Post by ellyodd on Mar 3, 2005 6:01:51 GMT -5
This is the first article that has been published about me and my dyscalculia. It's in a Danish magazine for teachers. (http://www.friegrundskoler.dk - but its in Danish)
Gifted - and learning disabled
20 different math teachers couldn’t teach Mette math. As an adult, she realized why.
Mette Christoffersen is waiting for me at the Copenhagen town square. She's there in good time, as always. Mette is dyscalculic, and that means, among other things, that she has no inner clock - and therefore she's always afraid of being late.
In a cafe, she tells more;
>> I wasn’t particularly happy about recess in school, because I didn’t know how long they were. 15 or 2 minutes, I can't tell how much time has gone, I have NO inner clock. I always spent recess right by the door, so I wouldn’t be late for class. <<
The missing sense of time is just one of the things dyscalculia can cause, but every dyscalculic has their own type and degree of the disability.
For Mette, it also implies having trouble with left and right. And she gets distracted easily, so if she has 4 things to do in a row, she will forget 2 of them.
But that is just side effects, and she can live with that. The big problem about dyscalculia is the lack of being able to "compute" and understand numbers, just like dyslexics and words. A dyscalculic person has a normal IQ, but numbers is so confusing and unmanageable that it IS a disability. If you say 2x2, Mette wouldn’t understand (that’s over the top, but... whatever).
Mette Christoffersen experienced school as a negative thing, and the reason she's doing this interview is because she hopes that teachers one day will be able to identify dyscalculic students and find helpful ways to work with and around the disability.
Lazy and stupid
In school, she was seen as lazy and stupid. None of the teachers she met was able to put the pieces together - they couldn’t see that the problems she had in math class was actually a real problem - a disability.
>> I knew something was wrong, when we had to learn the multiplication tables. The other kids could do it easily, but I couldn’t even do the 10-20-30 etc.
The first math teacher I had was away all the time, so he didn’t see that there was a problem. If he had realized that, he would have sent me to an extra math class. But that wouldn’t have done me any good - cramming math doesn’t help a dyscalculic. In stead we need new ways of learning math. In Denmark, the teachers are not allowed to teach how to do multiplication in more than 2 ways. That's stupid. I know dyscalculics that can do math ok, if they get the opportunity to do the stuff their own way. Isn’t the important thing, when it comes to math, that the result is right, NOT how you get there? <<
>> The next math teacher I had, told me to get a grip. "You can do it, if you want to!” That comment can hurt more than you realize <<, Mette says.
One-to-one lessons
In a third place she was taught math alone, in 6 months. And all she did was division.
>> I actually did learn division. Some days. And the next day, I had forgotten all about it. I don't get, that when it was SO obvious that I couldnt learn this, in this way, that the teacher kept on trying. I liked her, she didn’t yell at me like other teachers had, but she had no idea what was going on. She had probably listened too much to the former math teachers I had, when they called me lazy and stupid. <<
ARE you stupid and lazy?
>> No. I got very good grades in other classes time after time. And I really did try to understand math. <<
She calls herself a quiet girl. She wasn’t bullied or anything like that in school, but she always felt really alone with her learning disability, no one understood.
"Misplaced"
Mette changed school 4 times in 10 years, because of her disability. At one time, she went to a special school, with children with severe ADD, autism and other behavior difficulties. She says she wasted so much time there - was actually taught Danish with dyslexics, even though she always got A+ in spelling - simply because no one else in the school was at her level. She felt misplaced.
All these years she was alone with this problem, and no one but her understood that she wasn’t lazy and stupid. No one helped her.
There was a good period, though. She had a substitute teacher in 8th grade, and he somehow taught her about percentage. She still remembers that, but it has to be simple percentage. (I’d like to add, that teacher ROCKED, I loved him, even though I only had him for 5 weeks. Can't remember his name, but I remember the math he taught me - crazy, huh)
Advice
If Mette has to give some specific advice for teachers, it would be to find the literature there exists, in Swedish, Norwegian and English. Nothing good has come out in Danish. Also, her advice is; give time!
>> The teacher has to ask the student questions, to try and find a way that this specific student can learn math. Find different ways to teach, than the normal ways. <<
Mette, as an adult
(just want to add that the whole education system in Denmark is way different than in the us, so just ignore what you think sounds odd
Mette didn’t pass 9th grade math - she didn’t take the test. After that, she has tried to take different educations, everything from cooking school to layout. But everything has numbers in it, and she can't work around it, so she dropped those educations.
All the while, she had no idea that there was such a thing as dyscalculia (even though I have always called myself number blind - in Denmark dyslexia is called "word blind", and therefore dyscalculia has been named something alike, number blind, all by itself. 100% of all the dyscalculics I talk with here in Denmark, has some time or another called themselves number blind, without realizing that it is for real. Hey, this was supposed to be an article about me, not BY me, shut up...). Not until this year, when she saw a program in TV about a dyscalculic woman. She felt relieved - she was no longer alone with this problem, and thought that she could finally get some help.
Mette lives on her own, and does her own budget and everything. She manages, because she only has limited expenses, for now. When she shops, she has no idea what the things will cost, so she always carries around extra money.
The future? A pre-pedagogy study, that takes 1 year and 7 months, beginning in September. She has to take that course, to get into the "real" pedagogy study at the university. The government is trying to change that way to get into the pedagogy study, but she really hopes that she will get in before it changes.
>> If not, I have no chance whatsoever, to get an education and get on with my life. << (in Denmark, you actually almost need an university degree to get a job at 7-eleven)
Mette is now active in the dyscalculia association.
Interview with Lena Lindenskov
Denmark has been too focused on education for everybody and not for the individual, says Lena Lindenskov, Associate professor (in math education, normal and special) at The Danish University of Education - www.dpu.dk/site.asp?p=6604&init=lenali〈=eng.
>> If you want to hurt a dyscalculic child, just tell him/her "you can do this, if you want to". >>
Lena Lindenskov calls that comment a mistake, and it can actually make things a lot worse for the dyscalculic. As a former schoolteacher and now professor, she has studied the area around math difficulties, and sees dyscalculia as a serious handicap, because math is all around us, in education and daily life.
She thinks that there is too little focus on the problem, and not enough material for teachers. >> The government education department and the minister of education are doing nothing about this. The local school authorities are doing nothing about this. And therefore, the schools are doing nothing about this. Because of that, students with math learning problems are bound to be misunderstood. <<
Her comment to Mette Christoffersen's story is;
>> The dyscalculic children have to be recognized earlier, so they won't go through what Mette did. There HAS to be adults who has the time and training to support kids with these problems. You don't have to be good at math to realize that there is way to little of those adults around. The area is a low priority. Its so easy to say that math learning problems has to do with motivation or concentration, but in a lot of cases it will be dead wrong. <<
Her advice is, that the adults have to help the children in two areas - getting them motivated and help them concentrate, AND work on the academics.
>> The dyscalculic children experience that they forget the things that the other children have learned. There has to be something special done about that, so that the student can actually remember what they did in class yesterday. It’s no good just to leave a done assignment, and then move on to the next. The teacher has to notice WHAT made the student learn this.
The important thing is not being able to remember the multiplication tables quickly or see through a problem formulation. The important thing is, that they will see the assignments and problem formulations as meaningful and feel secure that they know how to find a result. <<
Gifted - and learning disabled
20 different math teachers couldn’t teach Mette math. As an adult, she realized why.
Mette Christoffersen is waiting for me at the Copenhagen town square. She's there in good time, as always. Mette is dyscalculic, and that means, among other things, that she has no inner clock - and therefore she's always afraid of being late.
In a cafe, she tells more;
>> I wasn’t particularly happy about recess in school, because I didn’t know how long they were. 15 or 2 minutes, I can't tell how much time has gone, I have NO inner clock. I always spent recess right by the door, so I wouldn’t be late for class. <<
The missing sense of time is just one of the things dyscalculia can cause, but every dyscalculic has their own type and degree of the disability.
For Mette, it also implies having trouble with left and right. And she gets distracted easily, so if she has 4 things to do in a row, she will forget 2 of them.
But that is just side effects, and she can live with that. The big problem about dyscalculia is the lack of being able to "compute" and understand numbers, just like dyslexics and words. A dyscalculic person has a normal IQ, but numbers is so confusing and unmanageable that it IS a disability. If you say 2x2, Mette wouldn’t understand (that’s over the top, but... whatever).
Mette Christoffersen experienced school as a negative thing, and the reason she's doing this interview is because she hopes that teachers one day will be able to identify dyscalculic students and find helpful ways to work with and around the disability.
Lazy and stupid
In school, she was seen as lazy and stupid. None of the teachers she met was able to put the pieces together - they couldn’t see that the problems she had in math class was actually a real problem - a disability.
>> I knew something was wrong, when we had to learn the multiplication tables. The other kids could do it easily, but I couldn’t even do the 10-20-30 etc.
The first math teacher I had was away all the time, so he didn’t see that there was a problem. If he had realized that, he would have sent me to an extra math class. But that wouldn’t have done me any good - cramming math doesn’t help a dyscalculic. In stead we need new ways of learning math. In Denmark, the teachers are not allowed to teach how to do multiplication in more than 2 ways. That's stupid. I know dyscalculics that can do math ok, if they get the opportunity to do the stuff their own way. Isn’t the important thing, when it comes to math, that the result is right, NOT how you get there? <<
>> The next math teacher I had, told me to get a grip. "You can do it, if you want to!” That comment can hurt more than you realize <<, Mette says.
One-to-one lessons
In a third place she was taught math alone, in 6 months. And all she did was division.
>> I actually did learn division. Some days. And the next day, I had forgotten all about it. I don't get, that when it was SO obvious that I couldnt learn this, in this way, that the teacher kept on trying. I liked her, she didn’t yell at me like other teachers had, but she had no idea what was going on. She had probably listened too much to the former math teachers I had, when they called me lazy and stupid. <<
ARE you stupid and lazy?
>> No. I got very good grades in other classes time after time. And I really did try to understand math. <<
She calls herself a quiet girl. She wasn’t bullied or anything like that in school, but she always felt really alone with her learning disability, no one understood.
"Misplaced"
Mette changed school 4 times in 10 years, because of her disability. At one time, she went to a special school, with children with severe ADD, autism and other behavior difficulties. She says she wasted so much time there - was actually taught Danish with dyslexics, even though she always got A+ in spelling - simply because no one else in the school was at her level. She felt misplaced.
All these years she was alone with this problem, and no one but her understood that she wasn’t lazy and stupid. No one helped her.
There was a good period, though. She had a substitute teacher in 8th grade, and he somehow taught her about percentage. She still remembers that, but it has to be simple percentage. (I’d like to add, that teacher ROCKED, I loved him, even though I only had him for 5 weeks. Can't remember his name, but I remember the math he taught me - crazy, huh)
Advice
If Mette has to give some specific advice for teachers, it would be to find the literature there exists, in Swedish, Norwegian and English. Nothing good has come out in Danish. Also, her advice is; give time!
>> The teacher has to ask the student questions, to try and find a way that this specific student can learn math. Find different ways to teach, than the normal ways. <<
Mette, as an adult
(just want to add that the whole education system in Denmark is way different than in the us, so just ignore what you think sounds odd
Mette didn’t pass 9th grade math - she didn’t take the test. After that, she has tried to take different educations, everything from cooking school to layout. But everything has numbers in it, and she can't work around it, so she dropped those educations.
All the while, she had no idea that there was such a thing as dyscalculia (even though I have always called myself number blind - in Denmark dyslexia is called "word blind", and therefore dyscalculia has been named something alike, number blind, all by itself. 100% of all the dyscalculics I talk with here in Denmark, has some time or another called themselves number blind, without realizing that it is for real. Hey, this was supposed to be an article about me, not BY me, shut up...). Not until this year, when she saw a program in TV about a dyscalculic woman. She felt relieved - she was no longer alone with this problem, and thought that she could finally get some help.
Mette lives on her own, and does her own budget and everything. She manages, because she only has limited expenses, for now. When she shops, she has no idea what the things will cost, so she always carries around extra money.
The future? A pre-pedagogy study, that takes 1 year and 7 months, beginning in September. She has to take that course, to get into the "real" pedagogy study at the university. The government is trying to change that way to get into the pedagogy study, but she really hopes that she will get in before it changes.
>> If not, I have no chance whatsoever, to get an education and get on with my life. << (in Denmark, you actually almost need an university degree to get a job at 7-eleven)
Mette is now active in the dyscalculia association.
Interview with Lena Lindenskov
Denmark has been too focused on education for everybody and not for the individual, says Lena Lindenskov, Associate professor (in math education, normal and special) at The Danish University of Education - www.dpu.dk/site.asp?p=6604&init=lenali〈=eng.
>> If you want to hurt a dyscalculic child, just tell him/her "you can do this, if you want to". >>
Lena Lindenskov calls that comment a mistake, and it can actually make things a lot worse for the dyscalculic. As a former schoolteacher and now professor, she has studied the area around math difficulties, and sees dyscalculia as a serious handicap, because math is all around us, in education and daily life.
She thinks that there is too little focus on the problem, and not enough material for teachers. >> The government education department and the minister of education are doing nothing about this. The local school authorities are doing nothing about this. And therefore, the schools are doing nothing about this. Because of that, students with math learning problems are bound to be misunderstood. <<
Her comment to Mette Christoffersen's story is;
>> The dyscalculic children have to be recognized earlier, so they won't go through what Mette did. There HAS to be adults who has the time and training to support kids with these problems. You don't have to be good at math to realize that there is way to little of those adults around. The area is a low priority. Its so easy to say that math learning problems has to do with motivation or concentration, but in a lot of cases it will be dead wrong. <<
Her advice is, that the adults have to help the children in two areas - getting them motivated and help them concentrate, AND work on the academics.
>> The dyscalculic children experience that they forget the things that the other children have learned. There has to be something special done about that, so that the student can actually remember what they did in class yesterday. It’s no good just to leave a done assignment, and then move on to the next. The teacher has to notice WHAT made the student learn this.
The important thing is not being able to remember the multiplication tables quickly or see through a problem formulation. The important thing is, that they will see the assignments and problem formulations as meaningful and feel secure that they know how to find a result. <<