Al’s Story: Overcoming Beliefs That Inhibit Learning

Shares the author's minute-by-minute decisions in working with an alienated student whose beliefs about reading created a wall of resistance to learning. Notes the student's beliefs about his learning potential and his lack of strategies were at the root of his reading problems. Concludes that before alienated students can overcome the restrictive situations imposed by the present educational system,educators must learn to see struggling students in a new way.