Hi,
I am the mother of five children, four of whom are dyslexic. My husband is dyslexic as well. Over the the past ten years we have muddled our way through several schools and we even homeschooled for several years. After putting our children back into school (they are all doing well:) I decided that it just isn’t acceptable to me that so many teachers (and parents) have so little knowledge on how my children need to be taught in a classroom. My husband and five kids and myself decided to write down all the frustrations, and helpful things that have occured as we took our children through school. It’s a real eye opener. We have passed the book throughout our children’s school. The results have been very good. I even had one teacher who has my nondyslexic child tell me that he felt horrible that he let many children in the past slip by because he just had not understood. Almost all the teachers stated they had no training in school on how to help children like mine and were grateful for any insight. I am hoping to someday educate all educators to understanding my children. If you would like to read our book for free, I would love comments. I feel there are a lot of parents, who like myself, could also use a little heads up when it comes to dyslexia.
Check out my web site at http://geocities.com/mmmasko/nochild.html
Thanks
Re: We're educating the teachers to help our kids!!
Hello,
Thanks for the response. We have worked so hard at this book and I am so determined to have it reach ALL teachers. After the dozen or so teachers that we have given it to read all responded that it helped fill in some of the blanks that had been missing in their education regarding dyslexia. I am seeing small changes that the kids come home and tell me about (not things that the teachers want me to see) A couple for instances are in Spanish my daughter stated the teacher made them all put down their heads on the desk and raise their hands as she called out amount of times that each child had studied for her last test. I went in and asked her about it. She stated it was surprising how many of the kids spent no time studying and did well while others spent a long time and did poorly on the test. She then gave them opportunities for the kids to fix their errors on the tests in several different ways for a better grade. Another example is when my sons’s teacher quized the classroom about how they were computing their multiplication tables. I had just spoke to her about my boys “adding” their facts rather then memorizing them. I explained to her that that’s what my husband and oldest daughter had done and they still do not know their facts. Only when we changed the facts to include the answer on the front did my second daughter memorize the “whole Picture” She now knows her facts well because she can picture the answer when she see’s just the fact. When my boys class showed that several students were adding their facts, she made changes to insure that the kids don’t follow that adding road.
These may be baby steps, but we are gaining ground on educating about dyslexia.
Thanks again for your moral support.
Michelle
Re: We're educating the teachers to help our kids!!
Hi there,
Just a couple of things I’d like to add… FIrst off, my 8 yr old has a language disorder, causing very delayed expressive and receptive language skills. I’m not educated on dyslexia, unfortunately, but I did notice her writing her d’s as b’s, like instead of “dad” she would write “bab”. I showed her the sign language letter “d” and told her she could make it with her writing hand (right hand) and it looked like the letter d. She no longer writes her d’s backwards. BUT, a new problem has started. She mixes b’s and p’s now and will say “but” when the word is “put”. Again, not sure if this is dyslexia. She is extremely visual. I wanted to comment about the math facts. We’ve been trying to memorize as well and to do this I went to a website where you can print your own flash cards on plain paper. We did that and then cut them out and colored them with pretty designs and included the answer that way she could take a snap shot of the fact including the answer. That makes such a difference. With store bought flash cards I put the answer on a post-it note on the bottom of the card until she doesn’t need it anymore. For spelling, she studies visually.
Anyway, my other comment is that we have had a similar experience to others with her second grade teacher. She started the year asking me if “IT” affects Michelle’s ability to do certain things, such as memorize, etc…. Like she has leperacy or something. Then she would pat me on the back and say things like “I know it’s hard” as if I was about to cry or something. I know my child and we do get a little bummed out at times, but we try to remain positive and focused on her strengths not dwell on what she cannot do. They wanted to send her to the resource room for more than 50% of her day! I said absolutely not. She does go to the resource room for about 40 min/day 4x/week and gets additional help at math time 3x/week, but sometimes it is someone coming into the classrom, not sending her out. I think the newer teachers who have not experienced a child with special needs and in my opinions, special strengths, does not know what to do because they are not trained. I’m not even sure it’s something they can learn in school or out of a textbook. They really need the experience. It’s just hard when my child is their experience that they are getting to help kids in the future.
FInally, this has been my biggest complaint and I think it might be the synicism of the teachers. They get so many parents who are not supportive of their children that they try to take it all on themselves and not remember to include me as their biggest resource. I have volunteered to come in and help and have told the teacher so many times “PLEASE let me know when you need me to work on something with Michelle.” So far this year I have gotten one note to work on Title, Title Page, Author and Illustrator of a book. That’s it! Granted, she knows we are working very hard and doing extra work, so maybe she doesn’t want to burden us with more, but I feel at times as if I am offering them the lottery numbers and they are turning them down. I give them clues as to how to help my child and they say things like “At this age they should not be doing that anymore” or “The problem is that that method can become a crutch”. I’ve said over and over again, “PLEASE use visuals whenever you can” and I get absolutely no feedback unless I go in and ask.
The change I am making for next year is that I will be more aggressive in selecting her teacher and then I want to know what is being taught each week and when they are introducing a new topic so that we can get a jump start so Michelle is not clueless when they discuss something new in class. She has the abilities to learn so much and they are not giving her credit for it.
Anyway, thanks for writing the book. I will check it out for sure. Teachers need to be more educated so they can integrate these children into their classes instead of sending them away so they don’t have to “deal” with them.
Kathryn
Thanks for writing this book! I got somewhat teary eyed reading in parts, as I felt this could be my family’s story. I have 1 dyslexic daugher and a dyslexic husband(I cannot imagine 4 dyslexic kids, I thought I was going off the deep end trying to teach just one!). My son and I are very much ‘linear’ thinkers. Your learning style (and Bekhas) are just like my son and I. Your dyslexic ‘crew’ learns and thinks very similar to my dd and dh(slight differences and issues, but overall very much visual learners.) My dh even made a similar comment as to your dh about how listening to a lecture in class was just painful- it was like he was missing a page out of the content and just couldn’t understand what the heck the teacher was talking about.
We have also experienced the teacher who said ‘I’ve never had a child like this in my classroom’, the resistence to being pulled-out for resource room and only wanting to be like the other kids, the long hours studying and me KNOWING she understands the content only to get a B or C on the test. Although I never homeschooled, I did feel like I was homeschooling after school for many years and had to discover on my own how to present the material so that it stuck. In 4th grade science I wondered if she was ever even there in class, she knew nothing before studing for a test. This year in 7th grade she is excelling in Science, her best subject by far- easy straight As.
There needs to be a stronger voice and advocacy in the dyslexic community. Unless you have lived through this(and willing to accept that there ARE people who think differently in the world), you don’t understand.
I know I have failed to be a stronger advocate to making sure teachers understand this. Your book makes me more motivated to understanding of not only my families thinking styles, but even those people I work around.