Students were working on end-of-the-year projects in teams of two or on their own. in English. One of the projects (unfinished) can be seen in the picture. The teacher asked me to help the children work on this assignment. I mostly tried to help them do more research on the two-party system, as they had expressed opinions in their writing about the presidents that were not grounded in facts.

As a learning specialist, I was immediately drawn to a student who, unlike most of the other children who were clearly engaged and working independently, found it difficult to sustain her focus. I asked her what she was doing, and she explained that she was paraphrasing a text into her own words. She needed someone to be with her the whole time she wrote, although she was able to formulate and write her ideas down on her own.

Children who need support beyond the classroom teacher's have lessons after school with private providers who work in tandem with the school.