Dyslexia and Me - Past

02 Aug 2018 at 18:45 // under Personal Dyslexia

These posts cover how dyslexia has, and continues to, influence my life.

I have been meaning to write these for some time but never quite managed to get the ideas out of my head and onto the screen before.

I am dyslexic and I really struggled at primary school. I remember a time when a teacher was demanding to know why I was taking so long to complete my work. I didn't have an answer for her. But she needed an answer. She kept asking until a said something. Eventually I told her something along the lines of "I didn't want to get it wrong".

It was a lie.

I was working as fast as I could and didn't care if I made a mistake. But that wasn't fast enough for her. It wasn't as fast as the others in the class. I didn't know how the others had managed to do it so quickly. Looking back if feels equivalent to shouting at a small fat kid on sports day, demanding to know why they didn't run faster.

So why did the teacher think it was ok to ask me why I wasn't working faster?

Because dyslexics aren't stupid. They simply struggle with written language.

The teacher knew that I knew the answers to the questions. She knew I was smart enough to answer all the questions, immediately, if she just asked me verbally. She couldn't then understand why I couldn't write those answers into the paper in a reasonable time. How can someone do that hard bit of learning the new subject yet doesn't complete the work when left alone to write them out?

Clearly, thought the teachers, I must have just been lazy.

More tomorrow.

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