The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
Topics:
Dyslexia Resources for Parents
Dyslexia Resources for Children
Dyslexia Resources for Teachers
Dyslexia Resources for Educators
Transcript:
And actually my foreign language requirement set up my next accommodation which is a reader. Because when… what they do when they test you for foreign language… I mean, your learning disability, what they’re looking for, right, is the variance. You know, is he really high on some levels and then really low or blocked on other levels. Cause that tells you it’s not an IQ problem, right. It’s actually an intelligence… it’s a blocked way that the brain is wired. So that’s what causes that variance. Well in testing that, I tested out at functionally illiterate. Lower than a 5th grade reading level, right. So now they’re saying, so Rob, we need to give him a reader, you know, in the classrooms. Now I’m five years into college. How did I get five years into college without the reader before this? Well I’ll also tell you what my mom and I figured out is. There’s a blue-collar method – that’s just what I call it, a blue-collar method – to get anything you want in school, it feels like. So what was my blue-collar method? My blue-collar method… by the time I left college I had this down to such an art… I actually listened to my friends’ voices and if I heard a voice that I liked and thought I could to for a long period of time, I would ask them ‘do you read well?’ and if they said ‘yes I do’, I would say ‘I would like to pay you to read my syllabuses on to tape for me.’ Now understand this, people who can read have no clue what a great gift that really is. None whatsoever. So I’m talking about pennies on the dollar. I’m talking about five dollars, ten dollars, to have an entire syllabus read onto tape for me by someone who reads really well. And if they were in the class, they weren’t going to read it anyway. They were going to go get the cliff notes; they were going to knock it out, right. But now if they’re in my class it’s a dual benefit because they’re actually going to hear the information, right. So now okay I’m going to have it read onto tape for me and you know because when the teacher says we’re reading Machiavelli next week. Pages, you know, 300 to 500… what do I do? Back then I grabbed my cassette which I had it recorded on; I popped in my cassette and I listened to it while I drove around town… while I drove back and forth from the college to home. And guess what?... Join DyslexiaEd.com for full broadcast and transcripts.