Mooney talks advocacy and positive self-concept

Greg Leonov
the advocate

Last Friday, April 21, author and public speaker Jonathan Mooney gave a presentation in the Visual Arts Theatre about supporting students who struggle with what are commonly called “learning disabilities,” which he instead refers to as “learning differences.”
He underscored his main point for those who attended the Mt. Hood discussion: how the presence of a single supportive adult can be so crucial in making a difference in the life of a challenged student.

“Somebody in their life who believed in them, who connected with them, who challenged them, who pushed them, who advocated for and with them… somebody there,” he said, looking over the audience that consisted of mostly instructors, advisers, counselors, and MHCC staff. “That’s you.”

Mooney struggles with dyslexia, and dropped out of school in the sixth grade. He still struggles with reading and writing, yet he has published two books and graduated from Brown University, an Ivy League school, with an honors degree in English literature.
His presentation focused on three solutions that build up and help those who face challenges with learning differences to succeed. The first is to build individuals’ self-concept. The second idea was about fixing learning environments, not people, and to do so “through advocacy and agency.” Finally, to acknowledge that “folks who thrive despite their challenges are folks who have an opportunity to get good at something,” he said. “Not everything, but something.”

 

Throughout his education, teachers and administrators focused on treating Mooney’s dyslexia. Getting him to learn to read and write was where teachers exercised the most effort. “We spend so much time and energy trying to fix those skills, but if there is one thing I’ve learned in my journey, professionally and personally, it’s (that) fixing skills is the cart before the horse,” he said. “No young person can go off to live a life that thrives if they have a negative self-concept.”

He talked about teaching a class in which he was to “remediate skill deficits” in Southern L.A.
“I remember that I was so excited to go to this program and work on remediating skill deficits, so I had all of my fancy tricks to do so,” he said. But while getting into his lesson, a student asked why he bothered, and referred to the group of students as “the dumb kids.”

“That was a profound revelation for me,” said Mooney. “All the fixin’ of skills, all the building of the skill-sets is the cart before the horse because nobody can go forward in their life – doesn’t matter how much phonics remediation we do – if we feel defective as learners.”

A positive ‘sense of self’

At that point, Mooney realized it wasn’t his dyslexia that was the actual cause of his difficulty through school. “It wasn’t the thing that everyone said was my problem, my attentional and language-based learning disabilities: It was the negative self-concept that came from the way those differences were treated that really disabled me,” he said.
“It was the sense of shame and the relentless message that I was the crazy or bad kid that really held me back. I was told that I was the bad kid so much in school, by the time I was 13 – I said, well, if I’m the bad kid, guess what? I’m going to be the best bad kid you’ve seen.”

To help students with learning differences get through their challenges, Mooney said it’s their self-concept that needs to be remediated, not their skills.

“It’s the social identity that comes from the way that these different brains and learners with challenges were treated,” he said. “That insight is really important because we spend so much time as learners ourselves thinking about fixing ourselves and thinking we have to fix ourselves, that we’re broken, and then (suffer) in our institutions re-mediating the weaknesses as opposed to rebuilding the sense of self.”

In order to foster a positive self-concept, it is important to create an environment in which students are encouraged and supported. Mooney’s biggest advocate as a young student was his mother, he said. She was an Irish-Catholic, single mother raising four kids.

‘Fighter’ needed
“People dismissed her because of her socioeconomic status. She never went to college, much less graduated from high school,” he said. Lastly, my mom was dismissed because she had this very funny voice – a very high-pitched, squeaky voice like Mickey Mouse.”
Mooney’s mother was constantly meeting with his teachers and administrators, flinging obscenities at them because they always focused on remediating his skills. “She understood that I didn’t need somebody in my life to ‘fix me.’ And that’s kind of what moms and dads, teachers, support professionals are told,” he said.

Instead, “what I needed was somebody to fight for and with me,” he said. “That’s (a) very different sort of scope of work, for lack of a better word. To wake up every day and say ‘You know what? My job here is to be an advocate for somebody who’s getting the short end of the stick. My job is to help them navigate the very complex systems that surround them.’ ”

Mooney talked about being treated as a patient his whole life, and how disempowering it was. “I was treated and fixed and diagnosed and poked and prodded so much, I lost that sense of empowerment. But when I got my mom there fighting for me, when I got somebody like you in my corner, I can re-emerge empowered, and can be an agent in my life,” he would learn, he said.

“That sense of agency is the most important skill that you can cultivate. And being an agent in your education, it means asking for help. It really does, because asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but an indication of strength and confidence.”

Finding what’s right
The third concept Mooney focused on was allowing a student with differences to get good at something.
“There are people who, at some point in their journey, have been supported in putting aside a deficit focus, and adopting a strength, talent, a capacity mentality,” he said.

During his own journey, before he finished at Brown, Mooney attended Loyola Marymount University where he once again “found myself in the purgatory that we call ‘developmental education coursework.’ You know, it’s like one of the rings of hell in “Dante’s Inferno” – there ain’t no way out – 25 different remediation courses before you actually get to read an interesting book,” he recalled.

His instructor’s name was Mr. Starky. “Y’all know a guy like Mr. Starky. He’s got a big old beard, he’s the kind of guy that names all of his kids after characters in JD Salinger novels – probably the dude that’s smoking a little dope in the break hour. You all know a guy like him – it’s Portland!”

Mr. Starky was teaching from a book called “A Guide to Remediating Reading and Writing Deficits in Developmental Students,” Mooney said. “The guy looks at it, and you could just see the horror on his face, and the soul-crushing nature of the task in front of him.

“He did not get into the business to do this. He wanted to talk about ideas and talk about learning as transformation, not remediation. So he starts the thing, and it’s just painful, and about half way, he drops the book, and he looks at all of us, and he says ‘You know what? Screw spelling!’

“He said ‘Every one of you gots something that’s right with you, and we’re gonna try to find it in this class today, in some way.’ And that was transformative for me – flip the script,” said Mooney.

He summed up the power in that understanding.

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about human beings who have faced challenges and have had some deficits, it ain’t about fixing the deficits that help them go off to live good lives – they don’t get good at everything, they get good at one thing.

“They find a passion, they turn the passion into an interest, and they turn that into a pathway.”

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Books by Jonathan Mooney include:
“Learning Outside the Lines”
“The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal”

For more visit: http://www.jonathanmooney.com