Anna Yarborough, social studies teacher, flunked the first grade. The reason: she was diagnosed with Dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disability which can affect reading, arithmetic and language processing because the brain mixes or jumbles up words and numbers.
People diagnosed with Dyslexia usually have difficulties with reading, writing and connecting their motor skills to their individual brain patterns.
“They’ve diagnosed different forms now,” Yarborough said. “There are people who can just switch words around and then there are people who can write an entire paragraph backwards.”
When Yarborough’s mother realized her daughter was not learning and succeeding in the first grade like other kids were, she took her daughter to the Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville (SIUE) campus, where scientists and researchers taught her how to learn with her disability in a normal school environment .
“They used me at SIUE as a test subject to figure out how to re-teach the human brain and re-pattern my brain functioning,” Yarborough said.
The scientists at SIUE led Yarborough through various activities, which were designed to help her connect her motor skills to her brain.
“They would have me look at patterns and then I would trace them, and then retrace them onto another paper that was right next to it,” Yarborough said. “[They had me draw] shapes, boxes, triangles and octagons. They trained my motor skills to my brain.”
After Yarborough learned how she could adapt her reading and writing skills to be more successful in school, she began excelling in school. Activities that had once been very difficult for her were now manageable.
“After I went to SIUE I didn’t really have any more problems because they taught me how to re-teach my brain,” Yarborough said.
Even though Yarborough has learned how to deal with her learning disability, she still has certain difficulties in her daily life. When computers first came out she had to repeatedly practice with the computer’s mouse to fully understand it’s movements.
She also still struggles with reading and writing.
“I’m a slow reader, so it takes me a long time to do things,” Yarborough said. “When I’m tired and I do work at night, I’ll wake up in the morning and my words will be completely mixed around.”
After becoming a teacher, Yarborough said she struggled with teaching at first, but soon found ways to adjust her lessons to better accommodate her disability.
“If I turn my head away from the board I can visualize [the words] I’m writing. I have trouble writing on white boards for some reason, so planning my lessons out ahead of time on PowerPoint is really helpful,” Yarborough said.
Yarborough says she feels more compassion and sympathy towards students who have to deal with Dyslexia or any other learning disability because she understands what they are going through on a daily basis.
Living with a disability has also taught Yarborough lessons about life in general.
“It’s made me realize that things can be overcome,” Yarborough said. “It’s an obstacle and not a handicap.”