just dyslexic things

FUCKING DARE

TELL ME THAT SCHOOL ISN’T HARD

I KNOW YOU’RE GROWN UP

I KNOW YOU ARE MY PARENT

I KNOW YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THIS PART OF LIFE

BUT SCHOOL HAS GOTTEN HARDER

AND HARDER

AND HARDER

 AND TEACHERS ARE UNFAIR TO ME AND ASSIGN TOO MUCH

AND THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN I AM TIRED

I CANNOT DO WORK

I CANNOT SUCCEED ON A TEST

I CANNOT FUNCTION

BECAUSE

I

AM

FUCKING

TIRED

“He was dyslexic, which meant he couldn’t learn two lines without making a mistake. That meant he had to understand what he said, to feel it. That gave him a certain strength. He never played a scene the same way twice. He was a restless presence"

You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED. The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).

Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’  It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.

I have a 6th grade student who isn’t really interested in doing her homework (big surprise). from my experience, kids who aren’t trying to do their homework usually fall into two general categories – “this is too easy and therefore boring” and “this is too hard and therefore i’m not even going to attempt”. it became clear by October that she fell into the latter group, but most of the staff chalked it up to “she doesn’t understand it”. I didn’t really believe it because she was a very smart, emotionally aware girl and it didn’t seem like she didn’t always want to try, just that she would rather do other things than struggle with her work. 

yesterday, she got sent to my office, just so that she would have a space away from her friends to focus on her work, and she asked me to help her with two questions. I looked at them and they were fairly straightforward, simple questions about the results of using various amounts of force on an object. I did what I always do – I read the question out loud first, and then tried to help her use recall to figure it out. she did in a snap. I did the same with the second question, and before I even finished it, she went “OH!” and started writing her answer.

that’s when it hit me – she doesn’t have trouble with the material, she just has trouble reading and processing what she’s reading at the same time. big difference! I asked her and she confirmed that it was easier to hear a question and understand it than to read it and understand it. so I got her phone out, pulled up her voice recorder, and told her to try reading the question aloud and then playing it back to herself so she could process it and she looked like i had handed her the holy grail.

the moral of the story is that sometimes you have to set aside what you think is a problem with a kid and just watch for what’s easier for them. will she be able to do that during a test? maybe not, BUT now that she knows that the issue is processing reading and that she’s an auditory learner, she’s in a better position to ask for resources to help her work better in school.