‘How I gained from the right help’

Rebecca: Primary and secondary school teachers should be equipped with the knowledge and skills to teach special needs students.

AS a five-year-old, I watched enviously as Miss Y’s red pen glided swiftly across my classmates’ written work, leaving bold red ticks and three stars before letting them go back to their seats.

Although I had tried really hard to solve the mathematical word problems, Miss Y left gigantic crosses on my work before turning to me with her red pen in hand and dotting my head out of frustration.

“Ugh! What to do lah?” I heard her lamenting to the other teachers about it.

To be fair, Miss Y wasn’t a bad teacher. She was so dedicated to her job that she was bothered about my inability to understand her teaching, despite the numerous exercises and examples she had given.

I felt annoyed with myself too for failing to grasp the basic concepts. Had Miss Y known that I had dyslexia and dyscalculia, she wouldn’t have “stabbed” me in the head.

Hence, the Education Ministry’s ruling that Malaysian kindergarten teachers are required to possess a diploma in early childhood education as a minimum qualification from the year 2020 is a step in the right direction.

This will ensure that young minds are nurtured by teachers with the necessary qualifications and understanding of the challenges in early childhood education.

I am also of the view that primary and secondary school teachers should be equipped with the knowledge and skills to teach special needs students.

While many may question the benefits of doing so – seeing that a great deal of time, effort and money would need to be spent on training courses – this is an investment which has the best interests of our youths at heart.

Firstly, the detection of learning disabilities can be done at an earlier stage if teachers are trained to spot children’s behavioural patterns and tendencies.

My kindergarten teachers assumed that I was a lazy or dreamy child. Unfortunately, this misconception is still widely perpetuated in schools – many teachers have probably dismissed students as “slow” or “lazy” without knowing the underlying reasons.

Before you judge any student, try putting yourself in the person’s shoes. Imagine not being able to distinguish a “b” from a “d”, seeing words clumped together or having difficulty concentrating, despite your best efforts.

It’s only when teachers are able to spot and connect the missing links can they work together with parents and the students to overcome the problem.

Secondly, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when teaching special needs students. By understanding their individual strengths and how learning disabilities affect their thought processes, the task of educating them becomes more productive and less stressful.

In my case, Miss Wati, a teacher from Persatuan Dyslexia Malaysia, started having one-to-one sessions with me where the emphasis was on phonics and we read short stories while practising the methods she had taught me.

Within three months, she successfully “decoded” my brain and I began to enjoy reading.

Today, I’m proud to say that I am a bookworm and my performance throughout my primary and secondary schooling years has been great.

Schoolteachers can assist in referring students to experts like Miss Wati. The teachers can then do their part to reinforce in the classroom what has been taught by the specialists and encourage the students to be the best versions of themselves.

In recent years, prominent thought leaders and organisations have recognised that individuals with learning disabilities have strengths which can benefit the community if they’re tapped into.

For example, dyslexics are known to be creative, which makes them great problem-solvers. I suppose these traits play a part in Elon Musk and Richard Branson, both dyslexics, owning successful empires.

By having a teaching workforce who caters to the needs of academically challenged students, our teachers would be able to bring out the strengths of these individuals.

Furthermore, values such as empathy and kindness can be instilled in neurotypical students as they try to help their struggling friends and understand the challenges they face.

Most of the time, individuals with learning disabilities end up dropping out of school due to their inability to cope. This has a domino effect on society as it means unemployment and crime rates will rise.

By making quality education for these students accessible, we would be able to curb the social ills in our society to a greater extent.

Based on the points I put forth above, it can thus be deduced that our society will gain significant return on investment when educators are able to identify special needs students and assist in teaching them.

Rebecca, 17, a student in Selangor, is a participant of the BRATs Young Journalist Programme run by The Star’s Newspaper-in-Education (Star-NiE) team.