As a teacher with learning disabilities who had a very difficult relationship with learning as a child, I am constantly exploring new ideas and approaches to ease my anxieties around a learning-disabled teacher. Even at 26, I am extremely self-conscious about my learning disability and how my colleges and the parents of my students will perceive me. I worry that they will think I am not well suited to be a teacher due to the difficulties I face. So, to compensate for this, I spend a lot of time preparing my lessons and activities to try and avoid putting myself in a vulnerable position. One way I try to do this is to be constantly exploring different teaching approaches. In my searches I have found that prepping my slides for each lesson is an easy way for me to avoid writing on the board. This is something that I have noticed many teachers with dyslexia get in the habit of doing. Of course I can’t always avoid it, so I do tend to have a demystification lesson around my learning disability at the beginning of the year in hopes that my students will give me grace when I spell something wrong.
In my research adventures, I found a blog post that boosted my confidence in my unique experience and qualification as a teacher with dyslexia. He refers to himself as the attentive teacher, due to the personal experience and difficulties in school, a point of view that I am trying to adapt.
My dyslexia is a gift to my teaching, it gives me perspective and insight into the realities of my students who might be struggling.
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/gift-of-being-dyslexic-teacher-matthew-friday
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing such a personal post. Your students are incredibly lucky to have a teacher like yourself who proves learning disabilities don't have to hold you back, and in fact they can be a gift. I think it's a great idea to talk things through at the beginning of the year, it's important our students know we're human too, just like them.
Great post,
Jaclyn