Joel struggled as a student. His parents were divorced, he hated school, and he was actually expelled from high school because of his poor grades. After two years, he barely had one semester of credits. He ended up in a continuation school, but it was no better. He eventually graduated through a home-study program, but almost a year after his peers did. He did not have much motivation for college or work. He felt that he was just not cut out for school, and had no interest in working at some fast-food place. He did like computers, but he figured that would take too much schooling.
A Strategy for Struggling Students
Things took a turn for Joel after taking the Highlands Ability Battery (HAB). With the HAB results, Joel began seeing himself in a new light. His low scores in the learning channels – in Design, Number, Verbal and Tonal Memory – helped him understand why the traditional classroom model didn’t work for him. Much to his amazement, he scored very high on two of the Driving Abilities – 85% in Classification and 95% in Concept Organization.
When he realized how well his problem-solving abilities complimented his propensity for self-directed study, everything started to make sense.
He took a college course in electronics in a self-directed lab and noticed how quickly and easily he understood the course compared to his 30-year old classmate, who claimed to have some experience in electronics.
Through the years, Joel had made many attempts at teaching himself to play an instrument, but he had never stuck with it. But when he learned that his Rhythm Memory stood high compared to most of the other specialized abilities, he took up drums and stuck with it. He began to love and excel at it.
A Big Turn of Events for Joel
Joel’s continuing success at mastering new subjects emboldened him to enroll in a self- directed computer diagnostics school. After a few months in the program, he was so far ahead of his class that the school gave him an additional course at no cost. It also enabled him to bump his hours by assigning him to teach and tutor others. After another couple of months, the school hired him as an instructor and permitted him to continue his schooling, tuition-free.
Thanks to the HAB, a proven success strategy for struggling students, Joel went from being an unmotivated, aimless teen who wore only black clothes, to facing life as a young man who wears slacks and a collared shirt and is able to handle a full-time-plus school. Certainly, there have been some growing-up issues at work, but Joel’s new awareness of himself and his built-in strengths and weaknesses has played a critical part in giving him direction and courage and in abandoning a confused and unmotivated life.