Rje horse jumped dmsk mkx fence.
That's what dyslexics see when they read the second grade sentence, "The horse jumped over the fence". The words "horse", "jumped" and "fence" make sense to their brains because these words have visual equivalents. However, words like 'the" and "over" can not be visualized and therefore cannot be processed by the brains of those with dyslexia. That was, of course, until Judith Schwarcz entered the picture.
British-born Judith arrived in Israel in 1976. She had already spent most of her early life in and out of psychologists' offices as her parents tried to figure out why she seemed so bright but her school grades indicated the exact opposite. When the teaching was oral, she was at the top of her game. As soon as lessons required paper and pencil, she was lost.
"There's a constant feeling that there is something wrong with you," she says remembering her childhood. "I remember thinking that everyone around me was succeeding and feeling that I should be too." It was a very painful time in her life. She ultimately finished 12 years of school, but as she puts it: "not well".
When she arrived at Kibbutz Be'erot Yitzhak, she had no real career aspirations. She studied beauty therapy because she was good with her hands. Then something interesting happened. She passed all her courses with honours because all the testing was practical and there was no book study. Of course, these realizations are only clear with the benefit of hindsight.
The real turning point in Judith's life came following the birth of her son, Yaron, nine years later. "He was a vibrant, exciting, fun child, who seemed normal to me because he was like me." However, in fact, when Yaron began school it quickly became apparent that he had learning problems. "He couldn't learn at all and he became very disruptive in class," she recalls.
In first grade she suspected something was wrong because she could see that he learned some things very quickly, but the school had already labeled him a slow developer. Two evaluations showed that nothing was wrong with him. By second grade she was sure that something was wrong, so he had him evaluated again. "This time, I said to the didactic evaluators testing him: 'I don't care what it takes, there is something wrong and you have to find it'".
They did. He was dyslexic.
Judith set out to find ways to help her son, but found that there was very little available. Israeli schools did not have enough money to help all the students who needed help, so priority was give to those with physical disabilities and more obvious learning disabilities. Even those children were only receiving a fraction of what they really needed.
In her desperation and frustration, it dawned on Judith that the only person she could count on was herself. She decided to take matters in to her own hands. One of the tools she stumbled across was a book called "The Gift of Dyslexia" written by Ronald D Davis. That book proved to be her salvation. "I started to read it and quickly noticed that you could order tapes of the book. I ordered them as fast as I could and made plans to go to the England for Davis' five-day Correction Reading Program. Then, I packed up my son and we left."
By that point, Yaron was 10. The help they got from Davis' course changed both of their lives.
First they learned to read technically, which means they could read the words but did not necessarily understand them. Afterwards, they learned comprehensive reading, which filled in the understanding by mastering words with clay and doing the Davis Reading Exercises.)
"When we returned to Israel, my son was a different child," she says. "He could read, his behaviour improved and he was happier to go to school."
Five days had changed their lives.
Dyslexia, they had learned, is the umbrella term which means that sometimes the left side of the brain is doing what the right side of the brain is supposed to be doing, and vice versa. In a dyslexic person, the two sides of the brain do not stick to their specific tasks. Dyslexia is not brain or nerve damage; nor is it the result of a malformed brain. It is just that some people's brains don't respond to information in a typical fashion.
Dyslexia becomes apparent somewhere after the age of three, when children begin to think using analytical reasoning and logic. There are two components to thinking - verbal and non-verbal. Verbal means thinking with the sounds of words, while non-verbal suggests thinking with mental pictures or intuition. Most people are better at one than the other. Dyslexics think in non-verbal pictures to the extreme. The Davis idea is to teach dyslexic thinkers to read and write using their heightened non-verbal skills.
Words like "horse" and "fence" are not problematic for dyslexics because they can visualize those words - most people know what a horse looks like. But what about "the" or "and"? It is difficult to create mental pictures of these words and dyslexics must find alternative ways to recall such words so that they can incorporate them into their non-verbal thinking -- because if they can't, there is confusion and no comprehension.
Today, Judith runs the Center for Learning Correction in Israel, and she facilitates dyslexics to focus and comprehend using Davis' method. But before she accepts someone into her program - and she doesn't accept everyone -- she does an intake assessment to determine if the child or adult is suited to the program. "The five-day program is just the beginning of the process," she says, "so I am looking for students who are prepared to make that commitment." That commitment includes 15 minutes of supervised reading every day and practice in other areas, two to three times a week, until a list of approximately 217 "pictureless" words are mastered.
The program involves teaching the student to focus (rather than concentrate) on the subject matter in front of them. "There's a definite difference between concentration and focus," says Judith, "dyslexics need to learn to shift between the two." There are separate programs for those with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), and Learning Disabilities (L/D), which all fall under the umbrella of dyslexia.
Of the 200 students Judith has already facilitated in the Davis Program, she says that her success rate is approximately 97%. As for the other three percent, according to Judith, they were simply not motivated.
"Society is very quick to write these people off," she says, when in fact, many of them are very, very intelligent. Some end up working in factories, when they should be searching for a cure for cancer. Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, Walt Disney and many other very gifted thinkers all suffered from some form of dyslexia.
Israeli schools, with their average class sizes of 40-42, are not well suited to identifying children with learning issues. If your first grader isn't succeeding, it is the parent's obligation to ask for an evaluation and make sure the child gets it, Judith says. Teachers of younger students often suggest that families wait and see what happens for a while, but Judith disagrees: "Parents must trust their own instincts and those of the children, and lead the effort to get the children the help they need."
There are classes for students with learning issues available in Israel, but not enough of them exist. There aren't enough resources to properly help these kids. So what happens is that these children end up grouped together with other children who have behaviour issues, and many of them turn to crime and other destructive activities. "No education means no graduation, and in turn, no options," says Judith. "Israel should focus less on funding juvenile centers and more on education."
I wasn't born yesterday.
I had a life before I became a writer. I was a small town kid from Eastern Canada. I went to university. I liked it so much, I went to university a second time. After that, I had had enough university, so I decided to find a job. I always wanted a job that came with a hard hat and I found one in Hamilton, Ontario. I worked for a steel company where hard hats were a must. The hard also came in use once when I had a bat stuck in my living room.
Unfortunately the thrill of hard hats didn't hold me too long, so I set off to Toronto where I became a public relations professional. Apparently that was going too smoothly, because one day my husband decided it was time I made good on an old promise to move to Israel. It's hard being a person with a sense of integrity at moments like that. In other words, I moved to Israel where we still live today.
Moving to Israel it seemed like a good time to retire. It wasn't like I could go back into the job market and do exactly what I did in Toronto. First of all there was the matter of language. My Hebrew was not employment ready (and it never will be). And then there was the matter of my lack of Israeli experience. That did not sound like fun at all. So, I became a writer. Well, actually, I already was a writer -- annual reports, executive speeches, press releases and so on. But now it was time for the fun stuff. I've been writing websites, newspaper articles and staring in pregnancy videos for the past few years, as well as the all the old standbys.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kendall_Wigoda
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