From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 26 Jul 92 13:22:34 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Need help with Assisting my child with dyslexia
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <1992Jul24.170208.19901@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>, by bgt@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (barbara.tongue):
> In article <64247@hydra.gatech.EDU> ad4@prism.gatech.EDU (Angela Dubose) writes:
> ->
> ->        Once again, hello, misc.kid folks.  I need some advice...  My
> ->daughter, Mandy, who will soon be five is still writing backwards.  My
> ->brother has dyslexia and I found out recently that it runs in my mother's
> ->side of the family.  I have quizzed the doctor previously in this regards
> ->[about brother's dyslexia and experiences]
>
> One of the public's biggest misconception is that dyslexia -> learning
> defiicent.  i would highly recommend that you ensure that your child's
> teacher either know how to teach dyslexic kids or find someone who does...
> not being able to learn like the other kids do can be a frustrating
> experience indeed.

Agree totally. Almost all "dyslexic" children can learn how to read well
-- if given appropriate instruction at an early age.

Unfortunately, most of them are not. According to the reading research, 60%
of kids learn how to read okay no matter what method you use to teach them.
But there's many kids who benefit from more structured approaches to the
teaching of reading. For example, the DISTAR program has been extremely
effective with kids from lower-income backgrounds. Wesley Elementary here
in Houston, whose principal, Thaddeus Lott, was profiled in national TV a
while back, uses DISTAR in his school and gets test scores from his inner
city kids that look like the results from a mediocre suburban school
district (all of his kids are reading at grade level -- in a city where the
average inner city 5th grader is still on the 1st grade level).
Unfortunately, most teachers are not provided with programs such as DISTAR
or Alphabetic Phonics or the Steck-Vaughn developmental readers or etc....
instead, they are given the basal primer, and told "you'll teach with this,
and be happy with it, and we don't care if 40% of the kids will have
trouble learning to read with it." Thaddeus Lott had to fight the school
system bureaucracy up and down to get DISTAR into his school, and as a
result he has not been promoted in 20 years of principalship. Most
principals aren't willing to put their job on the line the way that he did.

It doesn't matter whether your child's teacher knows how to teach dyslexic
kids or not, when he/she isn't ALLOWED to teach them. And without the
materials, well... it's like trying to build a computer using a blow torch
and brazing rods. You're going to get holes in the circuit board. It's
very difficult to teach dyslexic kids if you aren't given the materials
needed to do so. And even special education teachers here in H.I.S.D.
aren't given adequate materials to do so. I know. I'm one of them.

Given this situation, the best I can do is say: get a copy of Seigfreid
Engellman's book _Your Child can Succeed_. Monitor the instruction that
your child recieves. If it doesn't look anything like the instruction that
Ziggy Engellman describes, you'll need extra instruction for that kid to
straighten out the nonsense that your kid is being taught. This is how it
is. I'm not allowed to say that when I am functioning in my official
capacity as a teacher, because telling parents how it is gives grounds for
the parent to sue the school district for failing to meet the child's
needs. But here on this forum, I'm protected by the 1st Amendment, so I'll
speak my piece.

 --
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"