Individuals are not naturally designed to read. Individuals must develop and refine the “right” brain connections to efficiently process written language. Efficiently is defined as fluently reading written words and gleaning the writer’s intended message. A person’s brain adds, subtracts, and reorganizes read information to develop and refine the highways of connection to process written language. The reading brain connections for most individuals will develop without much fanfare or grit. These individuals are genetically programmed to develop brain connections that communicate with many regions of the brain to process written language.
Individuals who have developmental dyslexia do not develop the same communication routes to effectively process written language. Their brain works twice as hard to process and develop more efficient processing routes for written language. Many dyslexic students seem to be at grade-level or above, because of their good oral language skills. But oral language uses different brain routes than written language to comprehend what is said. Students that are diagnosed or show strong signs of dyslexia usually need direct, explicit, systematic instruction to learn how to read.
This means that for approximately 10-20% of individuals the task of learning how to read is very laborious, making the task at times uninteresting. These students often look for an escape-daydreaming, bathroom, drink, irritate their neighbor, etc. These students are also often labeled as an attention problem, lazy, undisciplined. Making the process of learning how to read engaging, a want to participate in the process usually eases the process of gaining reading skills for dyslexic students.
Many states now have educational laws in place to better assist students with dyslexia and other students struggling to acquire literacy skills. These laws are dependent on those seeing that the laws are put into motion and sustained. The motion and sustainment are dependent on the educators present at each educational site. Many educational sites now have systems to better identify and accommodate students who might have dyslexia. The hope is that no student will have to face the “private prison” that Mr. Corcoran, author and literacy advocate, had to face.
John Corcoran describes, in his 2008 book The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read, his journey of how he learned to read in his late 40s. He invented his own survival methods to navigate a literate world. He managed to muddle, navigate his way through layers and years of education to become a social studies and English grammar teacher. Most individuals didn’t know he couldn’t read or write above Grade 2 or possible they ignored his lack of literacy skills. John states “I began a 40-year battle inside my own private prison” in Grade 2 (p. 20). He describes middle school as a battlefield (p. 47). John wrote, “I felt like I was in a maze at a carnival, only this wasn’t fun. I had six 45-minute classes, six teachers, and a list of classrooms I couldn’t find. I didn’t have any friends and I couldn’t read the schedule or figure out what door to open” (p. 48). By high school I felt “dumb, ignored or dismissed by teachers, evasive, polarized by literate and illiterate camps, angry, and confused” (p. 66). John became an expert at deception, as his parents didn’t seem to know that he couldn’t read either. His father was a teacher who “had degrees or college credits from six different institutions of higher learning and read books like kids eat popcorn” (p.79).
John began the agonizing work of developing more efficient brain connections to process written language at age 48. He is severely dyslexic. Dyslexia is known to jump around in the family trees, depending on the mix of genetics. Dyslexia can jump generations and show up in families of distant dyslexic relatives. Dyslexia doesn’t skip socioeconomic levels or race. More about how he developed the brain connection to become literate in my next blog.
References
Corcoran, J. (2008). The teacher who couldn’t read. Kaplan, Inc.
