Experience Informs Instruction Skills Teaching Learning-Disabled Students

November 20, 2008

By NICK KATZ nkatz@pioneerlocal.com

David Kessler doesn't mince words when asked why he volunteers to mentor learning-disabled junior high students.

"I want to save the world. We all want to save the world," the Northwestern University student said.

Kessler is one of four area college students who travel to Golf Middle School each Monday where they buddy up with learning-disabled students at the school for an after-school program that combines art or craft projects with a chance for the two sets of students, college and junior high, to talk about school and other issues that are important to the younger students.

What makes Project Eye-to-Eye special is that the college students themselves have learning disabilities that they have learned to deal with.

They understand what their young counterparts are going through as they too try to cope with disabilities. The younger students can see that it's possible for them to succeed and even excel in the same way the older students have.

"We know what it's like to be them," said Robert Schaefer, a graduate student at National-Louis University.

Bari Levin, special education teacher at Golf, ran a trial of the program last school year. This year it is running a full 16 weeks with an average of seven students a week.

She hopes to expand it again next year with more mentors so that they can be teamed up with students one-on-one.

"The goal is to have them be able to see that everybody learns differently, but they can be successful," she said.

Project Eye-to-Eye, based in New York, aims to help students with learning disabilities improve their self-esteem. The program at Golf is the first in Illinois.

The college-age mentors serve as role models, Levin said, and can help the younger students in a way that even she can't. They have been though the same difficulties as the junior high kids and have come out not only OK, but have succeeded.

Kessler and Schaefer as well as mentor Noah Yulish, another Northwestern student, are in graduate school working on masters degrees. The fourth, Brian Amado, is working on his bachelors at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"We know what a learning disability is like," Amado said.

"Just because they learn differently doesn't mean they can't succeed," Schaefer added.

Kessler is a good example. He can't read words in the usual manner, but instead has to memorize them so that he can recognize them. That's the kind of thing he can share with the junior high students.

Kessler note that four out of five students with learning disabilities have IQs in excess of 100. However, only 2 percent of them go to college.

That's something they hope to change, one student at a time.

At a session Monday four students worked with the four mentors, each pair shaking hands and wrapping their clasped hands with plaster-soaked gauze to make a model of the handshake.

As they worked, wrapping sheet after sheet of dripping gauze, they talk about school, books, problems the junior high students are having. The mentor's offered a bit of advice and related stories from their own experience.

They say they can help the younger students find new ways to learn, ways to work around their disabilities and be proud of who they are. And it's easy for them to identify with the young students.

"I didn't get a diagnosed until I was in the seventh grade," Schaefer said. Without that knowledge he said, he thought he was just unable to learn.

It was even worse for Kessler, who wasn't diagnosed with attention deficit disorder until he was in college.

"I got kicked out of high school," said Kessler, who later graduated from an alternative high school. "I thought I was stupid.

"It wasn't just hard for me. It's hard for everybody. He said.

The Golf students aren't the only ones who benefit from the program, either, they said.

"I see this as a way to have a direct impact on a kid's life," Yulish said.

"I leave here feeling good every time I'm here," Kessler said.

Although she has no quantifiable data to prove the program is working, Levin said the fact that her kids are there after school in a voluntary program shows that it is.

"The fact that they are showing up after school is to me an important factor," she said.

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