I love my dyslexia, I love my beautiful dyslexia

    When I was going to elementary school in Beaverton, Oregon at Raleigh Hills Elementary School, I was taken out of class once a week to practice my phonics with Miss. VanLentee. I didn’t know why, and  the exercises were designed to make my learning disability painfully obvious.

For my whole life I didn’t quite know what to do with my ‘dyslexic’ past. Did I grow out of it? Was it still a problem for me? Did I pass the same problem on to my 6 yr. old daughter? (now 9)

I had always tried to hide from my dyslexic past. Not wanting to give anyone any indication that I might be different or have flaws.

Edison

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
– Albert Einstein

“A teacher sent the following note home with a six-year-old boy: “He is too stupid to learn.” That boy was Thomas A. Edison”.
– Thomas Edison

“I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.”– Winston Churchill

A movie that played at last years Bolder Life Festival changed my mind. Written and directed by James Redford (son of Robert). Robert’s grandson among other case studies in the movie document the brilliance and genus side of dyslexia that had only previously been known to me as a learning disability. No, not a learning disability, the movie points out, a dyslexic brain is 100% healthy. A dyslexic brain just works differently. Some say more creative, more concerned about the results and less about how to get there.

This year my 4^th grader was confronted by concerns from her teachers. Just before the parent teacher conference I was given a questionnaire with 100 questions about my daughters attention span, a spelling  test that she was given made from made up words and they recommended a vision test from a special eye doctor. . . It was clear to me that Taryn was not learning in the way that her teachers wanted her to learn. They were having trouble keeping her attention in class. Were there easy solutions out there? Ritalin, eye glasses, or was it her class instructors themselves that needed to change?

After being armed with some of the statistics that James supplied in this documentary, those teachers didn’t have a leg left to stand on. I encouraged them to buy the DVD and now I am sending each one an e-mail directly encouraging them to go see: “Dyslexia, the big picture”

Showing this Monday February 4^th at the Boulder Theater.

Article written by: Anthony Prichard, small business digital marketing manager . He facilitates sustainable business practices and multiple revenue streams. He is passionate about human development and the science of mind, body & spirit.

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