Spending Time with Students

This past week several of my activities involved me talking and speaking to students.  Without a doubt this is my favorite part of what I get to do as a board member.  Students will always make you remember what it is that is really most important in life and the work we do in education.  Those of us who have children in our lives, or work with them, know that you never ask a student a question that you are not prepared to hear their truth.

On Tuesday I was at Citrus High School and spent three block periods with Ms. Kathleen Oliver’s students.  Ms. Oliver teaches Learning Strategies classes.  Students in these classes often have learning challenges like me.  Once or more a year, I try to go in to the classroom and share with the students about my own learning challenges as a person with Dyslexia.   I share with them how I have learned to deal with it and what tools I use to overcome the daily challenges which come with it.

I enjoy sharing how the use of technology helps me.  I explain to them how, as a dyslexic, I benefit from using my iPod to listen to audio books, for reading documents and other books to me, and how I use my SmartPhone and iPad to speak into to help me with correct spelling and writing.  I also explained what reading can looks like to a dyslexic when they read and why it can be so challenging to read, write and work with letters, words and numbers.  I explained that math can be challenging, not because of lack of the ability to understand the formulas or how to do it, but because dyslexics might be asked to give the answer for “232 x 41” and instead our brains might inadvertently mix the numbers up and write down “323 x 41”..  I shared that when I do write hand notes I use long hand and write capital letters in different situations where they really don’t belong.  For example I may write a sentence, “The Boy went to the door”, because my mind finds it easier to know that a capital “B” is a “b” instead of an “d”, whereas my mind gets confused and mixes up the small “b” and “d”.

I want to share with you that recently Jerry Swiatek who is one of our District Instructional Technology Specialist shared with me a new font called, “Dyslexie” which is a typeface for dyslexics. It’s based on the 26 letters in the standard alphabet used in English, many of the letters look similar – such as “v/w”, “i/j” and “m/n” – thus people with dyslexia often confuse these letters. So by creating a new typeface where the differences in these letters are emphasized, it was found that dyslexic people made fewer errors.

I shared with the students that to say I found reading and spelling quite difficult is an understatement. I told them that when I was a high school student, like them, that my own reading level was middle school reading level and that “I HATED TO READ”, “I HATED TO WRITE”!   The funny thing now is when I ask myself what I find myself doing in my life much of the time, it is READING!!!!  The reason I do so much reading now is to learn more about educational issues that I may be voting on, and writing letters, speeches, emails, blogs and more.  I also have always been a very inquisitive person in general and interested in a wide variety of subjects to do with life, our country, and so many other things. This, of course, puts me in a position of needing and “wanting” to read all kinds of material to constantly learn, not because I HAVE to but because I WANT to!

I wanted the students to understand that I know what it is like for people to not understand who you really are and to, perhaps at times, think less of you. I have had to deal with people who would read what I wrote and jump to the conclusion that I was not smart and didn’t know anything. I want them to know that I understand how that makes them feel and reassure them that I know that is not the case at all!

I want students to have, a dream and to work to achieve that dream.  No matter what that dream is, they will need to obtain knowledge and skills from what you are learning right now, in high school and then in college. The trick is to always keep learning and finding a way to use those skills because you never know when they will come in handy again. Like many they will probably hold many different positions as an adult in the work world and never know when something you learned in a previous career will give you the edge in your next job.

Nothing is insurmountable!  An intelligent person once said, “Start working to fulfill your dreams today… because if not, someone will put you to work fulfilling their dream.”

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