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Learning disabilities and challenging behaviors using the
building blocks model to guide intervention and classroom
management 3rd Edition Nancy Mather Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Nancy Mather, Sam Goldstein, Katie Eklund
ISBN(s): 9781598578362, 1598578367
Edition: 3rd
File Details: PDF, 50.37 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
LE AR N I NG DI SA B I L IT I ES / SP EC IA L ED U C AT IO N / E D UC AT I O N

& EKLUND
GOLDSTEIN,
MATHER,
“An in-depth yet practical treatment of the complex learning,
behavior, and social-emotional needs of students with disabilities and
how to help them to take ownership of their learning and school success.”
—David Allsopp, Ph.D., University of South Florida

LEARNING DISABILITIES and Challenging Behaviors

“Provides a comprehensive look at the underlying skills students need to learn and
does a great job exploring the interplay among them. More importantly, it provides
teachers with a framework by which to make sense of what they’re seeing in the classroom
and the practical, actionable tools and information they need to make positive change.”
—Amanda Morin, educator and author of
The Everything Parent’s Guide to Special Education

W
hy do students in Grades K–12 struggle with behavioral
HELP STUDENTS
and academic skills, and how can teachers help them MASTER THE 12 BUILDING
develop the competence and confidence they need BLOCKS OF LEARNING:
to succeed? Get practical answers in the new edition of this
• Self-Regulation
bestselling book, a staple of teacher training since 2001.
• Behavior
• Emotions
The new edition is structured like the popular previous editions. A • Resilience
detailed questionnaire pinpoints each student’s individual strengths • Phonological
and needs, and an updated version of the highly effective Building • Orthographic
• Memory
Blocks model helps educators target 12 school success factors with
• Motor
proven strategies and guidelines they can use right away. Reliable, • Efficiency/Automaticity
up-to-date research makes this a perfect preservice textbook, and the • Verbal
classroom-ready strategies are a lifeline for in-service teachers as they • Nonverbal
work toward better outcomes for their struggling students. • Executive Functions

NEW IN THIS EDITION: New in-depth information on ABOUT THE AUTHORS Nancy Mather, Ph.D., is a professor
today’s most critical topics, including school climate, in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies
multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), positive at the University of Arizona. Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., is the
behavior interventions and supports (PBIS), clinical director of the Neurology, Learning and Behavior Center
social-emotional learning, and student–teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, and an adjunct assistant professor in the
interactions. You’ll also get fresh contributions from Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah School of
experts on learning disabilities and behavior challenges, Medicine. Katie Eklund, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the
EDITION
THIRD
plus lists of helpful apps and other online resources. School Psychology Program at the University of Arizona.
 Learning Disabilities
and Challenging Behaviors
Third Edition
 Learning Disabilities
and Challenging Behaviors
Using the Building Blocks
Model to Guide Intervention
and Classroom Management
Third Edition

by
Nancy Mather, Ph.D.
University of Arizona
Tucson

Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.

Neurology, Learning and Behavior Center
and University of Utah School of Medicine
Salt Lake City
and

Katie Eklund, Ph.D.

University of Arizona
Tucson

with invited contributors

Baltimore • London • Sydney

Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
Post Office Box 10624
Baltimore, Maryland 21285-­0624
www​.brookespublishing​.com
Copyright © 2015 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved.
Previous edition copyright © 2008.
“Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.” is a registered trademark of
Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc.
Typeset by Scribe Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Manufactured in the United States of America by
Sheridan Books, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan.
Cover image © iStockphoto/michaeljung.
Photograph of Dr. Goldstein on p. ix courtesy of Michael Schoenfeld (www.michaelschoenfeld.com).
The list from Jones, 1994 found at the bottom of p. 120 is from Attention deficit disorder: Strategies for school-­age
children. Copyright © 1994 NCS Pearson, Inc. All rights reserved.
All examples in this book are composites. Any similarity to actual individuals or circumstances is coincidental,
and no implications should be inferred.
The information provided in this book is in no way meant to substitute for a medical or mental health practitio-
ner’s advice or expert opinion. Readers should consult a health or mental health professional if they are interested
in more information. This book is sold without warranties of any kind, express or implied, and the publisher and
authors disclaim any liability, loss, or damage caused by the contents of this book.
Purchasers of Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviors: Using the Building Blocks Model to Guide Interven-
tion and Classroom Management, Third Edition, are granted permission to download, print, and/or photocopy the
assessment tools in Appendix 1A, Appendix 8A, and Appendix 10B for educational purposes. None of the forms
may be reproduced to generate revenue for any program or individual. Photocopies may only be made from an
original book. Unauthorized use beyond this privilege is prosecutable under federal law. You will see the copyright
protection notice at the bottom of each photocopiable page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­P ublication Data
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Mather, Nancy.
Learning disabilities and challenging behaviors : using the building blocks model to guide intervention and
classroom management / Nancy Mather, Sam Goldstein, Katie Eklund.—Third edition.
pages cm
Summary: “This third edition shows teachers and specialists, such as school psychologists and speech-­language
pathologists, how to support children in Grades K-12 with learning disabilities and behavioral challenges in the
era of high-stakes testing and accountability. An innovative framework is included to help professionals identify
areas of strength and weakness and to determine the types of educational and behavioral interventions needed
and to develop meaningful, realistic educational goals. Even more comprehensive and user friendly than the pop-
ular previous edition, this text follows the same basic format: the Building Blocks model targets 12 factors and
abilities related to school success and gives teachers practical strategies for helping students succeed as well as a
detailed questionnaire that pinpoints student strengths and needs. The reliable, up-to-date research makes this
an essential textbook for any course focused on learning disabilities and behavior problems, and the practical
advice and guidelines will be a lifeline to in-service teachers year after year. The new edition explains the same
philosophy and model for intervention, but it also includes information on multi-tiered systems of support, posi-
tive behavior interventions and supports, and social-emotional learning. This new edition has a new third author,
Katie Eklund, who will bring a fresh energy to the author team. As in the previous edition, there are a few invited
contributors as well, including Robert Brooks”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59857-836-2 (paperback)—ISBN 978-1-59857-840-9 (pdf ebook)—ISBN 978-1-59857-837-9 (epub
ebook)
1. Learning disabled children—Education. 2. Behavior disorders in children. 3. Classroom management.
I. Goldstein, Sam, 1952–­ II. Eklund, Katie. III. Title.
LC4704.M374 2015
371.9—­dc23 2014042845
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available from the British Library.

2019 2018 2017 2016 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

About the Downloadable Materials.................................................................................................vii

About the Authors..................................................................................................................................... ix
About the Contributors.......................................................................................................................... xi
Preface......................................................................................................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................ xvii
A Note to Teachers..................................................................................................................................xix

I Introduction
1 The Building Blocks of Learning: A Framework for
Understanding Classroom Learning and Behavior.......................................................... 3
2 Theoretical Foundations............................................................................................................31
3 The Learning Environment.......................................................................................................55

II Foundational Blocks
4 Self-­Regulation: Understanding and Managing Students with
Hyperactivity and Poor Attention, Planning, and Impulse Control.......................81
5 Understanding and Managing Challenging Behaviors.............................................. 123
with Lauren Meyer
6 Emotions: Understanding and Managing Anxiety, Depression,
Trauma, and Stress..................................................................................................................... 155
with Gretchen Schoenfield and Jennifer M. White
7 Strategies to Promote Resilience......................................................................................... 181
with Robert Brooks

III Processing Blocks

8 Specific Learning Disabilities and the Processing Blocks....................................... 207
with Deborah A. Schneider
9 Instruction for the Processing Blocks: Decoding and Encoding,
Reading Fluency, Calculating, and Handwriting.......................................................... 273
with Breanna Sherrow

IV Conceptual Blocks
10 The Conceptual Blocks: Verbal, Nonverbal, and
Executive Functions.................................................................................................................. 351
with Ann M. Richards

v
 Contents

11 Instruction in Reading Comprehension, Written Expression,

and Math Problem Solving......................................................................................................403
with Ann M. Richards

V Conclusion
12 The Classroom Environment as a Microcosm of the World....................................463

References................................................................................................................................................ 475
Additional Resources.......................................................................................................................... 513
Web Sites and Professional Organizations................................................................................ 523
Index............................................................................................................................................................ 527

vi
About the Downloadable Materials

Purchasers of this book may download, print, and/or photocopy the assessment
tools in Appendix 1A, Appendix 8A, and Appendix 10B for educational use. These
materials are included with the print book and are also available for download at
http://www.brookespublishing.com/mather/materials for print and e-­ book
buyers.

vii
About the Authors

Nancy Mather, Ph.D., University of Arizona, College of

Education, Department of Disability and Psychoeduca-
tional Studies, Education Building 409, Tucson, Arizona
85721

Dr. Mather is a professor at the University of Arizona

in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational
Studies. She specializes in the areas of reading, writing,
and learning disabilities. She has conducted numerous
workshops and presentations both nationally and inter-
nationally on assessment, instruction, and issues that
affect service delivery for individuals with learning dis-
abilities. She has written many books and articles on top-
ics and issues in the field. Dr. Mather is a coauthor, along with Dr. Fredrick A. Schrank
and Dr. Kevin S. McGrew, of the Woodcock-­Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities
(WJ IV; Riverside, 2014). Dr. Mather has also coauthored two books on interpreta-
tion and application of the WJ IV: Woodcock-­Johnson IV: Recommendations, Reports,
and Strategies with Dr. Lynne E Jaffe (Wiley, in press) and Essentials of WJ IV Tests
of Achievement Assessment with Barbara J. Wendling (Wiley, in press). In addition,
she has coauthored Essentials of Dyslexia: Assessment and Intervention with Barbara J.
Wendling (Wiley, 2012).

Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., Neurology, Learning and Behav-

ior Center, 230 South 500 East, Suite 100, Salt Lake City,
Utah 84102

Dr. Goldstein is a board-­certified forensic and clinical

neuropsychologist, certified school psychologist, and
member of the faculty at the University of Utah School
of Medicine. He is Clinical Director of the Neurology,
Learning and Behavior Center in Salt Lake City, Utah,
and on staff at the University Neuropsychiatric Insti-
tute. Dr. Goldstein is an adjunct assistant professor in
the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah
School of Medicine. He is Editor-­in-­Chief of the Journal
of Attention Disorders and sits on the editorial boards of six journals, including the
Journal of Learning Disabilities. His publications include 47 professional and trade
texts on subjects including genetics and developmental disorders, intelligence,

ix
 About the Authors

executive functioning, autism, depression, classroom consultation, learning dis-

ability, and attention. He has coauthored six psychological and neuropsychological
tests, including the Cognitive Assessment System, Second Edition (PRO-­ED, 2014),
the Autism Spectrum Rating Scales (Multi-­Health Systems, 2009), and the Compre-
hensive Executive Functioning Inventory (Multi-­Health Systems, 2012). Dr. Gold-
stein speaks internationally on a wide range of child development and forensic
topics.

Katie Eklund, Ph.D., University of Arizona, College of

Education, School Psychology Program, 1430 East Sec-
ond Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Dr. Eklund is an assistant professor in the School Psy-

chology Program at the University of Arizona. She
received her doctorate in counseling, clinical, and school
psychology from the University of California, Santa Bar-
bara. Dr. Eklund has worked in public education for
14 years as a school administrator, school psychologist,
and school social worker and is a Nationally Certi-
fied School Psychologist and licensed psychologist.
Dr. Eklund has authored a number of publications on
childhood risk and resiliency factors, including early identification and intervention
for behavioral and emotional concerns, school climate, and positive psychology. Her
teaching interests include school-­based academic and behavioral interventions, cri-
sis response and intervention, and school-­based consultation and problem-­solving
skills.

x
About the Contributors

Robert Brooks, Ph.D., 60 Oak Knoll Terrace, Needham, Massachusetts 02492

Dr. Brooks is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He also has a part-­t ime
private practice and provides consultation to several educational institutions. His
major professional activity is conducting workshops and presentations nationally
and internationally to groups of educators, health care professionals, business peo-
ple, community organizations, and parents. The major themes he addresses in his
writings and workshops pertain to motivation, resilience, positive school and work
environments, and balancing personal and professional lives. He has coauthored or
co-edited 12 books with Dr. Sam Goldstein, including the second edition of Hand-
book of Resilience in Children (Springer, 2013).

Lauren Meyer, M.A., University of Arizona, College of Education, School Psychology

Program, 1430 East Second Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Ms. Meyer is a doctoral student at the University of Arizona pursuing a Ph.D. in

school psychology and a minor in rehabilitation counseling. She teaches under-
graduate psychology and developmental mathematics at Mesa Community College.
Much of her work has involved curriculum development and schoolwide program-
ming targeted to improve retention rates and campus connectedness in high school
and early college. She has worked as an advocate for multiple organizations at the
local and national levels promoting suicide prevention, sexual assault and domes-
tic violence awareness, and treatment alternatives to high-­r isk behaviors among
students. Her research interests include crisis response and intervention, positive
psychology, and emotional and behavioral concerns, specifically how they intersect
during the high school to college transition.

Ann M, Richards, Ph.D., West Virginia University, 508G Allen Hall, Morgantown,
West Virginia 26506

Dr. Richards is an associate professor at West Virginia University, where she trains
teachers of special education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Much
of her work has been done in the areas of transition, schoolwide positive behavior
support, collaboration, and learning disabilities. She has provided several profes-
sional development workshops on characteristics of special needs learners and the
need for differentiated instruction within general education classrooms. She is also
an active volunteer for West Virginia Special Olympics, providing preservice teach-
ers with experiences working with individuals with disabilities.

xi
 About the Contributors

Deborah A. Schneider, Ed.S., University of Arizona, College of Education, Depart-

ment of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies, Education Building 409, Tucson,
Arizona 85721

Ms. Schneider is a doctoral candidate and Department Fellow in Special Education

at the University of Arizona. She earned an Ed.S. in language, reading, and cul-
ture; an M.A. in educational psychology; and a summa cum laude B.A. in English
at the University of Arizona. She has also studied English literature and linguis-
tics at the graduate level at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She has coau-
thored several book chapters on the identification and remediation of learning
disabilities. Her research interests include testing and measurement in education
and the identification and remediation of learning disabilities. In addition to her
departmental fellowship, she has worked in various capacities at the University of
Arizona for a combined total of more than 7 years. In that time, she has contributed
to several research projects, including research concerning literacy, the adoption of
instructional technologies, and strategies to promote the success of veterans with
disabilities in the higher educational environment.

Gretchen Schoenfield, Ph.D., Neuropsychology Limited, 2650 North Wyatt Drive,

Tucson, Arizona 85712

Dr. Schoenfield is a licensed psychologist in private practice specializing in neuro-

psychological evaluation and brief model interventions in inpatient rehabilitation
and outpatient settings. She received her doctorate from the University of Arizona
in school psychology with an emphasis in pediatric and adult neuropsychology. She
has coauthored several book chapters on the topic of diagnosis and treatment of
anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence. Her clinical interests include neu-
ropsychological assessment of individuals with medical conditions having neuro-
psychiatric sequelae and assisting patients and families with their adjustment to
cognitive and lifestyle changes.

Breanna Sherrow, M.A., University of Arizona, College of Education, Department

of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies, Education Building 409, Tucson, Ari-
zona 85721

Ms. Sherrow is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona pursuing a Ph.D. in

special education and a minor focusing on behavior and positive behavior supports.
Because she had specific learning disabilities in reading and writing in elementary
school, she has a personal connection to the field. Ms. Sherrow’s research interests
include assessment, instruction, and intervention for students with specific learning
disabilities and emotional behavior disorders. She is also interested in parent and
teacher supports for students with learning disabilities.

Jennifer M. White, M.A., University of Arizona, College of Education, Department of Dis-

ability and Psychoeducational Studies, Education Building 409, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Ms. White is a doctoral student at the University of Arizona pursuing a Ph.D. in

special education with a minor in school psychology. She has experience as both
a reading specialist and special education director. Much of her work has focused
upon training teachers in research-­based reading instruction and implementing
accommodations and modifications in the classroom. Her research interests include
evidence-­based interventions, assessment, and diagnosis for students with high-­
incidence learning disabilities, as well as how to effectively prepare teachers to pro-
vide effective reading instruction to students with learning disabilities.

xii
Preface

Most children enter kindergarten feeling excited and ready to learn. They are
instinctually optimistic and intrinsically motivated. They are of an age during
which they believe they are capable of achieving anything they set their minds to
accomplish. The very experience of success is all the reinforcement they require
to persevere. Yet within a few years, a significant minority become disenchanted
and turned off to school not because of the challenges they face but because the
educational system has failed to understand and address those challenges. Many
children struggle with learning, behavior, or emotional problems at school. School
experiences for these children further reinforce their perceptions of inadequacy.
The instinctual optimism that children bring to life must be nurtured at school if all
children are to make a successful transition through their educational years.
What variables contribute to this change of heart and view of self? For example,
despite failing to complete a puzzle, most first-­g rade students confidently report
that if they were given another chance, they would be able to complete the puzzle
successfully. Yet by the end of elementary school, many students do not predict that
they will experience future success following failure (Dweck, 2006). Some scholars
would suggest that this transformation in attitude is simply a process of matura-
tion. Young students are unable to assess their capabilities accurately and, when
facing a problem, they are naive about the probability of success. Yet this very same
research can be viewed from the perspective that school experiences negatively
alter students’ self-­confidence (Goldstein & Brooks, 2007). If this is the case, we
are missing a valuable opportunity to help children develop self-­discipline; confi-
dence; and a resilient, optimistic view of self—­essential components for life success
(Brooks & Goldstein, 2001, 2007, 2013).
Although the next decade brings promises of unlimited technological and sci-
entific advances, as a society, we are experiencing increasing problems in prepar-
ing our youth for this future. Violence, vandalism, increased school dropout rates,
and mental health problems among our students remind us daily of this fact. The
burden of preparing children for their future has been and must be increasingly
borne on the shoulders of educators. Our schools must find a way to educate all
students efficiently and effectively, providing them with knowledge and instilling
in them qualities of hope and resilience. These qualities will help them be confident
and overcome the challenges and adversities that they will face.
To accomplish this goal, educators must begin looking at children differently.
Rather than viewing the learning, emotional, and challenging behaviors that some
children experience as somehow making them different in a fixed and stable way,
educators must view these problems as malleable and responsive to environmen-
tal manipulation. This requires a shift from a categorical model of differences to
a model that acknowledges that most children’s school problems result from the

xiii
 Preface

combination of variations in abilities and environmental influences. Children with

slower learning rates, for example, learn through the same processes as others but
may require more time. They respond to the same types of strategies and interven-
tions that other children do but often require more assistance.
The third edition of Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviors: Using the
Building Blocks Model to Guide Intervention and Classroom Management marks more
than 18 years of collaboration between the first two authors and is the result of a
chance meeting at an educational conference in Saskatoon, Canada. We were each
speaking on different but related topics concerning children’s development, learn-
ing, and behavioral challenges. Although our backgrounds and training were quite
different, we immediately found common ground in our conceptualization of chil-
dren’s development as well as in our understanding of how to help children who
struggle in the classroom.
Our first joint book, Overcoming Underachieving (Goldstein & Mather, 1998),
was written as a guide to help parents foster their children’s school success. In that
volume, we took a novel approach by suggesting that an appreciation of a finite pat-
tern of skills and abilities could help parents understand the reasons for their child’s
successes and failures in the classroom. Of note, these skills and abilities, which we
organized into the Building Blocks of Learning model, could be used to evaluate and
then address children’s difficulties in school.
A number of years later, we were fortunate to meet an editor at Paul H. Brookes
Publishing Co. who asked if we would be interested in creating a book for teachers
based on our Building Blocks model. The first edition of this volume was published
in 2001 and then the second edition in 2008. In this third edition, we have made the
following changes:
1. We have added a third author, Dr. Katie Eklund, who has additional expertise
and experience in social-­emotional development, school climate, and edu-
cational policy changes, such as implementation of the Common Core State
Standards and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). In addition, we have
several colleagues who have made significant contributions to specific chap-
ters of this edition: Robert Brooks, Ph.D., Lauren Meyer, M.A., Ann M. Richards,
Ph.D., ­Deborah A. Schneider, Ed. S., Gretchen Schoenfield, Ph.D., Breanna Sher-
row, M.A., and Jennifer M. White, M.A.
2. We have revised all chapters to include the most up-­to-­date research available.
3. We have added information on school climate and the importance of teacher–­
student relationships.
4. We have added information on MTSS, positive behavior interventions and sup-
ports, and social-­emotional learning.
We have also modified the Building Blocks model, as well as the question-
naire used to assess a student’s environment, behavior, and abilities. Although
our model still emphasizes the underlying behaviors and skills that contribute to
efficient learning, it has been revised to reflect the most recent educational, psy-
chological, and neuropsychological research. Since the publication of the first and
second editions, an increased emphasis has been placed on assessing the effec-
tiveness of educators to teach basic skills in the areas of reading, writing, and
mathematics. Terms such as curriculum-­based measurement, Common Core State
Standards, high-­stakes testing, accountability, and merit pay are common termi-
nology in the educational landscape. In an era in which educators are warned of
the consequences of “leaving a child behind,” some still fail to understand and

xiv
Preface

appreciate how children learn, how they differ, and what are the best ways to help
them when they struggle.
We are confident that the revised material in this third edition enhances and
expands on the content presented in the first and second editions. It is our hope that
this book will increase your understanding of children’s learning and behavior dif-
ficulties. Throughout, we suggest many specific strategies and interventions to use
to ensure that more struggling students are successfully educated and prepared for
their futures. It is our belief that throughout this educational process, all children
can be nurtured and guided to develop a resilient, optimistic view of themselves
and their surrounding world, thus preparing them academically and emotionally
for their future lives.

REFERENCES
Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2001). Raising resilient children: Fostering strength, hope, and opti-
mism in your child. New York, NY: Contemporary Books.
Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2007). Raising a self-disciplined child. New York, NY: McGraw- Hill.
Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2013). Handbook of resilience in children (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Springer.
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
Goldstein, S., & Brooks, R. (2007). Understanding and managing children’s classroom behavior:
Creating sustainable, resilient schools (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley.
Goldstein, S., & Mather, N. (1998). Overcoming underachieving: An action guide for helping your
child succeed in school. New York, NY: Wiley.

xv
Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Lynne Jaffe, Nicole Ofiesh, Deborah A.
Schneider, Michael E. Gerner, Jack Naglieri, and Connie Rissen for their helpful com-
ments regarding revisions to the Building Blocks model. We would also like to thank
our contributors for their assistance with this revision. Thanks also go to Rebecca
Lazo at Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. for her guidance throughout this project, as
well as Danny Constantino, Michael Kingcaid, and Michael Miller at Scribe Inc.
We also wish to thank and express our admiration for the many inspired and
dedicated educators who are the charismatic adults guiding children in their learn-
ing and development.

I would like to thank all the teachers and school psychologists I have known over
many years who are determined to understand why students are struggling and the
ways that school personnel can help. The lives of these children and their parents
were made better because they were at your school.
—­Nancy Mather

I want to thank the thousands of families over the past 35 years who have entrusted
me with the diagnosis and care of their children. Helping them has gifted me with a
lifetime of learning.
—­Sam Goldstein

I would like to thank all the teachers, psychologists, social workers, counselors,
principals, and other school staff I have worked with over the last 15 years. Your
level of dedication, creativity, and commitment to the field are remarkable and con-
tinue to fuel my passion for this work.
—­Katie Eklund

xvii
A NOTE TO TEACHERS

A Note to Teachers

Your best efforts in working with challenging students will be inspiring to other
teachers and parents. But your efforts will give special encouragement to the
Your bestthemselves,
students efforts in working with challenging
as illustrated in this letterstudents willa be
from Andy, inspiring
9-year to to
old boy, other
his
teachers and parents, but your efforts will give special encouragement to the stu-
teacher.
dentsDear
themselves, as illustrated
Ms. Caseman. Thank youinfor
this letterme
helping fromwithAndy, a 9-­year-­
my writing oldyear.
this boy,You
to his
lis-
teacher.
tened to my ideas. Have a great summer.
Dear Ms. Caseman. Thank you for helping me with my writing this year. You lis-
tened to my ideas. Have a great summer.

xvii
xix
To my son, Daniel: What a marvelous young man you have become!
And to his fairy godmother, Vesta Hammond Udall, an extraordinary
teacher who knew that the way to reach students is through sincere
caring and respect. Thank you both for a lifetime of love and support.

—­NM

For my grandchildren, Isaac and Avery, and my wonderful wife, Sherrie.

—­SG

For my grandmothers, Phyllis, Florence, and Adele—­all strong and

beautiful women who dedicated their professional lives to teaching.

—­KE
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, will forget what you did, but will never
forget how you made them feel.

—­Maya Angelou

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

—Chinese proverb

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship.

—­Louisa May Alcott

No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the
soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

—­Emma Goldman
SECTION I
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 OUTLINE

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LEARNING

The Learning Environment

Foundational Blocks
Processing Blocks
Conceptual Blocks
How the Blocks Work Together

COMMON PROFILES

Strengths in the Processing and Conceptual Blocks, Weaknesses in the

Foundational Blocks, and a Disadvantaged Environment
Strengths in the Foundational and Conceptual Blocks, Weaknesses in the
Processing Blocks, and a Supportive Environment
Strengths in the Foundational and Processing Blocks, Weaknesses in the
Conceptual Blocks
Strengths in the Conceptual Blocks, Weaknesses in the Processing and
Foundational Blocks
A Significant Strength or Weakness in One Block

BUILDING BLOCKS QUESTIONNAIRE

Completing the Building Blocks Questionnaire

Ryan’s Profile

PURPOSE, OVERVIEW, AND AUDIENCE

APPENDIX 1A: BUILDING BLOCKS QUESTIONNAIRE

 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

1
Verbal Nonverbal

PROCESSING
CHAPTER
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor

EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

FOUNDATIONAL

The Building Blocks of Learning

Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
Regulation

ENVIRONMENT

A Framework for Understanding

Classroom Learning and Behavior

The last day of school at the Harper Unified School District was a cause for celebration as
well as a time for reflection. Although both the teachers and students were looking for-
ward to the summer break, the students were sad to leave their teachers. The teachers
also had mixed feelings about the school year coming to an end, as they were worried
about certain students. The teachers wanted all their students to be successful in school
in the coming years, but they were most concerned about the children who had learn-
ing and/or behavior difficulties. On some days during the past year, these students were
their teachers’ greatest source of fulfillment; on other days, they were their teachers’
greatest source of frustration. There were many days when thoughts of these students
and their chances of being successful in school occupied their teachers’ minds.

Veteran teachers know that students with learning and behavior difficulties face a chal-
lenging journey and that their education requires constant attention and fine tuning
throughout the school year if they are to succeed. One such teacher, Ms. Abram, rec-
ognized this fact when working with Andy, one of her third-­grade students. Although
Andy could talk up a storm, he struggled with both fine and gross motor tasks. On the
playground, balls would roll past him. He often tripped going up or down the school
stairs. When the class played kickball, Andy usually wound up on the ground after
attempting to kick the moving ball. Andy still could not tie his shoes, nor did he attempt
to ride a bicycle. Although Ms. Abram had worked with Andy diligently all school year to
improve his handwriting, he seemed to have made little progress. His spacing was still
poor, and the size of his letters was inconsistent. One day, Andy left the following note
on Ms. Abram’s desk: “I’ll see you later.” (See Figure 1.1.)

Ms. Garcia was concerned about Beto, a fun-­loving 8-­year-­old in her third-­grade class.
Beto was born and raised in New Mexico to Spanish-­speaking parents who arrived in the
United States just before his birth. Beto spoke only Spanish until he attended kindergar-
ten, at which time he was placed in an English-­only classroom. He received English as
a second language (ESL) support services in kindergarten through second grade. Beto
had always struggled with reading and writing in English. Each year, his teachers noted

3
 Introduction
The Building Blocks of Learning

Figure 1.1. Andy’s note to his third-grade teacher: “I’ll see you later.”
Figure 1.1. Andy’s note to his third-­grade teacher: “I’ll see you later.”

children would walk away as a group, with Stephanie lagging behind, trying to get their
concerns. He had never been referred for testing because each teacher concluded that
attention. Ms. Richards tried to create situations that would help Stephanie develop friend-
he was behind because he “was still acquiring English.” At the end of second grade, he
ships, but nothing seemed to work. In the classroom, Stephanie spelled, memorized rote
received the designation of “fully English proficient,” or “FEP.” As a result, he no longer
facts, and read words with ease. She talked quite easily about situations and information
received pull-­out ESL services. By mid-­year in third grade, Ms. Garcia knew that Beto was
she knew well. At times, she seemed to go on and on with little point to the conversation.
falling further and further behind.
In contrast, when questioned about a story she had just read, Stephanie was unable to
provide any answers. When she was asked to predict an answer or follow several direc-
Mr. Steen,
tions, a fourth-­
she often grade
forgot whatteacher,
she was was
doingthinking
and wasabout Ryan.
unable At the beginning
to complete the task atof the
hand.
year, Ryan entered Mr. Steen’s classroom with very limited reading and math skills. Ryan
seemed to have difficulty
Ms. McGrew, memorizing
a fifth-grade teacher, was information; he knew
most concerned few
about multiplication
Katy. facts.
Unlike Stephanie,
He also had difficulty completing assigned tasks quickly. He complained
Katy had several good friends, but she also struggled to learn new concepts and vocabu- about how
hard tasks were and how much he disliked school. He was quick to
lary. Although she memorized her spelling words easily, she had trouble using the words tell others that he
was “dumb” and that school was “stupid.” Because of the daily visits
in sentences. She had memorized many math facts, but, after reading a story problem, she to the resource
room for
would ask,individualized instruction
“What am I supposed andAdd,
to do? an adapted
subtract,classroom program,
or times it?” She often Ryan’s reading
volunteered
skills, attitude, and self-­confidence had improved somewhat. Nevertheless,
information in class, but her answers usually missed the mark. Only last month, when Mr. Steen
Ms.
was well aware that, because Ryan was so far behind, he would continue
McGrew asked her students what they knew about the planet Saturn, Katy raised her hand to struggle
withstated,
and reading, writing,
“Saturn is aand math
car.” Nexttasks
year,inKaty
the years
wouldahead.
start middle school and would work
with six or more teachers each day. Ms. McGrew worried and wondered how Katy would
Whenever
keep up andMs. Taylor,
obtain thea individualized
fourth-­grade attention
teacher, saw Stephanie
and support sheon the playground,
would she
require in a new
was concerned that
school environment. Stephanie did not interact with her peers appropriately. Stephanie
often ran up to other children on the playground and pushed her way through them.
When Ms.they
Jonestold
was her to stop,
thinking Stephanie
about Anthony, would lookbeen
who had at them and
in her move closer.
fifth-grade class. Finally,
During
the other children would walk away as a group, with Stephanie lagging
the year in her classroom, he had appeared withdrawn, quiet, and inattentive. Over behind, trying
the
to get their attention. Ms. Taylor tried to create situations that would help
first few weeks of school, the quality of his work had declined and he often appeared sad. Stephanie
develop
One friendships,
day Ms. Jones foundbut Anthony
nothing hiding
seemed in to
thework. In theWhen
coatroom. classroom, Stephanie
she asked him to spelled,
join the
memorized rote facts, and read words with
class, Anthony said he just did not feel like it. ease. She talked quite easily about situations
and information she knew well. At times, she seemed to go on and on with little point to
the conversation. In contrast,
Ms. Perry’s thoughts werewhen questioned
on Mark, about astudent.
a sixth-grade story she
She had just read,
secretly Stepha-
wished she
nie was unable to provide any answers. When she was asked to predict
could adopt Mark. She knew the boy had a lot of potential, but every afternoon when he an answer or
follow several directions, she often forgot what she was doing and was unable
left school, he returned to a chaotic, inconsistent home life. Mark and his two brothers and to com-
pletesister
one the task.
were currently living in a trailer with four adults. As Ms. Perry learned more about
Mark’s home life, she understood why he never completed or handed in any homework
Ms.studied
or McGrew,for athe
fifth-­
gradequizzes.
weekly teacher,Knowing
was most concerned
that she had noabout Katy.
control Unlike
over Stephanie,
his home envi-
ronment, she had stopped assigning Mark homework and had instead arranged a vocab-
Katy had several good friends, but she also struggled to learn new concepts and special
ulary.study
daily Although
time forshe memorized
Mark at school. her
She spelling
even spentwords easily,
2 days she had
per week withtrouble using
Mark after the
school,
words in sentences. She had memorized many math facts, but, after reading
helping him keep up with his assignments. One afternoon, Mark thanked Ms. Perry for lik- a story
problem,
ing him. she would ask, “What am I supposed to do? Add, subtract, or times it?” She
often volunteered information in class, but her answers usually missed the mark. In the
Mr. Chavez was thinking about Jeremy, a fifth-grade student in his class. Jeremy’s first-
4
grade teacher had described him as a “moving target who can’t control his motion.”
Although Jeremy had been diagnosed as having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) and was receiving medical treatment and counseling, he still had trouble follow-

4
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

last month of the school year, when Ms. McGrew asked her students what they knew PROCESSING
about the animal, a jaguar, Katy raised her hand and stated, “It’s a car.” The following
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor
year, Katy would start middle school and would work with six or more teachers each day.
Ms. McGrew worried and wondered how Katy would keep up and obtain the individu- EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

alized attention and support she would require in a new middle school environment. FOUNDATIONAL

Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
Ms. Jones was thinking about Anthony, who had been in her fifth-­grade class. Through- Regulation

out the year in her classroom, he appeared withdrawn, quiet, and inattentive. Over the
ENVIRONMENT
first few weeks of school, the quality of his work declined and he often appeared sad.
One day, Ms. Jones found Anthony hiding in the closet. When she asked him to join the
class, Anthony said he did not feel like it and would rather stay in the closet. Ms. Jones
talked Anthony into coming out of the closet, but he refused to join the class, so she
finally sent him to the nurse’s office.

Mr. Chavez was preoccupied by thoughts of Jeremy, a fifth-­grade student in his class.
Jeremy’s first-­grade teacher had described him as a “moving target who can’t control
his movements.” Although Jeremy had been diagnosed with attention-­deficit/hyper-
activity disorder (ADHD) and was receiving medical treatment and counseling, he still
had trouble following directions and completing tasks. Mr. Chavez believed that Jeremy
could do his schoolwork if he could only concentrate for longer periods of time and
think through situations before he acted. One day, after blurting out a response in class,
Jeremy explained, “I just can’t keep the words in my mouth.”

Ms. Perry’s thoughts were on Mark, a sixth-­grade student. She secretly wished she
could adopt Mark. She knew the boy had a lot of potential, but every afternoon when
he left school, he returned to a chaotic, inconsistent homelife. Mark, his two brothers,
and one sister were living in a trailer with four adults. As Ms. Perry learned more about
Mark’s homelife, she came to understand why he never completed or handed in any
homework or studied for the weekly quizzes. Knowing that she had no control over
his home environment, she stopped assigning Mark homework and instead arranged
a special daily study time for him at school. She even spent 2 days per week with Mark
after school, helping him keep up with his assignments. One afternoon, Mark thanked
Ms. Perry for liking him.

Mr. Arnold, a sixth-­grade teacher, recognized early in the year that Maria was having
trouble with reading and spelling. When reading aloud, she skipped words that were
difficult to pronounce. Some of her attempted spellings bore little resemblance to the
actual sound structure of the words. Mr. Arnold had asked Maria’s mother if Maria’s
hearing had been checked and was assured that Maria had no difficulties with hear-
ing. Maria’s mother did mention, however, that Maria had experienced many ear infec-
tions during her preschool years. Her mother also reported that they typically spent
3–­4 hours each evening completing her homework. Mr. Arnold recognized how hard
Maria was working and how willing she was to attempt any task, but her reading and
spelling skills were nevertheless far behind those of the majority of her classmates.

Thoughts of Samuel, a sixth-­grade student who seemed to get in trouble for something
every day, were never far from Ms. Handler’s mind. In the past, Samuel had taken jew-
elry from other students, stolen lunch money, and even plucked the doorjambs from
the classroom wall. Ms. Handler had to check Samuel’s backpack each day to make sure
that all the contents inside were his. He had been suspended twice during the school
year, once for lighting a firecracker in the school hallway and another time for bringing

5
 Introduction

a pocketknife to school. Recently, when he was asked by a student teacher to remove

a hat from his desk, he refused. When the request was repeated, he picked up his chair
and threw it at the teacher. Last week during lunchtime, he locked two children in the
art supply closet.

Ms. Roberts, a middle school English teacher, was thinking about Ben, an eighth-­grade
student. Ben loved physical activities and sports. He excelled in soccer, baseball, and
tennis. In school, he enjoyed challenging math, science, and computer activities. He
loved to draw intricate sketches of machines and cars. Ben did not, however, enjoy activ-
ities involving reading and writing. Although he read fairly accurately, his reading rate
was extremely low. When most of the students had already read 10 pages, Ben was just
starting the second page. He often misspelled short common words, such as writing
thay for they. He tried to avoid writing tasks by any means possible. Ms. Roberts won-
dered how Ben’s high school teachers would respond to his limited writing skills and his
negative attitude toward writing tasks.

Mr. Kelly considered how to help Marta, a freshman in high school. A shy girl with an
amazingly sweet smile, Marta had arrived in the United States from Honduras 2 years
earlier. According to her mother, Marta read and wrote well in Spanish, and there were
no concerns about her school performance in Honduras. Once she began attending
middle school in the United States, however, she received pull-­out ESL services to
support her English development. She learned how to speak English, but her reading
and writing skills remained limited. Because there was no ESL teacher in her new high
school, Marta received some help from the special education resource room teacher.
The rationale for the provision of services by the special education teacher was that she
was the teacher most qualified to provide scaffolding and support for literacy. Marta’s
history and language arts teachers were also concerned that Marta was not able to keep
up in their classes.

Dr. Mantell’s thoughts were on John, a junior in her American history class. Although
John was enthusiastic about learning and always completed his homework assign-
ments, he appeared to possess very poor study skills and had trouble grasping concepts.
He received As on his homework assignments but never passed in-­class tests. When he
volunteered a response in class, his answers revealed his limited understanding. In fact,
it seemed as though he possessed “Swiss cheese” knowledge. He appeared to under-
stand some things but lacked basic knowledge in other areas. One day in class, when
he was asked to name the country that bordered the United States on the northern
side, he responded, “England.” When asked what material was used to make paper, he
responded, “Sodium.” John had extreme difficulty understanding the concepts intro-
duced in his science class, such as the difference between meiosis and mitosis. Even
with tutoring three times a week, John could not understand or retain the concepts to
pass the classroom tests.

For general and special education teachers who have been teaching several years,
and school psychologists who have worked with children with learning and behav-
ior problems in some capacity, the characteristics of these children are likely to
sound familiar, and educators in training will soon come to recognize these char-
acteristics as well. All children possess different learning styles and abilities. The
reasons why one child struggles typically differ from the reasons why another
child struggles, and learning and behavior difficulties are rarely resolved quickly
or easily.

6
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

This is not a typical introductory textbook about specific learning disabilities PROCESSING
(SLD) and classroom behavior problems. Although various learning and behavior
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor
problems are explained and informal ways to assess these difficulties are described,
the main focus of this text is on identifying the developmental, learning, and behav- EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

ior skills of children and then determining the practical strategies and techniques FOUNDATIONAL
that will be most effective in helping them succeed in school. As illustrated by the Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
brief descriptions of these students, each child has an individual style of learn- Regulation

ing and a unique set of circumstances. Increased awareness and understanding of

ENVIRONMENT
a child’s unique profile of strengths and weaknesses can help educators improve
school-­related outcomes.

BUILDING BLOCKS OF LEARNING

When a child struggles in school, teachers must first determine the underlying fac-
tors contributing to the learning or behavior problem, because when a child acts
out, the reason may not be readily apparent. Similarly, when a child fails or refuses
to complete work, it is rarely because of poor motivation. Lowered motivation in
students is often a secondary symptom resulting from chronic failure and school
difficulties. Over many years of working with students, school psychologists, spe-
cial and general education teachers, and parents, we have developed and revised a
simple framework for explaining why children experience learning and behavior
problems in the classroom. This framework is called the Building Blocks of Learning
(Goldstein & Mather, 1998). Although similar in intent to our original framework,
this third edition contains an updated model and a revised questionnaire.
Our efforts to develop a working model of classroom problems and the reasons
they occur, combined with our professional experiences, led us to conclude that the
classroom behavior and learning problems of children could be represented using
a three-­level, triangular framework with the bottom of the triangle reflecting foun-
dational skills, the middle of the triangle representing processing or perceptual
skills, and the top of the triangle representing conceptual or thinking skills. The
remainder of this chapter introduces the Building Blocks of Learning model. Chap-
ter 2 reviews the theoretical foundations for the model.
Although the model has not yet undergone large-­scale evaluation, we believe
it is consistent with both past and present research and with the observations and
reports from parents, teachers, and specialists throughout the years. The model
offers a bridge between research and educational practice. Its intent is to help edu-
cators increase their understanding of the various reasons why children struggle
in school and, more important, the ways in which professionals can help these
students.
This model, presented in Figure 1.2, contains 12 Building Blocks stacked into
the shape of a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is the learning environment—­an
external variable that includes a child’s home and classroom environments. The 12
blocks of the pyramid are divided into three distinct groups. At the base are the four
Foundational blocks: Self-­Regulation, Behavior, Emotions, and Resilience. The middle
level contains a set of four Processing blocks: Phonological, Orthographic, Memory,
and Motor. Underlying these four blocks is a support block: Efficiency/Automaticity.
Automatic and easy processing facilitates all learning. The top level contains three
Conceptual blocks: Verbal, for thinking with language; Nonverbal, for thinking with
images and spatial reasoning; and Executive Functions, the top block, for thinking
with strategies. The abilities in the Processing and Conceptual blocks affect differ-
ent aspects of academic performance and learning.

7
 Introduction

CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

Verbal Nonverbal

PROCESSING

Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor

EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

FOUNDATIONAL

Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
Regulation

ENVIRONMENT
Figure 1.2. The Building Blocks of Learning model.

Many of the most common classroom learning and behavior problems can be
represented clearly, described, and subsequently understood through the use of
this model. We acknowledge that not all important school abilities are accounted for
in this model; we also recognize that these blocks are not discrete units but rather
encompass interrelated factors and abilities. Certain abilities do not fit neatly into
one block, and some degree of overlap exists among the abilities in different blocks.
For example, aspects of morphology, the meaning units of language, are relevant to
the Phonological and Orthographic blocks, such as the skills needed to decode mul-
tisyllabic words by breaking words apart into prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Other
aspects of morphology are more related to the Verbal block, such as how knowledge
of the meaning of word parts can influence vocabulary development. The Memory
block really affects all types of learning and is involved in the Processing blocks,
as well as extending into all the Conceptual blocks. Different demands are placed
on memory depending on the nature of the task. Working memory is involved in
the earlier perceptual processes but also in the network of executive functions
(Gathercole & Holmes, 2014). For example, memory is involved in learning multi-
plication facts or following the series of steps in a long division problem (Process-
ing blocks) but also involved in retelling a story or planning a strategy to solve
a problem (Conceptual blocks). As another example, some overlap exists among

8
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

the attentional demands within the Foundational block of Self-­Regulation and the PROCESSING
attentional control that is required in the Conceptual block of Executive Functions.
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor
As we explain the model, we will attempt to clarify these overlaps and distinctions.
Although learning does not consist of isolated skills, identification of the unique EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

affective, behavioral, cognitive, and linguistic variables that influence development FOUNDATIONAL
and school performance can help educators understand a student’s challenges and Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
subsequently design appropriate behavioral and academic interventions. Regulation

ENVIRONMENT
The Learning Environment
Symbolically, the base of the pyramid is the learning environment. This includes
the supports provided for the student in the home and school as well as any spe-
cial services such as speech-­language or occupational therapy that the student
receives. Clearly, children’s learning and behavior problems can be exacerbated by
factors within the home and school settings. For example, lack of parental support
coupled with chaos at home was having a significant effect on Mark’s self-­concept
and his emotional availability to engage in academic tasks. Although Beto had a
stable home environment, neither one of his parents spoke English. Thus, when he
entered an English-­only classroom, he was at a distinct disadvantage. Despite the
fact that the home environment exerts a powerful influence on school adjustment,
our focus in this book is on the learning environment at school. Classroom teach-
ers have the primary responsibility for creating a nurturing class environment in
which students feel respected, valued, and supported academically, socially, and
emotionally.

Foundational Blocks
The Foundational blocks provide the support system for all learning. Just as the
foundation of a house must be strong enough to support the structure, these four
blocks must be strong for efficient learning to occur. A brief description of the skills
in the Foundational blocks follows.

Self-­Regulation
The Building Block of Self-­Regulation includes a child’s ability to pay attention,
regulate behavior, and control impulses—­all skills that are critical to learning.
Mr. Chavez knew that the basis of many of Jeremy’s attention and behavior difficul-
ties stemmed from poor self-­regulation and that his problems with impulse control
prevented him from focusing on the relevant requirements of classroom learning
tasks. Jeremy had trouble maintaining persistent effort and was easily distracted
when attempting to pursue a goal. He had difficulty sticking with a plan for com-
pleting his assignments and rarely turned in work. He would often disturb other
children.

Behavior
The Building Block of Behavior includes a student’s covert and overt actions, includ-
ing social skills and compliance. Conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder,
and insufficient anger control all are examples of externalizing disorders and
behaviors that influence interactions with teachers and peers. Samuel’s behavior
caused negative reactions from his peers. He would often shove another student or,
without provocation, knock a student’s books onto the floor. Ms. Handler had tried

9
 Introduction

to implement several interventions, including moving Samuel’s desk away from

other students or sending him to time-­out, but his disruptive behaviors continued.

Emotions
The Building Block of Emotions includes a child’s general temperament as well as his
or her moods. Problems in this block are sometimes called internalizing disorders—­
conditions such as depression, anxiety, and poor motivation. These disorders can
significantly affect a child’s availability to learn. Difficulties in school also affect
attitude and performance. Ben had always struggled with reading and spelling, for
example. These difficulties affected his attitude and his willingness to persevere on
tasks requiring reading and writing.

Resilience
In our model, the Building Block of Resilience focuses on how students perceive
themselves and to what factors they attribute their successes and failures. These
are learned attitudes, developed in part through feedback from parents, teachers,
and peers. Resilience is a quality that reduces risk and vulnerability while simulta-
neously enhancing functioning and development.
Poor academic self-­efficacy can affect a child’s resilience and willingness to
persist on difficult tasks. Maria, the sixth-­g rade student, wrote about this in her
journal (see Figure 1.3). Clearly, her struggles with spelling and writing were affect-
ing her self-­concept and perceptions of self-­efficacy. Because of these difficulties,
Maria was beginning to believe that she was not good at anything at all.
To succeed in school, a child requires a supportive classroom environment, the
ability to sustain attention, self-­discipline, healthy emotions, and a positive view
of self and school. Strengths in the Foundational blocks help a student compensate
for other difficulties and learn to persevere even when faced with difficult tasks.
Weaknesses in the Foundational blocks affect school performance, and adverse fac-
tors such as anxiety or depression reduce a student’s mental availability for learn-
ing. Strong Foundational blocks do not, however, guarantee school success. Some
children have support at home and school, pay attention, and are happy and well
adjusted but struggle because of specific cognitive and/or linguistic weaknesses in
the Processing or Conceptual blocks.

Processing Blocks
The second level of the Building Blocks model involves the processing of informa-
tion through the senses. The abilities in these blocks help children gain access to,
produce, recall, and retrieve information about the symbolic aspects of language.
Many terms have been applied to the deficient school achievement of this group,
including SLD, underachievement, learning difficulty, dyslexia, and specific devel-
opmental disorders (Hinshaw, 1992).
In general, the abilities in the Processing blocks are conceptualized as secre-
tarial in nature because these difficulties primarily affect basic skill development
or the mastery of the coding systems of language: decoding (i.e., word identifi-
cation), encoding (i.e., spelling), and motor coding (i.e., handwriting). Isaacson
(1989) aptly distinguished between the roles of the secretary and the author in the
writing process. The secretary manages the mechanical concerns of writing, such
as spelling, punctuation, and handwriting (i.e., skills affected by strengths and
weaknesses in the Processing blocks), whereas the author formulates, organizes,

10
 CONCEPTUAL
Strategies
Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning LanguageNonverbal

Verbal Images

C PROCESSING
O N C E P T UA L

Phonology
Phonological Orthography
Orthographic Memory Motor
Motor

EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY
SY M B O L I C
Attention FOUNDATIONAL
& Self- Emotions Behavior Self-
Self- Esteem
Regulation
Regulation
Behavior Emotions Resilience

F O U N DAT I O N A L
ENVIRONMENT

Figure 1.3. Maria’s comments in her journal.

Figure 1.3. Maria’s comments from her journal.

and expresses
affecting ideas (i.e., skillsBecause
her self-perception. affected ofby strengths
these and weaknesses
difficulties, in the Con-
Maria was beginning to
ceptual
believe blocks).
that she was not good at anything at all.
Some children
To succeed have trouble
in school, a childwith phonological
requires processing
a supportive classroomtasksenvironment,
(e.g., rhym-
ing
thewords,
ability identifying the discrete
to pay attention, healthysounds in words).
emotions, Other children
self-discipline, have trouble
and a positive view
with the
of self andorthographic or more
school. Strengths invisual aspects of learning
the foundational to read
blocks help and spell,
a student such as
compensate
remembering which way
for other difficulties andtolearn
writetothe letter b even
persevere or how to spell
when faced thewith
irregular element
difficult tasks.
in a word. Certain
Weaknesses in thechildren have trouble
foundational blockswithaffectaspects
schoolofperformance,
memory, suchand as learning
adverse
to say the
factors months
such of the year
as anxiety in order or reduce
or depression memorizing multiplication
a child’s availability facts.
for Still oth-
learning.
ers do poorly
Strong on the motor
foundational blocksaspects of learning
do not, however, and, like Andy,school
guarantee have trouble
success. cutting
Some
with scissors
children haveorsupport
learningattohome
formandletters. Eventually,
school, these abilities
pay attention, and arebecome
happy and increas-
well
ingly morebut
adjusted automatic
struggle(with littleof
because thinking
specificinvolved)
cognitiveasand performance
linguistic becomes
weaknesses morein
effortless
the symbolicand efficient. Children
or conceptual with marked weaknesses in these blocks are often
blocks.
diagnosed as having SLD. A brief description of the skills represented in these blocks
Symbolic Blocks
follows.
The second level of the Building Blocks model involves the processing of
information through the senses. The abilities in these blocks help children gain
Phonological
access to, produce, recall, and retrieve information about the symbolic aspects of
This block encompasses
language. Many terms phonological
have been appliedprocessing,
to theandeficient
oral language
schoolability that helps
achievement of
individuals
this group,toincluding
understand LD,the sound structure oflearning
underachievement, speech. Phonological awareness
difficulty, dyslexia, and
allows
specificthe individual to manipulate
developmental language 1992).
disorders (Hinshaw, sounds. As students learn an alpha-
betic In
language
general,such the as English,
abilities a critical
of the symbolicfirstblocks
step inareprereading is becoming
conceptualized aware
as secretarial
that speech because
in nature can be divided or sequenced
difficulties primarily intoaffect
a series of discrete
basic sounds, words,
skill development or syl-
the
lables,
mastery andofphonemes,
the codingorsystems
the smallest units of sound.
of language: decoding In most
(i.e., children, this aware-
word identification),
ness develops
encoding (i.e.,gradually
spelling), during
and motorthe coding
preschool(i.e.,and early elementary
handwriting). Isaacsonyears. Maria’s
(1989) aptly
distinguished between the roles of the secretary and the author in the writing
process. The secretary manages the mechanical concerns of writing, such 11 as
spelling, punctuation, and handwriting (i.e., skills affected by strengths and

9
 Introduction

difficulties with reading and spelling were caused by poor phonological awareness.
She had trouble discriminating similar speech sounds and often would omit sounds
when spelling a word or confuse certain sounds, such as writing f for the /v/ sound.

Orthographic
The next block is orthographic processing. In a general sense, orthography refers
to the writing system of a language, including the punctuation marks, capitaliza-
tion rules, and spelling patterns. In a narrower sense, orthography refers to the
perception and recall of letter strings and word forms. This ability, referred to as
orthographic awareness, allows the individual to form a mental representation of
the appearance of a letter or word. In addition, orthographic sensitivity helps one
become aware of the common spelling patterns and word parts as well as the rules
about legal letter strings or combinations that exist in a language. For example,
most first-­g rade children quickly learn that the letters ck can be placed at the end of
a word to make the /k/ sound but not at the beginning of a word.

Memory
Several different types of memory can affect school learning. In reality, aspects
of memory permeate all learning. Verbal short-­t erm memory refers to the ability
to repeat in a serial order information that has just been heard. This type of skill
is needed to follow directions in a classroom or take notes during a lecture. Dif-
ficulty with memory is also associated with remembering rote information, such
as learning the letters and their names or memorizing multiplication facts. This
type of memory is often referred to as paired-­a ssociate learning or associative
memory.
Some memory abilities are more complex and include aspects of two or more
blocks, such as working memory. Working memory refers to the ability to appre-
hend information and then rearrange it in a specified way. A simple example would
be to ask someone to listen to a series of digits and then ask him or her to say the
digits back in a reversed order. This type of ability requires verbal short-­term mem-
ory as well as the ability to visualize and rearrange the digits (nonverbal) and the
ability to use strategies (executive functions). In some cases, a student’s academic
difficulties are primarily related to a weakness in some aspect of memory. In other
cases, poor performance on tasks involving memory is more related to weaknesses
in self-­regulation or verbal ability.

Motor
This block includes fine motor tasks—tasks involving small muscles such as those
used in writing or drawing. Although it also includes gross motor skills, or skills
involving the large muscles, such as jumping and running, fine motor skills are
more related to school performance. Fine motor skills can be broken into two types:
1) symbol production (i.e., writing letters and numbers) and 2) artistic expression
(i.e., drawing a picture). Some children can sketch or draw wonderful illustrations
but are stymied by the production of symbols. This difficulty with producing the
motor patterns needed for writing is sometimes referred to as dysgraphia. Andy
possessed weaknesses in motor planning that made it difficult to perform most
types of fine motor tasks with ease; however, he was an excellent artist.

12
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

Efficiency/Automaticity PROCESSING

This block, at the base of the Processing blocks, involves automatic and efficient Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor

retrieval, or the speed of recognition and production of letters, numbers, and words.
EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY
This ability is needed to recall quickly basic sight vocabulary for both reading and
spelling and to solve a page of math facts quickly. A child with initial weaknesses FOUNDATIONAL

in this block is likely to have a slow reading rate and poor spelling in later years. Self-
Regulation
Behavior Emotions Resilience
In fact, Ben’s major problems with reading and spelling were due to both his poor
orthographic awareness and his slow speed of word perception. Often a student ENVIRONMENT
with a weakness in this block will have low scores on measures of processing speed
or rapid automatized naming (RAN).
In general, as skills become increasingly automatic, students are more able to
perform secretarial tasks such as accurately and fluently identifying words, tak-
ing notes, and memorizing math facts. Once a child has learned a task, which may
require repeated practice, these skills become increasingly automatic, or automa-
tized, and are performed with little thought and effort. For example, when a child
has learned to read a word, the word is recognized instantly when it is encountered,
and, as a child learns to write letters, the speed and ease of writing these symbols
increase. The best way to become an expert is through practice—­t he more practice
the better (Rosenshine, 2012).
Skills in the Processing blocks help children perform various tasks, but these
skills alone do not guarantee school success. Some children have no difficulty learn-
ing to read, spell, write, and solve math computations. These children perform
automatic processing tasks with ease; however, when the curriculum begins to
accelerate and the children must read to learn, they may struggle because of weak-
nesses in language or reasoning skills. They may be capable of mastering basic
mathematical processes but struggle with more complex mathematics because of
difficulties with spatial reasoning and concept formation. In our model, these types
of difficulties relate to the abilities of the Conceptual blocks.

Conceptual Blocks
The top of the pyramid includes the Conceptual abilities: Verbal, Nonverbal, and
Executive Functions. The abilities in the Conceptual blocks help students to under-
stand meanings, comprehend relationships, visualize complex designs, apply pre-
viously acquired knowledge, and evaluate their performance as they engage in
academic tasks.

Verbal
The Verbal block includes tasks that involve thinking with language, such as under-
standing what is heard, comprehending written text, expressing ideas through
speaking and writing, learning and using new vocabulary, and solving mathemati-
cal story problems. Students with strengths in language tend to speak easily and
possess an expansive vocabulary. Students with weaknesses in language often have
trouble with tasks involving both comprehension and production of text. Katy had
weaknesses in language, and, consequently, her answers often missed the mark.
One day, Ms. McGrew showed Katy a picture of four trees and then asked her, “Half
of these trees would be how many?” As she drew a horizontal line across the trees,
Katy asked, “You mean if you cut them this way?”

13
 Introduction

Nonverbal
The Nonverbal block includes tasks that involve thinking with images, such as the
abilities involved in reproducing complex visual patterns and designs as well as
understanding and judging spatial relationships. Some children have more diffi-
culty with tasks of a nonverbal nature than with those involving language. These
children tend to have particular difficulty grasping and acquiring mathematical
concepts. They also may have trouble with developing social competence and rec-
ognizing, evaluating, and interpreting gestures and facial expressions. Stephanie
had a lot of trouble interpreting facial expressions and could not readily assess how
others were feeling. This block represents some problems associated with what is
often referred to as nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLDs).

Executive Functions
The top block on the model is Executive Functions. Executive functions encompass
the abilities to monitor performance and act strategically to solve problems and
complete tasks. These skills and abilities are used to direct all cognitive activities
and include the abilities to plan, organize, monitor, evaluate, and reflect on one’s
own learning. This block is placed at the top of the model because of its importance
to all learning and behavior. Strengths in this block help students to be purposeful
and engage in goal-­directed behavior. Ultimately, if students can be strategic, they
are better able to maximize their performance while compensating or adjusting for
weaknesses. This block includes thinking about thinking, or what is referred to as
metacognition.

How the Blocks Work Together

In thinking about the learning and behavior of students, one can understand the
role that specific weaknesses in one or more of the Building Blocks can play in
creating school difficulties. Ryan had weaknesses in the Processing blocks. These
contributed to his reading difficulties and consequently affected his self-­esteem.
Katy had weaknesses in the Conceptual blocks, and she struggled to comprehend
tasks that involved using language and reasoning. Jeremy struggled with weak-
nesses in the Foundational block of Self-­Regulation. Although Ben could produce
intricate sketches of machines and rebuild a motorcycle engine, he had trouble
spelling even common words. Ben’s weakness in orthography affected his ability
to store and retrieve a mental image of the appearance of words. His marked dif-
ficulty with spelling contributed to a negative attitude toward all types of writing
tasks. Mark came from a disadvantaged environment in which little support was
provided for learning in the home. Marta had weaknesses in English but not in her
native language.
When the blocks are stacked together as a model, it is easy to understand how
a student’s unique learning and behavior characteristics, as well as the child’s sup-
port system and environment, can affect school success. When considering the
unique characteristics of each student, the first goal is to identify specific strengths
and how these abilities can be used to enhance performance; the second is to iden-
tify weaknesses so that appropriate accommodations and instructional plans can
be developed and implemented.

14
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

COMMON PROFILES PROCESSING

Children’s difficulties result from qualitative differences, and many different com- Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor

binations of skills are possible. “One size fits all” does not apply to the learning
EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY
abilities or disabilities of children. When designing academic and behavioral inter-
ventions for specific students, a more accurate adage is “One size fits one.” We have, FOUNDATIONAL

however, encountered a few frequently occurring general profiles. We describe five Self-
Regulation
Behavior Emotions Resilience
of the most common profiles in the following sections.
ENVIRONMENT
Strengths in the Processing and Conceptual Blocks, Weaknesses
in the Foundational Blocks, and a Disadvantaged Environment
Some children have the language, reasoning, and processing abilities needed for
school achievement but are hampered by emotional or behavioral issues. The diffi-
culties that some children experience in school can be related directly to weaknesses
in the Foundational blocks. Students who experience trouble with self-­regulation or
have serious emotional or behavior problems may be mentally unavailable for learn-
ing. Other children, like Mark, return home each evening to a chaotic or extremely
stressful home environment. This constant disruption at home can reduce the
child’s ability to profit from instruction. In most instances, once their attentional,
emotional, or social issues have been addressed and resolved, these children can
succeed in school.

Strengths in the Foundational and Conceptual Blocks,

Weaknesses in the Processing Blocks, and a Supportive Environment
Some students possess above-­average language and reasoning abilities and the
ability to sustain attention, and they live in supportive homes and participate in
nurturing school environments. In spite of their many capabilities, their marked
weaknesses in the Processing blocks affect their ability to learn and memorize
specific types of information. Although these children may be well adjusted and
highly motivated, they struggle with school tasks that require rote learning and
memory, such as reading words, spelling, or calculating. They are slow to develop
automaticity with word reading and spelling and may be diagnosed as having dys-
lexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia (specific reading, writing, or math disability). With
understanding and systematic, intensive interventions, as well as curricular adjust-
ments and accommodations throughout their school careers, these students can be
successful.

Strengths in the Foundational and Processing Blocks,

Weaknesses in the Conceptual Blocks
Students with weaknesses in the Conceptual blocks have trouble with tasks involv-
ing reasoning and language. These students have particular difficulty with tasks
involving comprehending and expressing ideas and problem solving. In contrast,
because of strengths in the Processing blocks, they can memorize spelling words
and math facts easily but have trouble applying these skills to real-­life problems.
A modified and adapted curriculum coupled with direct instruction in the use of
language and the application of strategies can help these students improve their
chances for school success.

15
 Introduction

Strengths in the Conceptual Blocks,

Weaknesses in the Processing and Foundational Blocks
Some children with strengths in thinking and reasoning have weaknesses in pro-
cessing and attending to information. For example, some students with SLD often
receive the dual diagnosis of SLD and ADHD. In other cases, students with SLD lack
resilience or have emotional or behavior problems. These problems contribute fur-
ther to reduced motivation and school failure. With appropriate, often intensive,
long-­term interventions, these children can succeed in school.

A Significant Strength or Weakness in One Block

Some students excel in one area. Although Ben was having trouble with reading
and writing, he was an extremely talented athlete. His success in sports helped him
maintain a positive view of himself. Maria had trouble with the sounds of language
but not with tasks involving thinking with language. Her strong ability to reason
with language enabled her to learn through listening and compensate somewhat for
her phonological processing problems.
Other students possess a significant weakness in only one area that often
results in a specific diagnosis and eligibility for special services. For example, a stu-
dent with a specific weakness in phonology or orthography may be diagnosed with
dyslexia. A student with severe problems in motor skills may be classified as hav-
ing a sensory motor integration disorder or dysgraphia. Similarly, a student with
serious behavior problems may be classified as having an emotional or behavior
disorder. A student with persistent problems in self-­regulation may be diagnosed
as having ADHD. A student with a significant problem in language acquisition or
use may be classified as having a language impairment. Students with severe weak-
nesses in one domain often require intensive and systematic interventions to suc-
ceed in school. Maria, Jeremy, and Andy are all examples of students with marked
weaknesses in one area. To compensate, these children must learn how to rely on
their strengths in addition to receiving accommodations and interventions designed
to mitigate their weaknesses.

BUILDING BLOCKS QUESTIONNAIRE

The Building Blocks Questionnaire, presented in Appendix 1A and available as a
download, is designed to help educators pinpoint a student’s strengths and weak-
nesses and to provide an overview of school-­related skills and behaviors. This
questionnaire has two sections. Part 1 provides 13 questions—­1 question for the
environment and then 1 for each of the 12 Building Blocks—­which are intended to
provide a general overview of a student’s strengths and weaknesses. For example,
under Foundational, for the Emotions block, the general question would be, “Does
the student appear to be sad or anxious more often than not during the day?” The
user would indicate whether this was true by checking the options Rarely, Some-
times, or Frequently. Part 2 provides an additional 10 items for the environment and
then an additional 10 items for the other 12 blocks in order to provide more in-­
depth information about the behavior or ability.

Completing the Building Blocks Questionnaire

When concerns exist about a certain student, a teacher can make a copy of the
Building Blocks Questionnaire and then complete it. A parent also can fill out the

16
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

questionnaire, or a teacher or school psychologist may interview the student and PROCESSING
complete the questionnaire. The purpose of completing the questionnaire is to
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor
gain a better understanding of the factors contributing to a student’s successes
and struggles in school. When teachers are able to understand the reasons why a EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

student is struggling in school, they are more efficient at determining and design- FOUNDATIONAL
ing appropriate interventions. In addition, when teachers are aware of a student’s Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
strengths, they can build on these abilities in designing programs and selecting Regulation

interventions.
ENVIRONMENT

Ryan’s Profile
Mr. Steen, Ryan’s fourth-­grade teacher, thought about Ryan as he answered the 13 questions in
Part 1 of the Building Blocks Questionnaire (see Figure 1.4). He had noted that on occasion, Ryan
seemed inattentive, so he checked Sometimes for Self-­Regulation. Ryan usually followed school rules,
so Mr. Steen checked Rarely for Behavior. At times during the day, Ryan seemed sad, so Mr. Steen
checked Sometimes for Emotions. Ryan often complained about how much he disliked school and
was quick to tell others that he was “dumb,” so Mr. Steen checked Frequently for Resilience. Ryan had
started the year with very limited reading and spelling skills, so Mr. Steen checked Frequently for both
the Phonology and Orthography questions. Ryan had difficulty with memory, so Mr. Steen checked
Frequently for the Memory question. Ryan did not seem to have difficulty with motor tasks, so Rarely
was checked for that block. Ryan did, however, work slowly on most tasks, so Mr. Steen checked Fre-
quently for the Efficiency/Automaticity question. Ryan enjoyed science and math activities and had
an adequate vocabulary, so Mr. Steen checked Rarely for the Verbal and Nonverbal questions. Ryan
was, however, inconsistent in devising and sticking with plans, so Mr. Steen checked Sometimes for the
Executive Functions question. He then completed Part 2 for the questions that were answered Some-
times and Frequently. The completed questionnaire helped Mr. Steen get a sense of the kinds of tasks
that would be easy for Ryan and the kinds of tasks that would be difficult. As a result, Mr. Steen was
able to develop an effective educational program to help Ryan improve his self-­esteem and attitude
as well as his basic skills in reading, spelling, and math.

PURPOSE, OVERVIEW, AND AUDIENCE

The information in this book does not address all the learning and behavior prob-
lems experienced by children. Its purpose is to help general education teachers and
specialists—­such as school psychologists, speech-­language therapists, and spe-
cial education teachers—­to increase their understanding of the factors that influ-
ence a student’s school performance. The goal is to help professionals involved in
education increase their knowledge about the ways that developmental, behavior,
and academic problems influence school performance and the ways in which these
problems can be addressed.
As we have discussed, the Building Blocks model was developed, in part, through
our many years of consulting, teaching, and counseling children and their families.
The first requirement for helping a student is to form a clear understanding of his
or her unique characteristics by evaluating his or her strengths and weaknesses.
The next step is to determine the types of educational and behavioral interven-
tions needed and to develop meaningful, realistic educational goals. A student’s
strengths and weaknesses in these 12 blocks can affect multiple areas of learning.
Before reading further, you may wish to review the Building Blocks Questionnaire
in Appendix 1A (also available as a download) and complete it for one or more stu-
dents. When learning and behavior are viewed through the lens of this model, it is
easy to understand why children such as Andy, Beto, Jeremy, Katy, Ben, and Marta
are struggling in school and, more important, what can be done to mitigate their
problems.

17
 Building Blocks Questionnaire
Ryan
Student’s name ______________________________________________ 4th
Grade _____________________________

Mr. Steen
Teacher’s/Parent’s name _______________________________________ 5/30
Date _______________________________

PART 1
The 12 questions composing Part 1 are general and provide an overview of the student’s school-­related skills and behavior. For
each of the Building Blocks described with questions in the left-­hand column, indicate with a check mark whether the student
exhibits the behavior rarely, sometimes, or frequently. Once you have completed Part 1, for each of the questions you have
answered Frequently or Sometimes, proceed to Part 2 of the questionnaire and complete the additional 10 items corresponding
to that Building Block. For example, if you answered Frequently to “Does the student appear inattentive or impulsive?” under
the Foundational Self-­Regulation item, then you would proceed to the second section of Part 2 and answer the additional 10
items under the category of Self-Regulation.

FOUNDATIONAL Rarely Sometimes Frequently

Environment: The student’s school environment is not conducive to learning. ✓

1. Self-­Regulation: Does the student appear inattentive or impulsive? ✓
2. Behavior: Does the student have trouble following the rules? ✓
3. Emotions: Does the student appear to be sad or anxious more often than not
during the day? ✓

4. Resilience: Does the student appear to cope poorly in the face of problems? ✓

PROCESSING
5. Phonological: Does the student have difficulty hearing or applying letter sounds
when speaking, reading, or spelling? ✓
6. Orthographic: Does the student have trouble reading or spelling words with
irregular elements (e.g., once)? ✓

7. Memory: Does the student have difficulty repeating information just heard? ✓
8. Motor: Does the student have difficulty forming letters or writing legibly? ✓
9. Efficiency/Automaticity: Does the student have trouble completing tasks quickly? ✓

CONCEPTUAL

10. Verbal: Does the student have trouble using or understanding oral language? ✓
11. Nonverbal: Does the student have difficulty creating mental pictures? ✓
12. Executive Functions: Does the student have trouble forming or following a plan? ✓

Figure 1.4. Building Blocks Questionnaire, Part 1, as completed for Ryan.

18
 CONCEPTUAL

Executive
Functions

The Building Blocks of Learning Verbal Nonverbal

This book is also designed to serve as a text or supplement in undergraduate PROCESSING

and graduate introductory, characteristics, and methods courses in SLD and behav-
Phonological Orthographic Memory Motor
ior problems. In addition to school psychologists, special educators, and counselors,
preservice and in-­service general education teachers can use this book to increase EFFICIENCY/AUTOMATICITY

their understanding of the types of problems that their students will face and the FOUNDATIONAL
specific teaching techniques and materials that they can use to help students over- Self-
Behavior Emotions Resilience
come these difficulties. Unlike many other texts and resources outlining SLD and Regulation

behavior problems, this text focuses on developing an understanding of the under-

ENVIRONMENT
lying causes of a student’s problems. We stress the importance of identifying an
individual’s underlying strengths and weaknesses for the purpose of designing an
effective intervention program.
In Section I, the introductory section, Chapter 2 provides the theoretical ratio-
nale for the Building Blocks model. Chapter 3 discusses the importance of a positive,
nurturing learning environment.
Section II addresses the Foundational blocks. Each chapter addresses a specific
Building Block: Self-­Regulation, Behavior, Emotions, and Resilience. If a student has
problems in any of the Foundational blocks, we suggest that you turn to the ques-
tionnaire, answer the 10 additional items, and then read the relevant Foundational
block chapter.
Section III addresses the Processing blocks. If a student has problems in any of
the Processing blocks (Phonological, Orthographic, Memory, Motor, or Efficiency/
Automaticity), we suggest you turn to the Processing blocks section of the question-
naire, answer the additional items about the student’s skills and abilities, and then
read the chapters in this section.
Section IV addresses the Conceptual blocks. If the student has difficulty with
any of the three Conceptual blocks (Executive Functions, Verbal, or Nonverbal), we
suggest you turn to the Conceptual blocks section in Part 2 of the questionnaire,
answer the additional items about the student’s conceptual abilities, and then read
the chapters in this section.
Finally, if you are in training, working as a consultant with teachers, or work-
ing in a classroom with many children, we suggest that you read through this entire
text. Many of the ideas and techniques presented in this book have been used for
years by special educators and school psychologists working with students who are
experiencing school problems. The techniques are practical, supported by evidence-­
based research, and are relatively easy to implement.
One conclusion from research is clear: For children with learning problems,
learning is hard work; for their teachers, instruction is very hard work and requires
an enormous amount of training and support (Semrud-­Clikeman, 2005). Effective
education for students struggling with learning and behavior is dependent, how-
ever, on the individual actions of competent and caring professionals (Kauffman &
Landrum, 2012) and the implementation of an individualized approach that pro-
vides effective teaching strategies (Zigmond, 2004). It is our hope that all children
struggling in school will receive instruction from caring, sympathetic teachers
who understand learning, behavioral, and temperamental differences and know
when and how to intervene to help support these students in their growth and
development.

19
 APPENDIX 1A
Building Blocks Questionnaire

20
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of Marque
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Letters of Marque

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Illustrator: Charles D. Farrand

Release date: July 5, 2020 [eBook #62561]

Most recently updated: January 23, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, MFR and the Online Distributed

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF

MARQUE ***
 LETTERS OF MARQUE:
I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX.,
X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI.,
XVII., XVIII., THE LAST.

LETTERS OF MARQUE
Page 223—"They motioned silently that none must pass immediately before the seat of the
King."

LETTERS
OF MARQUE
By RUDYARD KIPLING

ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES D. FARRAND

R. F. FENNO & COMPANY: PUB-

LISHERS: 9 & 11 E. SIXTEENTH
STREET: NEW YORK CITY: 1899

Copyright, 1899
BY
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
Letters of Marque.
LETTERS OF MARQUE
 I.
Of the beginning of Things—Of the Taj and the Globe-Trotter—The Young
Man from Manchester and certain Moral Reflections.

E XCEPT for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying
Bombaywards, it is good for every man to see some little of the great
Indian Empire and the strange folk who move about it. It is good to
escape for a time from the House of Rimmon—be it office or cutchery—
and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal inclination,
and with no more definite plan of travel than has the horse, escaped from
pasture, free upon the country side. The first result of such freedom is
extreme bewilderment, and the second reduces the freed to a state of mind
which, for his sins, must be the normal portion of the Globe-Trotter—the
man who “does” kingdoms in days and writes books upon them in weeks.
And this desperate facility is not as strange as it seems. By the time that an
Englishman has come by sea and rail via America, Japan, Singapore, and
Ceylon to India, he can—these eyes have seen him do so—master in five
minutes the intricacies of the Indian Bradshaw, and tell an old resident
exactly how and where the trains run. Can we wonder that the intoxication
of success in hasty assimilation should make him overbold, and that he
should try to grasp—but a full account of the insolent Globe-Trotter must
be reserved. He is worthy of a book. Given absolute freedom for a month
the mind, as I have said, fails to take in the situation and, after much debate,
contents itself with following in old and well-beaten ways—paths that we in
India have no time to tread, but must leave to the country-cousin who wears
his pagri tail-fashion down his back, and says “cabman” to the driver of the
ticca-ghari.
Now Jeypore from the Anglo-Indian point of view is a station on the
Rajputana-Malwa line, on the way to Bombay, where half an hour is
allowed for dinner, and where there ought to be more protection from the
sun than at present exists. Some few, more learned than the rest, know that
garnets come from Jeypore, and here the limits of our wisdom are set. We
do not, to quote the Calcutta shopkeeper, come out “for the good of our
’ealth,” and what touring we accomplish is for the most part off the line of
rail.
 For these reasons, and because he wished to study our winter birds of
passage, one of the few thousand Englishmen in India, on a date and in a
place which have no concern with the story, sacrificed all his self-respect
and became—at enormous personal inconvenience—a Globe-Trotter going
to Jeypore, and leaving behind him for a little while all that old and well-
known life in which Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners,
Governors and Lieutenant-Governors, Aides-de-Camp, Colonels and their
wives, Majors, Captains and Subalterns after their kind move and rule and
govern and squabble and fight and sell each other’s horses, and tell wicked
stories of their neighbours. But before he had fully settled into his part or
accustomed himself to saying “Please take out this luggage” to the coolies
at the stations, he saw from the train the Taj wrapped in the mists of the
morning.
There is a story of a Frenchman “who feared not God, nor regarded
man,” sailing to Egypt for the express purpose of scoffing at the Pyramids
and—though this is hard to believe—at the great Napoleon who had warred
under their shadow! It is on record that that blasphemous Gaul came to the
Great Pyramid and wept through mingled reverence and contrition, for he
sprang from an emotional race. To understand his feelings, it is necessary to
have read a great deal too much about the Taj, its design and proportions, to
have seen execrable pictures of it at the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition, to have
had its praises sung by superior and travelled friends till the brain loathed
the repetition of the word, and then, sulky with want of sleep, heavy-eyed,
unwashen and chilled, to come upon it suddenly. Under these circumstances
everything you will concede, is in favour of a cold, critical and not too
impartial verdict. As the Englishman leaned out of the carriage he saw first
an opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and later certain towers. The masts lay
on the ground, so that the splendour seemed to be floating free of the earth;
and the mists rose in the background, so that at no time could everything be
seen clearly. Then as the train sped forward, and the mists shifted and the
sun shone upon the mists, the Taj took a hundred new shapes, each perfect
and each beyond description. It was the Ivory Gate through which all good
dreams come; it was the realization of the “glimmering halls of dawn” that
Tennyson sings of; it was veritably the “aspiration fixed,” the “sigh made
stone” of a lesser poet; and over and above concrete comparisons, it seemed
the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy and all things unhappy.
That was the mystery of the building. It may be that the mists wrought the
witchery, and that the Taj seen in the dry sunlight is only as guide books say
a noble structure. The Englishman could not tell, and has made a vow that
he will never go nearer the spot for fear of breaking the charm of the
unearthly pavilions.
It may be, too, that each must view the Taj for himself with his own
eyes; working out his own interpretation of the sight. It is certain that no
man can in cold blood and colder ink set down his impressions if he has
been in the least moved.
To the one who watched and wondered that November morning the thing
seemed full of sorrow—the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman
he loved, and the sorrow of the workmen who died in the building—used
up like cattle. And in the face of this sorrow the Taj flushed in the sunlight
and was beautiful, after the beauty of a woman who has done no wrong.
Here the train ran in under the walls of Agra Fort, and another train—of
thought incoherent as that written above—came to an end. Let those who
scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward be dumb. It
is well on the threshold of a journey to be taught reverence and awe.
But there is no reverence in the Globe-Trotter: he is brazen. A Young
Man from Manchester was travelling to Bombay in order—how the words
hurt!—to be home by Christmas. He had come through America, New
Zealand, and Australia, and finding that he had ten days to spare at Bombay,
conceived the modest idea of “doing India.” “I don’t say that I’ve done it
all; but you may say that I’ve seen a good deal.” Then he explained that he
had been “much pleased” at Agra, “much pleased” at Delhi and, last
profanation, “very much pleased” at the Taj. Indeed he seemed to be going
through life just then “much pleased” at everything. With rare and sparkling
originality he remarked that India was a “big place,” and that there were
many things to buy. Verily, this Young Man must have been a delight to the
Delhi boxwallahs. He had purchased shawls and embroidery “to the tune
of” a certain number of rupees duly set forth, and he had purchased
jewellery to another tune. These were gifts for friends at home, and he
considered them “very Eastern.” If silver filigree work modelled on Palais
Royal patterns, or aniline blue scarves be “Eastern,” he had succeeded in
his heart’s desire. For some inscrutable end it has been decreed that man
shall take a delight in making his fellow-man miserable. The Englishman
began to point out gravely the probable extent to which the Young Man
from Manchester had been swindled, and the Young Man said:—“By Jove!
You don’t say so. I hate being done! If there’s anything I hate it’s being
done!”
He had been so happy in the “thought of getting home by Christmas,”
and so charmingly communicative as to the members of his family for
whom such and such gifts were intended, that the Englishman cut short the
record of fraud and soothed him by saying that he had not been so very
badly “done” after all. This consideration was misplaced, for, his peace of
mind restored, the Young Man from Manchester looked out of the window
and, waving his hand over the Empire generally, said:—“I say! Look here!
All those wells are wrong you know.” The wells were on the wheel and
inclined plane system; but he objected to the incline, and said that it would
be much better for the bullocks if they walked on level ground. Then light
dawned upon him, and he said:—“I suppose it’s to exercise all their
muscles. Y’know a canal horse is no use after he has been on the tow path
for some time. He can’t walk anywhere but on the flat y’know, and I
suppose it’s just the same with bullocks.” The spurs of the Aravalis, under
which the train was running, had evidently suggested this brilliant idea
which passed uncontradicted, for the Englishman was looking out of the
window.
If one were bold enough to generalise after the manner of Globe-
Trotters, it would be easy to build up a theory on the well incident to
account for the apparent insanity of some of our cold weather visitors. Even
the Young Man from Manchester could evolve a complete idea for the
training of well-bullocks in the East at thirty-seconds’ notice. How much
the more could a cultivated observer from, let us say, an English
constituency blunder and pervert and mangle! We in this country have no
time to work out the notion, which is worthy of the consideration of some
leisurely Teuton intellect.
Envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment of the Young Man from
Manchester; for, as the train bore him from Jeypore to Ahmedabad, happy
in “his getting home by Christmas,” pleased as a child with his Delhi
atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered and superbly self-confident, the
Englishman, whose home for the time was a dâk bungaloathesome hotel,
watched his departure regretfully; for he knew exactly to what sort of
genial, cheery British household, rich in untravelled kin, that Young Man
was speeding. It is pleasant to play at globe-trotting; but to enter fully into
the spirit of the piece, one must also be going home for Christmas.
 II.
Shows the Charm of Rajputana and of Jeypore, the City of the Globe-
Trotter—Of its Founder and its Embellishment—Explains the use and
destiny of the Stud-Bred, and fails to explain many more important matters.

I F any part of a land strewn with dead men’s bones have a special claim to
distinction, Rajputana, as the cockpit of India, stands first. East of Suez
men do not build towers on the tops of hills for the sake of the view, nor
do they stripe the mountain sides with bastioned stone walls to keep in
cattle. Since the beginning of time, if we are to credit the legends, there was
fighting—heroic fighting—at the foot of the Aravalis, and beyond in the
great deserts of sand penned by those kindly mountains from spreading over
the heart of India. The “Thirty-six Royal Races” fought as royal races know
how to do, Chohan with Rahtor, brother against brother, son against father.
Later—but excerpts from the tangled tale of force, fraud, cunning, desperate
love and more desperate revenge, crime worthy of demons and virtues fit
for gods, may be found, by all who care to look, in the book of the man who
loved the Rajputs and gave a life’s labours in their behalf. From Delhi to
Abu, and from the Indus to the Chambul, each yard of ground has witnessed
slaughter, pillage and rapine. But, to-day, the capital of the State, that Dhola
Rae, son of Soora Singh, hacked out more than nine hundred years ago with
the sword from some weaker ruler’s realm, is lighted with gas, and
possesses many striking and English peculiarities which will be shown in
their proper place.
Dhola Rae was killed in due time, and for nine hundred years Jeypore,
torn by the intrigues of unruly princes and princelings, fought Asiatically.
When and how Jeypore became a feudatory of British power, and in
what manner we put a slur upon Rajput honour—punctilious as the honour
of the Pathan—are matters of which the Globe-Trotter knows more than we
do. He “reads up"—to quote his own words—a city before he comes to us,
and, straightway going to another city, forgets, or, worse still, mixes what
he has learnt—so that in the end he writes down the Rajput a Mahratta, says
that Lahore is in the North-West Provinces and was once the capital of
Sivaji, and piteously demands a “guide-book on all India, a thing that you
can carry in your trunk y’know—that gives you plain descriptions of things
without mixing you up.” Here is a chance for a writer of discrimination and
void of conscience!
But to return to Jeypore—a pink city set on the border of a blue lake, and
surrounded by the low red spurs of the Aravalis—a city to see and to puzzle
over. There was once a ruler of the State, called Jey Singh, who lived in the
days of Aurungzeb, and did him service with foot and horse. He must have
been the Solomon of Rajputana, for through the forty-four years of his reign
his “wisdom remained with him.” He led armies, and when fighting was
over, turned to literature; he intrigued desperately and successfully, but
found time to gain a deep insight into astronomy, and, by what remains
above ground now, we can tell that “whatsoever his eyes desired, he kept
not from him.” Knowing his own worth, he deserted the city of Amber
founded by Dhola Rae among the hills, and, six miles further, in the open
plain, bade one Vedyadhar, his architect, build a new city, as seldom Indian
city was built before—with huge streets straight as an arrow, sixty yards
broad, and cross-streets broad and straight. Many years afterwards the good
people of America builded their towns after this pattern, but knowing
nothing of Jey Singh, they took all the credit to themselves.
He built himself everything that pleased him, palaces and gardens and
temples, and then died, and was buried under a white marble tomb on a hill
overlooking the city. He was a traitor, if history speak truth, to his own kin,
and he was an accomplished murderer, but he did his best to check
infanticide; he reformed the Mahomedan calendar; he piled up a superb
library and he made Jeypore a marvel.
Later on came a successor, educated and enlightened by all the lamps of
British Progress, and converted the city of Jey Singh into a surprise—a big,
bewildering, practical joke. He laid down sumptuous trottoirs of hewn
stone, and central carriage drives, also of hewn stone, in the main street; he,
that is to say, Colonel Jacob, the Superintending Engineer of the State,
devised a water-supply for the city and studded the ways with stand-pipes.
He built gas-works, set a-foot a School of Art, a Museum, all the things in
fact which are necessary to Western municipal welfare and comfort, and
saw that they were the best of their kind. How much Colonel Jacob has
done, not only for the good of Jeypore city but for the good of the State at
large, will never be known, because the officer in question is one of the not
small class who resolutely refuse to talk about their own work. The result of
the good work is that the old and the new, the rampantly raw and the
sullenly old, stand cheek-by-jowl in startling contrast. Thus, the branded
bull trips over the rails of a steel tramway which brings out the city rubbish;
the lacquered and painted ruth, behind the two little stag-like trotting
bullocks, catches its primitive wheels in the cast-iron gas-lamp post with
the brass nozzle a-top, and all Rajputana, gaily-clad, small-turbaned,
swaggering Rajputana, circulates along the magnificent pavements.
The fortress-crowned hills look down upon the strange medley. One of
them bears on its flank in huge white letters the cheery inscript “Welcome!”
This was made when the Prince of Wales visited Jeypore to shoot his first
tiger; but the average traveller of to-day may appropriate the message to
himself, for Jeypore takes great care of strangers and shows them all
courtesy. This, by the way, demoralises the Globe-Trotter, whose first cry is:
—“Where can we get horses? Where can we get elephants? Who is the man
to write to for all these things?”
Thanks to the courtesy of the Maharaja, it is possible to see everything,
but for the incurious who object to being driven through their sights, a
journey down any one of the great main streets is a day’s delightful
occupation. The view is as unobstructed as that of the Champs Elysees; but
in place of the white-stone fronts of Paris, rises a long line of open-work
screen-wall, the prevailing tone of which is pink—caramel pink, but house-
owners have unlimited license to decorate their tenements as they please.
Jeypore, broadly considered, is Hindu, and her architecture of the riotous
many-arched type which even the Globe-Trotter after a short time learns to
call Hindu. It is neither temperate nor noble, but it satisfies the general
desire for something that “really looks Indian.” A perverse taste for low
company drew the Englishman from the pavement—to walk upon a real
stone pavement is in itself a privilege—up a side-street where he assisted at
a quail fight and found the low-caste Rajput a cheery and affable soul. The
owner of the losing quail was a sowar in the Maharaja’s army. He explained
that his pay was six rupees a month paid bi-monthly. He was cut the cost of
his khaki blouse, brown-leather accoutrements and jack-boots; lance,
saddle, sword, and horse were given free. He refused to say for how many
months in the year he was drilled, and said vaguely that his duties were
mainly escort ones, and he had no fault to find with them. The defeat of his
quail had vexed him; and he desired the Sahib to understand that the sowars
of His Highness’s army could ride. A clumsy attempt at a compliment so
fired his martial blood that he climbed into his saddle, and then and there
insisted on showing off his horsemanship. The road was narrow, the lance
was long, and the horse was a big one, but no one objected, and the
Englishman sat him down on a doorstep and watched the fun. The horse
seemed in some shadowy way familiar. His head was not the lean head of
the Kathiawar, nor his crest the crest of the Marwarri, and his fore-legs did
not seem to belong to the stony district. “Where did he come from?” The
sowar pointed northward and said “from Amritsar,” but he pronounced it
“Armtzar.” Many horses had been brought at the spring fairs in the Punpab;
they cost about Rs. 200 each, perhaps more, the sowar could not say. Some
came from Hissar and some from other places beyond Delhi. They were
very good horses. “That horse there,” he pointed to one a little distance
down the street, “is the son of a big Sirkar horse—the kind that the Sirkar
make for breeding horses—so high!” The owner of “that horse” swaggered
up, jaw-bandaged and cat-moustached, and bade the Englishman look at his
mouth; bought, of course, when a butcha. Both men together said that the
Sahib had better examine the Maharaja Sahib’s stable, where there were
hundreds of horses—huge as elephants or tiny as sheep.
To the stables the Englishman accordingly went, knowing beforehand
what he would find, and wondering whether the Sirkar’s “big horses” were
meant to get mounts for Rajput sowars. The Maharaja’s stables are royal in
size and appointments. The enclosure round which they stand must be about
half a mile long—it allows ample space for exercising, besides paddocks
for the colts. The horses, about two hundred and fifty, are bedded in pure
white sand—bad for the coat if they roll, but good for the feet—the pickets
are of white marble, the heel-ropes in every case of good sound rope, and in
every case the stables are exquisitely clean. Each stall contains above the
manger, a curious little bunk for the syce who, if he uses the
accommodation, must assuredly die once each hot weather.
A journey round the stables is saddening, for the attendants are very
anxious to strip their charges, and the stripping shows so much. A few men
in India are credited with the faculty of never forgetting a horse they have
once seen, and of knowing the produce of every stallion they have met. The
Englishman would have given something for their company at that hour.
His knowledge of horseflesh was very limited; but he felt certain that more
than one or two of the sleek, perfectly groomed country-breds should have
been justifying their existence in the ranks of the British cavalry, instead of
eating their heads off on six seers of gram and one of goor per diem. But
they had all been honestly bought and honestly paid for; and there was
nothing in the wide world to prevent His Highness, if he wished to do so,
from sweeping up the pick and pride of all the horses in the Punjab. The
attendants appeared to take a wicked delight in saying “eshtud-bred” very
loudly and with unnecessary emphasis as they threw back the loin-cloth.
Sometimes they were wrong, but in too many cases they were right.
The Englishman left the stables and the great central maidan where a
nervous Biluchi was being taught, by a perfect network of ropes, to
“monkey jump,” and went out into the streets reflecting on the working of
horse-breeding operations under the Government of India, and the
advantages of having unlimited money wherewith to profit by other
people’s mistakes.
Then, as happened to the great Tartarin of Tarescon in Milianah, wild
beasts began to roar, and a crowd of little boys laughed. The lions of
Jeypore are tigers, caged in a public place for the sport of the people, who
hiss at them and disturb their royal feelings. Two or three of the six great
brutes are magnificent. All of them are short-tempered, and the bars of their
captivity not too strong. A pariah-dog was furtively trying to scratch out a
fragment of meat from between the bars of one of the cages, and the
occupant tolerated him. Growing bolder—the starveling growled; the tiger
struck at him with his paw and the dog fled howling with fear. When he
returned, he brought two friends with him, and the trio mocked the captive
from a distance.
It was not a pleasant sight and suggested Globe-Trotters—gentlemen
who imagine that “more curricles” should come at their bidding, and on
being undeceived become abusive.
 III.
Does not in any sort describe the Dead City of Amber, but gives detailed
information of a Cotton Press.

A ND what shall be said of Amber, Queen of the Pass—the city that Jey
Singh bade his people slough as snakes cast their skins? The Globe-
Trotter will assure you that it must be “done” before anything else, and
the Globe-Trotter is, for once, perfectly correct. Amber lies between six and
seven miles from Jeypore among the “tumbled fragments of the hills,” and
is reachable by so prosaic a conveyance as a ticca-ghari, and so
uncomfortable a one as an elephant. He is provided by the Maharaja, and
the people who make India their prey are apt to accept his services as a
matter of course.
Rise very early in the morning, before the stars have gone out, and drive
through the sleeping city till the pavement gives place to cactus and sand,
and educational and enlightened institutions to mile upon mile of semi-
decayed Hindu temples—brown and weather-beaten—running down to the
shores of the great Man Sagar Lake, wherein are more ruined temples,
palaces and fragments of causeways. The water-birds have their home in the
half-submerged arcades and the mugger nuzzles the shafts of the pillars. It
is a fitting prelude to the desolation of Amber. Beyond the Man Sagar the
road of to-day climbs up-hill, and by its side runs the huge stone-causeway
of yesterday—blocks sunk in concrete. Down this path the swords of
Amber went out to kill. A triple wall rings the city, and, at the third gate, the
road drops into the valley of Amber. In the half light of dawn, a great city
sunk between hills and built round three sides of a lake is dimly visible, and
one waits to catch the hum that should rise from it as the day breaks. The air
in the valley is bitterly chill. With the growing light, Amber stands revealed,
and the traveller sees that it is a city that will never wake. A few meenas
live in huts at the end of the valley, but the temples, the shrines, the palaces,
and the tiers-on-tiers of houses are desolate. Trees grow in and split open
the walls, the windows are filled with brushwood, and the cactus chokes the
street. The Englishman made his way up the side of the hill to the great
palace that overlooks everything except the red fort of Jeighur, guardian of
Amber. As the elephant swung up the steep roads paved with stone and built
out on the sides of the hill, the Englishman looked into empty houses where
the little grey squirrel sat and scratched its ears. The peacock walked upon
the house-tops and the blue pigeon roosted within. He passed under iron-
studded gates whereof the hinges were eaten out with rust, and by walls
plumed and crowned with grass, and under more gateways, till, at last, he
reached the palace and came suddenly into a great quadrangle where two
blinded, arrogant stallions, covered with red and gold trappings, screamed
and neighed at each other from opposite ends of the vast space. For a little
time these were the only visible living beings, and they were in perfect
accord with the spirit of the spot. Afterwards certain workmen appeared, for
it seems that the Maharaja keeps the old palace of his forefathers in good
repair, but they were modern and mercenary, and with great difficulty were
detached from the skirts of the traveller. A somewhat extensive experience
of palace-seeing had taught him that it is best to see palaces alone, for the
Oriental as a guide is undiscriminating and sets too great a store on
corrugated iron-roofs and glazed drain-pipes.
So the Englishman went into this palace built of stone, bedded on stone,
springing out of scarped rock, and reached by stone ways—nothing but
stone. Presently, he stumbled across a little temple of Kali, a gem of marble
tracery and inlay, very dark and, at that hour of the morning, very cold.
If, as Violet-le-Duc tells us to believe, a building reflects the character of
its inhabitants, it must be impossible for one reared in an Eastern palace to
think straightly or speak freely or—but here the annals of Rajputana
contradict the theory—to act openly. The crampt and darkened rooms, the
narrow smooth-walled passages with recesses where a man might wait for
his enemy unseen, the maze of ascending and descending stairs leading no-
whither, the ever present screens of marble tracery that may hide or reveal
so much,—all these things breathe of plot and counter-plot, league and
intrigue. In a living palace where the sightseer knows and feels that there
are human beings everywhere, and that he is followed by scores of unseen
eyes, the impression is almost unendurable. In a dead palace—a cemetery
of loves and hatreds done with hundreds of years ago, and of plottings that
had for their end—though the grey beards who plotted knew it not—the
coming of the British tourist with guide-book and sunhat—oppression gives
place to simply impertinent curiosity. The Englishman wandered into all
parts of the palace, for there was no one to stop him—not even the ghosts of
the dead Ranis—through ivory-studded doors, into the women’s quarters,
where a stream of water once flowed over a chiselled marble channel. A
creeper had set its hands upon the lattice here, and there was dust of old
nests in one of the niches in the wall. Did the lady of light virtue who
managed to become possessed of so great a portion of Jey Singh’s library
ever set her dainty feet in the trim garden of the Hall of Pleasure beyond the
screen-work? Was it in the forty-pillared Hall of Audience that the order
went forth that the Chief of Birjooghar was to be slain, and from what wall
did the King look out when the horsemen clattered up the steep stone path
to the palace, bearing on their saddle-bows the heads of the bravest of
Rajore? There were questions innumerable to be asked in each court and
keep and cell; aye, but the only answer was the cooing of the pigeons on the
walls.
If a man desired beauty, there was enough and to spare in the palace; and
of strength more than enough. By inlay and carved marble, by glass and
colour, the Kings who took their pleasure in that now desolate pile, made all
that their eyes rested upon royal and superb. But any description of the
artistic side of the palace,
 Page 30—“Bearing on their saddle-bows the heads of the bravest of Rajore?”
if it were not impossible, would be wearisome. The wise man will visit it
when time and occasion serve, and will then, in some small measure,
understand what must have been the riotous, sumptuous, murderous life to
which our Governors and Lieutenant-Governors, Commissioners and
Deputy Commissioners, Colonels and Captains and the Subalterns after
their kind, have put an end.
From the top of the palace you may read if you please the Book of
Ezekiel written in stone upon the hillside. Coming up, the Englishman had
seen the city from below or on a level. He now looked into its very heart—
the heart that had ceased to beat. There was no sound of men or cattle, or
grind-stones in those pitiful streets—nothing but the cooing of the pigeons.
At first it seemed that the palace was not ruined at all—that presently the
women would come up on the house-tops and the bells would ring in the
temples. But as he attempted to follow with his eye the turns of the streets,
the Englishman saw that they died out in wood tangle and blocks of fallen
stone, and that some of the houses were rent with great cracks, and pierced
from roof to road with holes that let in the morning sun. The drip-stones of
the eaves were gap-toothed, and the tracery of the screens had fallen out so
that zenana-rooms lay shamelessly open to the day. On the outskirts of the
city, the strong walled houses dwindled and sank down to mere stone-heaps
and faint indications of plinth and wall, hard to trace against the background
of stony soil. The shadow of the palace lay over two-thirds of the city and
the trees deepened the shadow. “He who has bent him o’er the dead” after
the hour of which Byron sings, knows that the features of the man become
blunted as it were—the face begins to fade. The same hideous look lies on
the face of the Queen of the Pass, and when once this is realised, the eye
wonders that it could have ever believed in the life of her. She is the city
“whose graves are set in the side of the pit, and her company is, round about
here graves,” sister of Pathros, Zoan and No.
Moved by a thoroughly insular instinct, the Englishman took up a piece
of plaster and heaved it from the palace wall into the dark streets below. It
bounded from a house-top to a window-ledge, and thence into a little
square, and the sound of its fall was hollow and echoing, as the sound of a
stone in a well. Then the silence closed up upon the sound, till in the far
away courtyard below the roped stallions began screaming afresh. There
may be desolation in the great Indian Desert to the westward, and there is
desolation upon the open seas; but the desolation of Amber is beyond the
loneliness either of land or sea. Men by the hundred thousand must have
toiled at the walls that bound it, the temples and bastions that stud the walls,
the fort that overlooks all, the canals that once lifted water to the palace,
and the garden in the lake of the valley. Renan could describe it as it stands
to-day, and Vereschagin could paint it.
Arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, the Englishman went down
through the palace and the scores of venomous and suggestive little rooms
to the elephant in the courtyard and was taken back in due time to the
Nineteenth Century in the shape of His Highness the Maharaja’s Cotton
Press, returning a profit of 27 per cent., and fitted with two engines of fifty
horsepower each, an hydraulic press capable of exerting a pressure of three
tons per square inch, and everything else to correspond. It stood under a
neat corrugated iron roof close to the Jeypore Railway Station, and was in
most perfect order, but somehow it did not taste well after Amber. There
was aggressiveness about the engines and the smell of the raw cotton.
The modern side of Jeypore must not be mixed with the ancient.
 IV.
The Temple of Mahadeo and the Manners of such as see India—The Man by
the Water-Troughs and his Knowledge—The Voice of the City and what it
said—Personalities and the Hospital—The House Beautiful of Jeypore and
its Builders.

F ROM the Cotton Press the Englishman wandered through the wide
streets till he came into a Hindu Temple—rich in marble, stone and
inlay, and a deep and tranquil silence, close to the Public Library of the
State. The brazen bull was hung with flowers, and men were burning the
evening incense before Mahadeo, while those who had prayed their prayer,
beat upon the bells hanging from the roof and passed out, secure in the
knowledge that the god had heard them. If there be much religion, there is
little reverence, as Westerns understand the term, in the services of the gods
of the East. A tiny little maiden, child of a monstrously ugly priest with one
chalk-white eye, staggered across the marble pavement to the shrine and
threw, with a gust of childish laughter, the blossoms she was carrying into
the lap of the great Mahadeo himself. Then she made as though she would
leap up to the bells and ran away, still laughing, into the shadow of the cells
behind the shrine, while her father explained that she was but a baby and
that Mahadeo would take no notice. The temple, he said, was specially
favored by the Maharaja, and drew from lands an income of twenty
thousand rupees a year. Thakoors and great men also gave gifts out of their
benevolence; and there was nothing in the wide world to prevent an
Englishman from following their example.
By this time, for Amber and the Cotton Press had filled the hours, night
was falling, and the priests unhooked the swinging jets and began to light
up the impassive face of Mahadeo with gas! They used Tændstikker
matches.
Full night brought the hotel and its curiously-composed human
menagerie.
There is, if a work-a-day world will give credit, a society entirely
outside, and unconnected with, that of the Station—a planet within a planet,
where nobody knows anything about the Collector’s wife, the Colonel’s
dinner-party, or what was really the matter with the Engineer. It is a curious,
an insatiably curious, thing, and its literature is Newman’s Bradshaw.
Wandering “old arms-sellers” and others live upon it, and so do the
garnetmen and the makers of ancient Rajput shields. The world of the
innocents abroad is a touching and unsophisticated place, and its very
atmosphere urges the Anglo-Indian unconsciously to extravagant
mendacity. Can you wonder, then, that a guide of long-standing should in
time grow to be an accomplished liar?
Into this world sometimes breaks the Anglo-Indian returned from leave,
or a fugitive to the sea, and his presence is like that of a well-known
landmark in the desert. The old arms-seller knows and avoids him, and he is
detested by the jobber of gharis who calls everyone “my lord” in English,
and panders to the “glaring race anomaly” by saying that every carriage not
under his control is “rotten, my lord, having been used by natives.” One of
the privileges of playing at tourist is the brevet-rank of “Lord.” Hazur is not
to be compared with it.
There are many, and some very curious, methods of seeing India. One of
these is buying English translations of the more Zolaistic of Zola’s novels
and reading them from breakfast to dinner-time in the verandah. Yet
another, even simpler, is American in its conception. Take a Newman’s
Bradshaw and a blue pencil, and race up and down the length of the
Empire, ticking off the names of the stations “done.” To do this thoroughly,
keep strictly to the railway buildings and form your conclusions through the
carriage-windows. These eyes have seen both ways of working in full blast
and, on the whole, the first is the most commendable.
Let us consider now with due reverence the modern side of Jeypore. It is
difficult to write of a nickel-plated civilisation set down under the
immemorial Aravalis in the first state of Rajputana. The red-grey hills seem
to laugh at it, and the ever-shifting sand-dunes under the hills take no
account of it, for they advance upon the bases of the monogrammed,
coronet-crowned lamp-posts, and fill up the points of the natty tramways
near the Water-works, which are the outposts of the civilisation of Jeypore.
Escape from the city by the Railway Station till you meet the cactus and
the mud-bank and the Maharajah’s Cotton Press. Pass between a tramway
and a trough for wayfaring camels till your foot sinks ankle-deep in soft
sand, and you come upon what seems to be the fringe of illimitable desert—
mound upon mound of tussocks overgrown with plumed grass where the
parrots sit and swing. Here, if you have kept to the road, you shall find a
bund faced with stone, a great tank, and pumping machinery fine as the
heart of a municipal engineer can desire—pure water, sound pipes and well-
kept engines. If you belong to what is sarcastically styled an “able and
intelligent municipality” under the British Raj, go down to the level of the
tank, scoop up the water in your hands and drink, thinking meanwhile of the
defects of the town whence you came. The experience will be a profitable
one. There are statistics in connection with the Water-works, figures relating
to “three-throw-plungers,” delivery and supply, which should be known to
the professional reader. They would not interest the unprofessional who
would learn his lesson among the thronged stand-pipes of the city.
While the Englishman was preparing in his mind a scathing rebuke for
an erring municipality that he knew of, a camel swung across the sands, its
driver’s jaw and brow bound mummy fashion to guard against the dust. The
man was evidently a stranger to the place, for he pulled up and asked the
Englishman where the drinking troughs were. He was a gentleman and bore
very patiently with the Englishman’s absurd ignorance of his dialect. He
had come from some village, with an unpronounceable name, thirty kos
away, to see his brother’s son who was sick in the big Hospital. While the
camel was drinking, the man talked, lying back on his mount. He knew
nothing of Jeypore, except the names of certain Englishmen in it, the men
who, he said, had made the Water-works and built the Hospital for his
brother’s son’s comfort.
And this is the curious feature of Jeypore; though happily the city is not
unique in its peculiarity. When the late Maharaja ascended the throne, more
than fifty years ago, it was his royal will and pleasure that Jeypore should
advance. Whether he was prompted by love for his subjects, desire for
praise, or the magnificent vanity with which Jey Singh must have been so
largely dowered, are questions that concern nobody. In the latter years of his
reign, he was supplied with Englishmen who made the State their father-
land, and identified themselves with its progress as only Englishmen can.
Behind them stood the Maharaja ready to spend money with a lavishness
that no Supreme Government would dream of; and it would not be too
much to say that the two made the State what it is. When Ram Singh died,
Madho Singh, his successor, a conservative Hindu, forebore to interfere in
any way with the work that was going forward. It is said in the city that he
does not overburden himself with the cares of State, the driving power
being mainly in the hands of a Bengali, who has everything but the name of
Minister. Nor do the Englishmen, it is said in the city, mix themselves with
the business of Government; their business being wholly executive.
They can, according to the voice of the city, do what they please, and the
voice of the city—not in the main roads but in the little side-alleys where
the stall-less bull blocks the path—attests how well their pleasure has suited
the pleasure of the people. In truth, to men of action few things could be
more delightful than having a State of fifteen thousand square miles placed
at their disposal, as it were, to leave their mark on. Unfortunately for the
vagrant traveller, those who work hard for practical ends prefer not to talk
about their doings, and he must, therefore, pick up what information he can
at second-hand or in the city. The men at the stand-pipes explain that the
Maharaja Sahib’s father gave the order for the Water-works and that Yakub
Sahib made them—not only in the city but out away in the district. “Did
people grow more crops thereby?” “Of course they did: were canals made
to wash in only?” “How much more crops?” “Who knows. The Sahib had
better go and ask some official.” Increased irrigation means increase of
revenue for the State somewhere, but the man who brought about the
increase does not say so.
After a few days of amateur globe-trotting, a shamelessness great as that
of the other loafer—the red-nosed man who hangs about compounds and is
always on the eve of starting for Calcutta—possesses the masquerader; so
that he feels equal to asking a Resident for a parcel-gilt howdah, or
dropping in to dinner with a Lieutenant-Governor. No man has a right to
keep anything back from a Globe-Trotter, who is a mild, temperate,
gentlemanly and unobtrusive seeker after truth. Therefore he who, without a
word of enlightenment, sends the visitor into a city which he himself has
beautified and adorned and made clean and wholesome, deserves unsparing
exposure. And the city may be trusted to betray him. The malli in the Ram
Newa’s Gardens, gardens—here the Englishman can speak from a fairly
extensive experience—finer than any in India and fit to rank with the best in
Paris—says that the Maharaja gave the order and Yakub Sahib made the
Gardens. He also says that the Hospital just outside the Gardens was built
by Yakub Sahib, and if the Sahib will go to the centre of the Gardens, he
will find another big building, a Museum by the same hand.
But the Englishman went first to the Hospital, and found the out-patients
beginning to arrive. A hospital cannot tell lies about its own progress as a
municipality can. Sick folk either come or lie in their own villages. In the
case of the Mayo Hospital they came, and the operation-book showed that
they had been in the habit of coming. Doctors at issue with provincial and
local administrations, Civil Surgeons who cannot get their indents complied
with, ground-down and mutinous practitioners all India over, would do well
to visit the Mayo Hospital, Jeypore. They might, in the exceeding bitterness
of their envy, be able to point out some defects in its supplies, or its beds, or
its splints, or in the absolute isolation of the women’s quarters from the
men’s.
Envy is a low and degrading passion, and should be striven against.
From the Hospital the Englishman went to the Museum in the centre of the
Gardens, and was eaten up by it, for Museums appealed to him. The casing
of the jewel was in the first place superb—a wonder of carven white stone
of the Indo-Saracenic style. It stood on a stone plinth, and was rich in stone-
tracery, green marble columns from Ajmir, red marble, white marble
colonnades, courts with fountains, richly-carved wooden doors, frescoes,
inlay and colour. The ornamentation of the tombs of Delhi, the palaces of
Agra and the walls of Amber, have been laid under contribution to supply
the designs in bracket, arch, and soffit; and stone-masons from the Jeypore
School of Art have woven into the work the best that their hands could
produce. The building in essence, if not in the fact of to-day, is the work of
Freemasons. The men were allowed a certain scope in their choice of detail
and the result ... but it should be seen to be understood, as it stands in those
Imperial Gardens. And observe, the man who had designed it, who had
superintended its erection, had said no word to indicate that there was such
a thing in the place, or that every foot of it, from the domes of the roof to
the cool green chunam dadoes and the carving of the rims of the fountains
in the courtyard, was worth studying! Round the arches of the great centre
court are written in Sanskrit and Hindi, texts from the great Hindu writers
of old, bearing on the beauty of wisdom and the sanctity of knowledge.
In the central corridor are six great frescoes, each about nine feet by five,
copies of illustrations in the Royal Folio of the Razmnameh, the
Mahabharata, which Akbar caused to be done by the best artists of his day.
The original is in the Museum, and he who can steal it, will find a purchaser
at any price up to fifty thousand pounds.