Empowering Learners

They teach note-taking. They laugh. They recommend sleep. The tutors at the Learning Center know how to help students navigate the hazards of academia.

by Lisa Watts

» It’s All in Your Head: Treating Attention Disorders, by Skip Baker ’64
» When Reading Almost Ruined Me, by Matt Pilachowski ’98

It’s the week before spring break. Mary Cotton hasn’t slept much as her anxiety about Independent Study shifts into high gear. Meeting with tutor Donna Walls in the Learning Center, the senior ricochets from laughter to exasperation.

Today’s task: one more draft of Cotton’s communication disorders I.S. on the early diagnosis and treatment of autism. Papers, charts, and drafts are spread out on a table in Walls’ neat, orderly office.

"We have a lot to discuss," Walls says. They spend the hour working mostly on tables with numbers that don’t add up.

"Oh my God, I hate numbers," Cotton cries out at one point. Later she pushes the palm of her hand to her forehead, pauses, and says to no one in particular, "I get so confused."

Always, Walls meets Cotton’s agitation with calm. A former high school teacher and long-time tutor, Walls sits close to Cotton and keeps returning her student’s focus to a current problem. When they identify a question for Don Goldberg, Cotton’s faculty adviser, Walls encourages Cotton to write it down on a yellow sticky note and add it to a collection on the cover of a file folder.

At the end of the hour, Cotton asks for one last meeting time before she goes home for spring break. Walls mentions an open slot, but Cotton has a class then. "But we’re just watching a movie, something I can rent over spring break," she pleads.

"MARY!" Pam Rose calls out from the next office, then appears at the door. The director of the Learning Center and one of its three tutorial consultants, Rose stands just 5’2 and is generally amiable. But her trained ear has heard an alarm.

"You don’t miss classes!"

The challenge of learning differences

At a college that prides itself on providing a personalized education in a small setting, the Learning Center may be one of Wooster’s most unsung assets. Each semester, some fifty to sixty students find their way to the west wing of the Rubbermaid Building, tucked low behind Holden Hall. There, in pleasantly renovated office spaces and study rooms, the students meet encouragement. One of three consultant tutors – Rose, Walls, or Linda Marion – analyzes their academic strengths and weaknesses, asks about their challenges, and offers one-on-one sessions.

While any student struggling with coursework can benefit from the center’s services, students like Mary Cotton make the most obvious gains. Diagnosed at an early age with classic difficulities in reading and writing, Cotton is a thoughtful student who struggles to express herself and to stay focused. "I’ve never had an easy semester," she says, "even when I’m taking supposedly easy courses."

Cotton is one of a growing number of students nationally who enter college diagnosed with learning disabilities. Dyslexia, a wide-ranging condition that makes grasping language and reading skills difficult, and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are the most commonly identified conditions.

In the early 1980s, when the College created the Learning Center, such disorders weren’t well understood or quickly identified. Vivian Holliday (classics, emerita), then dean of the faculty, remembers teaching bright students who clearly understood the material in classroom discussions but would perform poorly on exams or papers.

With President Henry Copeland’s support, the College sponsored a few faculty workshops on learning disabilities. One memorable speaker introduced the concept that everyone has learning differences – some of us learn better by listening, some of us learn well visually, and others do best with hands-on practice.

"We knew this was an issue that wasn’t going to go away," Holliday remembers. "We decided we needed a place, a center, that would be a permanent part of our academic program."

Two federal laws – Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 – mandate that all institutions of higher education respond appropriately to the unique needs of disabled students and make reasonable accommodations. Students whose disability has been documented by a licensed professional can ask for such things as longer time limits for tests and permission to take tests in the Learning Center.

Some faculty members worried that by creating a center, Wooster would become a magnet for the learning disabled, Holliday says. "At the same time, I knew we had some very bright students whom I wanted to help set on the right track."

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