Dyslexia anyone?

Principessa

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I think that early school education is biased to left brain kids which favors those who can memorize and regurgitate facts, figures, vocabulary words, dates...etc. It is rarely about synthesis of knowledge or seeing the whole picture, artistic expression, or creativity - all right brain things. I am not left brained. I have a different intelligence than what is valued in schools and the established education system in this country. I have excellent retention of visual information. I think visually not verbally. I am a graphic learner. I memorize maps, globes, directions, paintings, architectural plans all quickly and without effort. I can solve 3-D problems easily in my head. I am artistically gifted and think through sketching not words. I rarely get lost anywhere I go, even in foriegn countries. I can easily memorize faces, places, and events.
Oh my God! You are my long lost fraternal twin. I am exactly the same.
 

madame_zora

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Wow, this has turned out better than I would have expected.

Earllogjam, you may not know this, but your ability to make an argument is actually far above average. You spell great, and you construct sentences AND thoughts in an extremely cohesive fashion. Had you not expressed this opinion of yourself, I would have never known you don't see what we see when you write.

Computers have helped me a lot. It's a lot easier for me to pick out my spelling mistakes when I can see them in print, and all the letters are facing the right way! My handwriting is atrocious unless I write slowly- as in one letter at a time. Oddly enough, I won the local county spelling bee for the high school I was in, and this was when I was still in jr. high. Spelling aloud was easy, I just couldn't write it down the right way.

Also, remember that many of the symptoms of dyslexia are things that we learn to compensate for, and some we actually grow out of, like childhood allergies. You may test very differently as an adult than you did as a child. I have actually considered auditing a math course now to see if I could understand things now that were baffling to me before. I had to use an extremely minute amount of algebra when I was in the mortgage business, and I was one of the few who grasped the concepts and even the simple formulas easily. It didn't go beyond a few steps, but many in the room couldn't even do that. I know I'm a lot more interested in learning now that I'm more "able" without getting confused so easily.
 

madame_zora

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As a lifelong special educator, I can attest to the validity of these "disorders and disabilities." Challenges in reading are very prevalent and challenges in math often go overlooked, especially if someone has strong verbal skills--Altered's profile is the same as Mrs. Lex and my daughter's.

I have taught many bright students who were incapable of performing simple math even though they read above grade level. I had one student who had an encoding disorder (reading is decoding, writing is encoding).

He was of above average intelligence and read above grade level. The only 5 words he could spell were his first name, last name, the, and & but. So severe was his encoding disability that his writing did not even follow any phonetic rules. He could verbally dictate the most intelligent responses, but when he went to write them it looked like this: kdjas ad9d awmai aidfnao.


Here are some helpful links:

Learning Disabilities Association of America

:: LDW -- LEARNING DISABILITIES WORLDWIDE -- ::

LD OnLine :: Reading & Dyslexia


I can dig up more. If anyone wants any of the Information I have, just send me an email or PM.

How could I have forgotten that you teach special ed? Thanks so much for the links. It will take me a while to read them, but I will do so eagerly. Please post whatever links you have that you consider good, I haven't kept up with the current trends and don't want to waste my time reading "junk science" if I can avoid it. I'd ask you to pm them, but there are too many people responding to this thread, and we could all benefit from knowing more about what's troubling us. You're a real treasure, babe.
 

earllogjam

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RB,MZ,

Thanks for your words. Posting here, for many of you seems easy like it is just your natural conversational voice that is being transposed - easy, natural and without much effort. For me it's more like writing. I need to go back and proofread, edit and fix much of what I write. It takes me a while but I get my point across. Clarity is an essential courtesy for any thoughtful communication so it's OK, I don't mind taking the time, especially here.


njqt466,

Yeah, I work with a bunch of guys like you! Nice to know you aren't alone huh?
 

earllogjam

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I am kind of glad I was never labeled with this "abnormality". I was just a kid who was a slow learner. That's all. There was no stigma attached to that. And it wasn't because I was dumb, it was because I had a different learning style from how and what they taught and tested at school. I would think that this label, "dyslexia" diganosed by so called "experts" acts as a crutch that a kid would buy into and serve as an excuse for never improving. It just externalizes the problem. I can't learn because of x. It is not my fault and I don't have any control over it. I'm special. I can't learn. BULLSHIT. I grew out of most of my shortcomings and I never thought of myself as being abnormal in any way. Kids rise up to their expectations. Not being able to read, spell or concentrate well as a bad thing is a value judgement, not a sign of intelligence or worthiness. Who is determining what is normal when normal is a value judgement from some self proclaimed professional "expert"? These are the same "experts" that have given kids Ritalin to tragic outcomes.
 

madame_zora

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RB,MZ,

Thanks for your words. Posting here, for many of you seems easy like it is just your natural conversational voice that is being transposed - easy, natural and without much effort. For me it's more like writing. I need to go back and proofread, edit and fix much of what I write. It takes me a while but I get my point across. Clarity is an essential courtesy for any thoughtful communication so it's OK, I don't mind taking the time, especially here.


You are sorely mistaken if you think it comes easy for me- a long post can take several hours sometimes, especially if I'm citing sources from several places. These are like homework assignments for me, the difference is that I'm doing them because I want to do them. There is enough stimulation to keep my interest. It takes a lot to get my attention sometimes so a lot of small talk leaves me feeling bored and frustrated. It's fun sometimes and I love our nonsense threads as much as the next guy but I like it that we have more too. Editing takes the majority of the time, and even after doing it two or three times, I still find more mistakes after I post- I have to read it again.:rolleyes:

I suspect a good many of us are able to express ourselves more eloquently here, where we have unlimited time to proofread and edit our words. I just watched a documentary on autism, from the point if view of an autistic woman who is high-functioning enough to have learned how to type. She has a machine that she can take her time and type into, and when she's done, she presses a button and it speaks her words for her, since she is too jerky and unfocused to really speak much. She still needed 24 hour care and always would, but she was living in an apartment and attending college with the help of an aide.

When someone else was reading her words aloud, you'd have thought they were coming from a college professor. So fluent and elegant were her words that they read like poetry, but to look at her, she was a midget by height, her face looked like someone with Down's syndrome, her teeth were jagged, she limped noticably, she carried a set of plastic spoons with her everywhere she went, because her "tweak" was that she liked to play in water at a sink with the spoons. No one would ever know how alert her brain could really be at times, and how much she actually understood about her position in society and how abnormal she really was.

One of her aides, a girl who had been with her for seven years was leaving, and she was inconsolable and even became angry. None of the other aides could get her to accept it and she finally said "I just don't want my life to be a living hell when you're gone." The two of them went out to the porch to talk alone, but she ended up just telling the girl to leave her alone, she was too angry. No one knew why.

She finally typed into the machine when she was alone that when you're attracted to a person, but you know that you will only ever be seen as a person with autism, it breaks your heart.

It sure made me want to stop whining about dyslexia, but they share so many symptoms, to varying degrees.
 

NCbear

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[...]

I only took easy math in high school, the math in college almost killed me.
I had to go for tutoring for intermediate statistics. I could get it in the first quarter, but by the second quarter, they were into the math I couldn't do in my head or approximate, and I just couldn't remember the formulas. It crushed me. I couldn't do what I wanted to do without that class, and probably advanced statistics as well. I ended up dropping out of college in my last year, I couldn't take working that hard for a c-, knowing I'd never finish with more than a d.

[...]

I took algebra, geometry, algebra II, and trig, and made straight As, but damn! Pre-calculus didn't make sense after we finished talking about limits. (It might've helped if our calculus teacher hadn't talked all year about everything OTHER than calculus in class.) I know now that my initial success was in large part due to my ability to memorize formulas. Now, of course, I just look them up or else create them for whatever I need.

My calculus prof in college was terrible. Quiet voice, talked to the blackboard, skipped steps, said "it is obvious that" about things that were completely NOT obvious, etc. Had to memorize more complicated formulas, which I couldn't do. Didn't understand WHY I was doing any of these calculations (I'm lost if I don't know how I can apply something). I squeaked by with a D and almost lost my (academic) scholarship. Yeah, it was my first semester. I'll never listen to my physics-major brother again about mathematics!

He inhales higher mathematics concepts, integrates them into his world-view, and in moments can talk about various implications intelligently. I'm that way only about literature, history, and rhetoric. Another brother is that way only about medicine, health, and molecular biology. And a third brother is that way about business and finance.

But here's the funny part: Judging from a 20/20 hindsight look at our behaviors in school, ALL FOUR of us are ADHD and have mild dyslexia along with such... interesting social skills that we might as well have mild Aspergers as well (in effect, if not in reality). And all four were valedictorians of our high school classes.

NCbear (who was once a bearish geek)
 

playainda336

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In another news I mentioned Aspergers because I may have that. I have many characteristics and second opinion from people who know me agree instantly after reading any information about it.

That being said, I'm much more hyperlexic than I am dyslexic.

I do agree that schools are biased to left-brain thinkers and I am so excited about the fact that more right-brain thinking schools (i.e. Performing Arts Academies) are coming into existance now. I'm just sad that I didn't get to take advantage of it.

In school, however, math was the easiest subject for me...and then English with Chemistry in a close third. I hated Biology, Geography, and Social Studies. Mainly because I thought remember dates and a bunch of names were pointless. I always wanted to know the practical application of it all. It didn't matter if I could memorize every nation and capital, if I could find it on the map, correct? Who needs to know when, where, and who was involved as long as I knew what happened, right? Chemistry and Physics people THOUGHT I was good at, but I was only good at the formulas. I knew the formulas and applied them. Math, of course, was a breeze...because it was always numbers and always definite. Teachers hated me, because I removed all theory and created new ways to perform old equations. They didn't like that.
 

earllogjam

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You are sorely mistaken if you think it comes easy for me- Editing takes the majority of the time, and even after doing it two or three times, I still find more mistakes after I post- I have to read it again.:rolleyes:

You put a lot of love into this site MZ and it shows. It touches a lot of people. I enjoy reading your advice too including your personal ad do's & dont's recently. :smile:

Regarding the autistic woman you described, it is funny that we can see the true beauty of someone like her or Stephen Hawkins in cyberspace, which in real life is masked by our prejudices or overlooked.
 

Lex

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How could I have forgotten that you teach special ed? Thanks so much for the links. It will take me a while to read them, but I will do so eagerly. Please post whatever links you have that you consider good, I haven't kept up with the current trends and don't want to waste my time reading "junk science" if I can avoid it. I'd ask you to pm them, but there are too many people responding to this thread, and we could all benefit from knowing more about what's troubling us. You're a real treasure, babe.

We all forget the many talents of the membership here from time to time honey-no worries.

I will post whatever I can find and will dig up some powerpoints on reading disabilities and send them to you.

NICHY page on disabilities (you can read online or download the PDFs)

The National Reading Panel (they conducted a huge meta-analysis on reading disabilities and what works to remediate them).

In another news I mentioned Aspergers because I may have that. I have many characteristics and second opinion from people who know me agree instantly after reading any information about it.

That being said, I'm much more hyperlexic than I am dyslexic.

...
Hyperlexia is very common in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (Asperger's Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder).

More:

ASPERGER DISORDER HOMEPAGE

National Autism Association

The Gray Center Autism Page


I teach intro to special education and also have a powerpoint on Autism if you want it. Just PM me with an email address.