RES 5530: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Spring 2009)

Laurie's story was a gripping one to me. Deborah Hicks clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this little girl and became invested in learning about her development. I guess the one thing that puzzled me as I was reading was Laurie's diagnosis of ADD. Now, I am no expert in this disorder and only know as much as what was taught briefly in my undergraduate education classes, but it did not seem that Laurie had this disorder. I totally agreed with Hicks when she stated, "...I also believe that what has been marked is not her inability to focus, but her response to stressful material and emotional practices" (pg. 66). Nothing that was described to me in her history showed an inability to focus. Laurie just seemed to be burdened by the forces of her home life and was acting out in ways her teachers couldn't understand. I don't want to get into a big ADD debate, because I know that this is a HUGE issue in schools today, but it seems that in many cases, children are misdiagnosed as having ADD when the problem really lies elsewhere. It seems that this was the case here, and Laurie suffered needlessly from that misdiagnosis. Her medication hurt her school performance and changed her behavior from an outgoing, "brassy" child to a sullen and sulky one. It hurts me to think about how many children have had this happen to them, and how their outcome might have been different if they had gotten the right kind of help. I'm sure it made Hicks feel helpless, seeing as how she could see what was going on with Laurie but she had to be the unbiased researcher just watching it all happen. I sometimes feel that way in my own classroom. I have a student right now who comes to school physically, but is never there mentally. He sits in my classroom with eyes glazed over and an absent, yet angry look in his face. He does no work and is failing my freshman English class. When I called his father to talk about it, he blamed it on his medication, which is also what the student blamed it on.

I also found it interesting how Hicks talked about anger. On page 65, she writes, "Angry feelings and actions were expressed in ways that were sometimes uncomfortable for me as an observer. Having grown up in a rural southern setting, I was used to norms of restraint. If angry emotions were voiced in strong ways, they would not have been voiced, in my girlhood experiences, by women." I think I would have felt uncomfortable as well if I were watching these outbursts of anger that were apparently commonplace in this household. Just like Hicks, anger was never something I saw from my southern born-and-bred mother and grandmother, especially my grandmother. She is the epitome of Southern, and I can't say that I have ever heard her raise her voice in anger. My mother was a little better about showing anger, but then again, I watched her raise myself and my brother :) But the common theme is that we never show anger in public, whereas Laurie clearly was taught that it was okay, or perhaps her stressors at home caused her to forget the boundaries of society?

The interaction between Hicks and Laurie on pages 95-96 were quite moving. After researching her for 3 years, I bet it would be hard for Hicks not to learn to love this young girl. I wonder where Laurie is now and how she turned out?

Christy Rivers