Susan Barton

My mom listened to the Jan Mickelson WHO Radio show show as promised to hear the interview with the "reading specialist" he was having on.  She eagerly reported back to me that this woman, Susan Barton, sounds like she really knows her stuff!  My mom really wanted me to sign up for the class she was holding the next day.  I vaguely remembered back to another seminar I had once attended about children's behavior.  Ultimately, it turned into a sales pitch, but because I had no other plan at this point, heck, Nick and I signed up for her presentation.

When we arrived at the class I was happy to see no tables full of products for sale.  There was a booth in the back with a sign of the sponsor which was Decoding Dyslexia- Iowa  There were quite a few people in attendance.  As the presentation started Susan introduced herself and stated that we were going to talk about the most prevalent, possibly most under recognized reading disability in our country- dyslexia.  She started with giving a picture of an adult today who grew up with untreated dyslexia.  About five characteristics in Nick leaned over to me and said "I think I might have this."  I gave him a reassuring nod and said "You do."

Susan then said that all people can read up to a point.  Most children can use their memory (not decoding skills) to "read" up until about 3rd grade.  At that point multisyllabic words are introduced and the vocabulary grows so quickly that simply memorizing words as a whole begins to fail.  And then she said this "Children who are identified into special education for reading failure by 1st or 2nd grade have the most profound cases of dyslexia."  And I cried.  In a unknown church with hundreds of strangers around I just started to cry.  She just told Zach's story.  He was in 1st grade and he had been identified for special education just the week prior.  In retrospect I don't know why I cried.  She said at the beginning of the program that she had solutions, but in that moment all I heard was that Zach likely has a profound reading problem.  It all got really, really real.

The next two hours I was completely engaged and engrossed.  Susan told the story of how she went from being a computer programmer to an adult literacy advocate to now a dyslexia expert because of  her nephew Ben.  Ben, like Zach, qualified into special education at a very young age.  What happened to him after that was tragic.  He was put through 8 years of special education, more reading programs than you can count, and his parents spent thousands of dollars at tutoring centers try to help Ben learn to read.  Yet, in high school he was still reading at a 2nd grade level.  This bright, happy child transformed into a young man with no self esteem that had been through the wringer.  His school held an IEP meeting and advised his parents that it was time to face facts.  Some people just are not meant to read.  So, with the few years of schooling he had left they advised getting him into a trade.  Preferably one that did not utilize a lot of reading so that he could earn himself a living after high school.  That news did not sit well with anyone.  His parents were despondent but Susan wasn't going to take this news lying down.  Through a series of adventures and misadventures she ended up volunteering as an adult literacy volunteer and teaching illiterate adults how to read using an Orton Gillingham reading approach.  She took this information back to her family, trained her own mother how to tutor Ben, and after just a few months Ben was reading at a 7th grade reading level.

Susan continued on to show examples of students work that she had seen over the years because kids with dyslexia have a series of highly predictable reading mistakes and often you can see highly predictable mistakes in their writing and spelling, if you know what to look for.  She talked about myths about dyslexia (people see words backwards, only boys have dyslexia, you cannot diagnose dyslexia until at least 3rd grade) and then the facts.

Susan also listed out the warning signs of dyslexia.  She gave about 30 symptoms.  She reiterated several times that if your child has 1 or 2 symptoms that she listed, do not worry, it is likely a normal stage of development.  But if your child has 3 or more of the symptoms she lists you should consider having them tested for dyslexia.  She proceeded to list off the symptoms and Zach had all but a few.  Well, I'm sold.  Whatever you are selling Susan Barton, I'm sold!  But there was no sales pitch...

Did you know that NIH (National Institutes for Health) began studying dyslexia in 1978?  They have multiple research centers throughout the country dedicated to dyslexia.  You might have heard of some of the places before like Yale or John Hopkins or Mayo Clinic.  NIH is the same group that gives us statistics like "heart disease is the number one killer of women in the US" and "colon cancer is the 5th most prevalent cancer in the US."  Things we accept as fact, things we take action on every single day because they have the research to back it up.  The NIH has years and years of research on dyslexia, it's cause, and it's known successful remediation yet the education institution, as a whole, has not taken action with all of this knowledge.

Part of the NIH research includes fMRI scans (functional MRI imaging) where they put children into an MRI machine and ask them to read.  When the non-dyslexics read their scan will light up in 3 different areas of the brain, predominantly on the left.  When the dyslexics read their scan will light up in 2 different areas on the left (1 area very faintly) with a long detour through to the right side which isn't the side of the brain that is most efficient at reading.  If that isn't proof enough (you can literally SEE dyslexia) the real magic is--- after receiving proper remediation through an Orton Gillingham based program the brain of the dyslexic will function (proven by follow up fMRI imaging) more like the brain of the non-dyslexic.  Remediation builds neuro-pathways which in turn improves the dyslexic student's ability to read, write, and spell.

At the end of her presentation she gave a list of different Orton Gillingham programs that could be used to teach a dyslexic student to read.  She gave a list of about seven.  She has made her own system, yes, but I am not exaggerating at all when I say she says "Sure, I like my system, but use ANY of these.  If you can get your child access to ANY of these programs, please do."

Now- here is my disclaimer- this is my blog.  This is not a research paper.  I have spent months researching the above information beyond what Susan Barton said at her seminar.  Everything I have read indicates that it is all accurate.  But I did not cite sources because again, this is my blog.  If you want more information please feel free to investigate.

Some sites I suggest are:

www.interdys.org
www.ddia.net
www.dys-add.com
www.nih.gov
www.mayoclinic.org
www.understood.org

If books are more your style I suggest:

Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz

I left Susan Barton's program full of excitement and hope.  I could not wait to share everything I had learned with the school...