I’m a teacher who works at a school in a very diverse neighborhood. We have a beautiful little girl in our third-grade class whose mother is from Pakistan, but her father grew up ten minutes down the road in the next suburb. I had the pleasure of teaching this young lady in kindergarten, and again last year in second grade. Up until this point, her dad had come along with her mum to every parent-teacher interview or school event. Her parents were both lovely people, and their daughter was so bright and well-behaved that we’d never had much cause for extra interaction.
School started up last week and we are having the initial round of meetings with parents to talk about what will be covered this year and if they have any questions or concerns. My student arrives with just her mother in tow.
Student’s Mother: “Sorry, my husband has been caught up at work and can’t make it today.”
Me: “No worries! Just us girls today, eh [Student]?”
My student laughs and proceeds to get into the Legos I set out for the kids to entertain themselves with while I talk to the parents. I start talking and handing over various forms/printouts to her mother – who is a very intelligent woman, but she seems panicked the more pieces of paper I hand over to her.
When she begins staring at a form in dismay, I think she might be concerned about the price of the school excursion later in the year. I drop my voice so my student can’t hear us.
Me: “If you’re having any problems with finances for the excursion, we have a fund here at the school to help with that and I can get you the information if you’d like.”
Student’s Mother: “Oh, it’s nothing like that, we can afford it and she is so excited! It’s just…”
She looks like she might start crying at any moment.
Student’s Mother: “I’m sorry, usually my husband comes to handle this sort of thing, but I actually can’t read English. I can barely read my own language.”
I was gobsmacked. This woman has always been very smart and engaged, has volunteered countless times to help with school events and last year personally hand-made almost a thousand ribbon flowers for a fundraiser we put on.
Student’s Mother: “I can speak it just fine; my parents taught me English as a child, but even in my own language and any language we learned in school, the words all seem to jumble up and swim on the page when I try to read them. When I was little my parents thought maybe I couldn’t see and got me glasses, but it never helped. I can write, and spell any word you ask me to, but anything more than ten or so words on a page…”
This poor woman seemed so humiliated to be admitting this to me. I scrambled in my drawer for a moment and handed her a new page.
Me: “Does this seem better?”
Student’s Mother: “Oh, wow!”
She stumbled over a couple of words but happily read out the entire paragraph that was written on the page. She looked at me with entirely different tears in her eyes.
Student’s Mother: “How is this possible?”
Me: “This is a special font we use for people with dyslexia. It’s a little bigger than usual and has extra shadows and spaces to help differentiate between the letters. You can read this?”
Student’s Mother: “I can! [Student], look! Mama can read this!”
Student: *Looking over at the page.* “Wow mama! That’s so many words! I don’t even know all those words.”
Student’s Mother: *Very quietly crying.* “I’m not just stupid…”
Me: “I never thought you were for a second.”
I sent her home with a tonne of resources I’d accumulated for people with dyslexia over the years, including a few chapter books printed in dyslexic-friendly fonts. She’s back tomorrow to help out with our swimming carnival, and I am SO excited to hear how she’s going! Her husband came to me at school pickup and told me he’d managed to set up her iPad so it used one of the fonts and he can barely get her to look up from it the past few days. He said this all with the proudest grin on his face I’ve ever seen.
