The Boy Who Kept Turning Up

What one student's Grade 4 taught me about consistency, overlearning and why a diagnosis should never become a prediction.

When I first started teaching this student, I genuinely wasn't sure he was going to pass GCSE Maths.

He had ADHD and dyslexia, was easily distracted and found it difficult to retain a lot of the maths we covered. I could spend a whole lesson on something, finish thinking, Yes, he's got it, and then the following week realise we needed to go through most of it again.

Our lessons were online, usually at 7.30 in the evening. Sometimes he'd appear drinking a can of Coke. Occasionally he'd yawn right in my face. There was no pretending that maths was the highlight of his week!

But he kept turning up.

Every week, we worked together for the full hour. If he'd forgotten something, I taught it again. If a method was shaky, we practised it some more. I stopped worrying that we'd “already covered” something. For him, covering something once and actually being able to retrieve it weeks later were very different things.

He needed a lot of repetition and overlearning. What he didn't need was for that to be interpreted as meaning he couldn't do it.

Slowly, things started to stick.

There was no dramatic transformation. He didn't suddenly start loving maths or find it easy. He was still the same student. He just got better at maths.

Then results day came.

Grade 4.

I was absolutely delighted.

It might not be the result that attracts much attention on GCSE results day, but I knew what had gone into that 4: the evening lessons, the homework, the forgotten methods, the repetition and all the times we had simply gone back and tried again.

And most importantly, he'd passed. He could move on without being caught in the cycle of compulsory GCSE Maths resits.

His ADHD and dyslexia helped me understand why some aspects of learning were difficult for him and how I needed to teach him. But they couldn't tell me whether he would pass his GCSE.

That's the distinction I think we sometimes lose. A diagnosis can help us understand a child's difficulties. It shouldn't become a prediction of what that child will achieve.

For this student, success was a Grade 4.

He turned up. He practised. He forgot things. We went over them again.

And eventually, he passed.

His diagnosis helped me understand why the journey might take him longer.

It couldn't tell me where it would end.