Opening the Box
While attending a workshop recently I had a striking realization – you know – an educational epiphany. As I took part in a dyslexia simulation, I felt that terrible feeling in my gut that so many of our children feel every single day in our classrooms. My head was down and I was sneakily surveying those around me as I tried to compensate for my inabilities. I felt inept, unskilled, and as if everyone else in the room understood what to do but me – and I knew that this was a simple role-playing activity.
You see, I always loved school. I wasn’t the sharpest crayon, but I was able to color inside the lines and was lucky enough to fit in the box. As I sat with a simulated emergent text in my hand, I was struggling to make sense of the symbols that had been put together to create words – words that I was supposed to accurately decipher and read fluently. The problem was that those symbols made absolutely no sense to me. Squiggly lines and loops had replaced the letters that had always neatly formed the words that I could easily read. This experience made my empathy grow for our children who learn in ways that don’t fit in the proverbial box.
As I took on the role of student, I sat in the reading circle quietly. I found my mind racing as I tried to compensate for my lack of understanding. I was looking ahead at the passage that I would be tasked to read orally and struggling to figure it out before it was my turn. As one of my peers read, our leader smiled. Taking on the role of the teacher she said, “If you were paying attention, you would know that word. We just went over it.” We all laughed because those words were familiar. “If you were just paying attention.” We knew there was much more to it than that.
ReadWS provided us with a taste of what literacy can be like for children who face challenges like dyslexia. Struggling readers face difficulties in decoding and word recognition and this causes fluency to suffer. When fluency is lacking, comprehension decreases and frustration increases. Students try to compensate in a number of ways and often feel defeated – as if they just don’t get it – and everyone else does. Reading is an incredibly complex process and not all learners go through the process in the same way. As educators, we are tasked to build the literacy skills of all our students, so we must continuously investigate and learn strategies to support their learning needs.
Literacy is a gift and we need to work to provide the strategies that open the box for each child. Yes, we want our children to learn to read and comprehend, but we also want them to develop a love for books and language. Yes, we want them to be successful in school, but we also want them to know they are unique capable lifelong learners. Sometimes we need to color outside of the lines to explore the best practices that will help each of our students grow and thrive. Our classrooms are filled with unique individuals, each equipped with different gifts and challenges. Teaching is a powerful profession and we can open the box (or at least tweak it), so that all of our children get to receive the gift of literacy.
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
