Barbara Arrowsmith Sparknotes

In this chapter, Barbara Arrowsmith is a young girl whose brain was asymmetry and her body was not normal since her right side was larger than her left. Due to her learning disabilities, she lacked the spatial reasoning. She also had kinesthetic problem as well as visual disability. She had trouble understanding math concepts, grammar. Due to her dyslexic, she couldn’t tell the different between b, d, q, and p, read “saw” as “was” which almost cost her life since she sniffles sulfuric acids. She does have unique ability in visual memory and auditory. Although she couldn’t understand concept of math but can memorize the math procedure. Since she didn’t understand the real time, she has to go back and go over and over things from the past. It
was not easy for her to have stable relationship since she had poor emotional development. Even her teacher told her parents that she has mental incapability to learn like other did.
During her undergraduate, she wanted to study of child development but due to her mental disparities she was unable to do so. Surprisingly, she did have ability to pick up nonverbal cues, which offered her to teach the course on the child development. When she went to graduate school, it was hard for her cause normal people take one or two times to go through the research paper, but for Barbara it was taking forever. In her graduate school, she met Joshua who also had similar problem like Barbara. Even though Joshua was running clinic for the learning disable children, but Barbara believe that the kids were really not improving and there must be a better way. After reading the book that Joshua gave her, made her realize that Zazetsky is describing her life in a way cause it was impossible for her to separate mother or daughter, bigger or smaller. At the end of the book, she did figure out what wrong with her brain, but there was no
treatment. One day while she was in graduate school, she read the paper by Mark Rosenzweig of the University of California at Berkeley and found out that neuroplasticity can change the structure of the brain that mean brain can be reorganized. She then start training her brain, first by using the flash cards to tell time, and if she didn’t get the time right. She would just be in front of the clock trying to understand real clock time. After she notice that her grammar, concept of math and logic. She decides to use same exercise for other disabilities. After she got married with Joshua, she opened the Arrowsmith School in Toronto.
They both did research and develop brain exercise. Arrowsmith School had lots of brain exercise not only for learning disabilities, concentrating and also strengthening their visual memories. Due to this brain exercise, students improve their verbal skills as well as reading to. There is one boy that author mention in this chapter who had problem with his speech because his thoughts always came first and he would have a problem finding words or sometimes there is sentences but missing words. He never right the things that is in his mind, even though he knows the answer it takes forever for him to write it down. As we know, learning disability children have trouble reading. Whenever he has to read something, he skipped words, lost his concentration and feels exhausted. After admitting that boy in this school, he didn’t skip any words and spoke spontaneously, and his handwriting improved. Barbara developed the brain exercise for those kids who lagged behind on verbal cues while being in social
settings. Everyone does have some kind of weak brain functions but there is a solution like neuroplasticity-based technique that helped almost everyone. Brabara help the artist who was a good artist, but had problem with visualizing the shape of objects. Similary, Barbara helped lawyer because he had pronunciation deficit. After Barbara help him with Broca’s problem, the lawyer had confident and spoke fluently. Barbara use brain exercise as well as brain area based assessment to identify brain weaken function and then strengthen them. She talks about the early neuroplasticity where brain can be modified in early age rather than during adolescence. Barbara has done stunning job by creating those brain exercises for so many brain dysfunctions, and with the children with multiple learning disabilities children like her.