INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES STUDENT

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Individual difference Student Profile

Jessica Warth

Instructor: Natalie Raass

EDUC 230 Intro to Special Education

Fall 2018
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Individual Difference Student Profile Essay

I recently had the opportunity to observe and amazing little girl who will be referred to as

Lola. I observed Lola not only in her third grade class but in her special education class and

various recesses. Lola is an eight year old caucasian female who suffered from a learning

disability. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss Lola’s general information, physical

development, cognitive development, socio-emotional development, and provide a summary of

major findings.

General information

As mentioned in the introduction Lola is an eight years and seven months old, caucasian,

American, female who has a learning disability. She has two older brothers ages ten and twelve

and both mom and dad are in the same home. She also spends mornings and afternoons with her

grandparents because both mom and dad work full time. Her mom volunteered at the school on a

Friday so I was able to talk to her about her daughter and found out she plays ROBLOX with her

middle brother quite often but her and her oldest brother fight frequently. The family

interactions I observed were; I watched her middle brother come get her one day after school so

they could walk home together and he made sure she had everything before they left the

classroom that way they did not have to come back to retrieve anything she might have

forgotten. I also got to observe how close her and her mom were when her mom was there

visiting. Lola wanted to wear her moms jacket even though she had her own so her mom made

sure she did not have anything that she did not mind getting lost in her pockets and gave Lola

her jacket and then went out to play on the playground with her during recess.

Physical Development
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Lola is a typically physically developing eight year old child. She looks just like all the

other children her age. She has blue eyes, red hair and pale skin with a face full of freckles. Her

vision seems fine with no chronic health problems. Her dominate hand is her right hand. She

loves running and playing with her friends, tag being one of her favorite games. She also loves

doing gymnastics and spend most of the recesses I spent with her showing me how well she does

cartwheels. Her small muscle development, is struggling as she has a hard time using a pencil or

cutting paper on the lines. She struggles to write words so they are legible without spending a

considerable amount of time focusing on how she is writing. She seems to be a bit picky when it

comes to food and during lunch barely ate anything presented in front of her in the lunch line,

but she seemed very active during recess. At the end of the day though she seems drained

because of how hard she seemed to try to understand and with her hand writing, it did not seem

like she had much left to give compared to the morning. Lola has an intellectual disability and

struggles with reading, writing, and math. You would never know this by talking to her though

as her vocabulary orally is just like her peers and her imagination and story telling ability is

amazing. Many of the stories were so realistic I had a hard time distinguishing between what

was fact or fiction.

Cognitive Development

Lola’s school spends most of her day in the regular classroom and only goes to the

resource room for reading and math. She also spends 45 minutes a week with an occupational

therapist to help her with her hand writing. She has recently had attention put on her individual

learning plan because she tends to lose focus on tasks quickly and unless it is something, she

enjoys doing it takes her longer to finish her work than it does other students. She is constantly

fidgeting, and I have yet to see her sit in her seat with her feet on the floor. She also must be
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reminded to get back on track multiple times throughout the school day. So, her teacher and her

special education teacher think she may have ADHD. Lola struggles with reading, math and

writing, so anything that involves her doing these things is a struggle for her. I observed her

getting incredibly upset with how long it was taking her to write a paragraph and that she felt the

teacher was not helping her so she had to take a time-out in the hall so she could calm down.

She loves art and telling stories in fact watching her draw you can tell it is something she is

passionate about. She is also good at making her characters in her stories that she tells me as

unique as she is, i.e. all of the girls she talks about have red hair even though she is the only

person in her grade with red hair. She hates being in special education and has even told me

multiple times that she wishes she can stay in her classroom with her friends. She also constantly

calls herself stupid because she does not know the answer or the words she is supposed to be

reading. Lola is aware she has a learning disability and she knows that learning is hard, and she

does not enjoy class because of how hard it is for her. She is in the third-grade but reads at a

first-grade level. Lola is at the concrete operations level of cognitive development, while she

cannot write her thoughts out with ease, she can explain her thoughts and physical experiences.

She also knows what is going on around her. She loves activities that are hands on rather than

reading out of a text book and did incredibly well on building a marshmallow catapult, making

her marshmallow go further than her classmates which made her incredibly happy. She could not

stop talking about it for the next couple of days. She told me that she was also diagnosed with

dyslexia about a year ago and has special paper to help her write her words correctly. Without

the paper she tends to invert her letters and write her numbers backwards so 23 would be 32

however she would read it as 23. Her response-to-intervention is showing that while she is still

behind with her reading and math, she is making progress and meeting her goals and that her
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writing is becoming more legible the longer she goes to occupational therapy and uses a special

paper and pencil to help her with her grip. She is definitely in Piaget’s concrete operational

stage of cognitive development because she is very aware that her feelings and thoughts are her

own she is always telling me her mom says she is really smart even when she does not think she

is very smart herself.

She has difficulty with her working memory and would have instructions written down

for her so she would not have to worry about focusing on both listening and writing as she would

soon forget what she was supposed to be working on. Lola is an incredibly sweet child and

would constantly tell me she was stupid because she didn’t know math problems or words that

she was supposed to read. She knows her brain doesn’t work like the rest of her classmates and

she tries really hard to be just like them academically. She also hates going into the resource

room for reading and math and wishes she could stay with her friends in her class. I told her that

she just needed a little extra help and that everybody is capable of learning even if some people

like herself have to try a little bit harder sometimes.

Socio-emotional Development

Her social intelligence is typical for her age and Lola has an incredibly easy time making

friends, she is incredibly sweet and will go out of her way to make her classmates feel welcome

and cheer them up. She recently befriended a new classmate that was having a hard time

adjusting to their new school and now they are best friends. In fact the teacher tends to pair them

because while they both struggle to learn they help each other out and Lola is the only student

this little boy wants to work with. She tends to play with more boys that girls and likes to rough

house with them, she likes to play the more aggressive sports but that may be because she only

has brothers at home. Her interactions with adults is pretty typical of children her age. She likes
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to test her boundaries but also likes to please them. She strives when they praise her and gets

incredibly upset when she is even remotely criticized by either her peers or adults. She is very

aware of herself and her limitations with reading and math however she is constantly calling

herself stupid when she struggles with understanding what the teacher wants or when it takes her

longer to write something than it does other people. She does not let her disability define who

she is and tells me all the time she wants to be a doctor and a gymnast when she grows up. She is

also really good friends with all of the other kids in her class, about five other students, who are

also in special education she tells me because they all go together it bonds them together. Lola

shows clear signs of being in Erikson’s fourth stage of development called industry versus

inferiority because she trusting of her peers and adults, she is able to delay gratification when

given a choice to spend money now or save for later she saves her money, she told me she is

waiting until she can afford a new computer before she spends anything and she has a while to

go. She acts autonomous when interacting with her peers she does not just go along with what

they want because every one else wants to do something. All of her friends wanted to play tag

and she did not, so she went off and played something else while they played tag. She was not

upset they did not want to play tag she was very much willing to let them play their game

without being upset they did not want to play what she wanted. She struggles with her self-

esteem when it comes to her performance academically but when talking to her about how she

feels about herself every other way she has nothing but good things to say about herself. She

loves herself which is honestly something adults struggle with. She really is the most amazing

little girl I have every met.

Summary
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Lola is trying really hard to catch up to her peers in the subjects she is struggling with.

She will be able to work on her hand writing though related services she receives such as

occupational therapy and with using her special pencil and be able to work on her reading and

math skills in the resource room with her special educational teachers. She will also need to

work on these skills at home with her parents and even her older brothers. She will need to learn

how to stay on task and listen to direction better but I think that the accommodations that the

special education teacher and her general education teacher have in place will help her learn.

In conclusion, I think Lola has the ability to manage and overcome her disability,

however it will take a lot of work and dedication not only on her part but she will also need the

proper support in order to achieve in school. She has such a bright future and has the potential to

achieve anything she desires. With the help of her parents and her teachers and available school

resources, if she is willing to put in the work, there is no reason why she cannot become a

successful individual and student.

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References

Hallahan, D., Kauffman, J., & Pullen, P. (2015). Exceptional learners : An introduction to special

education (Thirteenth ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Knight, Z. G. (2017). A proposed model of psychodynamic psychotherapy linked to Erik

Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development. Clinical Psychology &

Psychotherapy, 24(5), 1047–1058. https://doi-

org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/cpp.2066

Nakagaki, A. (2011). The Significance and Potential of Piaget’s Developmental Stage Theory.

Japanese Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22(4), 369–380. Retrieved from

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