United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Maia's injured arm is her dominant arm so she uses her non-dominant arm to write. She hates taking notes in school because it takes too much brain power to do that and cuts down on her "listening" time because her brain is working too hard getting the hand writing. She feels that if she just sits and listens, she "gets" the lesson much better and has great memory retention. Her grades are fabulous with this method - BUT teachers are giving her a hard time about it - wanting her to come up with another method because as she gets older, note taking is going to be a vital task.

Any ideas about this?

Time to get a doctors note To allow you to record the lessons in class. Re training your brain will take time so the teachers would be discriminating against you because of a alternative way you need to do things. I am sure you will keep trying to write better but it will take time. You should NEVER have others limits you base on what they think You need to find ways to adapt to things as you can If others try to stop you in adapting you may give up trying and that would be the worse thing. In my case one arm is birth erbs and the other one got rip up driving a semi. The carpel tunnel and radial nerve damage gave me a tremor so now I have to relies on others to fill out things for me. Some times I get people who insist, I fill a form out. I tell them I cant and I need HELP. There is somethings we can adapt to and other things we just cant find away to. I hope this helps
Tom

thanks Tom

I got it figured out. I bought Maia a Yamaha Powertrak C24 voice recorder (uses an SD card)(as per her music teacher's advice) ---- so Maia will be able to record lectures. And then I'm going to get Dragonsoftware and play it back to the "dragon" so it will do daily transcription for her.

Maia can do this under her 504 plan at school -- they know all about the non-dominant issue - they just don't understand how it manifests itself because they have no clue what this expeirence is like.

You are welcome You never know here how much a person limitation really are or how well they can learn to Adapt???? These injuries make you think OUT OF THE BOX, They make you stronger in a can do Spirit. Unfortunately some people dont understand but they really should not hamper a person from trying to find a way to adapt the best they can
Best wishes,
Tom

Rosalynnn just got an android tablet through the school. She likes the notepad on it because she does not have to use a much pressure to write with the stylus as a pen or pencil. We are playing around with it now with recording and transcription. She is transitioning to Jr. High next year and we just had her IEP meeting today (went back on an IEP because the school "lost" her 504 plan for 2 yrs) The IEP team is fantastic and have been very proactive about comming up with adaptations. When I taught I had a kid that was in a car accident and had a tramatic brain injury. I didn't do much lecturing in class (I think it is boring). When I did lecture I used power points and I know Rosalynn has had a couple teachers that did alot on power point. I would print out my power point slides for my student so he could spend time listening to the information instead of sturggling with writing it down.

She could always try to type if she likes typing. I can type faster than I can write. I would rather type my notes than write them long hand. It doesn't get as tiring.

Hi Elizabeth! Happy Birthday!
They set up a buddy note taking situation where Maia can just copy someone's notes so she doesn't have to tape or anything else.... it's working out GREAT as long as Maia remembers to ask that person for their notes! and that is another battle and a half
-francine

Oh, that's good... and thank you!