Struck by Ligtning; Alternative Learning. How Youth Learn Best Part I.

Not everyone dies when struck by lightning. 

When I was 6 years old and living with my family in Dallas, Texas we had a pool in the back yard.  One summer evening, after we all had gotten out of the pool my parents went inside to get ready for an evening out....(well, mom was getting ready and dad was sitting in his wet bathing suit, watching the news drinking his 'toddy') and I wandered to the front yard, still dripping wet.  I remember leaning against our car which was the color of a cooked mushroom and about 102 feet long....ahhhh, the tank like cars of the 1970's.  I vaguely recall hearing thunder as I was somewhere lost in an imaginative state after what I'm sure was a killer battle of Sharks and Minnows. 

There was a loud crack, and in an instant not only was I feeling a tickling heat, but I remember having the visual vantage point of being above and to the right my body as I watched a lasso of lightning surround the mushroom car and the wet girl in a bathing suit.  I of course screamed, maybe even peed myself, but I was already wet so who's to know, ran full speed into the house still screaming and into the lap of my father watching the 6:00 news.  I could barely get any words out....trying desperately to tell him I had just been hit by lightening...somehow observing that his wet bathing suit which also the color of a cooked mushroom, felt really clammy, and where were his glasses, and why isn't mom mad at you for sitting in the chair with a wet bathing suit, and I WAS JUST LASSOED BY LIGHTNING!

Dad calmed me down and downplayed the incident, saying it couldn't have happened.  Hmm. 

If you haven't already pegged me for a wacko, I mean, how could I have been above my body??  Read on, this is about alternative education for youth with learning needs.

Years later, this past year in fact....I'm now 39....for the first time my dad said as we were having a conversation about Experiential Education, "Do you remember in Dallas when you were hit by lightning?"
Of course I remembered, but I felt:  1) astounded that he did 2) somewhat validated 3) sort of angry that for so many years I thought he was sure it didn't happen when in actuality he did.  I asked him what made him think of the lightning incident.  He said something along the lines of, "Well, maybe you being hit by lightening explains why you are who you are?"  My dad is a very conservative, old republican, and so him making this sort of metaphysical type statement off the cuff was like being hit by lightening all over again.

Let me qualify, if I may, by what he meant by, "....way you are who you are."  I won't go into all the details of what makes me me, only the ones having to do with school as an institution of learning as that was the topic he and I were on. 

I'll start by saying that "learning needs, ADD/ADHD, Non Verbal Learning Disorders, Aspergers, Dislexia, slow processing speeds", and so on and so forth, were not even words found anywhere in the brains of an educator or schools mind when it came to a student who wasn't stellar in class.  If you didn't do a bang up job in academics as a student you were either lazy, unruly, you didn't try or listen, fidgety, unengaged, hyper, unfocused, stupid, slow, smart....as in ass....an underachiever, apathetic, spoiled....and the list goes on.  I was of the fidgety and unfocused variety, though bright and with a friendly and pleasant demeanor.  Sitting in class, listening to someone talk about the ecology of a stream, or of the U.S. Civil War, or any number of other topics, for 45 min, seven times a day, 5 days a week, for 180 days a year was my true form of hell.  Dull sticks being jabbed in my eyes repeatedly.  A strobe light in your brain when you already have a headache.  One of those dreams where you're trying to run fast and you're just not going anywhere.  These would have been welcomed by me during class and I'm sure that I fantasized about these alternative forms of torture as I was constrained by a strait jacket during most of my time in school.  Figuratively speaking of course.

I remember grumbling once as I sat in Earth Science class in 6th grade, wondering why the %$^&! weren't we outside looking at and touching the bark on the trees, pulling apart flowers to look at their stamen and stigma?  Why were we looking at pictures and listening to this joker describe a flowers physicality with words? Why can't we get out of this room?  Why can't we go DO something?


I've gotten far away from my initial preface, which is oh so typical, which was my dad's statement of why and how I or anyone else is who they are.  I can't remember a title to a movie I just saw if I only hear it, or the name of someone I've met only five minutes ago, but if I see the title of the movie I'm golden.  And for the person I met five minutes ago who's name I can't remember?  I may not see them again for 15 years, but I'll remember their face and be able to place where and when we first met.  The science teacher who taught us about the earth from inside a building?  No recollection of his name, but to a tee I remember his sweater vest patterns, his hand gestures, his hair style, and Doc Sider shoes.

Of course I'm not the learner or the person that I am because I was lassoed by lightning in Texas, but to someone who is a main stream, typical audio learner not to mention brilliant on many levels, any excuse or reasoning helps, especially when they are your father and even after 30 some years of not understanding.  I wasn't killed by the lightening obviously, but I died everyday in school when I wasn't visually or kinetically challenged, when as youth we weren't challenged to think in a way that was more than just memorizing facts.  I died for 45 minutes, seven times a day, 180 days out of the year out of boredom and monotony and the inability to retain information in a way that was delivered exactly the same in every class.

coming soon:  Part II: Types of Alternative Education best suited for youth who have been hit by lightening.



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