In this paper I will analyze the role that observation plays in the discovery of learning disorders, in reference to my own experiences. I will compare my experiences to the writing of Almy and Genishi in Ways of Studying Children: An Observation Manual for Early Childhood Teachers and also the personal narratives of Mike Rose in I Just Wanna To Be Average, and Sandra Cisneros in Woman Hollering Creek. I will use these writings to show how it is possible for students to pass through their education, experiencing difficulties but never being diagnosed with a learning disability that they may have. Such experiences of students are important to note in order to better identify learning disabilities within schools in order to provide students with …show more content…
22). In reviewing my writing experiences, it seems as if there was no overall analysis of my writing skills, but instead my teachers looked past repeated grammatical errors and attributed it to lack of interest. Due to being in mainly honors courses, it was never a concern that I typically scored a B in Honors English courses and Almy and Genishi speak about how teachers typically only observed based on their concerns. Due to a consistently average performance, Almy and Genishi would categorize this as a situation where an issue had slipped through the cracks due to a lack of concern about an acceptable grade. They may also view this as a lack of individual observation about a student. In my high school, a folder is passed from teacher to teacher that contains the writing of the student from each year. According to Almy and Genishi, it would have been beneficial to keep written records of observation because “it is easy to forget what one has observed, and because the usual purpose observation is to understand the child changing and developing” (p. 40). If these written records had been kept, then there is a chance that it would have been noticed that there was no development in my writing ability in the ways of grammar and then the problem could have been addressed. If a teacher had partaken in an individual study, they may have seen the same mistakes in my writing that were present in essays every year. The reason that there was no thought to engage in an individual study is due to Almy’s and Genishi’s writing about Halos, Horns, and the Average. One of the reasons that my experiences in the English classroom were so distressing was due to my positive experiences in all my other classes. When a teacher sees a student not “accomplishing their work as they should”