Understanding Dyslexia
Workshop Helps People Grasp Difficulties of the Disability
by Will Oremus
The following article appeared 10/22/2006 in the San Mateo Daily News (California)
When the teacher called on Pattie Barco to read a line out loud in front of the class, she got partway through and then faltered. She couldn't figure out the next word.
Other students' hands went up as she tried to sound it out. Finally, someone blurted out the answer: "village."
Barco, the parent of a fourth-grader at Charles Armstrong School in Belmont, was participating in a workshop at the school Thursday evening called Put Yourself in the Shoes of a Person with Dyslexia. The line she was reading was written in mirror-image letters to simulate the difficulties dyslexic students face when reading.
Afterward, Barco said she finally understood why her daughter, who has dyslexia, hates being called on in class.
"You really want to shake them and say, 'You learned that word yesterday, how can you not know that word?'" she said, "It's hard to be always aware of just how difficult it is."
The simulation, put on by the International Dyslexia Association as part of Dyslexia Awareness Month, showed parents and teachers what it's like to be asked to perform tasks that don't come naturally. According to the IDA, 15 to 20 percent of the general population suffers from dyslexia or a similar language-based learning disability.
The workshop put participants through six activities. In one called "A Special Pre-Primer," they had to read a simple story made complex by the fact that it was written in code. The "teacher," IDA volunteer Jan Tuber, purposely did not acknowledge that fact.
"This will be a snap," she told the participants.
When one stumbled over a word that had been decoded as "all" earlier in the session, Tuber prodded, "This is an easy word - we learned this in first grade."
Her kindly manner didn't make the activity any less stressful, participants said. They used words like "frustrating" and "exhausting" to describe the experience.
"I could feel the shutdown," said Catherine Peterson, parent of a second-grader at Charles Armstrong, a private school geared toward students with dyslexia.
"At first I jumped in, I was motivated, I felt like I was going to grab onto my compensation techniques," said Peterson, referring to the strategies students develop to overcome specific learning disabilities. "Then I started to feel overwhelmed and think, 'Well, it's almost dinnertime.'"
That type of fatigue and frustration can puncture a young student's self-esteem, said Cathy Dunn, board member of the Northern California branch of the IDA.
"Eventually they'll get to the point in life where reading isn't the most important thing anymore, but we've got to get them there intact," Dunn said.
For more information about the NCBIDA's dyslexia simulation, click here.
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