In the academic journal, TEACHING Exceptional Children, Slaughter and Sayeski (2019) published an article titled, "What Do You Know about Dyslexia?" This article consists of a quiz which asks basic questions regarding dyslexia. After taking the quiz, I learned that I have somewhat of an understanding of dyslexia and the teaching and learning strategies that most benefit students with dyslexia, although I did still have some misconceptions about dyslexia. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience in working with students with dyslexia in the classroom, as I do with students with other types of disabilities. I believe this lack of classroom experience could contribute to my having some misconceptions or misunderstandings regarding dyslexia, even though I do have knowledge of what dyslexia is and some of the best practices for teaching students with dyslexia. One question from the quiz that stood out to me while completing it was the question and subsequent answer that discussed the fact that a student's deficits in reading development can also affect their development and performance not only in reading and writing, but they may also be at a disadvantage with regards to mathematics (Slaughter & Sayeski, 2018, p. 173). I believe that this is a misconception many people have about dyslexia. This is something that we, as educators, must keep in mind when working with students with dyslexia; not only may their reading and writing performances be affected, but they may also be at a disadvantage in other subject areas as well.
In addition to taking this quiz, I also viewed the video "Overcoming Dyslexia, Finding Passion: Piper Otterbein at TEDxYouth@CEHS" (2013), which is linked below. In this video, Piper--a senior in high school--recounts just a few of her experiences of living with dyslexia. She discusses the struggles she faced throughout school, as teachers tried to help her understand the information being presented in the classroom. She highlights the amount of time and energy she puts into crafting a few sentences, when she details her experience of writing a short email to a professor and her cycle of writing and revising the email several times before sending it. Piper's talk offered several important reminders to educators, in that she explains that her processing of information takes longer than others. She also discussed how finding something she was passionate about in creating art changed how she viewed her disability. Once she found something about which she was passionate, she was able to be successful and achieve her dreams of attending college. Her successes and dreams were and are being achieved in a way that may just look a little different than others, and that is okay.
References:
Slaughter, M. H., & Sayeski, K. L. (2019). What do you know about dyslexia? Questions from TEC’s special issue. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 51(3), 172–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040059918820435
TEDxYouth. (2013, January 12). Overcoming dyslexia, finding passion: Piper otterbein at TEDxYouth@CEHS [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugFIHHom1NU