“What do letters look like to you? How do you read? Do the letters move?” These are the three most common questions I get after telling people I have dyslexia.
To answer these questions: The letters look normal, I can read and the letters don’t move. Or at least they don’t anymore; this did occur when I was a kid.
After reading “Thank You, Mr. Falker,” a children’s picture book by Patricia Polacco, “Fish in a Tree” by Lynda Hunt and “Percy Jackson” by Rick Riordan, the portrayal of dyslexia is viewed by many as so: words twisting, moving, or spinning around on the page.
However, many people, as I did, only experience this when they are kids. Defined as compensatory neural pathways, people with dyslexia eventually find different ways to read, according to Palo Alto High School Learning Specialist Kindel Launer.
“Some brains are really good at reading and just do it naturally on their own,” Launer said. “Some brains have dyslexia and can’t repurpose that [letters] without very specific phonemic awareness and phonics instruction.”
Because people with dyslexia find alternative ways to read, they often bypass dyslexia screenings and make the diagnosis go undetected. This is how I went through all of elementary and middle school.
I have vivid memories of being in second grade, sitting on my living room couch with my dad reading “Trumpet of the Swan” by E.B. White, stumbling over words and pronouncing them incorrectly. We had this big yellow sheet of paper where I had to write down all the words I didn’t know or didn’t say correctly. The couch sessions occurred at least once a week until the book was finished. Then, we would pick a new book and start all over again.
Eventually, with everyday schooling and weekly book readings, I grasped basic phonics. While I was still considered behind in English literacy and math according to my third and fourth grade teachers, I was proficient enough to not be considered for dyslexia screenings. Still, I remember looking at my first California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress test score in third grade, seeing “below average” under the reading category. I felt stupid and incompetent compared to my peers.
In fifth grade, I was placed in the lowest level spelling group in my class. Additionally, I attended a weekly specialized math class for kids who were falling behind. In sixth grade, during course selection, I would pronounce the word ceramics as “creamix.” In seventh grade, the COVID year, I struggled to write essays without in-person guidance from my teachers. In eighth grade, I spelled the word college as “collage,” making me cry to my dad that I wasn’t going to get into college because I couldn’t spell it right.
However, while it hasn’t always been easy, reading and writing was never something I personally thought I was “bad” at, despite what my third grade standardized test score seemed to say. I would spend my recess sitting on a big couch in my elementary school library reading every copy of the “Olympian Greek God” comic books by George O’Connor. Additionally, I enjoyed writing short stories. I’ve kept a journal since second grade, and whether it be for fun or for school, writing is something I’ve always loved.
According to my dad, my parents had always felt there was something “off” about the way I read. From the early couch sessions, my dad said I constantly passed over punctuation, misjudged the pronunciation of words and read out words that didn’t exist in sentences. In eighth grade, my parents had asked my middle school counselor and teachers if I could be tested for a learning disability. However, since I had straight A’s on my report card and my CAASPP standardized test scores had improved to “above average,” they said there was no need for me to be tested and no possible way I had a learning disability.
Despite this, in freshman year my parents put me through a dyslexia screening unaffiliated with the Palo Alto Unified School District. I went through a series of tests over the course of a month, and by the end of it, I had a result.
I was in the car with my dad, getting picked up from softball practice when he turned over in his seat and ominously said, “They have your results. You have dyslexia.” This was my “Luke, I am your father” moment. I laughed out loud in the car. Maybe I was hysterical, but it truly was funny to me that I had dyslexia. But when I had time to think about it more, the puzzle pieces fit in my head. I realized I no longer had to feel like I was behind in any way because now there was a reason behind my struggles. Even then, this didn’t change how I perceived learning.
Since the moment I discovered I had dyslexia, I knew I had to work even harder. However, it wasn’t some switch in my brain that automatically turned: it was a gradual determination that I was going to need to do better in order to succeed in high school.
I decided to take journalism in my sophomore year so that I could continue my love for writing. Last year, despite my parents warning against it, I enrolled in Advanced Placement United States History, a reading-and-writing-intensive class with 20 to 30 pages of textbook reading every week. Additionally, at the beginning of this year, I joined Foreign Policy Honors, another rigorous reading class.
Despite many difficulties, dyslexia has given me a great gift: creativity. People with dyslexia use different parts of their brain and process information differently, sparking imagination, according to Launer. This is something I feel in my daily life from my hobby of photography, to my sport of softball, to assessing different ways to make a play.
“For all folks who have dyslexia, it’s the ability to put solutions together,” Launer said. “You’re coming to a different conclusion, and it’s the process of coming to a different conclusion that I think is most interesting, especially when we’re talking about folks with just markers for dyslexia.”
Often, I feel like I’m playing catch-up. I take extra minutes to understand an assignment, hours to get over mental blocks and days to complete organizational tasks. For much of my education, I thought this was a me problem. While my mindset around this changed after finding out I have dyslexia, nothing about the fight I put up has. It’s the perseverance that makes it all rewarding.