In honor of Halloween, I’ve been watching some spooky and supernatural shows on Netflix, and one that I just finished is called Ragnarok.  In this show, the Norse god Thor, is reincarnated in the body of a high school boy named Magne.  The show was an entertaining modern interpretation of Norse mythology, but had I not been in my teacher preparation program, I might not have picked up a key element of Magne’s character in school.  My guess is that he had some sort of learning disability, and here are the clues I picked up in the show to support this theory:

• Magne listens to his textbooks through a text to speech program.  For students that have difficulty reading, whether it is through dyslexia or another learning disability, schools can set up accommodations to help students access the material.  To experience what a dyslexic student might experience when reading a piece of text, I found this Dyslexia Simulator online.  For students that have difficulty visually processing text, we can leverage another one of the body’s five senses, hearing.  On a train ride I had a few months ago, I was seated near a blind woman who was listening to spoken words through her headphones, and I was struck by how fast that speech was.  Brains are so elastic that a person who is blind can understand spoken words at a rate 2-3x faster than a person who can see (see this fascinating article from Scientific American about this).
• During Magne’s final exam, he stood in front of two seated teachers for an oral exam.  As teachers, we need to give students opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge in different ways.  If a student struggles to write things down, teachers can make arrangements to have students show their understanding of the subject through a different means, like speech.  There is a framework I’ve been learning about called the Universal Design for Learning, and it includes a number of considerations teachers can use to design their lesson plans in a way that makes the material accessible to all learners.  In this framework, educators are reminded to provide multiple means of Action and Expression so the verbal final exam is one example of this.
• He keeps his journal in the form of voice memos.  As noted above, if a student struggles to write their thoughts down in a written journal, then recording voice memos is a great alternative.  Giving students a number of different ways to express themselves makes the classroom environment that much richer, so we don’t lose out on a student’s voice because they don’t have a particular ramp to learn, much like how ramps help make buildings accessible to people of all physical abilities.

While teachers cannot diagnose learning disabilities, they do see the difficulties a child might have while reading and writing.  Parents and teachers can work together to create a classroom environment that makes learning accessible to all students.  Also, it is important to note that there could be other factors that contribute to challenges in reading and writing, such as a lack of phonemic awareness.  Learning disabilities like dyslexia are experienced on a spectrum, so for parents who are concerned about their children’s performance in school, it’s best to consult a medical professional.

Without giving away too much of the show, one of the last scenes of the series places Magne at his graduation, which is simultaneously his battlefield. As a student with a learning disability, school has been a challenge for him, but with his perseverance and accommodations made by his school, he is able to slay the monsters that haunt him as he accepts his graduation diploma.