Music lecturer Jason Houlihan had to wait until his mid-20s before being diagnosed as dyslexic. “I was a very middle-of-the-road student at school. I was bad at reading; I didn’t read many books as I was so slow and when I did, I’d read a passage two or three times before I could understand it.”
It was all change when he left school and joined West Herts College to do a BTec qualification in music performance, specialising in guitar. It was the first time he felt he had succeeded at anything. “The environment allowed me to thrive and one teacher really inspired me. He saw something in me that no one else did. He squeezed the best out of everyone, especially in music, told me I was really good at it, and I decided I wanted to be a teacher like him. I said in five years’ time I’d be back at the college and wanted to do for others what he’d done for me.” Jason gained maximum marks at levels 2 and 3 - he can’t recall ever being late or missing a session.
Then it was all changed again at university, which he only attended to get qualified to teach music and go back to work at his old college. “At uni, I was told I had dyslexia and ended up redoing my first year. I was given no strategies to cope with the condition and didn’t have it explained to me. I almost allowed it to become an excuse not to do better.” He lacked the support of his college and at the same time was expected to be far more self-sufficient. He eventually dropped out and for several years was a session guitarist with musicians he had worked with while studying.
“I didn’t want my student loan to be a waste of money so I invested in equipment and took some courses in guitar technology.” Eventually, he landed his first job at West Herts as a music technician, based on his professional experience.
So began his battle to ‘beat’ dyslexia. “I didn’t mention dyslexia at interview because I thought it would ruin my chances of progressing on to a proper teaching job. Declaring I was dyslexic and then asking for some extra time to do marking did not seem the best thing for me career-wise. But I wasn’t letting the condition get the better of me; I’d manage it myself.”
Working in a teaching environment encouraged him to start developing his vocabulary. Five- and six-syllable words he’d not heard before were common parlance, so to offset his poor reading background he started looking up their meanings and using them himself. “I didn’t want to be just an occasional cover teacher but a lecturer who made students want to achieve. I wanted to do such a good job of managing my dyslexia that no one would ever think I had it.”
He found living with dyslexia was all about self-discovery. Jason reasoned if you were taught how to create an individualised learning strategy for a student, why couldn’t you do that for yourself?
He started to learn how to cope from dyslexic students who had the additional learning support he never had. “I noticed they were using pastel-coloured work docs and writing text on those; when I did the same, it made a massive difference.”
Jason only admitted he was dyslexic after he had progressed via a work experience-based level 5 teaching course from technician to lecturer to teaching and learning leader during covid and then for reasons of work/life balance stepped back to frontline teaching as level 3 second-year music course leader. After fighting his dyslexia on his own at the college for seven years, he says when at last he admitted his condition to the college, he felt a huge relief.
“I found it was taking me 30-45 minutes to mark a 1,500-word essay as I had to read everything twice, whereas most colleagues were taking 10-15 minutes. One of the hardest things for someone with dyslexia is correcting low-level English with poor punctuation and spelling, no paragraphs and no spell-checking - you have to guess what words they have tried to write.
“I’m now very open with my students about my dyslexia; I encourage them to challenge me on it. You have to be strong enough in yourself first to welcome them into your learning need and then to help you with it.
“The students saw me as a teacher showing his own learning needs - his vulnerability - and then actually taking their advice on board. And yet so many teachers will do anything not to admit they have any chink in their armour.”
A change in career direction altered Jason’s attitude to dyslexia. “I had a student with autism come in wearing a t-shirt with the slogan ‘Autism is my superpower’. When I saw it I told him he’d won the t-shirt of the year award, saying ‘That’s absolutely brilliant - love what you’ve done!’
“His autism was quite severe - he’d really struggled socially but it didn’t hold him back. The fact he could just take ownership and pride in it made me think I should take more pride in my dyslexia.
“There are things that as a dyslexic teacher I excel at more than others. The big selling point for me is the opportunity to relate more with my students. I advocate that bravery and vulnerability are the same things - you can’t be one without the other. So I partly demonstrate that to my students by being very open about my condition. As a teacher, I aim to disarm students as quickly as possible to slowly build rapport.
“Being honest about my condition does have an impact, so if I misspell anything on the board, the punctuation is wrong, or my marking doesn’t reflect spoken English, I encourage them to challenge me - it’s something I think they thrive on. It shows first that they are paying attention if they can spot where I’ve missed a comma or misspelt something. Second, it brings them up to your level and it also shows a level of leadership many students haven’t really witnessed - it’s not the master/apprenticeship approach that many teachers take but an attempt to innovate and bring different perspectives to what I do.”
Jason advises anyone with dyslexia who wants to teach to work out their own strengths and weaknesses in terms of where they sit on the dyslexia spectrum - if you don’t spend time drilling down to discern your own special dyslexic qualities, you’ll almost always see the condition as a drawback.
“As a slow reader now studying for a masters - something I never thought I’d do - I’ve forced myself to read a lot more, using aids such as ‘post it’ notes, indexes and online reading tools like text to type (which you can also use for marking).
“Don’t shy away from testing yourself for dyslexia - there are some really cool diagnostics tests, even online, that you can do with your students and on yourself. If the results prove positive, thoroughly embrace them and don’t see dyslexia as something to hold you back. Work with it.”
In fact, he finds strategies to cope with dyslexia is like learning to play an instrument: “You do it over and over again, there is a lot of trial and error, but the process of failing can galvanise you into becoming more resilient.”
Developing composure backed up by problem-solving skills (eg when the internet goes down) is an absolute priority for a new dyslexic teacher, according to Jason; they show your students you operate well under pressure and you’ll earn their respect.
And be just as organised, he urges. “Organisation is something I still struggle with, so ensure you give your students enough time to complete their work. And don’t forget to factor in enough time for marking!”
AoCJobs, part of the Association of Colleges, connects teachers and support staff with schools and colleges for online job opportunities.