Is THAT what it is called!

I have wondered for years if I actually was Dyslexic, I was not diagnosed until my second year in college when I almost flunked out. I didn't have any of the overt signs, I could read fine, I am excellent in Math, with the exception of Geometry, but with the simple adjustment of reading out loud I was able to excel in College. At age 19 I was referred to the counseling department for my failing grades and the counselor really listened to me and asked the question that would forever change my life "Why do you think you are not scoring well on your tests if you know the material?", I answered "Well, the questions are getting harder to reword so that I understand them." That was all it took...I didn't understand that most people did not reword the test questions to be able to understand them, and she referred me for disability testing. Some minor tweaks in how I was given tests meant the difference in passing and failing. Today I am a Chemist, I am given a sample of a product and asked to duplicate it, and it is unbelievable how good I am at this...now I understand it is a top to bottom Job, I know what my goal is, now I just have to back track how to get there. I am extremely well suited for it. Thank you for your book; it gave me a lot of insight into, well, ME.

Tags: chemistry, college, counseling, dyslexia, dyslexia college, gifted, math, reading, spatial, talent, More…testing, verbal mediation

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Comment by Brittony T. on February 8, 2012 at 6:36am: Click on my name to go to my page, then under my picture are the words "Add as a Friend", click that and we should be good since I have already requested you as a friend.

Comment by Merlin Patterson on February 7, 2012 at 5:43pm: To Brittony T: I thought I had clicked what I need to, in order to "friend" you. But maybe I messed up. Not sure what/where to to get that accomplished...

Comment by Brittony T. on February 6, 2012 at 7:06am: If you accept me as a "friend" we can e-mail. In the mean time, I wish I had a manual to send you for how to teach a dyslexic student, but the term is so broad it is impossible to have a one size fits all manual. All I can really tell you is to talk to the student’s parents or other teachers about helpful things for the student. In my case my teacher got a sort of erector set for me that was specifically made for molecules. I could SEE how the hydrogen molecule only had one space open, I could see how a double bond affected the molecules around it, and in particular lewis electron dot structures where I could SEE how many bonds were capable of forming were the best tools for me in chemistry class. If you get into the R and S molecules the student may have a glitch with clockwise and counterclockwise as well. It was also helpful to understand, and have it told to me about a million times, that the elemental columns on the periodic table have relationships to each other within the columns. Anything you can do to make the different parts of the lesson connect to other parts of the lesson would have been helpful to me, because I remember in story format, and by pictures in my head, but for me I can't create the pictures myself....we are all different, but I can tell you that there are dyslexics out there that can "get" chemistry, you just have to phrase it in a way that they can remember the rules. You will have to go against what you have been told in the past on how to teach. You are told to keep it simple, keep it basic; they don’t need to know everything that will just confuse the student….well for me at least it was confusing NOT knowing the whole story, because I couldn’t put it together to make a complete story so that I could remember it. It was like getting the 1^st, 5^th, 7^th, and 10^th sentence in a story….you can kind of get the jist about what is going on, but you can’t make sense of it because you are missing major gaps.

Comment by Merlin Patterson on February 6, 2012 at 5:15am: I am a high school chemistry teacher. We started the new term with new students two weeks ago. I learned yesterday that one of my students is dyslexic. I would really like to be able to get some immediate suggestions from Brittony T. For example, tomorrow we start the unit on writing correct chemical formulas and naming compounds. We are on a fast schedule - the test is in one week Also the student in question will be absent Wed thru Fri for a hockey tournament. Wish there was a way to email directly .. don't know how to arrange that.

Comment by Brittony T. on September 20, 2011 at 7:10am: I created a blog about my "accommodations" given to me during college :-)

Comment by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide on September 19, 2011 at 8:16am: Thanks so much for posting this, Brittony!

Your post made me think how it important it is to have counselors who recognize dyslexia. What were some of the minor tweaks you were given in tests?

You work as a chemist takes spatial talent. Spatial talents are so under-recognized in K-12 education. It was great that you discovered it. I can't remember if this made the book, but I remember Blake Charlton (medical student and fantasy fiction author) told us that he had gotten into college because of athletics, but was identified as a weak reader before he entered college. He felt as if he was struggling non-stop until he began taking chemistry and then he came out at the top of his class.