Dreams don’t show up on government surveys or school league tables, but they are the fuel that makes us want to get up and get on. For young people to feel that the low road is the only one available to them is nonsense. We won’t climb out of recession, or meet the challenges of climate change, by thinking small.
Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Space Scientist, Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE)
We’ve gone over a lot of information. Here is the gist of what we’ve talked about:
What We’re Going to Talk About gave us an overview of dyslexia.
What Dyslexia Isn’t and What It Is cleared up some misunderstandings about dyslexia. We learned that dyslexia is a different wiring of the brain.
Why Me? Cultures all over the world have people who are dyslexic. But because English has so many words that don’t follow the spelling rules, we have a harder time learning to read. Both boys and girls can be dyslexic, and dyslexia tends to run in families.
What You Need to Read Fluently dove into the inner workings of the brain. We learned that reading takes spoken language and turns it into something that makes sense using your eyes. Crossing these wires can cause the problems of dyslexia. People with dyslexia have trouble with poor word recall and sounding words out.
How We Learn talked about how we learn scripts that help us take shortcuts in life. To learn a script, we start on the right side of our brains. As we learn the script, it is store on the left side of the brain. Dyslexics don’t easily move the scripts needed to read into the left side. Instead, you read in your right brains. We explore the nuts and bolts in How We Learn – Details. And finally, we see How We Learn to Read. All this explains why Reading is Hard Work For Dyslexics.
Learning Differently explored the positives of a strong right brain hemisphere — by not taking shortcuts, you have a lot more interesting ideas, and see things others might miss.
Creativity is the payoff for dyslexia. Creativity is made up of things like seeing the gist of a topic, pattern recognition, insight and imagination — all right brain activities. Because dyslexics are more active on the right side of your brains, you might be more creative.
Fall Down Six Times, Stand Up Seven. You can do this. And it’s going to be a lot more interesting than going in a straight line. Find your passion in life, and follow it.
Never let anyone tell you you’re stupid. Take this obstacle and make it the reason to have a big life, because if you can overcome that obstacle, your gonna be that much further ahead than anyone else …
Orlando Bloom, star of Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Blackhawk Down.
Words to Live By
Speak up for what you need. Play to your strengths and do something you are passionate about. Trust yourself when you spot opportunities or relationships that others have missed.
There are as many ways to thrive with dyslexia as there are dyslexics. How are you going to succeed?
References
Aderin-Pocock, Maggie. “Let’s Inspire the next Generation of Scientists.” Telegraph. March 13, 2009, sec. Technology.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/4985076/Lets-inspire-the-next-generation-of-scientists.html.
Bloom, Orlando. Orlando Bloom and Dyslexia – His Experience, Thoughts & Advice, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTSPmoH2eE.
Duckworth, Angela. 2016. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. 1st ed. New York: Scribner.
Eide, Brock, and Fernette Eide. 2011. The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain. New York: Hudson Street Press.
Shaywitz, Sally E. 2003. Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level. 1st ed. New York: Knopf.
Dyslexia Owners Manual 