Great Stories
Montana Campus Corps:
College Students Meeting Critical Community Needs
Learning to Learn by Laura D'esterre

I've had a number of great experiences as an Americorps member but when I sort through my memories for one that has perhaps been the most rewarding, a child with a learning disability stands out beyond the rest. I had an opportunity to tutor a young man who had barely slipped through the 7th grade and was expected to be incapable of meeting expectations to make it through 8th grade if he did not get assistance. He particularly struggled with subjects that required a great deal of reading and he struggled with writing as well.
This young man was dyslexic in a school environment that promoted only visual learning styles. Almost all of the teaching in this school was presented in texts and lectures that required rigorous note taking. While dyslexia alone would make it difficult for this young man to thrive in this atmosphere, to top things off, he was blind in one eye as well, so the already jumbled view of words that would be seen with two eyes were even more limited by the blindness in one eye.
Even with that disability, it was not the challenge that stuck out most about this young man. What makes this young man someone to recall was the manner in which he dealt with the challenge and his easy going personality and humor that enabled him to overcome many of the obstacles in his path to learning. Many tutoring sessions would consist of humorous banter about a historical figure, an event in history that ended with an amusing twist, a unique way to write about a season, or a comical picture that would summarize a point being made in a presentation. Together we would utilize the internet and research information to support his knowledge on particular topics. He discovered that he could write with ease when using a computer and that the jokes about historical figures enabled him to accrue A's on his history tests. He had discovered a new way to learn and he applied it to all his subjects. He would get his fellow students to join him in this new way of learning during study halls and he gained a confidence that was a pleasure to watch. He had even reached such an incredible capacity to write that has teachers began to doubt he had actually written his literature submissions. Being able to help this young man learn to learn was rewarding to me because I felt that I had truly taught this young man to "fish to feed him for a lifetime, rather than hand him a fish to feed him for a day."

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