Dyslexia Training For Teachers

DENVER - Students who struggle with reading may find out from their teachers dyslexia could be to blame. House Bill 1223, sponsored by Representative Michael Merrifield (D-Manitou Springs/Colorado Springs) unanimously passed through the House education committee on Thursday afternoon. The legislation would give teachers the training needed to identify literacy challenges, such as dyslexia.

"I was diagnosed with dyslexia in second grade," says 11-year-old Holmes Middle School sixth grader Theo Reitwiesner.

"Theo came to me in second grade and told me, ‘I'm done with school,'" says Theo's mom Patricia.

Theo started meeting with a tutor soon after his mom told him state law required him to go to school.

"I miss little words like ‘in,' ‘as,' the,' and I'll just skip them completely," says Theo. "There'd be a sentence and you'd read it, then it wouldn't make any sense cause you couldn't figure out one of the words, and you'd read it over like seven or eight times and then it'd finally click, and then you understood it, and that still happens to me today."

Dyslexia is much more than reading a word backwards, it's trying not to confuse letters that look alike, like a lower case ‘b' and a lower case ‘d.' It's trying to understand a word when you're not exactly sure what each letter of the alphabet sounds like on its own. Theo used to memorize words so that he knew how to say it later.

"If you hear the word ‘cat' it's three syllables cah-ah-tah,' so then you can't break apart the sounds in words and you can't blend them together," says Patricia.

"I didn't learn how to pronounce each syllable of every word," says Theo.

Patricia was one of more than a dozen who testified in front of the education committee about the need for literacy training.

"It gives us a chance just to elevate awareness to dyslexia," says Patricia. "This isn't just a problem for special education teachers, this is a problem for everybody in education."

Sydney Hough is a former teacher in the Lewis-Palmer School District. She told the committee about how the word ‘dyslexia' was basically taboo.

"I was not allowed to use the word dyslexia when I was speaking to parents about their child's struggles," says Hough. "I now understand why Joey and Brianna and several other students never learned how to read in my first grade class."

"They're accused of being lazy, not trying hard enough or just plain dumb," says Ellen Steinberg, from the Rocky Mountain Dyslexia Association.

Karen Brass is a 44-year-old mother with dyslexia. While testifying in support of the bill, she couldn't remember a certain word.

If I can't see it, I can't say it," says Brass. "That's a dyslexic mind for you."

"Having taught for 30 years, now that I've learned so much about it, I can recall students that I'm sure must have had dyslexia," says Merrifield. "This does provide training for teachers to recognize certain symptoms."

Merrifield wants to catch learning disabilities early in a student's life, so they can see a specialist and get the tutoring they need.

"From 40,000 to 150,000 students in Colorado have some form of dyslexia," says Merrifield. "This could have a huge impact on the dropout rate, on our graduation rate."

"We graduate far too many kids, able kids, with third and fourth grade reading levels," says Dr. Ed Steinberg of the Colorado Department of Education. "Our kindergarten through third grade teachers in general education, need this training probably desperately in the sense of the preventative aspects of this."

Today, Theo the sixth grader, reads at a seventh grade reading level. He loves to read the Harry Potter books.
"I've worked my butt off all year," says Theo.

By Marshall Zelinger
m.zelinger@krdo.com