Lois Letchford: The Lincoln Project - When students Fail

11 Aug 2020 · 2 min

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2:28

In this monologue, literacy expert and author Lois Letchford recounts her personal experience with her son Nicholas, who dramatically failed first grade. She describes how chronic ear infections between 8 and 18 months disrupted his language development during a critical brain‑growth period, leading to severe reading difficulties, classroom withdrawal, and low test scores that were misinterpreted as low IQ. Letchford critiques the common educational response of relying on testing and isolated interventions, arguing that when a child starts from such a low baseline, comprehensive, early‑focused support is required. She emphasizes the need to recognize hidden medical factors like ear infections that impair language acquisition, and to address them before they manifest as literacy failure.

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Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, author of the book Reversed: A Memoir and literacy problem solver, talking about the teaching of reading. And this week we're looking at failure. Children fail in classes still today. Parents then become overwhelmed, schools become overwhelmed, and we throw up our hands and say, what do we have to do? We get children tested, we get intervention. And we hope it works. My journey started with my son who failed first grade, and he just didn't fail, he failed dramatically. He actually went to class every day and just withdrew. He just zoned out. That was his coping mechanism. The teacher shouted at him for zoning out. He couldn't follow directions and he learned nothing, and the testing showed. The testing at the end of that year showed he learned nothing. He could read 10 words including on and no reversals. He showed no strengths and the testing implied he had a low IQ. When you start at such a low base, coming out of that hole is extremely difficult and you cannot just get one or two things right. You have to get everything right. And it's worth looking at why Nicholas failed so dramatically. And the first thing that I've learnt over time that caused his failure was constant ear infections from age 8 to 18 months. How does this impact learning? It actually impacts the brain. That during that time, a critical time of brain growth and brain development, he has had no language that has been clear to him coming in at that time. And it impacts the way the brain grows. That was the first problem. And that wasn't acknowledged when he was a baby having these ear infections. And 6 years later when he goes to school, he You go, this child's got a significant problem. That was the first thing that had to happen. So his language development has not been within the normal range and that puts him as an outsider to the general classroom.