Learning Through the Eyes of a Disabled Person

"Learning isn't about how much knowledge you can gain within a period of time; it's about the skills that you develop throughout the journey." This quote came to me when I sat down one morning this week to do a Reiki session with my mom. As I sat there contemplating on what this quote could mean or how it  could be related to my life and the lives of others, I came to a realalization. All of our lives are one big journey from the time we are born to the time we take our last breath in our physical body and within each journey there are many different learning experiences that we will encounter as we go through life. This got me thinking about the different ways of learning and I started asking myself the question of what learning looks like through the eyes of a disabled person?

In this blog, I am going to talk about  the different approaches of learning,my learning experience, and other learning opptunities that have found that has worked for me.

  

The four approaches to learning

There are many different ways to learn a new topic. No two people are the same, so why should their learning be exactly the same? There are four main approaches or categories that we each prefer to use during our moments of learning. These include;

• Visual learners
• Auditory learners
• Kinesthetic learners
• Reading/Writing learners

Visual Learners

What is a visual learner?

People who are visual learners thrive on using pictures, diagrams, be shown how to do a certain task, and have to have the instruction where they can analysis it as they complete their work.  These learner are the ones who like to

• Doodle
• Make lists
• Take notes

Characteristics of a visual learner

Some characteristics of this type of learner include;

• Seeing to learn
• Likes images
• Take really good and detailed notes
• Looks around to find something to watch or look at when you lose interest
• Struggles with spoken directions because it's hard to remember them a short time later

Helpful tips for visual learners

Unfortunately, you won't always be in a situation that acommadates visual learners, so how can you still be succesful with your learning when you are put in a situation that is different than the way you normally complete tasks some tips that can help you in these type of situation include; 

• Watching or observing what others are doing. Learning through videos may be the easiest way for you to receive the information.
• Try to visualize something that goes along with what you hear someone telling you that will help you remember the directions.
• Write down key words, ideas, or instructions especially if they are given to you orally.
• If allowed, try using drawings, mind maps,or flow charts to help you understand and remember new concepts.
• Color, highlight, circle, or underline important information to help you get an idea of what you to focus on.

Auditory Learning

What is an Auditory learner?

The next learning approach is called auditory learning which is what it sounds like in the name. These types of learners thrive by collaborating and listening to other people.

Characteristics of an auditory learner 

Some ways you can tell if you are an auditory learner is if you

• Learns through listening
• Can remember conversations easily 
• Likes to listen to other people talking and remember the information they give you over taking notes.
• Likes to listen to music
• Have good communication skills which allows you to talk to people easily
• This would make you a good presenter or speech people
• Tend to be a chatterbox when you get bored with the information being taught
• Struggle with getting distracted by noise
• Tend to read slower
• Find diagrams hard to understand

Helpful tips for auditory learners

I find people who learn through listening to others and being able to recall the information they relay to you quite fascinating. Some helpful tips that can help you in prove your learning and get you through any situation includes;

•  Watching other people and adopting visual learners approach. you may have to rely on looking at diagrams, different charts, and reading written instructions.
• Try reading the content out loud to yourself to help remember the information.
• Repeat the information to yourself over and over again as a chant to help you remember the information.
• Jioning a group of people who are learning the same content as you and callaberate by get different ideas, asking questions to help you better learn the information.
• Attend a Q&A session
• Avoid noise by going into a quiet space away from people when possible

Kinesthetic Learners

What is a Kinesthetic learner?

Are you the types of person who likes to be physically active and use your hands in order to learn? If so, you may be a kinesthetic learner. These type of people learn best by moving around, using their hands, and figuring out how to do things as they go, rather than sitting still for a long period of time listening to a full on teaching.

Characteristics of a Kinesthetic learner

These individuals can be pointed out in any class or situation by their personalities. When you like to work with your hands certain traits will come out which includes;

• Moves to learn
• Probably love sports
• Like hands-on activities such as building, drawing, and moving around rather than sitting still.
• Likes to figure out things for yourself
• You learn best and remember it better  by physically doing something for yourself.
• You may get fidgity if you sit for way too long or something is getting boring.
• One of your struggles could be sitting still for a long period of time while trying to pay attention.

Helpful tips for Kinesthetic learners

In my opinion, this has to be one of the hardest approaches to learning. I couldn't imagine being in a public school and trying to learn in this way. Luckily for these wiggle worms there are some helpful tips that can help improve their learning. These can include, but are limited to

• Trying to find training or learning opportunities that uses examples and case studies to explain different concepts. This can help with remembering information.
• Sharing what you have learned about a certain topic can actually help you remember that information by teaching others.
• Getting active by role playing, problem solving, or some other activity can help with taking in the information that you are learning.
• Adding movement to study sessions like moving your pencil around in your hand, squeeze a ball, or shaking your foot can allow you to still move in some sort of way while helping you stay focused on your work.
• Scheduling short study sessions and then taking a small break in between study sessions is a great way to still get your work done without sitting there for a long period of time. By doing this, you know that the dedicated time you set for studying is for sitting down and working hard then the short break inbetween each session is for getting your energy out.

Reading/Writing Learners

 What is a Reading/Writing learner?

I never really preferred this approach to learning, but some people thrive as a reading/writing learner. For these type of people they prefer being handed a text book, given their assignment , and sit down to read directly from a book while writing out notes in a notebook of what they learned. 

Characteristics of a reading/writing learner

Although this seems to be a pretty simple approach to learning there are still some ways that they can stand out from the crowd.  These traits include;

• Studing to learn 
• Loves to reading on free time
• Prefers reading to themselves or to others over other people reading to them
• Can stay interested in the traditional learning method
• Struggles to take in all the information if you don't have a pen and paper
• Struggles to understand diagrams 

Helpful tips for reading/writing learners

With this being more of a traditional approach to learning it seems to be pretty straight forward when it comes to getting your work done. Here are some tips to help you get more out of your learning.

• Whenever possible try to read any content on your own even if you have to read it again after working with others. This will help you remember and recall what you read easier.
• Taking organized and detailed notes will be super helpful when learning new topics. My favorite method for taking notes is 2 collum notes where you have your topic in the left collum and the information or details in the right collum. There are also a ton of other methods to taking notes, it just depends what method you prefer.
• It's always a good idea that when you are finish writing your notes that you rewrite them to help get the information in your brain. Normally, at least to me the first time I take notes I am trying to get the important information down on paper that I don't really remember all the information I learned. By taking the time to rewrite your notes will helps your brain recall all that information as you write it out.
• Personalizing your notes is a good way to remember the information you are learning. As you write out your notes try to put the information in your own words instead of copying the information straight from the book. If you put it in your own words and in a way that you normally talk then it will be a lot easier to still get the information you need from the text while easily remembering what you read.
• If you have a hard time learning the information when it is in a diagram form then translate it by putting it in a format that you can understand. There's no since in struggling to learning in a format that is not easy for you when you can easily tweek it to fit your liking.

What type of learner are you? For me, when I look at these different approaches to learning I find myself falling under the categories of being a visual learner, an auditory learner, and a kinesthetic learner which allows me with multiple ways of learning, but got a little challenging during my school years.

My Learning Experience

I have always been the type of person who enjoyed learning whether it was in school or during my free time. During the time I started kindergarten through the time I finished my fourth grade year I went to public school. It was nice to learn and interact with other kids throughout the week, but it was also challenging sometimes. 

The time I spent learning in a public school

Each year, I struggled with not understanding what was being taught due to my learning gap, always felt like I was trying to pay ketchup as I tried to keep up with the rest of my class, and flip flopping back and forth with one year having a teacher that would make the time to work with me on the content that I was having trouble with to help me understand it with over all achieving our goal we set of getting me on grade level by the end of that school year. Then, as I went back to school that following August I would end up with a teacher that was the complete opposite from the teacher I had the previous year.

The breaking point for my family was during my fourth grade year when I got a teacher that didn't make time to sit down with me when I asked if I could have some help with the topics I didn't understand, didn't do much to help me, knew I was trying my hardest; but left me sitting there in class to struggle my way through work I didn't understand, and underestimated what I could really do. Then during one of the parent teacher conferences my parent addressed yet again that I was struggling with the work,  that they were helping me at home the best they could, and that both my parents and I have asked for help, but have been rejected each time. At that point my teacher was so closed minded that she basically gave up on me and told my parent that she didn't expect me to be able to do the work since I was special needs. From that point my parents felt it was unfair for me to have to continue struggling in this way and started doing some research on other options for schooling. By the end of that year they had discovered K12; a online school program in which they talked to me about and asked if I wanted to switch to that school? As soon as I said "yes" my mom started the enrollment process on their website for the next school year. My fourth grade year was my last school year in a public school and was also the point my learning experienced changed forever.

The wonders of learning through K12

Starting K12 was way different than what I was use to when I was learning in a public school and took a little bit to get use to working at home. With K12 I had an online teacher that answered questions when they came up, graded submitted work through the prebuilt craiculum, and assist in the learning process when needed with my mom being my main teacher which was awesome. This allowed me to 

• revisit topics that I didn't understand from the previous years
•  provided me with one on one help on course work and assignments 
•   Have the flexibility to create my own schedule with the order I wanted to do each topic as long as I got all the daily work done the same day it is assigned in the program
• allowed me to learn wherever I wanted. Sometimes we did school at  Starbucks, other times we wouldgo out to lunch and did  schoolwork at therestraunts while our food was being cooked, would go to the library to get a change of scenery, or went to the park on warm days to do school, so we weren't cooped up inside on a beautiful day.
• I could work at my own paise
• There was no set school hours like they have in public schools. When I finished my daily work in each topic for that day, I was done and could spend the rest of the day doing what I wanted to do.
• I could spend 30 minutes before school learning cursive with my mom
• I was able to stay on my iEP and tweaked it to fit that school system requirements

It was nice to be learning in an environment where I didn't have to worry about trying to keep up with the rest of the class, ask for help on something and not get it, constantly falling into the visious cycle of getting on grade then not being on grade level, or having a teacher that gives up on me. I was just able to focus on what I needed to work on to get me back to being on grade level and staying there each year that followed with the help from my mom.

Schools are just not the same anymore

I stayed with K12 for all of my fifth grade year and which really helped me get on grade level and then switch to an online hybrid school when my special Ed teacher we met through K12 transferred there at the beginning of sixth grade year. This was a school that was built for kids like me who struggled with learning in the traditional classroom. Through this school all of my work was still online, but two days I would go into the classroom to learn and interact with the other students through small class sizes while still having all the benefits I had through K12. I stayed at this school through the end of middle school where I was awarded with being math student of the year and decided to keep going to that school through the end of highschool. Sadly though, at the beginning of my ninth grade they decided to change their views and started going downhill with changing a fun little school that allowed only a certain number of kids in at a time to keep class sizes small and to allow for one on one help from the teacher on work, and the vision of helping these kids in need who wasn't thriving in a traditional classroom to a school that let so many kids in to get more money, wanted more A and B students than the ones who where struggling, had huge class sizes, new teachers each year due to teachers leaving from all the changes, and was no longer able to get one on one help in the building.  Luckily by the time it completely changed  I was already a senor in highschool taking electives online since I already had all my credits for graduation and barely went into the build besides for my IEP meetings. After I had been out of the building for basically a year I would look around and  they had all new staff except for my Special Ed teacher who moved to being the Social Studies teacher which I couldn't really rely on anymore like I was able to in the previous years for help on work, added so much work to the students daily schedule in each topic,started stressing the kids out about their work when they fell behind some due to the work load, and basically made a school that worked really well into another public school which we were trying to avoid in the first place and thought this isn't the school that I once  thrived in anymore.

One thing I would recommend to people who choose to go to an online approach is to choose a format like K12 where it would be harder for them to change their view of how they want their school to run. Seeing such a wonderful school changing from being for kids who couldn't thrive in a regular school to a school that wanted higher grade students instead and stressing them about their work just broke my heart to watch it change in that way.

Going to a building to learn is overrated

After graduation I had planned to go to the local college where I was going to start studying to be a Photo journalist, but decided that I didn't really want to do that as a career and unenrolled from my classes a week before the start date after talking to my parents about it. They were fine with it  as long as I did something where I wasn't  just sitting around all day not doing anything productive.

 From that point I started getting into reading, drawing, did mind puzzles, got meoe in depth with my spiritualality, exercise, and practiced math each day to keep up with my skills. I had a good schedule that was fun and gave me something to do during the day, but as a month past I felt like there was more I could be doing with my time. I did some research online to see what different things were out there for learning opportunities that I could do at home and found two sites that I have started using and absolutly love. These sites include;

• Duolingo, a language learning program
• Udemy, a site full of different classes you can take online

More about Duolingo

Duolingo has been one of the best sites I have found to help me learn spanish. It is  the type of site that let's you choose from a number of different languages, has short mini lessons broken down by topic for easy learning, listening/speaking exercises, books, pod casts, and different tests to check your progress. Although it is a free site, there are some options to pay for unlimited hearts which is what you use to go through each lesson, but I don't do the paid version since it is basically the same as the free version and I can take tests to fill up my heart bank to continue learning. 

More about Udemy

This site was really useful in learning a variety of different topic from classes you would normally learn in a public school to topics like meditation, reiki, and a number of other topics under the category of spiritualality. It was on this site that I took a personal development class and where Alyssa-bilies was born. It is a paid site where you pay for each class you want to take through the site.

To Conclude

There are many different ways that you can learn within the community or on your own. Some people thrive in a tradition classroom, choose to go to college, and know exactly what they want to do with their life, but for others they thrive in more of a flexible environment, choose to not go to college, and learning in a way that works for you. There is no right or wrong way to learn in this world. Life is filled with a bunch of  learning experiences that you will encounter in your lifetime, but the important thing to keep in mind is that you can do anything you want to as long as you keep learning and growing.