Learning Differences

Session # 1224 : Teaching Research Skills to Students with Learning Differences
Teaching research skills to students is a challenge but when those students have learning disabilities, learning differences and disorders such as ADHD, Autism and Asperger.s syndrome the task can seem insurmountable.
Last summer, I got a call from a mother of a child with a learning difference. She explained that she was having a difficult time finding resources to help her son, who has severe difficulties reading. I ended up matching up talking books and print books in our collection (he was too old for kits), and gave it to her to try. She has never followed up as to the success of the impromptu kits, but the conversations I shared with her made me really think about the services we need to provide as a public library. We had several very long phone conversations in which she really expressed to me how frustrated she was with the education system, and the limited amount of resources available to her son. This interaction is what prompted me to attend this session, which turned out to be more focused on teacher librarians in secondary schools. I also think that as part of our Learning Place initiative, we should be aware of and address learning differences in our classes we develop. Not only acceptance of every kind of learner, but perhaps we need a class specially tailored for a particular kind of learner.
This course was extremely useful – I don’t feel by any means that I am an expert on the subject, but they gave a very good run-down of best practices when interacting with children with learning differences. This includes what one can expect, ways in which we can maximize their success in the learning environment, and best bets of resources we can use to help them achieve their research goals. They also have links to the projects they did with their classes, in which each student made a PowerPoint Presentation on a person of their choice. The issue of learning differences is something we may want to explore in the Inclusive Services Committee as well as the Programming Steering Committee.
Megan