Session by Gavin Reid, on LD: Responding to Need

Gavin Reid is an educator and researcher from Scotland, but now also living and teaching in BC. His career has been devoted to working with students with learning disabilities: in fact, he was involved with starting up a separate school designed to address the needs of LD students.

Mr. Reid's message focused on the fact that it is our job to ensure the task we give students is achievable in order for our students to be successful. He strongly promoted the importance of considering the emotional development of our LD students - " the feel good factor it vital to learning". (This is similar to Sheree Fitch's message about needing to bring the joy back in to learning.)

Mr. Reid talked about Response to Intervention (RTI), about potential barriers to learning that we need to anticipate, and about the various skills we need to teach our students in order to be successful. "We don't unlock potential by labelling: we unlock potential by helping our students become more effective learners". He too believes "we're not talking about disabilities: we're talking about differences".

Have a listen to this video clip of the Waterboys, singing their song: "The whole of the moon". Again, when you listen from the LD lens, think about the lyrics like: "You saw the crescent, (but) I saw the whole moon". Just because we (as educators) learn in one way, or believe that a job needs to be done in a particular way, we need to consider all other possibilities, to support the learning needs and styles of all of our students.