Landmark College Day 1: Inspiration by the Bucketful

Think of it as the Little College That Does It All. Teaching, Research, Advocacy, Outreach -- oh, and changing lives.

I've been to many academic gatherings in my time. This is the first one where I've gone all day and not gotten tired.

Earlier:
Intro
UDI Broken Down
Arrival

Heard from several Landmark people today -- Steve Fadden on Universal Design for Instruction (UDI), Mac Gander on the cognitive science underpinning the Landmark model, Karen Boutelle on coaching students with executive function challenges, John Nissen on Landmark students transferring to 4-year institutions.

The most memorable presentations were from Landmark students themselves, who spoke after lunch to the fifty or so academics and support staff who've come here -- chatty, outgoing people all, kibbitzing and slurping our way into the afternoon.

But when the students started talking, you could hear a pin drop. No one stirred.

"I Don't Know How to Teach Your Kind"

We heard stories from five students. All of them struggled through high school, squeaking by -- or sometimes coasting by -- after black-and-white diagnoses of dyslexia, ADHD, mood disorders, then hitting college and feeling the ground drop out beneath them. Flunking out, sometimes multiple times at multiple institutions, their paths lined with misdiagnoses and blank incomprehension on the part of people charged with their education.

"'I don't know how to teach your kind,'" one student reported hearing from an instructor.

"All my life," the same student told us, "all I'd heard was 'you're crazy' or 'you're retarded,' but then I came here and they just got me."

"I came into my own," she said.

Story after story. I have never felt such depth so quickly in people so young.

From Disability ... to Understanding

"From the time I was diagnosed in third grade," another student related, "all I'd seen were lists. This is what's wrong with you. This is what you can't do. This, and this, and this, and this."

I'll admit, when I heard about Landmark College, the uninvited image that first came into my head was of a bunch of little buildings staffed by people who knew how to handle kids with LD/ADHD. Remedial education in a resort-like setting.

The heart of it all, instead, is understanding. Understanding -- at a guts-and-nuts-and-bolts level -- how people learn with atypical brains. And it goes way beyond "oh, ADHD kids don't take well to x, so we'll give them y."

In essence, students take classes on their own brains, starting day one with the faculty passing along what they know from research. If that isn't self-empowerment, what is?

The Technology Trinity

Several people asked the students who spoke to us what the key to it all was. What one thing, they asked, made the biggest difference?

With all that I'd learned about the philosophy and science of Landmark, I was surprised when most of the five replied with two magic words: assistive technology.

Three programs in particular: Kurzweil 3000, a text-to-speech reader with interactive graphics. Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool. Inspiration, a graphical idea-mapping program.

Here's a short demo of Kurzweil 3000, for instance:



None of this software is on the burning forefront of Web 2.0 or anything -- just solid, practical 'ware used all over the place for years. And for these kids, totally liberating.

"I can write a 10-page paper in an hour as long as I don't have to type it," said one student.

"If I had to type a 10-page paper," he explained, "I'd still be working on it, and I've been here for two years."

Cornerstone has all three programs in various states of use, but you can bet that when I get back, I'll be fired up to become their local evangelist.

More to follow...