Dyslexia is a gift.
That is how we approach our creative, intelligent students.
Our confident graduates leave us with the academic and self-advocacy skills necessary to help them become as successful as these fellow dyslexics.
Forbes: CISCO CEO & Dyslexia
Read the full article at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2018/12/13/how-ciscos-former-ceo-turned-a-secret-disability-into-his-greatest-strength/#42e6965063ac
Sir Richard Branson: CEO of Virgin Enterprises
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“My teachers thought I was just lazy because back then; people didn’t understand as much about dyslexia as they do today. On one of my last days at school, the headmaster told me that I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire.” |
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And these former students of one of Joyce Bilgrav's OG-based schools:
Our 1:1 Orton-Gillingham tutoring,
in conjunction with subject matter classes that control for dyslexia
and let children learn as they are cognitively capable
are a winning recipe that let dyslexic children
achieve their potential!
Dyslexia should be caught early and remediated intensively. Dyslexic students, who are put into an Orton-Gillingham based curriculum in Kindergarten - 2nd grade, may never suffer the downsides of dyslexia and are poised to be the types of thinkers we need in 21st century.
Older dyslexic students who have struggled in traditional curricula, whose literacy skills lag grade levels behind their intellectual abilities (often despite intervention), can close the gap in an OG-based school. Dyslexics are "dyslexic" all day long, in every class- not just 2 or 3 hours a week. It's how they think, every second, and it's a beautiful thing. Creative, 3-dimensional problem solving, a common trait of dyslexic thinkers, can and should be harnessed in their subject matter learning. School shouldn't put a laser-focus on dyslexia's downside.
~ Katie Cashette, Co-Director of the Bilgrav School
The Problem for Dyslexic Children in Traditional Classrooms
Dyslexic minds have incredible strengths, such as three-dimensional problem-solving, big picture thinking, and innovative pattern recognition. These traits are tremendous cognitive assets. They are the kind of thinking skills that enabled Walt Disney to add a whole new dimension to the movie making industry, that led Ted Turner to create a 24-hour news channel and revolutionize the way we consume news, that allowed Steve Jobs to transform our digital lives, and that gave Einstein the power to behold that E = mc^2. All these men are dyslexic— and gifted. Their brilliance was masked in their school years by a difficulty learning to read.
Their brains, that naturally see things in three dimensions, automatically picked up two dimensional letters and started spinning them around in their mind’s eye. Though an asset in most cases, this cognitive trait, when learning to read, is quite the opposite. Letters and words need to stay two dimensional and in the order they are given on the page. A dyslexic mind picks up letters and words and starts spinning them around. So, b becomes d becomes p becomes q, and the letters in the words get all out of order.
Unfortunately for dyslexics, non-dyslexic brains (about 85%of the population) tend to evolve the higher-order thinking skills, that dyslexics naturally have, later in their development. The mechanics of reading and spelling are a much simpler skill for them. So, it makes sense to teach the mechanics of language in the lower grade levels and then use it as a medium to convey more and more sophisticated levels of information as students mature.
Their brains, that naturally see things in three dimensions, automatically picked up two dimensional letters and started spinning them around in their mind’s eye. Though an asset in most cases, this cognitive trait, when learning to read, is quite the opposite. Letters and words need to stay two dimensional and in the order they are given on the page. A dyslexic mind picks up letters and words and starts spinning them around. So, b becomes d becomes p becomes q, and the letters in the words get all out of order.
Unfortunately for dyslexics, non-dyslexic brains (about 85%of the population) tend to evolve the higher-order thinking skills, that dyslexics naturally have, later in their development. The mechanics of reading and spelling are a much simpler skill for them. So, it makes sense to teach the mechanics of language in the lower grade levels and then use it as a medium to convey more and more sophisticated levels of information as students mature.
Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Galactic, & South Florida’s own Brightline train, is dyslexic as well.
For the dyslexic student, this order is a disaster. It means that at the earliest grade levels, the dyslexic child’s strengths are ignored and their difficulties highlighted, all day long in front of their peers. Often, their cognitive assets are never recognized because by the time those incredible thinking skills are required by the curriculum, years later, dyslexic students have already experienced enough failure and missed out on so much information that they may not have gotten in to the advanced level classes, for which those strengths are necessary.
At The Bilgrav School, we teach how dyslexic minds actually develop. Our curriculum features their cognitive strengths every day, all day, and includes the daily, structured, phonetic, multi-sensory, Orton-Gillingham tutoring that enables a dyslexic student to acquire robust literacy skills. Subjects are taught in an interdisciplinary, project-based way that enables students to absorb grade-level concepts (and beyond) without being bogged down by the language mechanics that hold them back in traditional classrooms. Our students become confident learners, knowledgeable of their strengths and sure that they can overcome even the deepest of academic challenges, just like these successful dyslexics:
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