Dyslexia is becoming one of the most prominent childhood problems in the U.S. The unfortunate part is that many victims of dyslexia are not diagnosed until later in their lives, usually way after they are out of the education system. “This leaves that child with bad memories that relate to reading because of neglect from teachers from teachers and teasing from other children” (Wolf, 166). Some people never get over this part of their lives because it had such a big impact on them. This is why it is our job as teachers to recognize this problem and try to help the student so we can avoid that problem all together.
The reason why dyslexia is usually missed in childhood, as stated by Wolf in her book, is because many teachers overlook it or just do not know enough about the problem. Most teachers will just keep pushing the students to try harder and read more and the majority of the time the student just simply cannot understand the text. Since some teachers just don’t want to deal with the issue the just pass the students along. Then the students go home to their parents and the parents push them to try harder not knowing that their child has dyslexia. Now we all know that schools these days are hard for kids that do not “fit in” per say. Now imagine being in kindergarten or first grade and not being ale to read properly. As stated by Maryanne Wolf in her book, “children will be tormented and made fun of just because they cannot understand the text they are reading” (Wolf, 167). This is not the students fault, they did not ask to have this problem, so our job as teachers is to recognize that a students is struggling to read and then do as much as we can to help the student with dyslexia. When trying to recognize of a student is having trouble reading, you may want to look for these signs. One sign would be simple spelling errors in short words. Also, if the student has confusion over left and right may be a red flag that there is a problem at hand. Now do not assume the student is dyslexic just because they do not know their left and right because I sometimes get the two confused ha-ha. Another symptom to look out for would be if they have trouble following two to three step instructions. Noticing these problems when a student is having trouble reading can help them greatly. We can help the child and let them know that they will be able to succeed and not be left behind or passed on. Educating yourself on this problem will allow you to give the student reading exercises to help them practice. This will give the student confidence and allow them to feel comfortable trying to read, which is huge when the student is in the early stags of leering how to read.
I made a similar comment on another blog. It all goes back to really getting to know your students as individuals. So much rides on that these days. We cannot go into a class and expect them to all be the same. They are all different and we preach that like it is a good thing but when it comes to the classroom, it's like teachers forget that. Like they want their job to be easy and their best teaching method to be a cure-all.
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