Ocean City parent group hosts dyslexia roundtable Written by Claire Lowe Wednesday, November 13, 2013 03:56 pm OCEAN CITY — Local resident and dyslexia rights advocate Beth Ravelli visited the Ocean City Special Education Parent Advisory Committee meeting Tuesday, Nov. 12 at Ocean City High School to discuss the learning disability with parents from throughout the county. Ravelli, whose daughter, Sammie, 16, a junior at Ocean City High School, is severely dyslexic, has been working for the last 11 years to have bills passed in the state that will require dyslexia training and screening in schools. In August, she was successful in having three bills, two of which were combined, signed into law. The first bill defines dyslexia and the second, combined bill requires two hours of professional development a year for teachers and the Department of Education to provide professional development opportunities related to reading disabilities. Presenting with Ravelli on Tuesday was Deborah Lynam, director of parent community engagement for Learning Ally, a parent support group for children with dyslexia. Lynam presented a slideshow on the signs of dyslexia and how to treat and accommodate the condition, which she stressed is not just “reading backwards.” Lynam has two children with dyslexia. She reached out to Ravelli about eight years ago after reading her story in the press. The two having since been working together to pass the legislation in New Jersey, as well as to provide outreach to parents who are also dealing with a school system that may not meet their children’s needs. Lynam said her presentation was a “peer-to-peer presentation.” “I am not a scientist, I am not an educator,” she said. The research on dyslexia, its early warning signs, causes and effective treatments, is not new, she said, but the term was often dismissed in the public school system. Lynam said dyslexia results from a phonological deficit and is not related to other cognitive abilities. In layman’s terms, she said, that means a person with dyslexia cannot automatically associate a specific set of sounds to letters to form words and sentences. “These will be kids who are having some trouble learning the alphabet, even the names of the letters,” she said, as well as learning the sounds of the letters and rhyming words. Most importantly, Lynam said, dyslexia is not associated with a vision problem. “This has been proven,” she said. “That is not dyslexia. Children may be having underlying vision problems. “That’s a big myth that needs to be dispelled,” she said. Lynam said that poor spelling is usually the first sign of dyslexia. There are several concurrent conditions associated with dyslexia, but that are not caused by or a cause of dyslexia, the most common being Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Lynam said that almost 30 percent of children with dyslexia are also diagnosed with ADHD. She said that the 2003 book by Dr. Sally Shaywitz, “Overcoming Dyslexia,” became her guide when she started researching the issue, recommending the book to parents in attendance. In remediating a student with dyslexia, effective teachers are the key, Lynam said. There also has to be accommodation for students with dyslexia, she said, like allowing them more time to complete tasks. “That is the one thing dyslexia does do, it robs people of time,” she said. The added time “levels the playing field,” she said. Lynam said there are other accommodating resources available, such as audio books, which is a large component of Learning Ally’s outreach. She said there is often a stigma attached to people who are reading with their ears: Is that reading or listening? “It’s getting the content into the kid’s heads,” she said. “We’re accommodating because this is a brain processing difference,” Lynam said. Both Ravelli and Lynam pushed for parent involvement. “You have to be your child’s voice because they can’t do it themselves,” Ravelli said. “If you’re their voice, they will succeed.” Ravelli said she knew when Sammie was 3 years old that something wasn’t quite right. She took her daughter to several doctors before she was diagnosed with severe dyslexia. “In 2002, dyslexia wasn’t a word out there, even on the computer,” Ravelli said. While her daughter struggled to learn, she still passed each grade level. “She was such a happy child, they just kept passing her through the grades,” Ravelli said. “I had tutors. I had all kinds of tutors.” But nothing was working, so Ravelli decided to move Sammie to a district that offered a program that would help her. Ravelli’s husband stayed in their Dorothy home, while she and Sammie settled in Ocean City where the district offered the Wilson Program. “By the time she got to seventh grade, she was reading on grade level. I still cry,” Ravelli said. “What people don’t understand is you don’t have a life if you can’t read.” Now, Sammie wants to be a doctor. “Sam will do anything. She will do anything and she will try anything,” Ravelli said. Ravelli said Sammie is a fourth generation dyslexic, as Ravelli, her mother and her grandfather all showed symptoms of dyslexia. “I remember the nuns telling my mother and father, ‘She doesn’t want to learn,’” Ravelli said of her childhood. She said she tried hard and she did want to learn, and that her parents understood her disability. With the passing of the laws, Ravelli said she no longer has to worry about other children slipping through the cracks. “I didn’t really try to get law passed. I was just trying to get my daughter to learn how to read,” she said. “Now, I don’t have to worry about the children coming behind (Sammie) that have dyslexia or other reading problems.” To learn more about dyslexia, see the Decoding Dyslexia website at decodingdyslexianj.org or the Learning Ally website at learningally.org.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 22:08:18 +0000
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