared to other schools in the state, which indicates that the school environment is positive and achievement-oriented. The environment might be good for gifted students to reach their potential, however children with challenges would somehow feel great pressure from their competitive peers. Their learning results/academic achievement might be cared much more than how they learn and how much they have improved. In addition, lack of the support from ELL teachers would impede Picasso’s language development. The school provides language support for ELL students who don’t pass the standard test that only measures the ability of oral language proficiency. Since Picasso had passed the test, he didn’t get any support from the ELL teacher. Although his English language ability is better than students who don’t speak fluently, he still needs help from an ELL teacher on language comprehension. It seems like the school doesn’t consider and support the needs of students like Picasso.

Classroom information

The head teacher, Mrs. Nice, is very good at designing and delivering various learning activities. The whole class is efficient and productive. Students are always busy finishing interesting activities. However, the positive but intense pace doesn’t match with the pace of students who get language difficulty. Normally, students like Picasso don’t get enough time to finish their tasks even with assistance, let alone to digest new knowledge. A regular math learning activity the teacher holds is like this. There are four kinds of activities occurring at the same time. Students are divided into four groups according to their level of ability and have to finish all four activities in groups. When the teacher asked students to wrap up and move to the next one, students in the low-achieved group just understood how to play. It is obvious that low-achieved students take more time and effort on the same task than high-achieved students. However, the teachers were not responsive to tailor the activities or adjust the pace to meet individual needs.

Family information

(For privacy reason, this section is hidden)

Recommendations & Next Steps

Recommendation for school

My recommendation for School is to provide assistance to ELLs who are fluent in oral language but still struggling on comprehension. As research has shown, oral language proficiency doesn’t necessarily represent word-level reading skills or literacy. The school now is using oral language proficiency to predict literacy. As Picasso showed that he could fluently speak English and speak out a wide range of vocabulary, the school thought that he was not supposed to have any problem in language. However, as we discussed above, he might not understand words that he speak. As a result, he didn’t get any support on language comprehension.

Actually, in many school districts, oral language proficiency performance plays an important role in deciding who should get extra assistance. According to a report funded by the U.S. Department of Education, in 2003 there were 73% school districts that used oral proficiency tests in English as one indicator for providing services to special education limited English proficiency students. It is no problem to consider oral language proficiency as a source of information. The school could consider other dimensions as well such as writing samples in English and literacy tests and then make careful decisions (August, 2005).

Recommendation for teachers

1. Provide Picasso more opportunity to learn vocabulary, especially basic words.

   Teachers could refer to Tier 1 words that researchers labeled as basic words, usually used but rarely instructed at school. Teachers also can consider how to teach in four dimensions of Tier words: concreteness, cognate status, depth of word meaning, and utility.

   Practically, teachers could make Tier 1 word cards and present certain word cards when the words are being used, as research has shown the effectiveness of procedures for presenting words. If it is hard to organize a great number of cards, teachers could make 20 words, for example, per week, and try to use these target words as frequently as possible. Remember to show the cards and illustrate the meaning of it right after using the target words. Teachers could also make use of his strength in bodily motion, such as asking him to act out target words and using certain motions to remind him target words.

   It is also possible to let Picasso make his own word bank. He could write down a word per day that he has newly learnt, and draw whatever he thought related to the word around. As he likes to draw, he would be more engaged in this and more impressive than simply remembering the words.

2. Develop phonological processing skills and working memory in English.

   Picasso usually mixed different word that looks similar, such as mixing “you” with “your”. Geva et al. (2000) summarized that phonological processing skills and working memory play important roles in reading and literacy skills. Specifically, letter-name knowledge, sound structure of language and the speed of naming and labeling objects. Teachers could provide support to Picasso on these aspects.

   Practically, teachers can specially instruct the how to pronounce letters and asked him to sort words according to pronunciation. It would also be useful to link this activity with vocabulary learning (discussed in last bullet) together. Teachers could make cards for 26 letters and asked him to make up to the words in his book bank. It might be possible to let him make a letter bank and make use of his passion in drawing.

3. Build a mastery-oriented atmosphere.

   In a classroom, it is the expectations the head teacher holds influence students’ adaptations. Sunny School prefers product-oriented goal rather than mastery-oriented goal. As same as the class. As it is not suitable for Picasso who couldn’t catch up with students in average levels, teachers need to change their atmosphere to build a mastery-based classroom. Instead of spending a lot of time on preparing materials, the teacher need to put more time on how to get Picasso master skills through differentiated instruction.

   In a mastery-based classroom, curriculum is committed to the success of all students and students are not “allowed” to give up. Therefore, encouragement would play an important role in Picasso’s active learning.

   It is hard for teachers totally change the class into mastery-based. However, there are still some things that they can do to build a mastery-learning atmosphere. Posters on the wall that teachers drawn and written perfectly might make Picasso feel pressure. Teachers could use a wall special for students presenting their works and pick up different works so that Picasso will not being compared with others. As Picasso is good at drawing, the teacher could ask him to present his drawings as well.

What I learnt

“Learning is a process, before it can be a product.”

The philosophy helps me to empathize with Picasso a lot. At the very beginning of my tutoring experience, I didn’t realize that I used my power to push him to finish the task. I was trying to just get him to finish things, letting him write down correct answers, getting him to read aloud even though he thought it was too hard to read. My patience disappeared quickly when he got distracted from the schoolwork for the tenth time. Actually, all of these were because I didn’t really feel the pressure and difficulty that he got. When I realized that learning is a process rather than a product, I could empathize with Picasso much more than before.

I was a product-oriented student. I got stressed when I didn’t finish the assignments as well as others. When writing assignments, I would think about the negative outcomes if I didn’t do everything perfectly. These made it hard to concentrate on the tasks. When I changed my mind about the process, what should I master to achieve the goal, I became more relaxed and engaged.

“Teaching is a process, before it can be a product.”

Why he is easily distracted? Feel boring? Why he keeps talking about scorpion? Is that something related to his mother country? In the middle of my tutoring, I was aware of these questions and began to slow down my pace, to get to know his interest, observe his strength, weakness and improvement, and to chat with him from the heart. I found him to be really cute. Actually, he doesn’t mean to be problematic, he needs help. Nobody want to be problematic, you see they are problematic that’s because they need help.

In China, there is an old saying that goes like this “learning through teaching”. The tutoring experience is a bidirectional process where Picasso changed me and I had an influence on him back. I want to thank Picasso for changing my product-oriented teaching. I hate performance goals. However, as I was raised and educated in a county valued competition, product, and performance, I have been shaped by the environment to be a product person. When I became a teacher and got power to shape my students, what should I do? Something needs to change.

In a product-oriented school, education is for eliminating those less privileged, problematic, and unable and then for selecting those who are born talented, smart and productive. However, as everyone born equally, we as teachers don’t have the authority to judge students. Rather, the key is the effective process. What does the process look like? The following equation represents my thoughts.

“Love = respect + belief + patient”

I adjusted the equation many times.. This equation was built based on my tutoring experience as an ELL student. As I think love is the most important thing during the education process, I put it on the left.

Respect stands for “human point of view”, referring to the idea that you need to look at oneself beyond the labels. Picasso was labeled as an easily distracted child probably with a learning disability by his teachers. However, that is not the truth. Beyond his label, there is a cute but vulnerable person over there. He had a problem with language comprehension but his teachers were too occupied to help him out. The dysfunction circle I just discussed probably is the reason for his distraction, or probably not. However, the key is to learn, rather than to assume. In addition, for respect, you need to put yourself in other’s shoes. One big barrier that stopped me from understanding him is myself. I couldn’t understand why he always recognized “you” as “your” when I didn’t have any problem with it. However, I may have had the same problem when I was learning English probably 10 years ago. Try to forget what you are and imagine you are in the same age, same developmental stage with your child. That’s one strategy I have learnt to think in others’ shoes.

For belief, teachers must believe that their children are able to reach their potential in ZPDs. Moreover, teachers must have a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset, to believe that they are able to help children out. At the beginning of the tutoring, I kind of held a fixed mindset, thinking that his problem might be brain’s problem. When you believe it is his brain problem, you have kind of admitted the problem is fixed and hard to be improved any more. I experienced my change from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset, which is to be thankful. Through exploring his dysfunction, I got to find the great role that classroom microsystem and school exosystem was playing in the development of little Picasso. I came to change my attitude and believe that Picasso has adapted himself so hard to meet the developmentally expectations. It is because the expectations are beyond his ZDP that he couldn’t make positive change. As a teacher, we have to think about what we can do to facilitate his adaptation. Mrs. Nice and the ESL teacher believe that it is Picasso’s parents’ responsibility to improve his academic performance; the report turns out that there are a bunch of things in the classroom that still need to be improved.

Being patient is a subsequent part of belief. When you put patience on a child, you must believe he can. One thing for sure is that education won’t lead to immediate effects. It is progressively and cumulatively that development is happening. As an impatient person, when I don’t see any immediate effect, I will be disappointed and consider other strategies. It was only at my 6th or 7th visit that Picasso showed his excitement to study with me. It took him nearly two month to adapt to my tutoring and to like it. How about the influence of the scaffolding, responsiveness, various modality, etc.? May take more time to see. Another important thing to have patience is persistence. It is teachers’ persistent efforts that make influence happen. You don’t mind being persistent and focusing on a process rather than a product. You keep trying to make a difference. You teach upon your educational philosophy that is different from the school.

Respect, belief, and persistence make up for the process of love. I learnt how to really understand, strongly believe and persistently work with Picasso. I wish I can treat my future students following this equation.