With early detection and the right methods, a teacher can make a world of difference to a child with dyslexia

Our culture has always upheld the position of a teacher/ guru as equal to that of God (Guru Devo Bhava). The role of a teacher is indeed indispensable and it is filled with immense responsibilities and extreme challenges. They provide children with knowledge, satiate their inquisitiveness, they even provide answers to all their queries and guide them to do the right thing; sometimes taking on a role bigger than their own parents. One can only imagine how the responsibility and challenges of teaching a student with a learning disorder would be felt many times more. It is a miracle how some teachers possess the innate ability to understand and help them and boost their self-confidence to levels where they do as well as or even better than a child without a learning disorder. As American journalist Charles Kuralt rightly put it, “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.” That is the power of a good teacher.

Thanks to films like Taare Zameen Par, awareness and sensitisation towards learning disorders like dyslexia has grown in our society. The government of India has, for the first time, recognised dyslexia under the category of ‘specific learning disabilities’ in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which is a sign of increased awareness.

Problems that were brushed away as hypothetical have today gained the attention and acceptability that they truly deserve. It is important to understand the problem thoroughly first before attempting to tackle it. The biggest problem that our society faces is the lack of knowledge about a problem and the biases and taboos that accompany it. The even bigger struggle is getting a parent to accept that their child is suffering from a learning disorder and sadly it is the first step to finding the solution. Only when there is an acceptance can there be positive moves to help the child overcome the problem. Parents sometimes prefer to be negligent and often blame their children saying he/she is just obstinate, dull, or lazy, resulting in a wrong label which the child is stuck with forever, thereby affecting their self-confidence.

What is Dyslexia?

Advertisement

Dyslexia is defined as an unexpected difficulty in learning to read. Dyslexia takes away an individual’s ability to read quickly and to retrieve spoken words easily and it cannot be cured – it is lifelong. It is important to note that this does not dampen the child’s creativity and ingenuity.

Dr Harish Shetty, psychiatrist at Hiranandani Hospital, Mumbai explains, “Dyslexia is an artefact of an imperfect system. Our educational system focuses only on reading and writing. Some can answer orally, some can draw answers, some can answer in poetry and prose. There is cognitive diversity but there is no diversity in teaching. Similarly, there is learning diversity but there is no assessment diversity. Our world revolves around question-answers.”

In fact, many people with this disorder have gone on to do great things in life. What is most important is that the condition needs to be diagnosed and tackled by the parents and teachers together, so that the child can learn and work out the problem. An early intervention and change in the method of instruction can make a lot of difference to a child with the condition. DALI or Dyslexia Assessment for Languages of India is a screening and assessment tool for dyslexia in regional Indian languages that was launched last year. DALI was developed at National Brain Research Centre and this study was supported by Department of Science and Technology. DALI contains screening tools for school teachers and assessment tools for psychologists to identify dyslexia. The tools are currently available in four languages namely, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and English.

Dr Poorva Ranade, Consultant Psychologist and Counsellor at Apollo Spectra Hospital, Bangalore says, “Early identification through proper assessment tools is extremely important. Secondly, communication is equally important because the issue is equally sensitive to the parent, teacher and child. Knowing how to talk to children is of prime importance. There should be a continuous and regular teacher – parent interface to communicate how the child is doing. In this case, we work only by focussing on the strength of the child rather than on his weaknesses. We are not trying to fix the broken, we are nurturing the rest.”

Reading requires our brains to connect letters to sounds, put those sounds in the right order and pull the words together into sentences and paragraphs we can read and comprehend. It is a complex activity. People with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters they see on the page with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make. And when they have trouble with that step, all the other steps are harder. According to Dr Shetty, “God is a champion of diversity. Man is a champion of structure. Man wants to create and slot things into one structure. If you notice, some children who can’t do well in writing the long answer formant do well in multiple choice question answering. Each brain is different and we respond to things differently.”

Advertisement

Children and adults with dyslexia struggle to read fluently, spell words correctly and learn a second language, among other challenges. But these difficulties have no connection to their overall intelligence. In fact, dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading in an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader. While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities.

Laurette Reynolds, Special Educator at Christ Church School, Mumbai and Inspirium Holistic Care asserts, “Reading has to be taught to all children in a way that includes all the senses and it should include phonics. You cannot rote-learn how to read. If you know phonics, you can read 75 per cent of words. Sadly, most schools don’t realise the importance of teaching phonics.”

Ways to make a classroom dyslexia-friendly:

Teachers should be made aware of the condition: Teachers should spend time understanding exactly what the learning difficulty is and the effects it can have on the student’s ability to learn, perform and interact. Many still assume dyslexia to simply be a condition which causes children to reverse letters, and while this is a sign, there is much more to it than that. Ultimately, the better understanding you have, the more you can help your students. “Children with dyslexia often feel left out because they struggle to be part of a peer group. Parents can arrange for their child to play with his/her peers outside school too so that they can grow up together. But since a child spends most his waking hours in school, teachers have a major role in shaping them and building their self-confidence, and schools should train teachers for the same,” according to Dr Ranade.

Early screening for a learning disorder: Schools should screen children and identify a problem, if any exists. Dr Ranade asserts, “From my experience, I see that early detection does not happen in most cases. There is no early intervention because of no early detection. It is easier to work with a child when the problem is detected early. Often there is absolute denial from the part of parents. This is also because schools also lack the ability to give guidance and support to the parents. Schools are in a hurry to remove children with learning disorders, rather than trying to include them into the system. I’ve seen many cases where parents keep moving their child from one school to another but that is of no use. Child should be the focus here, not the schools. They should understand why the child is behaving in a certain way or is unable to cope with lessons taught in schools. This is often unnoticed.”

Work one-on-one: Giving one-on-one attention can go a long way in understanding the deficits and supplementing what is required. Teachers should understand where exactly a student with dyslexia is at the start of the term in terms of reading, writing and speech. They should create a plan and keep track of their progress.

Advertisement

Praise achievements: Teachers and parents need to give adequate praise to even the smallest achievement or progress made by a child with dyslexia as it is very important for the child to feel confident that he/she can progress in whatever task they undertake. 

Use dyslexia-friendly fonts and overlays: Most of the recommendations come from associations for people with dyslexia and they agree in using sans-serif fonts. The British Dyslexia Association recommends the use of Arial, Comic Sans or, as alternatives to these, Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, and Trebuchet. Laurette Reynolds promotes the use of overlays. She says, “Overlays which are coloured transparent sheets can be placed on paper to help children read better.”

Give one step directions at a time: This helps children lower processing time and caters to memory deficits. Giving multiple directions may confuse the child and will hinder their progress.

Provide visual representation of an oral instruction whenever possible: Children with dyslexia learn and remember better when there is a visual stimuli attached to a verbal instruction.

Use coloured backgrounds: Allow children with dyslexia to write on coloured paper (purple, blue or grey) as this minimises their symptoms. When using smart boards or computer screens, change the background colour to something besides white, and dim the screen slightly for the benefit of students with dyslexia. You can even print worksheets in coloured paper for children with dyslexia.

Advertisement

Train children to read each paragraph or question twice: Most of the time when a child with dyslexia is reading text, he/she is trying to read it completely without putting much thought into the meaning of it. Reading twice can help them understand the meaning of text better.

Create dyslexia-friendly classroom lighting: Fluorescent white lights are very difficult for children with dyslexia. Use yellow lights or keep windows open so that the natural light balances out the artificial lighting.

Preview and review whatever is taught: Previewing the day’s activities help children organise, prioritise and filter information.

Have buddies or peer mentors: Allocating a peer to mentor his/her friend can give the child that additional support and can help him/her focus and learn better in class and supplement their deficits.

Speak slower and focus on pronunciation: Children with dyslexia need more time to process information. Speaking slowly and pausing in between gives them the time to process what is spoken and comprehend better.

Advertisement

Create a space for high‐frequency words: This can be a simple way to ensure that dyslexic students can focus on other skills rather than trying to piece together vocabulary. It can be a big challenge for dyslexic students to learn new words, and this allows them to always have a reminder at hand – you could create sheets for each subject for students to reference.

Schools can take support of a counsellor: Schools can take the support of a counsellor or a psychologist to train teachers to be sensitive to children with a learning disorder. There has to be special educators on board to enable inclusive education. Special Educator Ms Reynolds says, “Teachers identify problems in a child and come to me. Then I do an informal assessment of the child to identify what exactly is the issue the child is facing and if needed an intervention is planned. I work with children right from the play group level up until the 12^th standard.”

It is also important to note that each student learns differently and all students with dyslexia cannot be taught in the same way. So teachers need to differentiate and adapt in line with these needs. We cannot define a fixed set of rules that need to be abided by while teaching a child with dyslexia. Teachers need to study the student first before they can start teaching them.

Dr Shetty says, “Children with dyslexia should attend a regular school which supports inclusive education. Schools should slowly harness the inclination and skill sets to make the classroom inclusive. Most importantly, the teacher has to be skilled to deal with each and every child.”

He also advises teachers to look at the space between the teacher and the child when a child is not doing well. “Never attribute motive or blame on the child. Look rationally for reasons. Fever or failure, diagnosis is the key. Teachers should spend more time with children who have scholastic issues. They must also work with a counsellor to provide the best for the child.”

Advertisement

To prove that dyslexia is never a deterrent to success, we have celebrities like Steven Spielberg (movie director), Whoopi Goldberg (actor), Cher (singer), Octavia Spencer (actor), Kiera Knightly (actor) and Jamie Oliver (chef), just to name a few, who have made it big in their career by never letting dyslexia be a deterrent.

Most importantly, it is the teacher who can make a huge difference by identifying a problem, altering the mode of instruction and by being sensitive to a student with the condition. Dubai-based Curriculum Expert Rashenah Walker says, “Children with a learning disorder can learn and become successful just like their peers. It is just that they may not learn something the conventional way. They learn differently. They may need more time to grasp a concept or they need to be instructed with more visual aids but they are capable of learning it in their own way and it is up to the teacher to make that happen.”

This story features in our November 2017 issue.