Understanding Dyslexia in Literacy
Understanding why Dyslexia is Important
Dyslexia is a learning disability that has many misconceptions, one being that readings only mix letters and replaces them with others. However, Dyslexia encompasses any learning disability that impacts reading instruction and learning. The “Together in Literacy” podcast is led by two reading specialists, Emily Gibbons and Casey Harrison, and in Season 1, Episode 2, they explore why it is important to raise Dyslexia Awareness not just in October, but year-round (Gibbons & Harrison, 2021). An assumption that the authors did make about struggling readers and most reading educators is they subscribe to the myth of diagnosing dyslexia as a learning and reading disability in the 3rd grade. As Casey describes this as the “waiting to fail” model, it explores the idea that reading teachers and assessors wait until students are in the third grade to diagnosis readers with this disability when it is too late, as the reading becomes more complex with ideas and the students are unfamiliar with multisyllabic, complex vocabulary and can’t recode them effectively. This assumption and myth have been debunked with evidence-based research that it can be identified as early as pre-school and pre-kindergarten. Basic foundational skills in phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are skills taught at early elementary grades, and with dyslexia labeled a learning disability that impacts reading skills, it may be identified early with the use of decodable texts and intervention strategies with direct, explicit instruction.
The hosts discussed that dyslexia intervention and identification can begin early, and has higher impact when parents are involved and communicated with on ways to help students overcome. Community partnership is a teaching pillar that I agree with, and within that umbrella is open-parent communication between school, educator, parent, and student, which allows all invested parties to show faith in the progress of the student’s self-efficacy in their difficulties. Educators are only able to assist students in the school-setting, but allowing parents ways to identify intervene, and respond to and with strategies to help their emerging readers while in the home-setting closes a gap in learning for the student. Although parents aren’t necessarily trained educators, they are the first-in-line from whom the reader learns from and if provided resources on how to identify and address dyslexia or any reading difficulties, they may be able to implement proven strategies at home, but it becomes difficult if the parent themselves are unable to read.
However, as Emily pointed out, over 40% of the United States is illiterate (Gibbons & Harrison, 2021), and it has created a subcategory of reading illiteracy, which are those struggling readers who can read but not efficiently in relation to phonological awareness and complex ideas and comprehension. They pointed out that the subgroup of those struggling readers are able to read, but as they got older and the texts became more complex, reading became harder for them. They argued that it plays a part in the reader’s social-emotional health, as it compares to their reading skills as they progress in grade-level. Even to agree with this, educators may wonder how standardized testing and reading exposure in home environments may play a part in the compounding effect of not being able to recode complex vocabulary while reading during those achievement exams. When readers receive a low reading score compared to their peers, it impacts their efficacy and motivation to become successful readers, and part of it is not being exposed to strategies at home that supplement what is being done in the school-setting, the discontinuity of learning.
Although a reader may be faced with a discontinuity of learning and exposure to reading opportunities, a student’s ownership in their ability to learn can be influenced by the reading specialist, and “Together in Literacy” identifies an immersive experience to do that. As an educator, an aspiration that an Anti-Racist educator may do is provide students with agency over the growth of their learning and giving them space to productive struggle over their identity in a learning disability. Secondary reading educators especially are driven to have expose students to worlds beyond their own and being able to build connection to their reality. If a student is given the safe space to learn about who they are, they can educate others, and own that part of their identity and not be afraid of a difficulty. If provided a way to “name” and “say” it (a difficulty), they can command power over it, and become effective readers towards progress (Gibbons & Harrison, 2021).
https://www.togetherinliteracy.com/podcasts/together-in-literacy/episodes/2147611616
