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Headshot Young Girl

Embeth Holly van der Wal

AMS24

South Africa

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Challenge

This year, while tutoring a young boy who struggles with reading, I discovered a significant challenge. This boy is incredibly smart and hardworking, with a genuine love for school. His ability to recall all the work he has learned in great detail is impressive. During formal assessments, he has a facilitator to read the questions and assist with writing and spelling, but his marks suffer significantly in class where no facilitator is present. Being in a government school with large class sizes, the teacher feels overwhelmed by the extra support he needs. My initial instinct was to intervene with technology. I am extremely passionate about using technology effectively to enhance learning, and I eagerly dove into research, exploring various technological solutions for this boy. However, he resisted these ideas, fearing that using a device would make him stand out and potentially be teased by his peers. This situation presents a significant challenge: how do we support a child's learning without making them feel like an outlier in the classroom? How do inclusive tools that are supposed to include him in the learning of the classroom end up making him feel more excluded? It fears me that he would rather choose to receive marks that don’t truly reflect his learning because he fears using tools that may lead him to being seen as different. This complex issue underscores the broader challenge of inclusivity in education, where every student’s unique needs must be met without making them feel isolated or singled out.

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