Resonating with Branson’s dyslexia
USA TODAY readers respond, weigh in with own stories, challenges
“Dyslexia does not need to be seen as a limitation; it is also a gift.”
Lisa Strouse, mother of 14-year-old Elizabeth, who attends the Jemicy School in Baltimore
Brian Beaumont was a below average student before entering graduate school in the early 1980s. ❚ So Beaumont, now 60, asked his professors if he could tape their lectures to make better use of his 60- to 90-minute commute time in and around Los Angeles. ❚ “I did not realize at the time I was making an accommodation for my dyslexia,” Beaumont says. “I had problems listening and taking notes at the same time. Now, I could sit back and just listen to the lecture. I could focus on the main points the professor was making.” ❚ Beaumont became an A-student and graduated with an MBA from Pepperdine. He ended up working for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as well as Bill Gates’ father, and today he’s executive director at Touch Worldwide, a communications agency
Beaumont was among the more than two dozen people diagnosed with dyslexia who weighed in via email or social media after reading my article last month on Sir Richard Branson, himself dyslexic.
The billionaire businessman, who noted people with dyslexia are “wired differently” and often misunderstood, is the co-founder of Made By Dyslexia, a charity led by successful and famous dyslexics, whose mission is to help change the perceptions people have about dyslexia and create solutions to help dyslexic children in schools.
Companies such as Microsoft, which recently became the first corporation to sign a Made By Dyslexia pledge, is addressing dyslexia through a series of newly updated Microsoft 365 “Learning Tools,” made free to educators. Such tools let students who are dyslexic write with their voice via speech-to-text inside Office web apps, or read aloud math equations through the Microsoft’s Immersive Reader tool.
‘It took a lot of grit’
Beaumont and others who responded to the article commented on how technology helps them cope with the challenges.
“It still took a lot of grit,” Beaumont recalls, “but it would have been impossible without the taped lectures.” For Beaumont, those lectures have given way to podcasts and content on Amazon-owned Audible, the largest seller of narrated books.
The Branson article similarly resonated with reader Kathleen Thayer.
“As a child, growing up dyslexic was painful. I always felt like the dumb kid in class. Everything was a struggle. Teachers made fun of me, as if I wasn’t trying,” she says.
Thayer, who adds she has ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), eventually earned a degree at age 44 in computer programming from Wisconsin’s Nicolet College, helped by getting books on a compact disc in the Word format and having her Mac read chapters out loud.
She also relied on AudioNote, an app that let her record lectures and type notes simultaneously, allowing her to click at the precise location of the lecture/notes to re-listen and study.
“Living in this computer age has been a blessing to me, compared to the lack of resources growing up in the late ’70s, early ’80s,” she says.
No one-size-fits-all approach
Another dyslexic with ADHD who wrote in, retired special education teacher Steven Shipley in Saint George, Utah, also is thankful for tech. Shipley spends his time these days reading on an Amazon Kindle and iPad.
“I increase the font size, pick the best style, double space the lines, and make the margins wider. Any book feels like reading a newspaper. This makes eye tracking easier for those with dyslexia. I love how technology has let me continue to read.”
Nancy Curran who now teaches art at the private Jemicy School in Baltimore for gifted dyslexics or kids with “language-based learning differences,” describes herself as one of the lucky ones, having been diagnosed with dyslexia herself in the eighth grade.
“I was at a top private girls school and did not even know my alphabet. It was groundbreaking for me academically but was still a label that was very misunderstood.”
Curran says there’s no one-size-fitsall classroom solution for dyslexics, “which is so completely different from the traditional school system.”
Kids at Jemicy – the student body ranges from the lowest grades on up through high school age – are taught with iPads and laptops and most every text book is on tape. Some students create flash cards on their phones. Others take advantage of voice-to-text technology.
“Some (students) are auditory learn- ers, some are visual learners, some are kinesthetic learners,” Curran says. She lists a variety of apps and tools commonly used at the school, Texthelp Read&Write, Grammarly, OpenDyslexic Font for Chrome, Spelling City, Explain Everything and Notability, among them.
One recent breakthrough, Curran says, is that “math is being accepted now as a language … where you can pick up on a child who maybe excels with literature or verbal words, but then just crashes with math for no apparent reason. As far as different programs, it seems that new ones are coming out every week.”
Jemicy student Elizabeth Strouse, 14, who loves math herself, describes some of the strategies that have helped her. “When my teacher says read this chapter, I always listen to it.”
Strouse has been taught how to color code her writing assignments on a computer: In preparing an essay, for example, a topic sentence would be coded in green, the supporting sentences in yellow, additional details in blue, and a final conclusion in red.
She also takes comfort in the fact that other classmates are in a similar boat. “Knowing that, you still push yourself, but you don’t have to be that stressed about it to be a certain place. You know that there’s things that can help you and because of those things, it makes it 100 times easier.”
Her goal is to be an engineer or involved in interior design some day.
“Dyslexia does not need to be seen as a limitation; it is also a gift,” says Elizabeth’s mom, Lisa, who contacted USA TODAY after reading the Branson article.
“Some (dyslexics) are more likely to take risks with their business decisions and have success, Richard Branson as an example.” But she adds that, “you’ll find this in every field.”