The Learning Spark

  I’m filled with so many emotions when I look at this picture. Tenderness, sadness, regret. The signs of dyslexia were there, but I didn’t see them. I didn’t even know them. Back then we spent so much time memorizing those “sight words.” He remembered that the word “of” has an o and an f, but he couldn’t remember the order (hadn’t mapped those letters and sounds). I think it’s pretty clever that he tried to spell the word “love” with the same letters he heard in the word “of.” And he often mixed up letter names…so when he wanted to write, “I love you, Mom” he put a y instead of the letter u for the word “you.” Oh my heart. I can see the struggle and the effort this writing took…and I love that it’s a picture of me and him…flying drones together on a train track. -He’s always loved trains. I didn’t see the signs of dyslexia. I didn’t even know what dyslexia was. If I had known how to help my son when he was in kindergarten, I could have prevented so much heartache. I can imagine wh...

Teaching my kindergartners to read was so frustrating my first year. As kindergarten teachers, we naturally focus a lot on phonics.  After all, our main objective is to teach students the alphabet!  We spend a lot of time drilling and practicing letter names and sounds.  So, after spending so much time on letter/sound instruction, I'd bring small groups of students to the reading table and would give them books provided by our big box curriculum.  Suddenly, I had to tell students to stop sounding out the words and basically throw everything out the window that we had previously been learning. Example of a "repetitive" or "predictable" text. Another example of a "repetitive" or "predictable" text. "Oh, this word you can't sound out. Look at the picture, does it give you a clue?" I was so frustrated that these stories could not be read without me telling them the sentence pattern or having them look at the pictures fo...

When my two oldest boys were in swimming lessons, I remember watching them, amused, as they'd literally walk back and forth between the width of the pool while making big swim strokes with their arms.  I'd see other kids in the class actually swimming...but my boys? They were walking.  They were going through the motions of swimming, without actually swimming. This is often what we see in classrooms today.  Students appear to be reading...some even become quite expert at keeping up the appearance.  Their arms are doing their strokes perfectly...but if you look under the water?  They're only walking.   Let me explain. I had a student one year who severely struggled in school.   By the end of her kindergarten year, she only knew a handful of letters.  I remember placing a book in front of her as I administered our state-mandated end-of-year kindergarten test.  She vaguely looked at the words on the page and then studied the p...

When N was diagnosed with depression last year, I was devastated!  He was only 7 years old...I felt like I had failed as a mother.  I mean, what sort of mom can't make her child happy?  Of course this is a totally unfair assumption, but those were the thoughts running through my mind at the time.  When the doctor had asked N if he was happy, he replied, "Not very much."  This broke. my. heart. Dyslexia and depression often go hand in hand and the reason is obvious.  Every day N is forced to be in an environment that constantly reminds him he is failing.  Dyslexia doesn't just affect his reading ability but every aspect of his learning and life.  Handwriting is tedious, spelling feels hopeless, learning facts near impossible, multi-step directions are overwhelming, he even struggles to recall certain words as he speaks.   Every day he goes to school knowing he will face countless hurdles that are simply too high. No matter how hard ...

Something's Off      As mentioned in this post, I knew something was off with N from the time he was very little.  His speech was delayed and he didn't walk until he was 2 years old.  When N was 3, my neighbors and I organized a preschool co-op and I was surprised to see how much N struggled to learn new things (especially letter recognition).  What was going on?  N was exposed to lots of literature, education, museums, etc.  I had done everything I had done with my older two boys, and yet N was not progressing as his big brothers had.  I knew there was something wrong...this was more than just being a "late bloomer." Auditory Processing Disorder? One possibility I explored was auditory processing disorder or some other type of hearing disability.  N was very slow to react to auditory sounds...I often found myself quietly calling his name to see if he could hear me.  When he was 3, we took him to an audiologist where he ac...