A Dyslexic Wonder

This is about Jennifer Smith, a finalist in 2010 for an Ann and Allegra Ford Scholarship, and her story of growth and pain. Terribly and typically teased, she persevered through language training and to the growth of her self-confidence. She enters college in the fall, speaks to students about dyslexia, has written a book, “Dyslexia Wonders”
and has created a non-profit group, Jenny’s Wish Foundation. This foundation provides scholarships to kids with learning disabilities, and provides grants to organizations who help them.

I’ve felt for years that teenagers and young adults with Asperger’s Syndrome or with High Functioning Autism really need help understanding and negotiating romantic and sexual relationships. Moving from Social Skills or even Social Thinking curriculums (there’s a difference) to dating, sex, love and adult relationships is no easy task when your primary difficulties are recognizing and understanding non verbal communication, emotional fluency and regulating sensory experiences.

This is a wonderfully written piece in the NYTimes.com called Navigating Love and Autism. Compelling in it’s depth, this article captures many of the challenges particular to couples struggling with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The first night they slept entwined on his futon, Jack Robison, 19, who had since childhood thought of himself as “not like the other humans,” regarded Kirsten Lindsmith with undisguised tenderness.

This is an honest account of their struggles and one that provides glimpses into what it must be like for a young man with ASD, who, despite feeling love and romance for his sweetheart, has to tell her (and I assume because of some sensory overload issues), after she smiled at him one morning, as she leans in for a kiss, seeking his lips, he turned away, “I don’t really like kissing,” he said.

It’s a touching piece and although having ASD adds a particular burden to relationship, I want to tell the young man in the article, that many of their struggles are generic to the confusion we all feel at times in relationships.  You want to put your arm around his shoulder and smilingly tell him you know just how he feels when he’s not sure what his girlfriend wants from him.  Here’s an example:

One might start over Kirsten’s request that Jack hug her when she came home from school, or his perception that she was already angry at him when she came through the door.

“The more we argue, the worse it gets,” Jack said once, close to despair.

One night as Kirsten cooked dinner, he peered into the pan where she was sautéing vegetables to comment on the way she had cut the cauliflower.

“It’s too big,” he explained. “It won’t cook through.”

“It’s better when it’s not all mushy,” she insisted.

“No,” he said. “You’re just doing it wrong.”

Eventually, Kirsten, unable to contain her tears, fled to the living room.

“What I want,” she told him when they analyzed their clashes in less-fraught moments, “is to be held and rocked and comforted.”

The author, an entrepreneur and business consultant, who also wrote a book about communicating in the workplace called, “Surviving Dreaded Conversations,” makes the case that schools must change their approach to education and help kids develop and practice real-world skills, especially the ones that are so desperately needed in the workplace, such as creativity and innovation. As she points out, with so much lock-step and dull emphasis in schools on arriving at the correct answers in only prescribed ways, an appreciation of those who learn differently is squelched. And then as we know, this one-sided, singularly focused approach to fix the deficits of those with learning disabilities, can kill spirit, at least temporarily, and rob us all from the potential of many.

She does however say, “…in some weird, ironic way, my success today is directly tied to my ostensible failures of the past, not because of the scars, but because of what I had to learn in order to survive a system that did not recognize me as a legitimate member.”

Though Ms. Flagg ultimately sounds like the epitome of a glass half-full person, she adds, “I didn’t always feel as though my years struggling in school were the gift that I do now, however. After I was diagnosed in college, I was angry and full of resentment toward the people who were unable to see the truth of what I was, and a system so small-minded that it couldn’t function without labels. But it wasn’t just the labels that angered me; it was the derogatory, demeaning, minimizing, soul-sucking nature attached to them and how they were used against well-meaning and talented kids without even the slightest awareness or concern of how it would affect the child’s view of him or herself.

Right on!

My friend Richard Wanderman, the founder of this LD site, who’s also dyslexic, once told me you have to help remediate difficulties in kids, but also “keep them in the game.”

In this article, from the London Evening Standard about the youngest chef to earn the acclaimed 3 Michelin stars, chef Marco Pierre White talks about how teachers would make him read aloud knowing full well the pain and embarrassment it caused him, without knowing why he struggled.

“The teachers knew that I struggled and I could hear the other children laughing so it broke my confidence down. When I left school I was 16 years old. Did I struggle with how to read? Yes I did. Did I struggle with how to spell? Yes I did,” he said.

I have kids reading aloud all the time but that’s in a structured and supported environment, and as an adjunct to skill-building. I’m careful how and when to step in and make corrections. It’s part of the art of specialized instruction.

He adds, “I was very fortunate that I entered a world where I didn’t have to read or write. I entered a world of cooking where I expressed with my fingers and so that built my confidence.”

Part of “keeping someone in the game” is to help them explore and develop potential strengths, interests and affinities. I’ve met lots of people with specific and academic related learning disabilities who show affinities for culinary work.

One size does not fit all.

Emma Jefferies, is an award winning researcher, designer, educator, writer and more recently, a filmmaker. She also has dyslexia. In a series of videos, she speaks about the challenges and processes she went through while earning her Ph.D (in Design).

Watch this first of a few videos posted on the Innovation Investment Journal website. At about the 1 min: 24 second point, she begins to talk about her non-linear processing, for what non dyslexics is a simple “getting from point A to point B.” The way she understands her variant way of delving into a subject or idea recognizes the positive aspects as well as the challenges.

Later on she talk about certain “attributes” or attitudes she’s developed as a result of challenges her dyslexia presents. Included in these attitudes is “taking responsibility for my own problems or challenges and that they’re not someone else’s to accommodate” (words to that effect). She considers reflectiveness about one’s own processes (such as writing) as being another key ingredient.

I loved watching her bit about not going directly “from A to B.” I noticed years ago that certain students who really struggled with the sequential nature of spelling words (theirs were rife with getting the right letters but in the wrong order), could much more quickly unscramble word jumbles like those in the daily newspapers.

I used to teach a class of 5th graders and I’d put a word jumble on the board for fun. Consistently, this one girl, the most severe dyslexic and the worst speller, was the quickest at unscrambling. I’ve always said that folks who are less encumbered with reliance (or ability) on sequencing may have interesting and creative solutions to problems because they are less stuck in A to B.

Sequencing is vital but in designing a creative solution sometimes comes afterwards, when you need to write it down so others can reproduce the solution.

I sometimes have mixed feelings about trotting out the celebrities who have dyslexia. I’m not at all implying that having dyslexia leads to great acting skills. I do believe however, that children and adults with academic learning struggles and learning disabilities need to develop a positive view of their capacities and potential. Well-known folks like Danny Glover help redefine how one can cope with learning disabilities, being unsupported in school, and struggle in general.

In this article, she writes a letter to parents explaining the differences in brain organization.

An artist with heart

I met this guy Gilles today on the Big Island of Hawaii. I bought some of his art work and we spoke a little while. He’s a quadriplegic whose face seemed to beam.

Talk about resilience and working through barriers, wow. Stricken with CP, and without use of arms or legs, he paints with another part of his body, his nose. Check out his The Nose Man’s website.

When I was a college student, I was friends with a teenager who was similarly challenged and I encouraged him to try painting and drawing while holding the pencil or brush in his mouth. He produced some great stuff, filled with light and proving to me that art comes from inside as much as anywhere.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve just become the owner of this longstanding website, and so I want to tell you a little about myself.

I’ve been working with kids for over twenty five years.  I settle on that number (25) because it’s true and because it signals lots of experience.  More than that just says you’re getting on in years.  So, I like the number 25.

Born in Brooklyn New York, I started as a teacher in Australia and continued teaching for the next fourteen years at various grade levels, in New York City, New England and California.

With brief exceptions, I’ve always worked with students who had learning differences and/or difficulties with behavior.  That certainly fits with my formal training.  If you’re interested you could take a look at my formal resume here.

I don’t mean to make this a detailed description of my professional background, but for this post I’ll continue on with a little more so that those who are interested will know.

I continued to expand my education and professional horizons, becoming a teacher trainer and eventually held leadership positions in schools.

Some key moments in my life that have made huge impacts on my work with kids:

1.  I met a guy named Jeff Allyn, who trained me in an Orton Gillingham-based approach to teaching  kids with a dyslexic profile.  He was starting a school on the Monterey Peninsula, in California, and I became his founding faculty.  I was able to apprentice myself to this master teacher for over a year, instead of taking a six-week summer course.  It was fantastic to be able to add an evidenced-based approach, which produced remarkable results, to my developing relationship/motivational and general teaching skills.  He’s remained a good friend and colleague.

2.  I fell in love and got married to someone who had two children. One of whom is dyslexic and adhd and dysgraphic.  Over the years, parenting someone who struggles in such ways has done more to open my eyes and heart than most other experiences.

3.  I worked and lived in North Idaho for five years. I did so for a group of schools that focused on “emotional growth.”  These were high school students experiencing lots of behavioral, emotional and family struggles.  Among many other things, I saw more clearly how important it is to understand the emotional life of people who struggle in school, as well as their families.

4.  Before moving to Bend, Oregon and opening up my private practice, I had the privilege of serving as the first non-founding director of a K-12 school for kids with learning disabilities.  Having the responsibility to understand the needs of parents, boards and faculty as well as the students, became immensely important and challenging and satisfying.  Equally.

OK. That’s all for now.

When the author was nine, his teacher thought he was “retarded” and sentenced him to a corner of the gym with a stout woman and a pile of flash-cards. Eventually this so-called retarded kid completed a doctorate, conducted research with an MIT consortium, and was hired to consult for an iconic American corporation. Oops!

As an adult, he learned that he suffered from learning and neurological problems with so many names he just called them all “Dave.” And, he also learned that the world preferred Dave stay hidden.

Daveland is a darkly humorous memoir written like a novel about a man who leaves everything to write and travel. He thought he would chase a little Spanish and tango, only to find that something was chasing him. Welcome to Daveland.

Wonderful story, nicely produced by Jerry Bowen at CBS. The kicker is that Kramer is dyslexic and his struggle with that no doubt routed him into doing things with his hands.

[via Jon Moss]

If you listen to this issue of OnPoint, once you run the player and the entire show has loaded, if you want to skip to the part where Irving talks about his learning issues, drag the slider to 40 minutes where a caller asks him about this.

In short, he says that the multitasking in high school and to a lesser extent in undergraduate school was a problem for him and once he got into grad school and specialized in one thing he did much better.

This seems to be the case with many of us who have struggled through college and on to grad school. In short, life can get easier as you become more familiar with one area and doing it a lot can help bring success in that area.

John Irving is certainly proof of this, he’s considered one of the finest writers in America.