However…it’s going to take you time and patience. Usually I blog about strong minded independent women, but today I want to make a bit of a digression and write about something which I feel passionate about. Being dyslexic.
I was born in 1975 and was a pupil throughout the eighties and nineties. Sadly my story is not an unusual one.
I remember being about eight years old and doing an English comprehension homework. Our teacher placed a lot of importance onto these homeworks as we were just starting to do them and the school wanted a decent precedent to be set. I got home, sat down, read the story and answered the questions. I remember looking at the passage and thinking about it, I remember wanting to watch The Avengers afterwards – which I was only allowed to do if my homework was done. As Emma Peel was in The Avengers, my homework was soon completed. I didn’t think about the comprehension again.
Then our homework was given back to us and it was gone through in class. My teacher (I shan’t name her) stood in front of the class and said how one or two of us (I am sure there was one other miscreant) had not worked hard. We had not tried. How on earth could anyone read the story and not understand that the answers were actually about blah di blah and she rattled off an interpretation of the story which I didn’t recognise. I sat there gazing at the passage re-reading it. Trying to understand what I’d got wrong. I’ve always loved reading. Though that doesn’t mean that I always get it right when I read something; I still take a lot of breaks when I read but it doesn’t stop me. I can remember sitting in the classroom realising that the whole class had understood whatever it was that I’d misunderstood in the passage (and which had altered the whole meaning of the comprehension).
It shook my confidence badly, so badly that I approached comprehensions as some type of beast to be wary of from there on. How did I know that what I understood was what everyone else understood? My teacher didn’t go back over the story of the people on the bus and explain why it was about whatever it was about (to this day I still don’t know what I was supposed to have understood). I was too dumbfounded and lost all sense of understanding as she rattled through the answers.
That last sentence has followed me through more lessons and more subjects than I can recall. If it hadn’t been for some incredibly patient friends at secondary school (my best friend in particular who I owe my Maths GCSE to) I would have struggled even more. Yes I became a day dreamer, but to be honest it was partly a coping mechanism. Once I’d not understood the beginning of a lesson how could I learn the rest of it. If the foundations aren’t there then how can you progress?
My secondary school left me with an extremely low sense of self-esteem as I struggled surrounded by friends who excelled with high marks. I didn’t. I failed quite a few end of year exams. In Maths I failed every single year, my marks dropping as the years went by. The only Maths exam I passed was my GCSE and that was entirely due to my best friend teaching me, as she doggedly insisted that I was able to do it. Unlike my maths teacher she had belief in me.
Certain teachers made my life hell. There was another lady in primary school (not my class teacher) who made fun of me in front of her class because I’d been sent next door to ask for some more ‘thread’, but I said ‘Fred’. No one forgets being publicly humiliated. I was used to saying things wrongly, I still do. It’s deeply frustrating as I know what I mean to say, it just doesn’t always come out that way. I was used to my mother correcting me but she has always done it kindly.
The there was one particular English teacher at secondary school. She would hunt me down at lunchtimes and insist I wrote out words, repeatedly, while telling me that I should be grateful for what she was doing. She believed that if I repeated writing out a word I’d someone how spell it correctly. I still can’t spell the word ‘definitely’ without seeing her peering at me clutching her errant list of words. My lunchtime freedom: gone.
It was hardly surprising that I walked out of school at the age of sixteen. I could not face returning. A year later I enrolled in at the local sixth form college. It was there while doing the compulsory sport activity (I opted for synchronized dancing) that a young biology teacher who lead the session saw how I struggled with processing and ordering information, muddling the combination of moves she was teaching us. She quietly took me to one side and asked ‘Are you dyslexic?’ I said no. She went on to ask me a series of questions before arranging a time for me to drop by her office. It was thanks to her that I saw an Educational Psychologist whose report confirmed my dyslexia. So much fell into place for me. It may have explained a lot, but my years at school had left me with a knock. Second doubting has been etched into my soul.
Reading University were as supportive as my sixth form college and I cannot thank either of them enough. What I really valued though were the random meetings that Reading Uni would throw together for anyone with learning difficulties. As not many people were diagnosed in those days there weren’t many of us who’d been found. In talking to other people I came across auditory dyslexia and began to learn there are different varieties of dyslexia. It was also while I was there where I learnt the answer to Can You Write And Be Dyslexic? The answer is yes – write – but you’re always going to have to work harder than those around you. Reading takes longer and though I may type quickly, I have to reread what I’ve written more times than you could imagine, for what I think I’ve written is not what’s actually on the page. So yes, I write, but it takes me a long time. It still hasn’t stopped me. When I say I’m passionate about telling stories, I mean it.
Near the end of my teacher training I went for a teaching job (at the place which inspired my Ladies of Stour series). The night before my interview I went to see one of my University tutors. I remember her asking me if I was still dyslexic. I had always been open about being dyslexic so I said yes. It’s not like the measles and in time you get over it. She fixed me with me a steely look and repeated the question with added force. I soon realised through a series of beadily eyed prompts that I was supposed to say that had somehow my dyslexia had improved and that I was never to tell any school or employer that I was dyslexic.
I’ve gone on to teach and be a tutor for over twenty years. My dyslexia has never been a problem. Being aware of it I’m careful, painstakingly careful in some cases. Filling out a paper register meant following the lines on a grid which was torment and doing all the end of term and then year attendances, absences etc was not easy but I always got there in the end. As the years went by I started spotting pupils who were dyslexic. It would scream out to me in the classroom and I’d flag it. If anything being dyslexic has really helped. I understand how some pupils see things because I’ve been there. I’ve been that confused pupil and I’ve never forgotten them. I know what it’s like to have no self-esteem or belief in yourself. And most importantly, I know it’s not their fault.
Years later I was teaching GCSE English when I came across an article: Young and dyslexic? You’ve got it going on. Benjamin Zephaniah had written about being dyslexic as a child, I read the lines ravenously and then looked back at his name. Benjamin Zephaniah. I was in excellent company. And hell, if he could write after what he’d been through – then why couldn’t I? He’s a superb poet and writer. I would never put myself in the same league as him but he has helped to give me the confidence to believe in my writing. If you’re dyslexic and reading this then go for it – follow your writing dreams. You’re going to be tired and frustrated at times. Just take a break. There’s always a bit later or tomorrow. No point in beating yourself up. It’s going to you take longer than it does for a lot of other people. Just keep on working away, that’s what I tell myself and remember – you’re not alone.
