Clippings
Far from a 'curse' - By Sean Kolenko - North Shore Outlook, March 09, 2011
Sue Hall's son George struggled with reading and spelling in elementary school, but after a move across the pond and enrollment at a new school, he's nearing graduation from UBC.
Sue Hall doesn't consider herself an educator. She says she's a mom – and a stubborn one at that. She isn't particularly keen on Band-aid style solutions so when her son George started having trouble early on in his school career, she kept digging.
Teachers said he was having trouble with his reading and his spelling. And he was. He couldn't keep up with the rest of his class, and Hall began to think public school may not be the best fit for the kid. It was never a question of intelligence or potential; she knew George had the chops. It had to be a process thing. She needed something a bit more nurturing, something with a bit more of a focus on the individual child.
Hall, a native of England, says the family was looking for a change and had fallen in love with the North Shore on vacation 14 years ago. And, two years after that West Coast tour, they made the jump. The family first moved to West Vancouver, then North Van. That's where the Hall family discovered North Vancouver's Waldorf School – an institution that touts a unique, holistic curriculum.
Now 23, George is wrapping up a chemistry degree at the University of British Columbia. He likes research, Hall says, and she fancies him a professor one day.
Not bad for the perpetually-behind youngster. You see, George is dyslexic. Very dyslexic, Hall explains. He sees in pictures, and that's what made for such difficulty in reading and writing. George, like many dyslexics, had trouble understanding words that had no immediate visual signpost. Words such as table, for example, were no problem. But what's the picture for "the" or for a concept such as "freedom." Hall says there are in the neighbourhood of 217 such words in the English language that typically make up half of what one reads.
"It's like a movie where the screen is 75 per cent black. And who in their right mind would want to watch that movie?" she asks.
"And who could blame some people for losing the plot?"
In order to fill as many plot-holes as she can, Hall has been facilitating the Davis Dyslexia Correction course for more than a decade. It was that program, she says, that helped her son in those tough early days back in England, and the course that led to a realization that she too is dyslexic. Always a successful student, Hall came to learn through her training as a Davis method facilitator that she had been taking mental pictures of her text books throughout school to compensate for a lack of understanding. She remembers having trouble comprehending the answers she would give on a test, but a photographic memory allowed her to regurgitate whatever she had read, regardless of whether she understood the material or not.
In 2003, Hall established the Whole Dyslexia Society, a non-profit organization that provides bursaries, outreach and establishes a sense of community for those with dyslexia. And, that's not all. Hall tirelessly advocates for a fundamental change to the public education system to include teaching methods that don't alienate visual-based learners. It's only fair, she figures, to give all students an equal start. It'll take some convincing, admittedly, amongst both teacher and parent circles, but continuing to employ a system that ignores one type of learner just isn't good enough.
"We need a new paradigm for education and these kids deserve that," she says.
"Why put millions of dollars into a system that just doesn't work? Dyslexia is a because-of, not a despite-of, thing. That's what I'm trying to get to."
For more information on dyslexia, visit www.dyslexia.com. For Hall's work, visit www.positivedyslexia.com or www.dyslexiacanada.com.
Off The Beaten Path - By Sean Kolenko - North Shore Outlook, November 24, 2010
For Adrian Boston, there are two types of people: those on the leading edge and those on what he calls the bleeding edge.
The bleeding edge is a tough place to be. An innovative spot yes, but maybe too much so. Steve Jobs, he says, has sat there a few times in his career.
No one was ready for Apple’s Newton a decade ago, for example. But now, everyone has an iPhone or an iPad – the grandchildren of the aforementioned, lesser known handheld device. Sometimes, there are people so far ahead of the pack, Adrian says, they bleed waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
At certain times in his life, Adrian admits he may have been on the leading edge of things, but never bleeding he says, with a laugh.
Growing up in Chilliwack, and never all that popular, Adrian says he was forced to keep himself entertained most of the time. He whipped around on a dirt bike and kept his eyes glued to his computer screen.
Always a self-proclaimed computer nerd, Adrian taught himself HTML coding and Java script by the early 1990s, a little while before everyone else hopped on the bandwagon.
He didn't think much of his unique skill at the time, but when he took off with his then-girlfrined to New York City after graduating from Emily Carr University, his knowledge of intricate computer lingo proved a valuable asset. "After I eloped to New York, I knew this computer language and they were just getting into it," he says.
"It was right place, right time I guess. The dot-com thing had started and I was just sending off resumes and cover letters saying I knew Java. Two months after being jobless in Vancouver, I was the seventh person hired by KPMG in their newly formed e-commerce division."
And the computer gigs didn't stop there. Adrian also worked as a consultant for Microsoft in Seattle, but after a few years of living the good life, his existence, and that of every other New Yorker, changed forever.
On Sept. 11, 2001 his adoptive home stood still. Smoke billowed out of one of the Wold Trade Center buildings. Soon the other would be spouting the same black fog.
"Just devastating," he says, quietly.
"It was like being punched by a left and a right. You saw white collar soup lines. When those buildings fell it blew my life apart. I left, tail between my legs, back to Vancouver."
Adrian had always wanted to go back to school – he says he was never comfortable with the way people viewed his fine arts degree – and his unemployed return to the West Coast proved as good a time as any to return to academia. But during his search for the right grad school, Adrian noticed he was constantly skipping over words like less or more when he read.
He realized he had trouble reading words that had no visual representation. He could read the word horse, for example, because he could picture a horse. But words like less, more or if, meant nothing because they couldn't be visualized. It was a harsh realization for someone looking to do graduate work — Adrian did move on to earn a master's degree at both New York and Cambridge universities — but it led him to an issue he now works adamantly to change.
Adrian advocates for what he calls cognitive equal opportunity, a situation for people of all learning styles to find success in school. People who have dyslexia, for instance, don't hear language the way many other people do. They handle language in a more visual sense, and what Adrian and his colleagues on the board of the Whole Dyslexic Society would like to see is a defined curriculum for people with spatial abilities.
"We've disciplined the visual out of people. Why not teach to the visual if that's what people need?" he asks.
"It's teaching to the human, not forcing the human into the system. I think my ultimate goal is to diversify society. I guess I'm interested in stability and I think a difference of opinion is more stable than everyone thinking the same. Expert opinion is overrated."
Dyslexia: Learning disorder or gift? - Jennifer Moreau, Burnaby Now Published: March 27, 2010
Imagine you're struggling to read the words on this page, and the letters get flipped backwards, spun upside down and turned into an incomprehensible mess. That's a bit what it's like to have dyslexia. But is it a learning disorder or a special gift?
For eight-year-old Freya Enright, dyslexia used to mean struggle. She would get so frustrated from school, she would come and throw screaming fits, and up until a few weeks ago, she couldn't spell her last name.
Making it fun: Eight-year-old Freya Enright and mom Hayley work on Freya's reading skills. The Grade 3 student received tutoring in a unique method designed to tackle the challenges of dyslexia, and had great results.
Larry Wright/BURNABY NOW
"It was very difficult in school. I was having a lot of trouble, it was very stressful and (I couldn't) really spell and I couldn't get my math right," said the Grade 3 St. Michael's student.
Freya took a course with Sue Hall, a North Vancouver woman trained in a special technique, developed by author Ron Davis, to help people with dyslexia.
Hall got Freya to make clay figures for "trigger words" - words like do, get or why - that aren't easily associated with an image.
The two then look up the meaning in a special dictionary. For the word fetch, Freya made three clay hearts and a star.
"It's a picture that I can see, and it helps me to remember the word," she said. "It's a different way to learn, it's easier for me, it's also fun at the same time."
For Freya, having dyslexia is something special. "I have this special gift that not many people have," she says.
Dyslexia is often characterized as difficulty with reading, writing and sometimes math, but it's not a reflection of lesser intelligence. It affects an estimated 5 million Canadians -roughly 15 per cent of the population.
According to Hall, dyslexics have brains that process information differently, which doesn't mean they are disabled. When they read, the processing signals go to the visual part of the brain rather than the auditory part, she said.
"There's nothing wrong with that. It's just different," Hall said.
Part of the problem is the education system teaches kids to read through sounds, while dyslexics think in pictures and see two-dimensional words in 3-D. Hall tries to train people with dyslexia to control their perception so they can recognize the words in two dimensions.
"Dyslexia is a wonderful way of thinking. The only reason they struggle is because the school system doesn't understand them," Hall said. "They don't have a learning disability at all, they just don't learn the way they are taught."
Freya started working with Hall last November. She's now on par with her Grade 3 peers in reading and she can spell her last name on her own. The specialized tutoring cost $3,000, but her mother Hayley said it was worth it.
"I would have sold everything for it," Hayley said. "For us, it was just a Godsend."
Hall is bringing her positive spin on dyslexia to Burnaby's McGill library branch on Monday. Her talk is from 7 to 8:30 p.m., at 4595 Albert St. Hall will cover methods to help correct learning challenges for dyslexics. For more information or to register, e-mail info@dyslexiacanada.com.
Dyslexia Can Be A Gift, Group Says - Wanda Chow, Burnaby Newleader Published: March 19, 2010
Wayne Gretzky has always been cited for his legendary ability to see the play unfolding, positioning himself according to where the puck would be, not where it already was.
Some believe that gift is as much due to the celebrated hockey player's dyslexia than anything else, a gift that also comes with obstacles.
The Whole Dyslexic Society believes many people with the learning disability are "visual-spatial learners" who see everything, including letters and symbols, in three dimensions, said the society's Donna Doerksen.
Sometimes such learners are unable even to comprehend some spoken words unless they can associate images with them, she said.
As a result, traditional therapies to help dyslexic children cope often don't work since they tend to be based on the concept of phonics, or sounding out words.
The society is holding an information meeting on Monday, March 29, 7 p.m. at McGill library branch to explain an alternative therapy, the Davis method, based on the idea that people with dyslexia think in multi dimensions.
Doerksen, a Burnaby resident and retired Vancouver teacher, said she first learned of the approach after one of her Grade 4 students wasn't able to read. The boy's mother spent months on intensive tutoring and searching for solutions, until she found Sue Hall, founder of The Whole Dyslexic Society. Through Hall's use of the Davis method, the boy was able to read.
When Doerksen paid him a visit, the boy said not only could he read, but he proceeded to recite the alphabet backwards. He explained he could picture the letters in his mind and simply read them out to her that way.
Ever since, Doerksen has worked to raise awareness not only of the alternative approach to therapy but the fact that, in many ways, the disability is a gift.
"It's a gift, it's a tremendous talent that they have," Doerksen said.
Unique Program Helps Dyslexics Fulfill Potential - Fiona Hughes, Vancouver Courier Published: Friday, August 07, 2009
Teaching method adopted from American author of The Gift of Dyslexia
"All the other methods out there come from the sound-based world, even if they have multi-sensory facets, they are still based in sound [phonics]," she says.
He'll be working with Sue Hall, a Davis Dyslexia Correction Facilitator who uses the Davis method, based on the experience and work of Ronald Davis,...
Click here to read the full article
Sue's Personal Hero - Jamie Oliver Puts America's Diet On Diet
On his first day in Huntington, W. Va., Jamie Oliver spent the afternoon at Hillbilly Hot Dogs, pitching in to cook its signature 15-pound burger. That's 10 pounds of meat, 5 pounds of custom-made bun, American cheese, tomatoes, onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard and mayo. Then he learned how to perfect the Home Wrecker, the eatery's famous 15-inch, one-pound hot dog (boil first, then grill in butter). For the Home Wrecker Challenge, the dog gets 11 toppings, including chili sauce, jalapeños, liquid nacho cheese and coleslaw. Finish it in 12 minutes or less and you get a T-shirt.
So much for local color. Earlier that day, Oliver met with a pediatrician, James Bailes, and a pastor, Steve Willis. Bailes told him about an 8-year-old patient who was 80 pounds overweight and had developed Type 2 diabetes. If the child's diet didn't change, the doctor said, he wouldn't live to see 30. Willis told Oliver that he visits patients in local hospitals several days a week and sees the effects of long-term obesity firsthand. Since he can't write a prescription for their resulting illnesses, he said, all he can do is pray with them.
Last year, an Associated Press article designated the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area as the unhealthiest in America, based on its analysis of data collected in 2006 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly half the adults in these five counties (two in West Virginia, two in Kentucky and one in Ohio) were obese, and the area led the nation in the incidence of heart disease and diabetes. The poverty rate was 19 percent, much higher than the national average. It also had the highest percentage of people 65 and older who had lost their teeth — nearly 50 percent.
This Is My Gift
Jonathan Notley, founder of the award-winning Australian hip-hop band "Bliss 'N Eso", (You can read up about Bliss 'N Eso on Wikipedia or listen to them perform on their website) attributes the band's success to his dyslexia. Here's an excerpt from an MTV News interview published yesterday:
"To tell you the truth, dyslexia's almost a gift," says Notley, who has a mild form of the learning disability that affects written and spoken language. "The way a dyslexic generally thinks is a lot more in a visual environment, which is why you get the reversal in the letters and that kind of stuff.
"It allows you to envisage what you're thinking very clearly and all of it transcends into the lyrics because before you write anything you have to imagine it and paint a picture for the listener. I guess that's why I’ve always been passionate about the art side and the visual landscape of the group, and being involved in the video clips and the way we're represented visually."
You can read the full article at www.mtv.com.au/news/7c545a5c-interview-bliss-n-eso/
This Is My Gift
This Is My Gift - written and performed by Don McLeod www.myspace.com/donmcleodmusic.
Dyslexics At Risk Early
9 steps for turning a dyslexic student (at worst into a criminal) at best into a defeated, negatively (and incorrectly) labelled student with low-self esteem.
Overseas, a pathway to eventual offending, originating from undiagnosed and unaddressed dyslexia, is well known," Judge Becroft said.
The Closer You Get, The Bigger I Look
Some of New Zealand’s most respected music industry figures have come together on a unique and exciting project to raise awareness and understanding of dyslexia, with a brand new single released to celebrate Dyslexia Action Week 2009 (15-21 June). Written by Don McGlashan, produced by Sean Donnelly and performed by dDub, the single 'The Closer You Get, The Bigger I Look'
Know Your Rights
Know Your Rights, Student Edition and Guardian Edition Produced by the Learning Disabilities Association of BC, funded by The Law Foundation and found at www.knowyourrights.ca.
We do not believe that students are learning disabled, we feel that the system is disabled by its lack of understanding and awareness. With that in mind, as long as you can disregard the "disability" word, we feel these booklets are extremely useful and empowering.
West Coast Families - November Issue
There is a great article in West Coast Families - November Issue. Click here to download the pdf.
Shift - In the North Shore News
Seeing dyslexia as a 'gift,' rather than disability - Karen Gram, Vancouver Sun Published: Saturday, November 03, 2007
Vancouver business wunderkind Glenn Bailey heads a diverse group of businesses, each one enjoying double-digit growth. The 45-year-old founder of Canadian Springs and owner of Wa-2, Liberty, Bailey Development and others, Bailey sees a niche where others see a barrier.
"I walk through the house before it's built," he explains.
He has the gift, man. The gift of dyslexia.
Click here to read the entire article.
Shift In Perception - Justin Beddall - North Shore Outlook - November 01, 2007
Sue Hall always knew her son, George, was a bright kid.
She began reading to him as a baby. He was creative and had a good vocabulary.
But when he went off to primary school in southern England he was suddenly miserable. He got along OK in math but reading was difficult. Very difficult.
By Grade 2, Hall came to the stark realization that her son wasn't keeping up with the rest of the class.
She asked the teacher: "Do you think he might be dyslexic?"
Click here to read the entire article.
A Peacock In the Land of Penguins
A story about courage in creating a land of opportunites.
It's not always as easy as 1-2-3 - By Tralee Pearce - Published in Globe and Mail – September 2008
Kids with dyscalculia have trouble deciphering numbers, in the same way dyslexics have trouble with letters, researchers say.
It may look like arts and crafts, but when Nicolas Lafreniere plays with balls of clay, he's actually learning the basics of math.
As the Vancouver child moves a clay rope up and down a grid of balls under the watchful eye of his tutor, he's adding sets of the same number in order to understand multiplication tables. It's a remedial method that is working for a number of children like Nicolas, 9, who have trouble reading numbers.
Click here to read the entire article.
Unraveling 'math dyslexia' - Published in Globe and Mail – September 2008
Although school has been back for less than a month, it is likely that many children are already experiencing frustration and confusion in math class. Research at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada could change the way we view math difficulties and how we assist children who face those problems.
Daniel Ansari is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Western. He is using brain imaging to understand how children develop math skills, and what kind of brain development is associated with those skills.
Click here to read the entire article.