Weekly Recap: Week 4 of Fall '09

Ah, the pleasures and perils of having a guest presenter in your classes. On the one hand, you have less prep work to do and get to play "participatory audience member". On the other, you pass control over to another person - when this works, it's sublime, and when it fails, you end up with this.

Since many of my courses are developmental in nature, I go out of my way to give my students any leg-up possible. There usually is a world of reasons why a student ends up in my class as opposed to the "higher" version, and among the most frequent are learning disabilities (some diagnosed, some not). This week I decided to bring in a presenter from our Disability Resources department to do a presentation on Adaptive Technology for writing - basically a brief run-through of the computer programs they have to help students organize thoughts better, have material read aloud through a computer, etc. The University does a good job of emphasizing the idea of universal design, and how often progress made in order to help a certain part of the population actually in turn helps us all (example - think of any time you've had your hands full and hip-checked one of those handicapped buttons that automatically opens a door for you).

My presenter is a wonderful woman and a dear colleague, so this is in no way a criticism of her. To put it plainly, the presentation was a disaster. The software didn't work, every step was fraught with technology glitches, and even when something went smoothly, it just plain isn't interesting to watch someone tinker around with a computer program. I teach back-to-back sections of the same class, and the only thing worse than sitting through a difficult presentation is knowing that in another hour, there's a repeat performance.

I tried to play cheerleader, asking helpful and upbeat questions, finding ways to illustrate how - despite the fact that this program is failing in front of your very eyes - you really should consider using it. I sensed my presenter's frustration and embarrassment grow with each technical snafu. We both knew the class was bombing, but the show had to go on.

My own internal panic began to grow - this class is a struggle already, the kids don't want to be here right now, this isn't a productive use of anyone's time, why did I think this was important...

As class wrapped, a student lingered hesitantly. Everyone packed their books and shuffled off, and she approached the presenter and I:

"Um...I'm pretty sure I have some form of dyslexia. Those programs actually look really helpful - can I schedule a meeting with you to get tested?"

Instantly, I'm humbled. My worries had been so much about myself (and by extension, feeling the flop-sweat for my colleague), that I hadn't considered that this was, after all, a useful session - maybe not to everyone, and maybe not even to the majority, but we gave a student an avenue toward help, and ideally, success.