Guest blogger Lisa Campbell is a former NWT Literacy Council staff member. She continues to do contract work with us.
I’ve worked in the education field for over 20 years and specifically in literacy for 15 years. I was certain that my daughter would be reading by the age of five.
I read to Maria on the day that she came home from the hospital and I don’t think there has been a day that either my husband or I have not read to her.
Not only that, I took Maria to every family literacy event available in Yellowknife.
When we moved to Winnipeg, Maria attended one of the best Montessori programs in the city and we continued to take her to preschool programs to enhance her literacy skills. So when my daughter wasn’t reading by the end of kindergarten and seemed to struggle I started to wonder what was wrong.
I asked for a meeting at the school. The teachers and principal said she was doing fine—not to worry. We decided to let it go for a while to see if reading would just “click” one day like the teachers said. And we continued to read to her daily and work with her one on one.
It wasn’t until the beginning of grade two when Maria came home from school and said to us with tears in her eyes, “I am the dumbest kid in the class. I am stupid,” that we realized something was desperately wrong.
We immediately contacted the school and asked for a meeting. Again they reassured us that while Maria was a little behind, she would catch up. We urged them to test her. They flatly refused.
This is when we decided to take matters into our own hands. We went online and started researching reading struggles—again and again the word “dyslexia“ came up. Could she have dyslexia? Everything we read suggested she did.
We contacted KC Dyslexia Centre in Winnipeg. I talked to the executive director, Cheryl Hoffman, and she asked me lots of questions about Maria. Maria ended up having 15 indicators that suggested dyslexia.
We had Maria tested and her reading level was two years behind. She was diagnosed with moderate to severe dyslexia. We were devastated.
How could the school have missed this? How could I have missed this? But in some ways we were relieved as well. Now we could start to actually help Maria.
-- Lisa Campbell
Maria’s story continues next week
