Learner Analysis: Steve Urkel

Steve Urkel from the ABC show Family Matters is the classic nerd.  He's extremely intelligent and is constantly inventing new things.  His vocabulary and manner of speaking are far beyond his age.  He is also extremely clumsy and very often responsible for breaking things.

His family is middle/upper-middle class, as his parents are both extremely intelligent and his father is a doctor.  However, his home life does not appear to be very happy, as his parents are depicted as very openly disliking him.  It is also suggested that his parents even neglect him, as they do not feed him every day.

Steve, being very intelligent, is very good at school and therefore tends to treat and view his teachers as peers.  He speaks several languages fluently including Japanese and Korean. He excels in science and is very passionate about it.  He does not distract others from school - at least, not out of a desire to avoid schoolwork himself, but perhaps unintentionally by his awkward and conspicuous social interactions and clumsiness.  He is very engaged in school.

He is very clearly interested in science and technology, as he invents new technology frequently.  Steve is probably more college-ready than most high-school seniors, intellectually.  However, he may still struggle socially in college.  Here, you can see his intellectual vocabulary and social skills at play at school:

While he is interested in science, his affections are also largely dominated by his neighbor, Laura Winslow whom he is "in love with."  The majority of his storyline and motivation in the show is about trying to win Laura over.  He spends a huge amount of time devising and enacting plans to win her affection, and is repeatedly rejected by her.  

If I had him in my classroom, I would want to give him more challenging assignments to really stretch his learning and to further foster his skills, especially seeing as my classroom would be a science (biology or chemistry) and this is the subject Steve seems most proficient at.  I could probably give him a teacher's assistant role and have him help in preparing labs and making solutions and helping his classmates.

I would love to incorporate his interests into assignments for him, and to expose him to new developments in science and technology.  I could really push him far, probably to the college level.  I could easily see him just tearing through peer-reviewed journal articles.  It would be so fun to have him as a student, because of his passion and interest about science! It would also be difficult because I have no doubt he would often know more than me.