Dyslexia and brilliant minds

 

Dyslexia and the brain.
A short story and some useful information about brilliant brains.

Everyone knows someone who is dyslexic. At school, there we had a "dyslexic unit" in which people went to have support and strategies but nobody else went in there, so it was a bit of a mystery to most. Our dyslexic units were those prefab classrooms that were "temporary" but stayed there until the end of time. Actually, our school was completely demolished to make way for a housing project (surprised? I'm not...) and rebuild 100m from it's original place. The school stood since the 1950's and my father and all his siblings attended the school. It was a comprehensive state secondary school and in the very beginning, had a smallholding in which the students were taught how to be self sufficient, how to raise sheep, chickens and so on. Since it was post war, the idea of growing one's own vegetables was still second nature after the rationing. Now, after it was rebuilt under the same name, it looked modern and miserable, reminiscent of my time spent there. For my cousins across the pond, the UK has a school system quite different to the US, in which schools are set in 2 stages. Primary (starting at age 4) in which you stay until you are in year 6 and 12 years old, then you can go to secondary school (starting from 12 until 18). We have college, which is not university but a preparatory institution in which you can study subjects with which you sit exams ready for university. College is a separate entity, thought in schools we have what's called "6th form" and acts exactly the same as college would. Confused? Yeah, sorry about that. 

I didn't know too much about dyslexia when I was young. All the dyslexic kids in our school were placed in the "lower classes", which gave the impression that they were considered less intelligent than those of us (including me) who were in the "high classes". I spent my school years floating between classes, mostly because I was considered lazy. Turns out lazy was AUDHD but that's another story. 

There was never any support in classrooms from what I can remember. Not in primary school nor secondary. This came much later when education evolved and the need for in-class support in the form of a classroom assistant was recognised. By that time, my generation had left school and become parents ourselves. Progress is always slow. It wasn't until I had my own children that I became the proud parent of a brilliant dyslexic mind. He's 14 now and has a hard time in education but he is far from unintelligent. He thinks completely outside of the box in every aspect of his life. School's been a tragedy for the poor kid and I think it's important to highlight what happened because I have no doubt, there will be a parent reading this who says "hey, that's us!"

He started school back in 2014 and for 2 years stayed within a primary school in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The first 2 years were spent teaching the kids to read using phonics. My son didn't work well with phonics and instead of helping him, the teachers would send him outside to play in the sand box. Mrs Leeming and her colleagues didn't help him at all and when I raised my concerns, they told me he was fine and there was nothing wrong. I asked for them to use the "Oxford Reading Tree" system but they told me since he wasn't special needs, they wouldn't be using it. Every meeting was met with denial and fabrications. We were trying desperately to help him at home but he just couldn't retain any information long enough to learn to read. Phonics just does not work with everyone. After he began year 2, they started to prepare for the SAT exams. School told us that he has to do SAT preparation homework and gave us a booklet to complete. I asked how he was going to do it and the teachers told me that I would have to do it for him. 

They still wouldn't help him. 

It was at this point I decided to do something and I deregistered him from school and home educated him for a year. We were harassed by Birmingham City Council, shamefully. Home education is perfectly legal in the UK and it's common for families to be targeted by the local education authority of their local councils. Some better than others but it's common. In my experience, home educating my son was the best decision I ever made. We paid for him to attend an educational centre twice a week that focused on maths and English. It made little difference but we still persevered. Despite all his difficulties, he was still creative and knew what he wanted to learn about. We spent days at the zoo, learning about wildlife. He enjoyed getting exercise at a brand new trampoline park and we spent a fair amount of time in there. We made friends with other home educating families. The HE (home educating) community is quite something, and it opened my eyes to a lot of things I would have never considered, having my children in school. I made sure he learnt all the basics and that he was given the freedom to tell me what he was interested in. He was happier, less stressed and actually learnt something. Progress was slow. But there was still progress.

In 2017 after about a year, we decided to relocate from the UK. Brexit and the poor educational experience made us revaluate everything and we took the decision to move to Spain before our rights were revoked. Here's where things changed for him, and quite quickly. We moved to Murcia in south east Spain and he was put in school in our little village. His teacher, JuanMa, was so patient with him and worked hard to develop his literacy skills. Within 6 months, he could read. Spanish is a phonetic language which means that every letter is pronounced the same in every word. This means there was no decoding, no over complicated phonics, no blending sounds... The boy got it! I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally hear him reading and he felt a sense of relief even though it was still difficult for him. He's still not a fan of reading but he will do it when necessary. So, thank you, JuanMa. I never got to tell you how much I appreciated you. JuanMa left the school after a year and my son was sad about it. They hugged on his last day. My son was 8 years old. I never considered that I would be the parent of a child who couldn't read. 

Once he learned to read, I started to get angry about what happened to us in Birmingham. I know I should forgive the teachers at his school, but they let him down and left him behind because he was dyslexic. There's a huge flaw in the English education system in which students are considered statistics and nothing more. Only the top performing students are considered and anyone else is left behind. This applies to any student with learning difficulties and explains why parents have to fight for their children's education. There is no fairness, no equity and no inclusion. This isn't to criticise the teachers, but to heavily criticise the government for setting guidelines and regulations which only seek to support the mainstream "sheep" learners. Those with differences? They don't want to know about those. 

Let's move onto dyslexia. What is it?

According to the British Dyslexia Association:

"Dyslexia is a neurological difference and can have a significant impact during education, in the workplace and in everyday life. As each person is unique, so is everyone's experience of dyslexia. It can range from mild to severe, and it can co-occur with other specific learning difficulties. It usually runs in families and is a life-long condition.

It is important to remember that there are positives to thinking differently. Many dyslexic people show strengths in areas such as reasoning and in visual and creative fields."

Let's take a look at this:

You can find more information here

Some of the most brilliant minds that ever existed are dyslexic. 

Some notable people are:

• Jennifer Aniston
• Keanu Reeves
• Albert Einstein
• Tom Cruise
• Whoopi Goldberg
• Steve Jobs
• Richard Branson
• Orlando Bloom
• Pablo Picasso
• George Washington
• John F. Kennedy
• Andy Warhol
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Agatha Christie
• Hans Christian Andersen
• Keira Knightley
• Henry Winkler
• Cher
• Octavia Spencer

Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are dyslexic. Their creativity and ability to think completely outside the box is second to none. (I don't think there was even a box to begin with) They are fiercely independent, stubborn, dreamers, creators, inventors, innovative, the list goes on and on. the brilliance about dyslexics is that the have had to find their own coping mechanisms. They have to develop ways in which they can succeed, because the non-dyslexic brain cannot (in general) establish aspects of a project, for example, that a dyslexic brain can. Engaging in projects with dyslexic brains works well. 

A Dyslexic experience.

Let's look at the image below. Take a moment to just watch and see if you can read the text and don't move your eyes from the moving words and letters. Now imagine that you have to copy this from the board in the classroom. You have 3 minutes to copy everything, before the teacher moves onto something else. While you are copying, the teacher continues talking and walking in front of the board. Other students are talking and you become distracted by the all the noise. 

Ask yourself these questions:

1. How does it make you feel?

2. What are you going to do?

3. How are you going complete the work?

4. Who do you talk to? Will they understand you?

5. At the end of the school day, what do you think you will do? You have homework. You haven't been able to follow the class. 

Many of the challenges faced by dyslexics are happening simultaneously. Below is a list of symptoms but you have to remember that these don't just exist individually. 

1. Confuse visually similar words such as cat and cot                         
2. Spell erratically.                                                                          
3. Find it hard to scan or skim text                                                   
4. Read/write slowly                                                                        
5. Need to re-read paragraphs to understand them                            
6. Find it hard to listen and maintain focus                                        
7. Find it hard to concentrate if there are distractions                         
8. Feel sensations of mental overload/switching off                            
9. Have difficulty telling left from right                                              
10. Get confused when given several instructions at once                     
11. Have difficulty organising thoughts on paper                                 
12. Often forget conversations or important dates                               
13. Have difficulty with personal organisation, time management and prioritising tasks.
14. Avoid certain types of work or study                                            
15. Find some tasks really easy but unexpectedly challenged by others 
16. Have poor self-esteem, especially if dyslexic difficulties have not been identified in earlier life

(I've written the above list in a simpler text with a highlighted background. This can help people to read a little easier rather than a typical black and white text. I often print worksheets for my students on pale coloured paper such as pink or yellow, because it's easier for them to read and digest. Some people say there's doubt if that actually works, it could be the placebo effect but I say if it helps, then that's all you need to do.)

The list of symptoms are not linear, not everyone experiences the exact same thing but have many of them and will experience things more severely than others. We are all different after all. For example, my son confuses letters a lot, he mispronounces words and often forgets the name of things. Writing is difficult for him, on top of dyslexia, he has something called dysgraphia which means difficulty writing. He mixes up capital letters and lower case letters in all the words he writes. He doesn't spell his name with a first capital letter, and often forgets. It took him a long time to remember how to spell his name. If you have messy handwriting, there may be a chance you are dysgraphic. This tickles me somewhat, because many doctors have terrible handwriting. Anyway, dysgraphia is a condition often diagnosed alongside dyslexia. In this case, they are co-morbid because they share some similar symptoms and are diagnosed together. This isn't always the case but I just want to explain what co-morbid means, as an example.

Here is an example of his writing:

This makes me burst with pride.