A Blessing in Disguise, The Theme for Dyslexia Awareness Week June 16-22

Our focus this year is on promoting greater understanding and acceptance of dyslexia as an alternative way of thinking and one that can offer wonderful creative gifts as well as bringing some learning challenges. The theme refers to the gifts of creativity as well as the difficulties and coping strategies which are the 'disguise'.

Taare Zameen Par – a delightful movie about a young boy’s struggle with dyslexia and the teacher who turned his world around.

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight year old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class.

When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a boarding school to 'be disciplined'. Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.

One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rule of 'how things are done' by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiam, all except Ishaan. Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is very unhappy, and he sets out to discover why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself.

Dyslexic thinkers are creative, imaginative thinkers who learn by exploring and by doing. Once out of school, they often excel in areas of life requiring lateral, visual-spatial ability such as architecture, engineering, practical professions and entrepreneurism.

Dyslexic learners are often told to "concentrate" because of their lack of success in reading and writing. When reading, they will sometimes stumble on seemingly easy little words such as "if", "was", "the" and "to" because their abstract nature doesn't engage the dyslexic imagination.

Dyslexic thinkers are creative, imaginative thinkers who learn by exploring and by doing. Once out of school, they often excel in areas of life requiring lateral, visual-spatial ability such as architecture, engineering, practical professions and entrepreneurism.

Dyslexic learners are often told to "concentrate" because of their lack of success in reading and writing. When reading, they will sometimes stumble on seemingly easy little words such as "if", "was", "the" and "to" because their abstract nature doesn't engage the dyslexic imagination.

In an age in which much of a child’s future is determined by high-stakes standardized written tests, Shaywitz says that she and her husband are gratified that their work has provided neurobiological evidence of the need for extra time for dyslexic individuals taking these tests. The Shaywitzes’ research has shown that a region on the left side of the back of the brain known as the word-form area operates less efficiently in dyslexic subjects than in normal readers. Neural circuits in this area allow normal readers to move from accuracy—reading a word correctly—to fluency, where these readers can simply look at a word and instantly know it. As many as one in five children, however, are dyslexic; they can learn to read accurately, Shaywitz says, but not fluently.

“If you’re a good reader and you can use that word-form area well, you can look at a word and you’re on the express highway to reading. But if you’re a dyslexic, that route is blocked and you have to get off and take a ‘country road’—it’s circuitous, and it’s bumpy,” says Shaywitz. “You can get where you’re going, but it takes a lot longer. Just as a diabetic requires insulin, a dyslexic requires extra time.”