A famous proverb tells us, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

When applied to teaching — and, more appropriately, to special education — it also begs a question. Who decides if the best approach is to give a fish or teach fishing lessons when teaching a student with learning disabilities?

The "fishing lessons" concept requires the motivation of the teacher as well as the student. The student must be motivated to work and to enjoy the intrinsic reward of feeling satisfied with success once a new concept is learned. The teacher must be motivated to continue the teaching until the concept is "caught," at times trying multiple ways and at times repeating the same ways.

The teacher must always be negotiating and evaluating. Does the student understand? Has he "caught" it? Does he really know it? Will my assessment prove that his IEP objective is met? If not, we will continue the process until the learning has occurred.

But what about the "give a fish" concept? When is it appropriate to give the answer rather than waiting for the student to know it well enough to supply the answer? This is often a split-second decision that I, and many of my colleagues, wrestle with daily. I will provide an illustration to help understand:

Decoding multiple-syllable words is often a difficult concept for students with reading disabilities. It is not possible to preteach every word that will be encountered when reading a grade-level text, especially as the students encounter higher grades and more difficult text.

However, the process for decoding a word can be taught methodically so that when the student understands the method, he can pause to decode unknown words as he reads. This is a "teaching to fish" lesson.

However, if the student is reading and comprehension is the goal of importance rather than decoding, the teacher may have to "give a fish" — in this case, the word that is unknown — so the student can read more seamlessly and gain the meaning of the text.

In both of these situations, the teacher is probably deciding which method is important at the time for the learning that needs to occur. The student does not know the intentions of the teacher, unless the teacher explains that she knows that the student should learn to decode independently, but in this instance she will provide the word.

The student may be happy with his easy gain of the word and be pleased for the day. He got the "fish." However, when he is reading on his own with no one available to provide the word, he is stuck unless he learns the procedure, does the hard work and gains the confidence that he can decode independently.

One of the goals of special education is for students to be independent learners. The Common Core standards are used in many of the schools in the United States to guide instruction. Several standards include verbiage such as "with guidance and support from adults."(W.3.4)

IEP goals are written with the Common Core standards linked to them. Students are expected to use teacher assistance to meet their goals. Students also are expected to present products that demonstrate they understand a concept on their own. There are two sets of expectations for students that require ascertaining when to use the teacher to provide information and determining when learning must be clearly known independently.

The goal of the teacher must always be toward the harder, but superior, end of teaching a student "how to fish." The goal must be teaching students how to learn, how to persist and how to anticipate knowing information independent of a teacher.

The teacher may have times of needing to "give a fish." However, the teacher must provide the opportunities for the student to learn that same information.