To mark Dyslexia (Awareness) Week Oct 4-10 we take a brief look at the lives of three FE staff members - a support worker, a faculty head and the AoC’s current president, to highlight the crucial, highly valued role played by dyslexic support staff, teachers and managers in today’s colleges.
Ben describes himself as a typical ‘bad lad’ at school. “I didn’t engage with education at all; I knew there was some kind of barrier there but no one took time or effort to look into it further other than trying to fix what was not right.” He left school at 16 to train as a carpenter at college, found he had a knack for helping apprentices, but then had to stop due to illness and joined Weston College as a technician. “One day the carpentry lecturer left and I was asked to cover; 15 years later I’m still here and now dean of faculty!
“I was only diagnosed at 24 when doing my first teacher training assignment at Yeovil College. I had a phobia about putting pen to paper and had to find other ways of communicating. I had a morbid fear of having to write on a board in front of my students.”
His solution was to ensure all his teaching resources were pre-selected and pre-typed, and got colleagues to check his spelling and grammar. Once he knew he was dyslexic, it was “not a case of overcoming it but understanding it, seeing how it worked and its potential in helping me in my role as teacher and tutor.”
“It’s given me a wider skillset, helped me make connections with less engaged learners and I’m pretty sure I’m more of a lateral thinker due to my dyslexia. I see things differently to other people in the room and taken different routes to get to outcomes. When students sit in front of you and they realise you are dyslexic, suddenly their dyslexia does not seem so much of an issue to them.
“They’ll ask me what’s easier for me and talk to me about that - what helps me make connections with a lot of young learners, what support mechanisms are out there, how much further down the line I am with my dyslexia?
“I feel I’m also good at thinking laterally - instead of going from A to B, I will go via 25 different stops before getting to my final destination. It lets me be more creative, takes away the rulebook a bit to allow me to think outside the box - these weird and wonderful things pop into my head that, because of my dyslexia, is wired differently. I come up wth some left field ideas at times - and some of them can drive my peers mental - but it does inspire creativity and can lead to really good conversations.”
For instance, instead of saying let’s cut this wood, I might suggest we drive to a forest and see it thru the whole felling process; we’d look at YouTube and how we delivered sessions online through lockdown… in lockdown we worked out how to use Microsoft Teams differently - we had a single camera and presenters zooming in to people’s workshops delivering practical sessions but students could also log on to their phone to zoom in close to an activity, or get onto their Xbox to find a different way to draw things.
What is a key influence on his teaching? “It’s people understanding that I will make mistakes. It’s about people not wanting to fix the problem but just understanding and accepting it. My team know what I’m capable of and so my dyslexia is not a barrier.”
Ben’s own strategies include dedicating a large portion of time to reading long documents.”I’ll read the first line on its own then the first two, followed by the first three to enable me to keep digesting it.”
He’s on a mission to dispel myths and misperceptions about dyslexia such as being labelled ‘thick’ when in school with undiagnosed dyslexia and not fitting into a recognised pattern.
What about advice for anyone considering a teaching career? “Take your time to understand not about how to cope with pen and paper but what is your whole different skill set as a dyslexic person, what your dyslexia is, what are your personal barriers, your level of self-esteem and confidence. It’s about embracing your condition, developing your own strategies and working round things.”
Amy was one of the lucky ones. She found schoolwork and GCSEs very stressful. Her school refused to get her assessed, because, she thinks, “I masked my disability very well”, so her parents paid for an assessment and she was diagnosed with dyslexia at 17. “It made me want to help others in my situation - so many get diagnosed quite late in life and I wanted to provide them with the positive strategies I’d learnt [on my own and from others] to live with dyslexia. It should not be seen as a negative but as a positive with your own strategies in place.
“I always knew I wanted to go into FE. I started as a teaching assistant at college, worked as a learning mentor at a secondary school, and then returned to college where I was supported to finish a part-time special needs degree, followed later by a PGCE and masters. At college I was interviewed by a panel and given the opportunity to take in pen and paper - by writing down key words it helps you as a dyslexic person not to keep your train of thought and recall examples of your skills quite quickly - something that interviewers constantly ask for. If you can write them down before the interview and take them in with you it’s really helpful. I was surrounded by many knowledgable staff who understood where I was coming from, and that has been worth its weight in gold.”
“At interview I said being dyslexic was a positive for me and drew on this as a strength. I didn’t want my dyslexia to be some sort of secret and I wanted them to know I wanted to get that job for who I was. I stressed my ability to put myself in other dyslexic people’s shoes.”
Amy sees things as a big picture. “I’m confident in knowing that in most things I won’t get there first time and yet will do so in the end, although that’s only because I have colleagues around me who are confident that, if something has not worked first time, it will do next time round.”
Amy has had to learn patience to reach her goals - a quality that is crucial when living with dyslexia. When learning to drive she had to write an r and an l (right and left ) on her hands and got additional time to take a theory test - something she urges dyslexic learners to push for. She did pass, though!
What coping techniques have worked for her? “Ensure your personal organisation is tip top; write a ‘to do’ list. When I’ve been in teaching roles, I’ve had to have all my lessons fully sorted. When tutoring, I was supported by learning mentors - and as one myself previously I understood how they could help me.” She colour-codes her emails by level of importance, uses technology extensively - all her work is done on computer. “I’d not really write on a board as I’d worry my spelling would be wrong and that would undermine my position of authority in class.”
Honesty with students and peers runs through her approach. When teaching in class she’d apologise if she made a mistake in spelling. She’s lighthearted about it but will always get her presentation slides proof-read. When she’s had to teach maths and English she has had everything double-checked and proof-read by herself and others. “Parents won’t be impressed with spelling errors from a teacher!’
What’s helped motivate her? “If a dyslexic student sees you as a teacher with dyslexia at the front of class, the empowerment that can give them is just astronomical.”
Sally Dicketts had to wait until she was already a college principle in her 40s before being diagnosed with dyslexia. “They didnt know about dyslexia when I was a child - they just thought I was delightfully stupid. I was only diagnosed at Milton Keynes college where I showed certain behaviours. Someone asked had I ever had a dyslexia test. I said no, what’s that?
“I was put in a remedial stream at school. I just felt I could not spell and my English was weak. Letters appeared to me in a different way but I did learn strategies to deal with it. My dysleixa is quite mild - I don’t need coloured sheets but I do jumble up words. I once went to a restaurant called DeAltos - whereupon I said I wouldn’t call my restaurant Death, would you?
“That’s how it looked to me. Letters appeared in a different way but I did learn strategies to deal with it. I always avoided writing like the plague so have become a good orator. I try talk everything rather than write it. I’ve always twinned with somebody to get them to edit all I write. When I was a teacher it was hilarious - my subject is economics and I’m strong on maths so I learnt techniques to do everything in a very pithy way. I have avoided any job interview where I’d have to do an English test of any kind. I withdraw if there is.
Once Sally knew she was dyslexic, life did change slightly. Before it was all about avoidance: “I thought I’d be humiliated and appear the idiot most people thought I was as a child although not my parents who were very supportive. I used to write things in a very expressive way; my writing used to come back to me as a sea of red spelling corrections so I started writing as little as possible unless it was technical and economic.
She says she has only discovered the concept of a first draft in the last 10 years. “I felt I could not write and that everyone else could; only now do I realise that everyone writes stuff over and over again. I’d given up working at anything as there seemed no point - that was one of the downsides of not knowing I was dyslexic.”
That’s why Sally has helped develop a learning philosophy across her Activate group that says ‘effort counts’ because before diagnosis she had genuinely had not thought that putting any effort in could help her. “Now,” she says, “I know the brain is like a muscle. If you practice and work on it, you can overcome it as a drawback. And that’s now a huge positive for me as I’m very creative.”
Sally, like our other interviewees (above), says she definitely thinks differently. “I’ve built up amazing resilience as I’ve had to learn the hard way.”
She admits she probably would not have become a teacher if it wasn’t for her dyslexia. “I’d been in the CSE stream all the time at school when they suddenly decided to put me in for maths O-level; I did that for nine months and got a grade 4. I thought I’d done really well, so I wanted to do maths, economics and geography at A-level, but the maths teacher said I’d lack the background needed after just nine months studying O-level. I’d felt pretty grim for most of my school life as people made it obvious they thought I wasn’t bright. But I felt no one should have to feel like this in a learning culture so I decided as a 16-year-old that I would become a teacher! I’d change the world and prevent students sufffering this level of humiliation.”
That’s what got her interested in neuroscience and accounts for why Activate provides such good dyslexia support and assisted learning backup.
How would Sally advise dyslexic applicants considering a teaching career in FE but who fear revealing their condition might scupper their chances at interview?
“We’re really hot on teachers’ development and we believe the more you develop as a teacher and understand your own learning, the better a teacher it will make you. Kids who struggle with maths and English are actually better taught by people who are not outstanding at maths. When you acknowledge your own personal struggle [with dyslexia], it can give students hope that if you can do it so can they. If your teacher is a genius it does not give you much hope as a student - they’ll just think they are not like their teacher, I can’t do it.”
Sally says she’s always declared her dyslexia at any job interviews she’s attended and if that means she doesn’t get the job, her response is: “Fine, I wouldn’t want to work there anyway!” What she looks for among interview candidates are people able to create an emotional environment where students feel emotionally secure. - otherwise they can’t learn.
How does dyslexia help Sally in her current roles? “It gives me an understanding that people are different. I’d be very careful when you judge people [say, at interview]. You have to judge someone on what they bring to the party. You can get amazing thinkers but they may not be ‘academic’.”
Look out for more interviews with dyslexic FE staff coming shortly
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