Stories of Dyslexia

Click the drop down arrow to read courageous and inspiring stories of FWISD teachers and their families in celebration of Dyslexia Awareness Month.

Isabel Moore, dyslexia teacher - Richard J Wilson Elementary

Some people live life as normal readers. Others struggle hoping that no one will notice them. I spent much of my middle school years hoping no one would ever notice my brother nor did he want to be noticed because his many deficits in reading. I always knew he could get through life because he was a good listener. He had a gift that he could remember just about anything he heard. He learned to compensate as he hid his reading disabilities by being super quiet. Years later when my second child entered school I never notice anything until the end of first grade because she was always so joyful and bubbly. I notice at the end of first grade all that bubbly personality started to deteriorate, and I wanted to know what was going on with this smart young vibrant child of mine. She didn’t want to be noticed, nor did she want to be picked to read ever. I knew this story all too well.

My younger brother who was also very smart, but absolutely refuse to read knew he could not read in the third grade, so it was always easier to volunteer to do anything other than reading or just stay unnoticed. Living in a small 2,600 populated town there weren’t opportunities to get to the root of the problem. My father decided to take measures into his own hands and take my brother to San Antonio to get evaluated. There it was conclude that he was dyslexic and needed a lot of interventions. Dyslexia wasn’t a term we were familiar with in the 70’s. My father made arrangement to make the two hour drive every Saturday for two years with someone who could tutor him and provide additional resources to support him during the week. It became the older siblings’ responsibility to help him navigate his new interventions. Gradually my brother became a reader, but has always lived with the stigma that reading was challenging. That same brother worked for James Avery Jewelers for about 21 years making rings. Recently has spent the last 10 years working on a maintenance crew for Kerrville ISD. He is a proud father of two gifted high school students. He says he spent a lot of his time trying to hide if it required any type of reading in front of others. As siblings we would at times taunt him to read just to give him a hard time. Today, one of his morning routines is to read the newspaper from cover to cover, but of course he does it in his own private time. He can remember almost every word he has read, a far cry from those struggling elementary and middle school years.

Fast forward several years later I had to two daughters and one of them was reading twenty-four words per minute at the end of first grade. Her reading was so laborious it was difficult to sit and listen to her. I knew something was not right and something had to be done. I followed my father’s footsteps and also had her tested by an outside diagnostician. It was concluded that she too was Dyslexic. I knew as an educator that I would have to invest time with her after school as I had many years ago with my brother. Needless to say, school was a challenge, but with the required help she was able to be successful. I remember spending an hour four days a week after January tutoring her for her 3^rd grade TAKS Test, and the end results was that she received commended scores after all that hard work of learning strategies and getting the appropriate accommodations. The Dyslexia Program wasn’t what it has been in the last four years in FWISD. Oh, how I wish she had been able to benefit from this program. We had to find things that she was interested in that made a difference in her life. Since school wasn’t her cup of tea, she spent many years in dance and theater. In high school she spent a couple of years showing goats and cattle. I was so blessed FWISD had these options when she was in high school because it kept her interested in academics. She needed something that would build her confidence, that she could be successful, since school was such a challenge. Today she attends the University of Houston at her own pace, hold a full-time job as a nanny, and is passionate with her milkweed plants and her monarch butterflies. The struggle of being dyslexic is there, but she knows what she can handle without being so hard on herself.

After observing both my younger brother and my daughter I feel like I have had better understanding on to how to help my students. It takes a lot of patience, motivation and perseverance. I believed I lived with the struggles myself, but like my brother and my daughter I did not want to be noticed. I was blessed throughout my education with very patient and kind teachers.

Isabel Moore

Patty Coté - Director of Dyslexia Services

In my career, I have had many students inspire me to push harder and to do more. One of those was a young man named Corder Maples. I met Corder, a bright-eyed, excited Kindergartener, in the fall of 2005. He was a joyful and highly engaged learner who had a talent for creativity in his teacher’s “Beautiful Junk” center. I had the privilege of observing Corder and his class more than most as his teacher often used my office connected to his classroom as an extension of his learning space. As Corder progressed through first grade, I watched as his joyfulness began to fade. His face still lit up during math and science, but reading and writing presented challenges and by second grade, the reading difficulties became more pronounced. Corder's mother, Alisa, did her research and, in her heart, knew Corder had dyslexia. I knew very little at the time about reading disorders and difficulties, but Corder and his mother Alisa set me on a path of knowledge and advocacy for students with dyslexia. Alisa was persistent in her pursuit of identifying the root cause of Corder's reading difficulties, determined to get him the help he needed and deserved. While it was a journey to identification, Corder was identified with dyslexia during his second-grade year and by 2011 he no longer received any accommodations for dyslexia.

I was promoted to principal the very next year, so I was unable to witness Corder’s growth except though his mother’s social media updates. Corder had an incredible third grade teacher with a background in early literacy who made all the difference for him as a reader. Corder continued to excel with the unwavering support of his family and dedicated educators along the way. Corder is now a senior at Texas A&M and serves as a Corps of Cadets leader. Corder and Alisa continue to inspire me to support families and advocate for students with disabilities.

Chantel Marie, Dyslexia Teacher - Western Hills Elementary

My name is Chantel Marie. I struggled all through elementary, middle, and high school, unknowing of the fact that I was dyslexic. I was a C, D, and sometimes even a B student during those years. If I did get an A it was in the arts classes. I would skim through a paragraph of a passage that a teacher was going to ask students to read and before the teacher could call a name, I would shoot my hand up high with eagerness to be a volunteer to read what I stumbled through—just to give you an example of my getting-by strategies. Finally, my senior year of high school I told my parents I was not going to college because I was working so hard and I was still falling behind. We agreed that I should get tested. I found out that fall semester of my senior year that I was dyslexic. I was relieved to finally have an answer but wasn’t sure what exactly being dyslexic meant. I got the extra time and help I needed, and I started getting A’s. The hurdles continued, of course, but I was and am today, confident in my intelligence and nothing, but me, can stand in my way. I finished college and became a certified teacher in the state of Texas. I became a Dyslexia teacher with FWISD—my dream job! I am also a Texas Realtor and a business owner of a business called Eulexiology which is all about changing the dyslexia narrative. True story. Teaching my students today gives me such a purpose and gives my students a success story to inspire them to be great!

Stephanie Smith, Dyslexia Teacher - Cesar Chavez Elementary

Back in the late 1970's to early 1980's, I was diagnosed with Reading and Listening Comprehension, as well as Written and Expressive Language disorder. On top of that, I was received speech services for a few sound corrections and had ADHD. It wasn't until the 1990's I discovered that my reading and comprehension problems resulted from Dyslexia! I remember as a child struggling to read and make sense of what I read. It always seemed that I did not understanding what it was saying to me. It was harder back then because I didn't have any coding lessons like we do today. I used to read very slowly and practiced blending two to three letters together. I also looked for words inside other words once I started to memorize some small words. As an easy way to get by in class, I tried to memorize everything I had to read, but my father made me stop memorizing everything and learn to read. There was a lot of crying, screaming, frustration, and I wanted to give up many times, but my father never let me. It was hard with the ADHD, but I accomplished it because I did not give up! I had my father (who is also dyslexic and ADD) help me train my brain to think of one thing. I remember repeating the same word over and over, what felt like a million times, before my brain started to just think on that one thing. It took years and I was off my ADD medicine when I went to college.

As for writing, that was one thing I hated the most and could not accomplish by the time I graduated high school. In the past, things would make sense to me, but never to others and that frustrated me to no end! In college there were so many papers I had to write. Instead of giving up, I decided to get help and went to free tutoring sessions they had at the library. Finally, I was able to write sentences that made sense for others to understand! To this day, I mostly stick to simple sentence structures due to some insecurity. I am proud I was able to accomplish all of this with some help.

Page updated

Report abuse