the barriers to reading, writing, and learning, a classroom that supports them in staying caught up minute by minute with lessons. We will have solved their problem with sounding out and spelling words. What about today? Are students with dyslexia staying caught-up minute by minute in the classroom? In this article, I will share what I’ve learned, discuss where we are with the technology, and where we go from here. THE LONG DARK PATH THAT OPENED FOR ME I spent 18 years trying to learn to read, and went to the reading clinic every summer after the first grade. I was the student that every teacher asks for: the student that doesn’t give up. In college, my reading specialist set up full-time reading instruction for me every day for one semester. I had a math major completed, but had flunked out of college because I couldn’t pass the classes that required reading. I thought surely, after a semester of full-time reading instruction, I would become a reader. This was not the case; my logic was based on faulty information. At the end of that semester, the reading specialist who had worked with me for years told me the truth: that I would never learn to read like my peers. I was adrift and didn’t know what to do. It turned out that telling me the truth was the best thing that ever happened to me. It let me come up with reading by listening and writing by speaking, and I went from making F’s in classes that required reading to making A’s, finished my degree, and then finished two advanced degrees also making A’s. THE WORD WOULD GET OUT Once I recognized that something amazing had happened, I believed that the news would spread like wildfire and others with dyslexia would also experience an amazing transformation from failing to succeeding in the classroom. However, after about 15 years, while working as a school psychologist, it became clear to me that the word had not gotten out. Our school system got a parent request for technology for a student with a print disability and they didn’t know what to do. I was called in to help. And I found that things had not yet changed for students with dyslexia. Students were continuing to fail because they couldn’t sound out and spell words like others. Furthermore, they were not even aware that they could be using reading by listening and writing by speaking technology to solve that problem. More students were referred to me and I became an assistive technology specialist. Every student referred to me over the years (except for one) could quickly begin reading by listening at 250 to 350+ words perminute, many who initially read visually at 45 to 95 words per minute. My research showed that after the initial training, of 4 1/2 hours and daily practice over 30 days, students would pass goals for: (1) reading
independently by using the reading by listening technology on their own, (2) reading accuracy by reciting a 7 to 10 word sentence verbatim after reading it at their highest speed, and (3) reading comprehension by reading a paragraph and giving the main idea and supporting details. Many of these students excelled academically and went on to college and later careers that would not have been possible without fluid reading. I shared the results we were having in presentations at conferences and in the articles I wrote, and expected that others would adopt these life- changing accommodations, but this didn’t happen. I suspected what kept students from using these accommodations came down to wishful thinking and ignoring the facts about reading outcomes for students with dyslexia. For years, I attended IEP meetings where parents were told that their student with dyslexia “will learn how to read,” and I recognized that parents were not being told that these students would never become fluent readers. I never heard a discussion that gave parents information about when their child would be reading like everyone else. My presentations in conferences primarily focused on the opportunities that were made available by reading by listening and writing by speaking technology. I couldn’t speak about the elephant in the room — that dyslexia is a lifelong condition. While this fact was obvious to me, I came to realize that the obstacle to students being successful with reading and writing was a false belief — that students with dyslexia will learn to read like others. This false belief seemed to be held by everyone involved: teachers, administrators, parents, etc. Once, I recommended audiobooks for a student, and a reading supervisor vehemently opposed my recommendation, because she said this would keep the student from learning how to read. It seemed like heresy to speak out in an environment where the prevailing opinion was that all students can learn how to read by practicing reading during their classroom lessons throughout the day. I continued to advocate for using accommodations and continued working to help those students, parents, and teachers who were referred to me when they realized that they were on the wrong path. As I spoke to experts about what dyslexia is and what it is not, read the research on dyslexia, and analyzed my own experiences with dyslexia, I came to realize that there are false beliefs dominating decision-making about students with dyslexia. These beliefs result in unrealistic expectations and create a classroom environment that forces students to attempt to do what they can’t do, and keeps them from doing what they can do. This false narrative and the classroom environment it creates sends students with dyslexia down the dark path (the same path I had gone down for 18 years), prevents them from
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