Learning with Dyslexia

When it comes to people that are monumental in the journey of a person’s literacy story it always must start somewhere. The place that that started for me was in a grade school parking lot. My mom came in for a student teacher conference, and as she was walking to her car, a man came running up to her and said, “excuse me, do you have a second?” My mom was crying.  She had tears rushing down her face because she had just sat through a meeting where nothing positive was said about her son. It had only been the first semester, and she was already being told her son would have to repeat the first grade. The man came up to her and said, “I will never admit that I said this, because if I do, I will lose my job, but your son will not learn here.” The man told her about a school that changes children’s lives that was right here in Cincinnati. The name of the school was Springer School and Center. He explained that if my mom ever wanted me to succeed in life then she would have to pull me from the school that I was at. Now, in hindsight, this doesn’t seem like a big deal, to changing schools in first grade. It’s not like her son had a bunch of friends. He was just that weird kid who would sit in the corner and just pray that he would not be called on or that his turn would never come up to read.

The downside was that the school that would help me was more than triple the tuition of my current school. My parents didn’t have a lot, but they decided to go and tour the school. My mom tells me that from the second she drove into the parking lot she knew I had to be sent there. From seeing the kids on the playground, to classes being taught outside, the tour was just icing on the cake.  In her eyes, it was the place for me.

Walking down that cobble stone path, breathing in that rose petal sent, I started my first day at the new school. I remember walking in, feeling nervous, scared, and worried, that I was just going to be another stupid kid in the class. What I didn’t know was that every kid that went to that school was just like me. There were 12 kids in each classroom and two teachers. I had gotten to that school when I started the second grade, and the change was visible almost instantly. Within three weeks of being at that school and having teachers that not only cared, but also wanted the success of their students, I was reading novels. Something that seemed impossible only one month prior was now something that I was doing nightly. The first teacher I ever had at that school was named Mrs. Ilg, and she changed my life. She showed me ways of understanding and controlling the movement of the letters on a page. She showed me small adjustments that I could make to my viewpoint that allowed the words to make sense and allowed me to understand what I was seeing. She told me that you must look at the small points if you ever want to see the whole image. What she meant by that was focus on one word, and if that was too hard then on a letter. Arrange the letters by simply looking at them individually. She showed me that it was okay to ask questions and that she would rather have me ask, then just not understand it. This is something that allowed me to start living life instead of just getting through it. A lot of people don’t understand how hard it is to live a life when you can’t read. It doesn’t matter what age you are. Our whole society is based on understanding what is being shown to you. The only reason I can do that is because of the five years I spent at that school.

Just because somebody can read, it doesn’t mean it’s something they enjoy doing. This was something I dealt with for a long time. I had learned how to read at this point in my life, but wanting to read wasn’t something I developed until much later. My very last year at Springer School and Center I had a teacher who explained to me the power of loving to read: In the very beginning of the year, we were tasked with a project that said “pick a number of books you expect to read during this school year, and by the end of the year we were supposed to read that many books or more. I remember writing three on the paper and turning it in. As the bell rang for class to be dismissed, my teacher said, “Thomas Blessing please see me after class”. I don’t know if a worse thing could’ve happened to me. This was the first time since kindergarten that I had been called out by the teacher in front of the whole class. I remember a knot in my stomach and sweat rushing down my face as I walked up to his desk. My teacher looked at me and asked me why I only wrote three books. I told him that I didn’t like to read and that I thought three books were a good number. He continued to have a very long conversation with me, he was not telling me that I was wrong but more explaining a point. The point was that, maybe I was just reading the wrong thing. Before he finally let me go to my next class, he was writing the permission slip for me because I was late. He told me that he was changing my number and that I was not only going to read three books. I remember my brain spiraling from all the emotions that I was feeling. I was mad, nervous, anxious, but at the same time relieved. I was relieved because even in that moment, I knew that I wasn’t being called up to the teacher’s desk because I didn’t know how to do something, I was being called up to the teacher’s desk because I could do something more than what I was saying I could do. When he finished writing the note he told me that my goal was now 100 books for this year. My jaw was the first thing to hit the floor, followed by my eyes and my shoulders as I couldn’t believe the number that he had said. As he spun in his swivel chair with the note in his hand, he grabbed a book and a piece of tape. He taped the note to the book in his hand, handed it to me and said start with this one. The book that he had handed me was called The Odyssey. I remember thinking that this is one of the biggest books I’ve ever read in my life.

When I got home that night, immediately, I started reading the book as I knew if I was going to complete my goal, which was a big percentage of my grade I was going to have to start right away. That night I read the fourth of the book. Within one week I had finished it. I went back to school the following week and turned in the book and said that I had finished it, but that there was no way I was going to be able to read 100 books in a school year. My teacher didn’t care about what I had to say, instead he asked me what did I think of it? The truth to that question is that I loved it. I felt like every character meant something and it was the first time I had read something that was fake but seemed like it could’ve actually happened. After telling him this, he asked me what my next book was going to be. Once again, I was baffled by the idea that he thought I could read 100 books in a school year. I told him that I didn’t know what my next book was going to be, because I thought that was easier than restating what I had already said. Once again, he turned around and grabbed a very thin book, handed it to me and said, “read this one next”. The book was called Hatchet. I read Hatchet in two days and once again I loved it. So once again, I went back to school. I told my teacher that I had read the book and gave it back to him. Once again, he asked me what I thought about it. I told him and he then handed me another. I took the book from his hand, walked out of the classroom and finished the book within two days. This cycle continued to happen, and I realized I had stopped worrying about reaching 100 books and just started to enjoy reading them.

I can recall the minute when I started to love reading.  I remember this novel that I was given at the midpoint of the year.  It was the first novel I had picked that I didn’t read in two days. I remember being midway through the book on the second day and wondering why I wasn’t finished. The book wasn’t any bigger than the other books that I had read, but there was something about it that made me not want to put it down.  At the same time, I knew I didn’t want it to end. I remember telling my teacher how conflicted I was, and he asked me a simple question, “don’t you want to know how it ends?”  I told him, “I know how it should end!” As I went to explain how I thought the novel should end, he stopped me. Instead of writing an essay like the rest of the class, why don’t you write an essay about how the book should end. I went home and within two weeks I had written an essay about how the book should end and during this time I had finished the book. The book ended badly in my opinion. This was the first time I had picked up a book and felt it ended in a way I didn’t agree with.  I turned in my essay and the next day after turning it in my teacher asked me to speak with him after class. At this point my teacher asking to speak with me wasn’t a problem anymore. It was a sense of joy and fulfillment as it meant, I had finished the book that I was reading, and I was ready to receive the next book. Normally my teacher would ask me what I thought of the book, I would tell him, get a new one, and go to my next class. This day was different. My teacher told me that he had read my essay and that he was appalled by it. I was confused. I had 100 different thoughts racing through my mind. He looked at me and said, “David at Night is one of my favorite books” and that was the book that I had just wrote an essay on. He told me that he had read that book 10 times and that when I told him I didn’t like it he was shocked. He told me that after reading my essay, he saw the book from a different perspective. He told me that the ending I had written was better than the ending of the story. He handed me another book and he told me that he hated the ending of the book he was handing me. He wanted to hear my perspective. This was the first time that my literacy journey wasn’t just about reading. It was the combination of reading and explaining what you read. For the rest of the year that teacher would give me a mixture of books that he loved and hated simply to get my perspective. What my teacher had shown me was that the best part about reading is that a book is never finished. Anyone can go and rewrite the ending to a story.

By the end of that year, I remembered that I had to read 100 books, so I went onto our excel spreadsheet and started writing down all the names of the books that I had read that year. By the time I was done filling out the sheet I realized that I had read 93 books. I remember freaking out all night and crying to my mom because I felt like my grade was going to plummet. I went in the next day, before school started to his classroom to talk to him. I told him that I didn’t meet my goal and that I had only read 93 books. He told me that I was the only student receiving 100% on that project. I was extremely confused because I felt that I was the only student who didn’t complete their goal. He told me if I set a goal for 100 and I make it to 50 then that job should be considered well done. He said, “if you are always reaching for goals higher than what you think you’re capable of then you will go a long way in life”. He shook my hand and told me it was a privilege to get to know me. This teacher changed my life. During that summer, I reached 100 books and now I set a goal every year.

Reading and comprehension are never going to be easy for me. I learned from a very young age that I will always have to work 10 times harder than every kid in the classroom. I was provided with the tools necessary to help me excel. I was taught that reading can be fun when you stop worrying about making mistakes and I was challenged with dreaming big. In my current situation, I must read codes for architecture. I must talk to customers and comprehend what they have envisioned for their property. I must deal with builders and inspectors. I must overcome it. There are always going to be obstacles in your path, and the difference between living life, an a life well lived, is how you choose to overcome those obstacles.