Category Number Five

S.Norris-K.Norris

            Our opening gambit seemed harmless. ‘Well, Winslow, three more weeks and you’ll be back in school. How’s that sit with you?’ I wasn’t prepared for a thirteen year old boy, extremely large for his age, to bursting into convulsive sobs, and having tears rush down his flushed cheeks. Neither were his Father, a very handsome, totally masculine blonde ‘beast,’ nor his equally lovely mother in her Navy Captain’s uniform. Mr. Sean Wilson was absolutely embarrassed. Right then his only recourse seemed to be twisting his very expensive wrist watch even faster as he avoided my enquiring eyes. His mother, Dianne, shook her head as she reached out and drew her sobbing son’s face to her shoulder and offered, “School is a nail in Winslow’s brain, Mister Norris.”

            Once Winslow regained some semblance of self control, I asked if they’d mind stepping out of the cubicle for a few minutes. It was obvious they were both relieved, even eager to retreat. Later I was convinced my first impressions about the Wilsons were entirely incorrect.                   Alone Winslow was slightly more at ease. When I asked what was bothering him so much about going back to 7th grade that could cause that kind of outburst, all the tension came flooding back, but at least the tears weren’t there.

            ‘I hate Ford Middle School! But I’ve hated every school I’ve ever been in. That includes this latest Funny Farm.’ When I asked about the ‘ Funny Farm Experience’, actually The Center For Alternative Learners’ where we happened to be at that minute, Winslow claimed this was his second year here, ‘ And all they do is let me play little kid games like Tick Tack Toe. But, they charged Mom and Dad $45.00 an hour.’  This was 1991, and that was still a good bit of money.

            When I confronted him with the fact that this shouldn’t cause him to cry as he did, I got a small sickly smile and added a nod. “Yeah it’s still better than Ford. So I asked why Ford Middle School was so terrible. By the time he was finished I really had to agree with him.

            “I’m a Special Education Student, in a class with 19 other kids. Eight of them are emotionally disturbed.  That means they’re complete loonies. Two other’s got Down syndrome. They just smile or cry a lot. Then there’s the three with limited intelligence. That means they can’t work a water fountain. The other six are just like me. Each and every one of us has got special talent. Vince can open any combination lock in less than a minute. Art is a Computer Whiz, and” . . . .

             I interrupted to ask Winslow what his talent was. “I can take a model with 2,000 plus pieces, never once look at the plans, and get it together in less than eight hours. It drives my Dad nuts that I can do that. I’ve also fixed our computers whenever Dad or Mom screwed them up.’ He grinned and added, ‘That’s at least two or three times a week.’ Another grin…‘I’ve been doing that since I was eight.”

            But that wasn’t getting to the why of the tears and sobs.  When I asked about that again, Winslow just shook his head, sighed, and said, “The Crazies wear the teacher down.  By the end of second period, she’s so pooped she always ends up just letting us do whatever we want. That’s wrong! The kids like me never get to learn anything!  And those nuthouse kids can really go bonkers! One starts a fire inside a desk whenever he can sneak matches in. No matter how they start, they always end up trying to attack us. Most of the day we’re hiding in back of the room behind a wall of desks and chairs… It’s like a war every day in there.”

            Even so, that didn’t seem to be awful enough to bring on such a violently emotional reaction, so I asked again. Winslow frowned, looked to see if we were really alone, and then half whispered, “I really can’t tell you unless you promise on Scout’s Honor you’ll never tell my Dad.  If he ever finds out about this, he’ll go in there and clean house! He’s an ex-Navy Seal.”  I swore on Boy Scout’s Honor, even added Spit in The Ocean that I would never rat on him. When he finished, I really wished I hadn’t.

            “One day near the end of school this year, I was on my way to the cafeteria. Three of my oldest and best friends were coming from their lunch period. They were walking on the other side of the hall. Ford has never had any traffic pattern rules, so I started to cross to ask how they were doing.”

             He paused here to explain how much he hated being separated from his childhood friends. That happened at the beginning of 3rd Grade when the Principal informed his parents he was not at grade level in either reading or math.

            “Dad just went nuts. He kept telling Mom that he thought I was just lazy, and then he asked why I wasn’t at grade level when I could do all the neat stuff I did around the house. From then on he just kept repeating that I was a lazy kid who didn’t appreciate what I had, and all that other crap about how hard he’d had it getting through school. Fact is, Mom told me that he quit when he was in the eleventh grade and joined the Navy! The first time he started all that stuff about me being lazy and how hard he had had it, I’d just helped him hook up his newest computer. He hadn’t a clue how to do it, and I think he got really angry that I could do it.

            “I thought Mom was really going to try and stop them from putting me in the zoo, but she took the dumb school’s word just like Dad did, so life’s been the pits ever since. Well, not about some things. Dad’s eased up a lot about the lazy stuff. Since he’s done that, I try not to cry every time he says it, but sometimes it just hurts too really bad. I guess after while he didn’t like me bawling, so he hasn’t said that all this year.’

            I was slightly amazed, even reluctant to believe Winslow could really hook up something as complicated as a computer when he was only nine or ten. I was also impressed by his fluid speech patterns even though his records revealed that Winslow had developed a halting stutter. For the time being I skipped asking about it. When I asked him to resume the story he’d been telling, I took him back on track, and his tone got instantly bitter again.

            “So there’s my guys, and I was beginning to cross the hall when Mrs. Suggs stepped in.  She’s the Vice Principal in charge of lunchroom, bathroom and hallway discipline. She reached out, took my arm, and spun me around. I thought she was gonna give me detention or something!  I was mad because I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. Then she told me, ‘Winslow Wilson, you get back over there with the students in your class. Get over there where you belong.’ It felt like she’d shoved a knife in my heart.” 

            I was so flabbergasted I made a wild promise, “I can see why you don’t want to go back, but Winslow, I’ll make you a promise. In two more weeks my wife and I are going to Central America for a couple of months. I can promise you two things: first off, I promise that in a couple of months you’ll meet someone who will turn your life around, and second, I also promise that if I see you three times a week until I go, you’re going to be able to spell better than you ever imagined you could. Is it a deal?’ Thus began a relationship which still continues to this day.

            Three weeks before we left for Mexico, I did manage to teach Winslow how to spell multi-syllable words and help him read three easy books. His mom later confided that one day when she was driving him home after one of our sessions, he said.  “I’m really learning lots of good things even if I’m still back at Ford.”

            Winslow met my wife, Kate, at the end of our three months after we returned from several Central American countries, and she did turn his life around. It wasn’t in 14 days or ever 14 months, but it did happen.

            Winslow graduated from high school and took technical training at the community college. He found what he did not want to do but also where his talents would take him. He learned to study. He became a real student, independent and successful. He went on to another school and earned a degree. Today he is a successful professional trouble shooter in a field perfectly suited for his gifts.

            So now it’s time Kate told the next steps in the Winslow Wilson Project.

Kate Norris

            My husband’s diagnoses only brushed the surface. When Winslow became my latest challenge, I confronted several new obstacles. From the very beginning, one nagging problem hindering Winslow’s progress was his lack of a work ethic regarding all school work. He had not been taught to learn, so he really did not know how to apply himself. I encounter this type of behavior frequently in my work and it frustrates my Academic Therapy goals. 

            I refused to excuse a student not being encouraged to do his or her best!  How can we expect students like Winslow to suddenly take pride in their academic efforts, or to buckle down and meet requirements when they have failed for so long?

            For the next four years Winslow, struggled through a complicated and extensive phonemic and phonological awareness program, an Orton-Gillingham based language therapy program even as he fought for basic math mastery. He also labored to learn how to write in cursive so at least it could be read. “All the teachers just gave up after second grade and told me to use a computer” he said. This was his common defense for the crude letter and number formations. Eventually, he was able to remember his multiplication tables, but his greatest difficulty still remained in trying to adopt the necessary work ethic and build motivation so that he could meet his potential. That didn’t happen until much later.

             It was obvious that Winslow had been short-changed by the public schools which tested him, marginalizing the results indicating his significant intelligence.  His mother once admitted to me that she felt the school kept hammering her with Winslow’s limitations. She said she felt they were telling her that he was not very bright, despite what she and her husband saw at home. School personal decided his academic abilities were low, so their expectations for him were equally low. Sadly very few classroom teachers have ever had sufficient training in how to identify unique learning differences, let alone accommodate them in the classroom.

              Winslow’s teachers hindered his math abilities by giving him a calculator at too early an age. Even then, he was told to follow procedures rather than approach problems from a conceptual basis. His math retrieval skills grew weaker and weaker as his dependence on the calculator became greater and greater. He simply pushed numbers around with no meaning attached. He struggled with algebra, geometry and all high school math requirements.

             Once Winslow began receiving specific instruction his parent’s faith and dedication never faltered. As his father once asked me, “How can this be a slow kid when he can assemble anything you give him?  Did he tell you that he knows exactly how to arrange furniture to get the maximum use of space? You take him into any room and in five minutes he’s got all the furniture where it really belongs. It just doesn’t jive.” His father was absolutely correct in his perception of Winslow’s giftedness! I also had this gift; I recognized a kindred spirit in Winslow.

            There could have been a terrible problem created by his younger sister. Amanda was an overachiever from the time she could stand. In addition, once she reached her teens, her physical beauty simply dazzled. Neither parent however allowed her to boast about her constantly high average or her social conquests. Winslow was always treated and looked upon as an equal.  Whenever I questioned Amanda, she was at a loss to explain why her brother could read a map better than anyone in the family, or why he had always attracted highly intelligent companions. “Mrs. Norris, Winslow never had a date until his senior year in high school! And then, his first real girl friend was president of the National Honor Society!” This simply made Amanda shake her head and offer, “That’s my brother. What can I say? Daddy never lets me forget that he’s got talents I’ll never find, but Winnie just hates how well I do in school, and how easy things are for me. Who can blame him?”

             Winslow’s Dad always set firm boundaries for both his children. His son had to make at least C’s, attend school, and do his homework. Whenever Winslow said there wasn’t any homework, which was very often, Dad sat down and made up assignments. Son’s and daughter’s report cards were never compared. 

            Winslow’s Mom was never a the commanding officer. Once she was convinced I could be trusted, she confided, “When he really got so frustrated he cried for hours, I took him out to an empty high school parking lot in our SUV. It was always late at night so I could let him pretend he was one of the Dukes of Hazard. I just let him get behind the wheel, (even when he was only twelve or thirteen,) and do wheelies. If we happened to have snow, that was really something special. I know it was illegal and dangerous, but I really think there were times when it kept him from losing control. You’ll never know how happy we were when Street and you finally convinced us his problem revolved around dyslexia!  We actually celebrated! Sean got out our best bottle of Scotch, poured us both a tipple shot, and almost shouted, ‘Hell! Half of the world’s great geniuses have all had it!”

            None of this support prevented Winslow from sobbing inconsolably when he failed the county math test for the second time at the end of the eleventh grade. The exam was based on a fifth grade functional achievement level.  Yet, Street and I never gave up on Winslow. Whenever Winslow screamed that he was never going to graduate, or ever be able to do simple arithmetic, we’d simply reach out, take his hands, stare into his troubled blue eyes and swear that neither of us would ever give up on him.

            “You can do this! We will find a way you can learn, Winslow. You’re so bright! Sooner or later we’ll find out how you learn math too. You learn most things so quickly!”

            He would sigh, then smile, nod as he took another deep breath, and promise, “I’ll really try this time. I really will.”

            We tried different strategies based on his language program. We used manipulatives, rhythmic chanting and patterns. We worked on math in manageable chunks. He practiced ‘safety net’ strategies for constructing math facts he had trouble retrieving.  He could go into a test and construct a graphic organizer, the times tables, necessary formulas, sample problems. We used his hands and gross motor movements to replication patterns.  We chanted in rhythm.   

            In the end, Winslow passed all the requirements for graduation.  But the public school system failed him in every other area from reading and math to the normal social skills of how to a date, and learn what to do on a date, to learning that acquiring new knowledge was his bliss!

            Both of us went to his graduation, and after he crossed the stage, shook hands and got his diploma, he met everyone from his grandparents to Street and I at the entrance to the hall. First, he looked right at the two of us and announced, “I’d never be here without you two. I’d… never mind that!” Then he took off his mortar board and gown, threw them on the cement and jumped up and down as he yelled, ‘And I’m never going to school again as long as I live!” Everyone present was determined that was not to be.

            By that September, he was enrolled in a community college, “Just so I can get enough auto mechanics training to get a job,” was how he put it when he surrendered. Less than six weeks later though, he announced to me, ‘I don’t want to do this. It’s too easy and it’s as boring as high school.’

             Winslow was allowed to switch to Automotive Electrical Systems because his instructor recognized his unique skills. Just about a month later Winslow said, ‘I don’t want to do this, and I don’t like what my teacher does either.’

            Street had me press him on what was going on. “Every day the teacher gets in there and makes some sort of complicated problem in the electrical system. Then we break up into four groups of five each, and so far I’ve been the only one who can find out what’s wrong. Most of the time it’s really some dumb thing, and I get embarrassed every time he tells the other guys how good I am.  Sometimes I just fuss around to make it look really hard. It’s not. And if that’s all there is to electrical systems, I’m gonna be bored out of my skull for the rest of my life. I’m not gonna go four years no matter what you or Kate tell me.” It now seemed to Winslow that computer repairs, or trouble shooting would be a better field for him.             

            Winslow struggled with college math. He did repeat some courses, but gradually, with patient quality instruction, his skills improved. For dyslexic students, arithmetic can be a barrier to finding themselves in math. There is a difference. When the Winslow began to see algebra as a construction built in patterns; functions and their variations as models for problem solving, his mathematical self awareness took shape. He used his multisensory strategies to build memory.  We used gross motor movements to replication algebraic functions and transformations around the coordinate plane. He began to fail less and not only pass, but achieve higher grades.

            His academic career blossomed once he found a math professor who saw Winslow’s potential. The shock of a “B” in College Algebra I sent his parents on an auto junk yard odyssey until they discovered a dilapidated 1966 Pontiac GTO, Winslow’s dream car. They bought it, and had it towed into their garage. Once Winslow and his dad had the engine on a work bench, Winslow spent every spare minute rebuilding it.

             An “A” in Collage Algebra II left the entire family speechless, but not Street and me. We did reach that stage when Winslow announced, “I’m taking Pre-Calculus this term.” I asked Winslow if he were signing up for Pre-calc because he liked math now or if it was to prove something to himself. He answered, “A little of both.” We smiled even broadly a few weeks into the term when he told us, “I made a solid ‘B’ and this stuff isn’t that hard.”  He then told me he had to drop out with only the final left.

             “I think I could make an ‘A,’ but Dr. Kline called me in this morning and told me I wouldn’t get any credit because I didn’t have Trig first. It’s a prerequisite and I didn’t take it. I didn’t know what that was until he showed me all the stuff I was doing. He was really embarrassed until I started laughing.”

            “Laughing…You laughing, Winslow?” I asked.

            “Yep… I thought it was funny that I could do all that stuff even though I’ve never had it! Made me feel really good, you know?” Yes, yes indeed! We really did know!

            The last stumbling block came when he took English Composition for the third time. The pressure was on. No matter how good his GPA was, Winslow was a flunkout if he failed any course for the third time, and English was necessary to graduate.  He finally took the class On- Line/ distance so that he would have ample time to edit and check his work. When his first paper came back, he stormed into my office, tears running down both cheeks, and threw himself on the couch. “I’m done! I’m never gonna get anything,” he sobbed. “Look at what she says,” he managed as he shoved the Manila folder toward me.

            Across the top of the title page written in blaring red ink was the following. ‘If you ever spell essay ‘S.A.’ again, I will not even read the assignment.’ Somehow I managed to suppress my laughter and Winslow’s sobs, but I urged him to look at her other comments.

             To his instructor, it seemed that his ‘S.A.’ would be very acceptable if he spent more time proofreading. There was general laughter when he grunted, “Jesus! I can’t depend on Spell Check. Most of the time, when it gives me a choice, I don’t know which one is the right word, or if it’s really the one I meant.” Perseverance rendered that defense inoperable, when I offered a solution. Actually, Winslow’s spelling was not all that bad.  His Orton-Gillingham work had given him the ability to sound out phonetically regular poly-syllabic words.  He often slipped when he wrote quickly and just put down whatever came to mind.  In a college class though, spelling must be accurate and Winslow would not be the first dyslexic individual whose paper was proofed by a parent, tutor, girlfriend or wife.

             ‘Winslow write it in your words, bring it to us, and I’ll go over it with you. I am not going to write it for you, but I will help you with spelling; and perhaps now you can see why heaping more phonics on you isn’t punishment.’

             Shortly after this, he decided he wanted to enroll in a computer maintenance and repair program at a very prestigious and expensive Technical College. Just about then the family moved to Georgia and Winslow became a file, a very thick, well thumbed one, but nevertheless a file.  “The file” still found reasons from time to time to phone.

            Much later Street and I were having coffee and discussing another difficult case when we came to diagnoses which could be applied to lots of future students. “Winslow was so frustrated because he was so bright, yet so impacted by his dyslexia and the skills he needed to express that intelligence. “You know, if we use some computer terms to describe that… what would you say was his dilemma?” Street asked.

            “I’d say that he’s got a Pentium Processor between his ears but has to use a ‘Dial Up’ system to access it. It’s like his thoughts are zooming around just short of the speed of light and his abilities to explain what they are;  are moving about as fast as that car he rebuilt,’ I  responded.                    

            His contacts were always sporadic. Winslow always promised to visit, but that has never come to pass. We sometimes hear about his most recent girl friend, how he really liked this one and when and why he broke it off. His usual reason is, “ After a couple of weeks we really didn’t have anything we could talk about.” What goes unsaid is that his latest wasn’t able to meet him in the one area he craved most…intellectual.

            After nine years I did hear something most would consider remarkable, but we found very reasonable. The call came on an early July evening when Washington, D.C. was bathed in heat and oppressive humidity.

            Winslow opened by telling me that his family was well, and it was too hot in Atlanta for a normal human. Then he let this slip out. ‘I’ve been working for this company that installs programs and maintains those computerized high tech forklifts you see in the Big Box Stores.

You know, the ones that go up thirty feet loaded with crates?’ Yes, both Street and I knew.

            ‘Well, I guess that I’ve really been doing okay because the owner says I’m the only person he can send out on difficult calls when they need the repairs or reprogramming right away. He also says that I’m the only one he can trust to be nice and not lose my cool.” I congratulated him, but I also reminded him that we were not surprised by any of his successes.

            Then Winslow had some additional information. He said this, as if it were an afterthought something which was not too important and perhaps he didn’t really deserve. Street and I are well aware of how scared our egos become…especially when we can’t cross the hall to be with our friends. “How about him telling me today that someday I was probably going to own the company when he retires! That the only way he could be sure he would still get a good income after he let go was to put me in charge? He believes hard work and intelligence should be rewarded.  ‘Said he’d let me buy the company on time! How’s that?”

            We both said that was truly amazing, but we never told Winslow about the tears that rolled off our cheeks as we did. And neither of us told him about all the hugs and toasts to him that went on well into that hot July night. 

            There is a post script. Winslow bought a nice house near his parents. He calls occasionally, usually around our birthdays. His company prospers and he is adding new employees almost each fiscal quarter.                      

            “I’m always looking for more help, Mrs. Norris. In fact most of them are like me but smarter than me. So far it’s easy finding me. I just check their handwriting and if it’s horrible, I give them a mess to solve.’ 

            Winslow enjoyed the complete commitment of his family. No matter how difficult his life could be his family was a shoulder to lean on. The family could also be counted on to give him a gentle shove.