FanStory.com - What We See - Chapter 3Bby Jim Wile

I turned on the TV to take my mind off this for a while. The White Sox were playing the Mariners in one of their last spring training games, and it was being televised. I grabbed another beer from the kitchen and sat down next to Archie on the sofa to watch it. I gave him a scratch on the head, and he opened his eyes for a moment but went right back to sleep again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep like that tonight.

I was doing a fairly good job of paying attention to the game when I must have dozed off, because when I opened my eyes again, the game was over. Archie was still asleep next to me. I turned the TV and the lights off and went upstairs to try to fall asleep again, but now the worries set in. I tossed and turned for an hour when I turned my bedside light on and tried to read. I wasn’t able to concentrate and eventually gave up and turned off the light.

My mind was still racing. I might have really blown it with Earl with that stupid slip I made. I will have to try to explain what I meant when he calls me, but maybe the damage has already been done, and it won’t make any difference now—if he even believes what I had meant to say. Damn dyslexia.

People don’t realize that dyslexia is a language-processing disorder, not just a reading disorder, and mispronouncing or saying the wrong word is not uncommon. They are beginning to test for and recognize the disorder in schools a little more now than in the ‘70s when I went to school. I went to small schools, and my teachers weren’t very aware of it. They thought I was just slow, although this was mainly limited to reading. I was an outstanding math and science student and always did well in those subjects, but I had some trouble in classes where the emphasis was on reading and writing.

My SAT scores showed a sizable discrepancy between the reading and math portions. The reading score wasn’t horrible but was much lower than the math score: 480 versus 760. The math score might even have been 800 if I hadn’t misread a few problems.

I had one outstanding teacher who seemed to recognize my disability. It was my physics teacher in 11th grade, Mr. Hafner. He had given us an exam with several problems on it that required computations, as well as 25 multiple-choice questions. I had scored a 74 on the exam, and when he handed them back, he asked me to come see him after school.

When school was over and I went to his classroom, he said, “David, you answered all the problem questions at the end perfectly, but you didn’t even answer five of the multiple-choice questions that came first, and of the ones you answered, you got a number of them wrong. Can you explain that?”

“Well, I did the problem ones first, then the multiple choice, and I just didn’t finish in time.”

“Could you pull out your test and read the first multiple-choice question out loud to me?”

I did as he asked, and my speech was very slow and halting as I read the question and the four possible answers:

1. Reflection is:
a) A change in the direction of waves as they pass from one

         medium to another
      b) The breaking up of light into its constituent colors
      c) A change in the direction of waves when they bounce off a

barrier
d) The spreading of white light into its full spectrum of

wavelengths

Mr. Hafner then said, “I can now understand why you missed the question, David. Do you realize you read the word ‘refraction’ just now instead of ‘reflection’? Your answer—a—would have been correct in that case.”

I looked at it again closely, and, sure enough, I had misread it.

“Let me ask you this too. Do you always read slowly like that?”

“I was told I have dyslexia, and that’s why I have a little trouble with reading and understanding.”

“Do you know the correct answer to this question?”

“I do now. It’s c.”

Mr. Hafner looked at me, shook his head slightly, and gave a small chuckle. “David, would you mind taking the multiple-choice part of the test again? I’ll read you the questions, and you just tell me the answers. How about it?”

“Sure.”

And he did, and I got all of them correct.

He said, “I’m going to change your grade from 74 to 100. From now on, why don’t we just have you answer the calculation questions on class tests, and you come to me after school, and we’ll finish the test like we did today together? Alright?”

This choked me up at the time. I thanked him profusely. I’d never had a teacher make an allowance for me like that. It was likely that kindness that helped steer me toward teaching as a career. What a difference he made in my attitude about school and my confidence. I hadn’t even been sure I’d be going to college until then, when I realized I was actually pretty smart. If I could help strugglers, whether dyslexic or not, the way he helped me, wouldn’t that be a worthwhile and gratifying career?

I’ve been able to recognize this disability in several of my students over the past four years. It’s not always in their school records. I think schools are just beginning to get serious about testing for this now, but most of the kids I’ve given extra attention to have never been diagnosed. These kids have been as bright as their peers; they just have a hard time with language, and I especially love working with them. They are always so grateful for it too, just like I was.

And now it may all come to an end because of one stinkin’ kid and her lies.