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and I would get upset about it and messed up,
and we would do it for an hour,
and it would be really stressful.
Made it obvious to everyone.
Sometimes I wouldn't get any help,
but the others would.
They shut me out.
It was a lot harder.
They didn't explain stuff.
So it was very hard
and not very easy to understand.
I almost always had to get help.
"He's different, be nice.
Treat 'em like a smaller person."
I had a lot of trouble with reading.
It made me feel very sad.
It was just hard
and I didn't understand any of it.
It was just very hard
and it was very frustrating.
The counting and the numbers
and the like adding stuff,
it's really hard for me.
- Dyslexia, it affects one in every five people,
yet few understand what it is.
Many go undiagnosed.
Dyslexia can be a burden that sentences students
to failure in school, feelings of inadequacy,
and frustration in life.
They are unable to learn through common educational methods.
Nearly 20% of our students have dyslexia,
but our public school system has done little
to help these children.
- Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability
that is neurological in origin.
Dyslexia is not always easy to identify in students,
because there are multiple characteristics
that must be investigated thoroughly in order
to make the diagnosis.
- Dyslexia is neurologically based,
so that's all in your brain,
and it's how they process language,
and so these kids can be really good at sports.
They could be really good at music.
They could be really good at art,
but their counterparts,
who aren't dyslexic could also have those same abilities
as well, and those same strengths.
It's when it comes to anything that's language based,
like your reading, your writing, your spelling, your math,
that you start seeing the differences on paper.
- Simply put,
the student has difficulty associating the sound
to the symbol to read words.
It can also be demonstrated in terms of listening to words,
reading words, writing words, and enunciating words,
so there are multiple different platforms
where dyslexia can be exhibited.
In 1877, a German physician
named Adolf Kussmaul diagnosed a condition
he called word blindness.
"Several of his patients could not read properly
and regularly used words in the wrong order."
10 years later,
the German ophthalmologist, Rudolph Berlin,
would rename the condition dyslexia.
In 1896, Dr. William Pringle Morgan published an article
on the condition in "The British Medical Journal".
He noted that, "Percy F, a well grown lad",
aged 14 is the eldest son of intelligent parents,
the second child of a family of seven.
He has always been a bright and intelligent boy,
quick at games, and in no way inferior to others of his age.
His great difficulty has been, and is now,
his inability to learn to read.
This inability is so remarkable and so pronounced
that I have no doubt, " he said, " it is due
to some congenital defect.
He has been in school or under tutors
since he was seven years old,
and the greatest efforts have been made
to teach him to read,
but in spite of this laborious and persistent training,
he can only, with difficulty,
"spell out words of one syllable."
- One of the most early indicators of dyslexia is difficulty
with word identification.
Sometimes dyslexic memorize words,
but they actually don't know the sound
that goes to the symbol to read the words,
so there's confusion with letters,
so that's why they need a very strong,
phonetically-based program to learn how to read.
- Well, let's say for example they're reading a story.
If the teacher was gonna assign a paragraph to each child,
you knew the order they were going,
and then you could count ahead,
and that's what I would do is I would say,
"Okay, they're over here."
There's 11 more kids before it gets to me,
so I'm gonna go down 11 paragraphs, and I'm gonna read it,
read it, read it, so that by the time it gets to me,
I'm not hopefully gonna stumble over the words
"or mispronounce them, because I can't read them."
And so I think that's what a lot of kids do.
They find coping strategies, they can mask it,
and if a teacher does call on a student,
they'll do whatever they have to do to not have to read,
and a lot of times they'll start complaining
of stomach aches, headaches.
They may do something that gets them in trouble,
because at least it got them out of the room.
They would much rather be considered the bad kid
than be embarrassed.
- The phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
There are 44 phonemes in our English language.
For example, the word cat has three phonemes, k, a, t,
so those are the three sounds that collapse together
to identify and read the word cat,
or to say the word cat, or to write the word cat,
so perhaps a dyslexic student would have difficulty knowing
the sound that is actually associated with the letter
to be able to read the word.
That's decoding.
Encoding is the orthographic, the writing of the word,
'cause some students actually can read the word,
but they don't know the sound symbol to write the word.
- Pringle asked the child to write the following words:
song, subject, without, English, Shilling,
and seashore.
What the child wrote?
Scone, sccojock, wichout, Englis, Sening, seasow.
The child could not even read aloud one
of the sentences he wrote only moments earlier,
nor could he read a single word other
than the simplest words in a children's book,
but the child had no difficulty reading numbers,
and claimed he was, "fond of arithmetic,
and finds no difficulty with it,
but that printed or written words have no meaning to him."
Pringle also noted that the child's school master claimed,
"He would be the smartest lad in the school
if the instruction were entirely oral."
- It's a hidden disability,
and I always hate to say disability,
because really dyslexia is a whole set of abilities
that non dyslexics don't have,
and what people need to realize is these children are
very, very bright.
They're average to above average intelligence.
They need to learn the structure of our language,
and they need to know why you use ay in a particular part
of a word, and why you use ai
in a different part of the word,
instead of being given 20 words to memorize
that have ai, ay,
but they were never told why one is used here,
and why one is used there.
- Often dyslexics have very strong visual spatial abilities
and skills.
They're great inventors and so perhaps the dyslexic student
in your classroom will become the next NASA scientist,
but he needs to be able to read the manual.
- Dyslexia was identified over a century ago.
Research shows there is a proven method
to effectively teach children with the condition,
but schools across the nation seem reluctant
to even use the term dyslexia
when talking about learning disabilities.
This leaves millions of children struggling
while teachers are ill-equipped to help them,
and in many cases,
schools refused to acknowledge the problem.
- I started teaching in 1976.
We had a better understanding in the public schools
to me then in 1970s and the 1980s than we do now.
I think the whole language approach has probably
contaminated, in some way, a child's ability
to learn, because you can provide a child
with multiple books and multiple pictures,
and they still can't take the words apart.
They still can't decode words.
They can't write words,
so I think it's a flawed plan for education
that has taken hold in many quadrants.
There is a significant research practice gap in America
that we have significant longitudinal studies
that demonstrate clearly, effectively
that multisensory instruction is the way
to teach all children.
We are not following that.
I've worked with teachers who say,
"But my philosophy is different,"
and I've shown them the research,
and I say, "Your philosophy may be different,
but we have have proven evidence here that this is the way
to go for a student."
- Some parents believe it's an intentional decision
to circumvent a federal law,
which requires schools to provide special services
for students with disabilities.
The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act
named dyslexia specifically as one such disability.
- When you talk about 20% of your students that suffer
from this, and the resources that it takes to address it,
it comes down to dollars and cents.
You know, in South Carolina, like most other states,
we're not like the federal government.
We don't print money every day, and we don't run a deficit.
We have to work within a budget every year,
and that budget that we have is a pie,
and there are,
in addition to children with dyslexia
and the education component,
there are a lot of other needs in this state.
- I think the public school system is set up
to educate the majority of children
who don't necessarily have challenges with reading,
or with writing, or with math.
What we're saying today is there's a large minority
of children who are not gonna be successful
in that education system,
and we, as a society, need to think about how
to address that.
- Debbie and Bo have two highly intelligent,
dyslexic children.
Traditional public school system offered no help,
leaving their parents frustrated.
They're not alone.
Families across the United States can echo their story.
- Helen has always been very precocious.
Her vocabulary, even at the age of three, was incredible,
and her recall of details is amazing to me still,
and she loves to soak in information,
and she also is very hyper-focused on things.
They have little sight words and sight word note cards,
flashcards that they have to learn in kindergarten,
and she wouldn't recognize A,
and we knew that that was not right.
It didn't match with her brightness,
and her ability to carry on a conversation,
and her ability to understand and comprehend things.
- I always just thought that was something natural
and she would eventually kind of grew out of that,
and she never did, and she kept just getting pushed on
to the next grade and her teachers would say,
"Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned,
but no need to do anything,
just keep moving forward."
- "It's developmentally appropriate."
That's what we heard a lot,
and she's left-handed, so we heard
that, "It's challenge sometimes for left-handed children.
She'll catch up."
These days children get homework in kindergarten,
so in kindergarten our five-year-old daughter was spending
an hour trying to read a page of sight words,
and there was screaming and anxiety and anger and tears,
and that was heart-wrenching and frustrating,
and looking back on it, then I thought,
"Well, this is homework."
We're supposed to be doing this with our child.
This will help her.
This will help her get over
"whatever hurdles she's having with learning,"
and it was hard, very difficult.
- It got to the point where she would start getting upset
just coming home, because she knew she was gonna have
to try to do that work,
and all day long she was just focused
on just pretending like, she was just focused on getting by.
She was just focused on pretending like she knew
what was going on,
and she was kind of doing the best she could,
and when she got home she just couldn't pretend anymore,
and we didn't know how to help her,
and it really was impacting our entire family.
It wasn't just Helen's issue.
It was a family issue.
- By the fourth grade, this had manifested in such anxiety
that her shoulders and her whole posture was just down
like this so that no one would see her doing math
or doing her ELA work in school.
- So if you can imagine,
a child in fourth grade struggling with reading,
it's gonna be very apparent,
when a child can't read the instructions at the top
of a paper, or can't read through a reading assignment
before everyone else.
The other kids in the in the class are gonna pick up
on that and notice.
Helen almost has a sense of shame about school
or anything.
She doesn't wanna show you the art she does.
She doesn't wanna show you what she's built on the computer,
and I think it comes from that feeling
like she couldn't do a good job,
or she was always being criticized,
kind of an outcast just 'cause of the way she learns.
- But that has been completely formative for her.
This is now her outlook on school, and I regret that.
I regret that it has become that way for her now,
and I don't know if that anxiety about school will
ever lessen for her.
- Dyslexic students can work into symptoms of depression,
anxiety, low self-esteem, and low self-worth,
and if the child can't navigate the school environment,
then how can they feel good about themself?
So they're robbed of life opportunities,
because we don't provide right instructional methodology.
- I realized something was wrong in the first grade.
I spoke to his teacher and just noticed that some
of the things that were simple with my oldest son,
like reading the sentences were more of a challenge.
He's a bright child and the teacher loved him.
She just really felt like everything was okay.
She reassured me that there was not a problem,
that some kids just struggle a little bit with reading
and not to be concerned.
Second grade was almost exactly the same.
I would talk to the teacher, she would say,
"Andrew's a lovely student.
He's a bright child.
I don't think you have anything to be worried about."
In first and second grade,
the students would have sentences that they would practice
during the week, and at the end of the week,
they read 'em to the teacher, and my friends would tell me
that their kids like read 'em one time,
and they had 'em, and we would practice all week long,
and it was such a struggle,
but Andrew would wanna practice,
'cause he wanted to get 'em nailed down,
and I can think of how many times that,
at the end of the week,
he would be reading the sentence to me and,
say the word would be probably,
and he would say something like might,
so kind of means the same thing,
but doesn't look at all the same,
and I realized that moment that he really couldn't read it,
but he was working so hard to memorize it,
so in his mind that's the association that he had made,
and to just see that drive in him,
that he was working and probably putting so much more effort
towards those sentences than anyone in his class,
but still falling short and feeling like he couldn't do it,
that's just, it's a difficult thing for those kids,
the way that it affects his confidence was really,
really heartbreaking.
I went online and purchased this online test for dyslexia,
not at all formal, and the report was just startling
that he had just,
I guess failed with flying colors as far as dyslexia,
and that's really where the journey began.
I then, put it in writing that I wanted the school
to test him and, at the time,
the school would not accept dyslexia as a diagnosis,
so they tested him, gave me those results.
They didn't call it dyslexic,
but they said if you were to take these test results
to a private institution,
and pay someone to interpret these results,
they would tell you that this is dyslexia.
They said, "We love having you here.
We love having your family at the school,
but this is my child, I would take him somewhere else."
- We have two daughters, Emma and Allie.
There's a four years difference between them.
- In elementary school, at the end of the year program,
Emma would always get the top in class
in math, language arts.
Several years she got every single award.
I mean, so she was always at the top of her class,
and Allie was at the bottom,
so there was a big difference.
When you would go in Allie's school
and see all the kids' paperwork on the wall,
it was obvious.
Allie was nowhere near the rest of her class.
They could write complete, short sentences,
paragraphs, and Allie could not.
We was thinking maybe autism,
like there was that much difference between Allie
and the rest of the classmates on the schoolwork.
- She would write according to sound.
I never understood, when she was in first and second grade,
like the word of, I'll never forget it.
It's O-F.
It should not be that hard to remember O-F is of,
but she always spelled O-V,
because she spelled phonetically.
I know she felt dumb.
She felt like she couldn't do it,
heavily intimidated.
I remember in third grade she coming home
with her first science project,
and to study for science and words like experiment
and hypothesis.
Her fight and flight syndrome was crazy.
Once she even seen a word that she had never seen before,
her mind was shut down,
because she knew that she was not capable then
of being able to understand the words,
much less do the work.
- Making Allie do homework was a nightmare.
It was a fight every night, was it not?
- Yeah, and it was useless to us as a parent,
and I hate to say that about education,
'cause she wasn't being taught how she needed to learn,
so it wasn't gonna stick,
so it wasn't doing any good at the time.
- We had this idea what homeschool was gonna be,
and I actually built a homeschool desk in our basement,
and it was four separate little stalls,
one big desk with four separate areas
and we bought four separate stools, one for each children,
and we had this picture that our kids were going
to quietly sit next to each other for the entire day
and work all their work and get up early
and get it all knocked out so they could go outside
and play, and then when we got Lucas and Penny,
when they started school,
you literally had to have four separate rooms,
and if we could have had them soundproofed
so that the other kids,
because they began to distract even the older kids
from doing work.
Margaret couldn't work,
couldn't leave Lucas to do some work
or leave Penny to do some work
and then work with the older kids,
so they really were not neglected,
but they didn't get the help that they needed,
so they were kind of left to do things on their own.
- Probably about first or second grade,
I realized something's not quite right,
and I realized that I could not do what I wanted
to do with him.
I would become really frustrated with him,
because I thought this is,
"You're just not trying hard enough,
or, "You're just being disobedient."
It was like we felt like we failed him,
like, "I just messed him up.
Well what's gonna happen to him?
Where's he gonna be when he is 15 or 16?
Is gonna be able to read?"
And I started to read books and blogs,
and everything says something different,
and we just were kind of at our wit's end.
I didn't know what we were gonna do.
- He asked us one day Lucas said,
"Am I gonna have to go to college?
I don't wanna go to college."
And we said, "No, you don't have to go to college
if you don't wanna go to college."
After we said that, he said,
"Do I have to go to high school?
And we said, "Yeah, you have to go to high school."
What does high school have for this kid?
Is he gonna be the kid that never does well in school,
and so he's marginalized,
but he's quiet and obedient and a good kid,
so he's gonna get put in the back of the class,
and he won't cause any problems
for the school, so they won't spend any time with him.
That was the fear for us.
- Students who have dyslexia,
who have not been identified
and received correct instructional methodology,
often don't finish high school or finish high school
with less opportunities for college.
We do have good colleges in America
that have learning centers at the college
that provide additional assistance
for the dyslexic student,
but even getting to that point,
if you don't have right instructional methodology,
the odds are not very good.
- He's gonna be successful eventually in life
if we manage not to screw that up in the first 18 years.
We both have background in education,
so we'd seen what happens to kids when they are labeled,
but if you've got a school of 1,000 kids, or 500,
or 700 kids and you have a just a handful
that have special needs,
it's difficult to get them the services that they need.
- When she had meet the teacher for first grade,
I immediately said,
"I am very concerned about Helen's reading abilities.
They don't match her speaking ability,
and I am worried that she might have a learning disorder."
And she said, "Oh, she's left-handed,
developmentally appropriate."
And even throughout first grade,
when Helen was in first grade,
that just continued to be the conversation,
and we had her tested formally,
it came back with a diagnosis of dysgraphia
and low reading fluency,
which all falls under the umbrella of dyslexia,
and no one really did anything.
We said we'd like an IEP or a 504, and everyone said,
"Well she's performing on grade level,
so we just don't really think that anything is necessary
at this time."
And it wasn't until her anxiety got to the point
where she was having panic attacks in school
that they've finally said,
"Oh let's look at a 504 plan,
and give her some accommodations."
- I said, "Brian, something's just not adding up."
And I sat with her for two weeks,
did her homework, and then Brian sat down with her
for two weeks and did homework with her,
and we come to the conclusion
that yeah, something's not adding up.
So we went to her teacher,
and her teacher said she would keep an eye on things.
Within the second phase of the nine weeks,
I went back to the teacher, because she had not contacted us
and said, "Hey, do you see any red flags with Allie?
Something's missing,
something's not connecting."
And she saw no red flags at all, which was heartbreaking,
but we were actually told from the school psychologist there
that maybe Allie had issues with words,
because mom had such a dialect.
- Southern dialect.
- A Southern dialect and maybe that was the whole reason.
I mean this was severe,
and to be told things like that, it was a constant thing.
We were told myths that only rich people have dyslexia,
that and the dialect thing is probably the two things
that infuriated me the absolute most.
- A southern accent is not the issue.
The issue is does the child know the sound symbol
association to read words, to take words apart,
to write words, to listen to words, to understand words.
It is not an accent issue.
- We were forced to take our child out
of the public school system to go
for testing somewhere else,
and we were fortunate enough that we had to pay for that,
but the school wasn't there to help us.
It was right before Christmas break and I got the paperwork.
I took the paperwork from the outside source
that we went to,
who is a doctor, who can diagnose dyslexia.
I took it to the school,
and it sat there at the school for about three weeks,
and I went to the principal and I said, "What's up?
What are we gonna do about my kid?"
And she says, "Well is there a problem?"
- We couldn't get to school to even read it.
So we had a doctor's orders that clearly diagnosed it.
So they said, "Well the school counselor",
"he has to do his evaluation."
He wouldn't even read it.
And he said, "I see nothing wrong with Allie.
This is not debilitating.
She can still function with the rest of her class."
I asked her teachers, I said,
"How many of Allie's papers do you have to read
and try to figure out what the heck it says?"
She said, "A hundred percent."
And then I asked her, I said,
"Are you holding that against Allie?"
She said, "No, because we know there's something wrong."
So I asked each teacher same question.
And then I looked at him and I said,
"How can you say that this is not affecting Allie's grades?"
- The problem with accessing services is you may access
services that are not appropriate for your child.
Does the resource teacher have an understanding of dyslexia?
Have they been trained in multi-sensory instruction?
Those are key issues that also need to be asked.
- What I always saw when I would go into classrooms
in traditional schools is that if it's day 63,
you had to have this number of word wall words
on your wall.
You had to be on this certain page.
You had to be doing this certain thing,
and so therefore there's no more individualizing instruction
for the students who are struggling.
And then oftentimes schools put the kids
in a resource room or RTI,
but they're using methods that are proven not to work
for the child with dyslexia.
- They are going out of the classroom
for a specialized program,
and then when they go out of the classroom
for a specialized program,
they're missing something else in the classroom.
It creates even more anxiety,
so what was meant to help the child,
and get them on track,
or close gaps is actually creating gaps in other areas
of their learning and their social emotional development.
They get singled out in class, they leave, they come back,
they've missed, maybe the class is in the middle
of something totally different than when they left.
They don't know what's going on.
They have to be caught up,
and they're expected to move at the same pace.
Even with the accommodations,
it's hard for a child to do that.
It's even hard for an adult to do that,
much less a child that with a difficulty in learning
and understanding language.
- Dyslexia is something that we all need to recognize
as an issue today.
I personally have dyslexia,
and I didn't know it until the last eight or 10 years,
but I started looking through some stuff
that my parents had accumulated over that time,
and I'm 62 years old now,
and there was information about dyslexia back then
that my mother had accumulated and I didn't know it.
She really didn't talk to me about it.
I don't think we publicly talked about it,
but she looked at a school in Chicago.
She looked at one out in Arizona,
and I didn't know this till I went through the paperwork,
and saw these schools that she was actually researching.
- We were doing homework one afternoon after school,
and one of the things was just free reading.
You just read something,
and so Andrew was reading these books
that I always thought he really enjoyed,
and he read to me and I said,
"You did a great job today,"
and I could tell that he was just really down,
and I said, "Andrew, I'm praising you.
I thought you read that really well."
And he said,
"I don't think that's what I'm supposed to be reading."
And then when I talked to him a little more,
and had him elaborate,
he shared with me that that's not
what other children his age were reading,
and he said that his friend, Cannon,
who's one of his best friends reads Magic Treehouse books,
and that's a series
that I think most people are pretty well familiar with,
and they're early chapter books and he said,
"Mom, I would love to read a Magic Treehouse book,
but I don't know how."
And just as a parent I'm trying to hold it together,
and reassure him that everything's gonna be okay.
And then he looked at me and he said,
"Mom, why can't I read Magic Treehouse books?"
And I know that we all face different challenges,
but that was a very tough moment for us,
because I honestly, this was all new,
and I wasn't sure
why he couldn't read the Magic Treehouse book,
and we just felt dedicated, kind of rededicated
that day that one way
or another we were gonna give him the skills
to be able to do it.
- Hundreds of families who sought help
for their dyslexic children were told repeatedly
that there was nothing wrong,
or that their student's progress was appropriate
for their age level.
Even when teachers did acknowledge a problem,
they put those children in special ed classes that failed
to address the issue or told parents to seek help elsewhere.
The only help the Collins family could find
in Indiana was a tutor in her last year before retirement.
School systems were ignoring and failing these students,
so a group of women from South Carolina decided
to do something about it.
- Reform in public education moves at a glacial pace.
We have private schools throughout this state
that do a great job,
but they are very expensive to put instruction for children
who are severely affected by dyslexia
into an affordable range,
you have to do it through the public sector,
and we had a group of very dedicated retired educators
that saw the need to have a public charter school,
and came up with the idea that they wanted
to create one that would be specifically
for students with dyslexia.
- A group of parents in our community were meeting,
because they had children with dyslexia
and the schools weren't meeting the need of their children.
It seemed like the answer was to homeschool,
find an Orton-Gillingham tutor, or send your child
to an expensive private school.
We needed a better answer than that.
- Nancy Linvill and I had the idea
that surely it would really be nice
to have a school for children with dyslexia,
so I was with her one day,
and we talked about a charter school and I said,
"I just wonder what if we google charter school
in South Carolina,
I wonder what would pop up",
and up popped the information
from the South Carolina Charter School Alliance,
so I had the keyboard,
and I put her name in and she began to receive information
about how to start a charter school in South Carolina,
and that's sort of how it was born.
And then we were tasked with finding other people
to help us.
- I was happily retired, living on the lake,
gonna enjoy life.
Nancy Linvill, who's been a friend of mine for a long time,
took me to lunch, and told me about a great idea.
She had to start a charter school, and I congratulated her
on her wonderful idea, and said I have wanted nothing to do
with it, that I had left it all on the floor
in my last school.
I was done, and she's a very determined lady,
so two more times she asked me,
and the last time she asked me, I said, "Why not?
Sounds like a good idea."
Just sort of to have her quit asking me.
And then also I'd been thinking about it and I thought,
"Things haven't happened in 40 years."
These children are still doing it the same way
that they were doing it 40 years ago.
It hasn't worked,
so maybe, just maybe we could do something
"that would make a difference."
We knew a lot about dyslexia.
We knew a lot about how dyslexic children needed to learn.
We knew very little about
how you even would put a school together.
- We chose to become a charter school because
that would be a way to be a free and public school
for dyslexics,
and remember there are schools out there,
but they're super expensive,
so we chose the charter avenue because it would be free,
and more youngsters could get the help that they needed.
- We learned very quickly
that we couldn't make it disability specific
under the current law,
so we had to amend the public charter school law,
so that we could then have disability specific schools,
because under the former law you had to admit anyone
to that school that had a disability,
so we were able to change the language,
make it disability specific,
and that was the key to the success.
Well he introduced it.
It never even went to committee.
It was passed and became law in three months,
so that was a miracle that allowed us to be mission specific
for children with dyslexia.
- Then it was time to figure out,
now how do you navigate the process of getting a charter,
and that's complicated.
You need a sponsor and we determined that the best sponsor
for us would be the Charter School District
of South Carolina,
and they have an application process
that's pretty rigorous,
so we got to work, and we worked, and we worked,
and we worked.
- We had to create and write a lot,
and we had to be ready to win or be awarded the P&I grant.
- Took about three years to write the application.
We did inordinate amounts of research.
Sometimes I felt like I should get a PhD at the end of it,
because it was just that detailed.
We knew of some schools
that were teaching dyslexic children very well,
so we started traveling and visiting schools
that were doing what we wanted to do to see how they did it.
We quizzed them on how they got started.
We also learned what they wished they had done differently,
which was huge for us because it kept us
from making some mistakes we would've made.
- It was a ton of work.
It was constant work,
and there were bumps in the road along the way.
We just had to be very tenacious.
We had to support one another.
We would come together,
and we would not always see things the same way,
but we did see that we all had different gifts
that we could bring.
Some of us were stronger with connections in the community
who could get behind others
who would be supportive financially
and just be supportive with their encouragement,
that kind of thing.
- We were one of the finalists to get a charter,
and we had to go to what's called a capacity hearing.
That was one of the most difficult parts.
- We were just asked questions about,
not so much about what we thought we would even be asked,
maybe they didn't even know as much
as we thought they would know.
We couldn't even see the people
who were asking the questions.
It was all this technology, and there was a little camera,
and we couldn't even see the person,
so that was very strange.
- There was a lady that we could not see.
She had a little cylinder that came out from the wall,
and whenever you talked the cylinder would point at you,
and you talked, and she was someplace maybe in Pennsylvania,
probably sitting in her pajamas in her living room listening
to us.
Then there was somebody also in Louisiana who was listening,
and they would ask us all kinds of difficult questions.
The capacity hearing lasted for one or two hours,
and then we waited for the results,
and we got a notice back and they said,
"We do not feel that you have capacity to start a school.
We are not going to recommend you to get a charter
for your school."
We were absolutely devastated.
We thought we have worked so hard and now we're not going
to get our school,
so we decided we will do the best job that we can
at the hearing.
We had people who came to testify,
and they had three minutes.
They could say nice things for us,
so we gave our presentation and, at the end,
they said, "Yes, you get your charter."
They voted that day that we could have our charter,
so then people said,
"Well you should be happy that you got your charter,
but you have more work than you can imagine still left
to do."
And that was true.
- We were very busy making talks everywhere,
and putting up signs, making the public aware
of what we were offering,
reaching out, and we would have little meetings
in the libraries and present and tell what dyslexia was,
that these are bright and capable kids who have gifts
and talents and they're just not getting what they need
in order to open those gifts,
so we were actually educating the public as we went along,
and we were trying to reach the people who maybe didn't
even know that they had a dyslexic in their house.
- I was having lunch in Easley, and I bumped into one
of the board members for Lakes and Bridge's wife,
and we knew each other from church way back when we were
in college, and I was sharing with her
about Andrew's struggles at school,
and she told me that her two sons were dyslexic.
And I said, "Really, 'cause I've asked the teacher,
and they tell me this is not dyslexia."
And as we got talking, the stories we were sharing,
they were sounding so much alike,
and we began to follow Lakes and Bridges,
and read about their progress and just know that
that was gonna be where we were supposed to end up,
and we homeschooled until we could get in there.
- I just started googling.
I would spend every afternoon
of Allie's third grade year crying,
figuring out how can I help my kid?
We had one more Orton-Gillingham trained tutor in the area,
one, and she agreed to take Allie on
with the fact that I had to understand
that she had one more year before retirement.
- Finally, when we knew that we was coming back
to South Carolina, to Lakes and Bridges,
I think the last six months I just did the homework,
because it was easier on everybody.
- So we saw Lakes and Bridges, the ad, and I said to John,
I said, "Should we apply?"
And at this point we'd already had Lucas tested.
So Jonathan said, "Let's apply,
We can say no if he gets in if it's not gonna work,
but let's just apply."
So we applied and I think that was in December,
and in February we got an email that he was accepted.
It was a Friday.
I still remember getting the email,
and I sat down at the kitchen table
and cried because I felt like someone was going to help him,
and it's still kind of, I didn't expect,
I'm sorry to do this,
but it was very emotional knowing that,
"Oh, someone's going to help him."
I didn't know Heidi,
I didn't know these teachers.
We just thought this is what's going to work out.
God has really worked this out.
We got in and,
- We're not alone.
Yeah, I think that's it.
- We don't have to do that by ourselves.
- We felt like we realized that there were other parents
who are in the same situation we're in,
and now someone basically has come, and is going to help us.
- Lakes and Bridges had its charter,
one of the first four charter schools in the United States
specifically designed for children with dyslexia.
That grabbed the attention of parents who were desperate
to get their kids the education they deserved;
however, the hard work was about to begin.
- There was more work than you can imagine.
We had to create the school.
The most difficult part,
and I was told this at the very first meeting,
is the facility or the building.
You have to find a facility.
This is extremely difficult because you have no money.
- I mean parents had been in touch.
They had their kids ready to sign up.
We had people.
We had our teachers, wonderful people,
who were geared up and trained,
but we had to have a place.
We would run into something that we were enamored with
and then we would hit a brick wall,
because it just didn't work out with the things that had
to be.
Even the Pickens County schools were actually trying
to find us places that were open or that could be used,
and we were led to a beautiful little school
in a wonderful facility that was much like schools way back
when I was a girl and went to school,
and so it was easy to fall in love
and feel comfortable there,
and in my mind that's just where we were going to be.
- State officials would ultimately rule that the facility
in question could not be adapted to the needs
of a modern school and rejected the location.
Lakes and Bridges found another, an abandoned church
that had once been a car dealership.
They leased it ahead of the 2018/19 school year,
and hired a faculty,
but there was still one big problem to overcome
that threatened to derail the entire project.
- We had a building we could not get through all the process
with the bureaucracy to get the approval to move in.
We couldn't tell people that we couldn't move in.
We couldn't tell people,
"We don't know if we will be able to start next year."
It was an awful experience.
It was the low point.
- If we could have just come in as hard workers
and started doing things,
and getting it ready the way we thought we could get
it ready, we could have opened in the fall,
but we were not the ones who could do that.
- That was devastating,
and we couldn't tell people,
and because we just had to put our smiling faces on and say,
"Oh everything's going great."
- Oh I was so frustrated about that.
- All their efforts seemed doomed to fail,
but Lakes and Bridges found an improbable solution
from an unlikely source,
the traditional public school system,
the very institution that had refused
to acknowledge a diagnosis of dyslexia
and it resisted parents' efforts to get proper education
for their children, was now partnering
with a charter school designed to teach those students.
- We went to Dr. Danny Merck,
the superintendent of schools for Pickens County,
and he said,
"Not only will I allow you to be in one of our buildings,
it will be only four miles from the facility
that you were going to have."
So Dr. Merck saved us.
He said, "I would not have done this"
for any other charter school,
but this school is teaching children
that we are not serving well,
and we know that you will teach them,
and then they will come back to us,
"and be able to graduate from high school."
- He blessed our coming into the school and welcomed us,
and that was a very warm and moving time
to see that people did believe,
and we're aware of the problem and were willing
to step out and offer a spot for us.
- That was not a very popular decision statewide,
because most school districts have looked
at public charter schools as competition.
Superintendent Danny Merck and his board,
my hat's off to them for being so helpful and agreeable
in accommodating Lakes and Bridges,
and I think that they have seen,
and have shown to other school districts around the state
that partnerships like this can be effective.
- My reaction was I was incredibly relieved
because we had a home.
The teachers, and the staff,
and the parents were probably disappointed,
because they didn't know there was a chance we didn't have
a home and they weren't exactly pleased
with the home where they were landing.
- While Lakes and Bridges searched for a home,
they also needed to find a principal.
Heidi Bishop was nearby at Camperdown Academy,
a private school
that employed an Orton-Gillingham based curriculum.
- The whole board was involved in the decision
to hire Heidi Bishop.
We wanted somebody that was mission specific.
If we had gone outside, say and had somebody
who had had public school administration,
it could have been the same old, same old.
- One thing that I had always wanted to do was
to be a part of something so much bigger than myself,
and one thing my husband and I always said was,
"One day if we ever hit the lottery,
we're gonna start a school,
and we're not gonna charge tuition,
"because we'll be able to cover it."
I have spent 32 years in private school,
and schools whose tuition are anywhere
from $22,000 a year to $65,000 a year,
and so I know,
and I'm very aware there is a teeny tiny population
of people that can afford an education like that.
I also know that at least 90 to 95%
of the population will never even be able
to sacrifice enough to get to a school like that,
and these kids deserve the same education
as any other child.
Yes, this has been stressful,
but I wouldn't trade it for anything,
'cause when I look at some of the students
in the school that I know had no means
to do anything else, that makes my day every day,
when I see them and see how they're thriving
and realizing that they deserve the same rights
to that same kind of education as the child
whose parents could just write a check for $22,000,
and it would probably be equivalent of most
of us writing a check for a couple hundred dollars.
- Now that they had a principal,
Lakes and Bridges needed a curriculum
that would give dyslexic children the tools to succeed
when they reentered the public school system
as high school students.
They used multisensory courses based
on the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching.
- By definition,
to be dyslexic means you have average
or above average intelligence,
and you can understand why a really bright student
would be especially frustrated that they can't do
what everybody else in the room is easily doing.
That's really frustrating for them.
One of the interesting type students is the one
with an extremely high IQ,
because when they get the kind of testing
for learning disability,
they're still gonna be above average in reading,
but compared to their intelligence,
there's still a huge gap with where they are compared
to where they would be expected to be
if they didn't have dyslexia,
and I think that those kids are often missed,
because they're coasting through,
but they're not available for special courses
that they could be taking for gifted and talent
and things like that,
because they're not above average.
There are three components to Orton-Gillingham.
First of all, it's understanding the dyslexic student.
Second, it's that multi-sensory teaching,
and then third, it's structured phonics,
and the multi-sensory is really essential
for the dyslexic student,
because they need to feel the letter
while they're seeing the letter, and hearing the letter.
If I would show you the letter M,
you would trace the letter M, and you would say "m"
at the same time, so there's the visual,
the auditory, and the kinesthetic that is a component
of every part of a lesson that the students receive.
There's no assumption that there are words
that you're just gonna memorize.
Everything has to be taught using logic and concepts
that the student can hold onto.
You don't put this child in the position of having
to guess anything.
Everything that you ask that child to read,
you've already exposed him to the letters, and the sounds,
and they're never frustrated.
The teacher sets a pace that works for the child,
so you don't just say,
"By next Thursday we're gonna be through 27 letters
of the alphabet."
You wait until you're sure
that the child has mastered the concept before you move on.
Every Orton-Gillingham tutor knows
that you can go as quickly as possible,
but as slowly as necessary
when you're teaching a child.
There's a lot of training that teachers need to have
in order to be able to teach that way.
- So at Lakes and Bridges curriculum is designed
specifically for children with dyslexia,
so it's meeting them at their needs,
and we're moving forward at their pace
versus a traditional curriculum is standards based
and usually based on a pacing guide, so by day whatever,
you have to be on this page,
and so while our curriculum ultimately meets the standards,
it's not driven by the standards.
So a specific example would be, we use Math-U-See,
and so it's Greek letters, so there's an Alpha, Beta, Gamma,
Delta, Epsilon.
Our Math-U-See curriculum is not designed by grade,
so Alpha doesn't represent first grade.
Beta doesn't represent second grade,
but by the time they complete Epsilon,
then they have met all the standards
for first through fifth grade.
We give them a whole series of assessments that focus
on reading, writing, spelling, comprehension, decoding,
phonological awareness,
and then we look at where the clusters are,
and then we group them into their small groups based
on where the students placed on the Math-U-See,
or where their strengths or weaknesses are
in the other areas of reading and writing and spelling,
and so you might have, for example,
first, second grade class.
We have them do direct math at the same time,
and we have them do small group OG instruction
at the same time,
so you may have a group that's comprised of first
and second graders,
and another group that's also comprised of first
and second graders,
and this group might be an Alpha at the beginning,
but another group of first
and second graders might be further along in Alpha,
or you may even have another group that's in Beta,
so we place them based on where their strengths
and weaknesses are with it.
We also use Orton-Gillingham combined with SPIRE
for our ELA reading component,
and so we bring in interventionist so we can get
even smaller groups.
So like for example, that first second grade group,
they do the ELA reading together,
and we call it PIE, Personalized Instruction and Enrichment,
and so instead of four teachers like direct math,
now we have seven that come in so we can get smaller groups.
And so we use Orton-Gillingham,
we do some assessments
with a criterion reference spelling test
to give us an idea of where their skills are strengths
and weaknesses with reading and spelling,
and then we group based on where those similarities were,
and then we start working through a sequence of phonograms,
and so it's very structured and systematic as well,
which is what Orton-Gillingham is and why Project Read is
that way, why Math-U-See is that way.
They all support what the dyslexic child needs,
and so they do working simple to complex.
They do sound symbol exercises, looking at a symbol,
putting the sound or sounds with it, then hearing the sound,
having to write the symbol for it,
and then you take those symbols and you put them together
into words to read, and then words to spell,
then into sentences to read, sentences to spell,
and then ultimately in the oral reading as the culmination
of the lesson.
- In 2018, Lakes and Bridges opened its doors
inside a neighboring school, Crossville Elementary.
It immediately filled to capacity.
This was the first charter school in the region designed
to provide a free education for students with dyslexia,
and parents were desperate for their children
to receive the education
the public school system had refused to provide.
Less than one year later, the results were astounding.
- If you talk to the parents at Lakes and Bridges,
you will certainly know that that school is having an impact
in their lives and the lives of their children.
- His gains academically are amazing,
but just the confidence to read to me, to read out loud.
He's reading the signs as we drive down the road.
It really is unbelievable.
I think when I look back, I just go,
"Wow, I can't even believe this happened."
- Near Christmas we had an IEP,
an Individualized Educational Plan meeting
where they went over what the kids were doing,
how they were progressing.
They told us we expect that by eighth grade,
Lucas will be on grade level and ready for high school.
The fact that he'll be ready to go into high school
and with a confidence and an ability
to succeed was something we'd never considered.
- I mean obviously he's gonna go to high school,
but I think it doesn't look quite as overwhelming.
- He's not afraid of it anymore.
It just probably doesn't even cross his mind.
It's just something down the road where before,
for a third grade kid to be worried about going
to high school is pretty terrible.
- I would say Orton-Gillingham made all the difference
just how you teach the kids,
and if a kid's dyslexic and they need Orton Gillingham,
I feel like that's what they should be given,
and it's made all the difference.
I don't think any other approach would've worked.
- Lakes and Bridges cares about Allie.
They care that she learns.
They give her what she needs academically,
and even emotionally.
They give her the support system that she needs
in an environment to learn in.
Where Allie was at before, she received nothing.
She was thrown in a classroom with 25 other kids
and expected to fit in this square hole.
- There have been a lot of changes in both Helen and Edward
since they started Lakes and Bridges.
She has not had a panic attack in school,
and that is a huge improvement over just last year.
- To my mind, they're thriving in school.
It's the exact opposite of where they were before.
We noticed the change within weeks of them starting,
and even just things like just when they come home,
they wanna read a book.
That never happened before.
- Even just their body language.
Helen was so closed off and so much trying to hide,
and now she smiles and she doesn't like to admit it,
but she does and it is just amazing growth.
- It's also helped us, 'cause we know they're getting
what they need.
We don't feel like we need to worry,
that they need to get taken outta school.
We need to get a tutor.
- We don't have to be these educational advocates
for our children anymore because we know
that their teachers and Heidi Bishop,
and the Elizabeth Bridges,
the special education coordinator,
they are the advocates for our kids now.
We can just do regular parent things now.
- The biggest difference that comes first is
the emotional difference, the child's confidence.
They're happy to go to school.
They no longer fight their parent in the morning about going
to school because they know that they're coming to a place
where they feel safe,
where they feel it's a risk culture,
where they can make mistakes,
where they know that everyone is at a level playing field,
because they know that they have the same struggles
as other students in their class.
- We had children that prior to coming to us would get out
of the car at their local public school,
and they would run away,
because there was so much anxiety,
and it was a real struggle for those children
to go through the school day,
but that is over now.
In fact, one of the children that would run away was one
of the leaders of the talent show
that the school most recently had,
which was very heartwarming to see.
- Got an email last night from one parent
whose child gets up very early every morning,
'cause he cannot wait to be at school.
He was actually really sad this past weekend,
because it was the weekend.
There was no school and he wanted to be here.
- Walking through dyslexia with a child who feels bad
about himself is a crushing experience as a parent.
I felt helpless to reassure him
that things were gonna be okay.
Now that he's in Lakes and Bridges,
it's almost a non-issue.
He feels like every other child around him,
and I don't think he even identifies himself as dyslexic
as much as he identifies himself as a child
that's lucky enough to go to Lakes and Bridges.
The biggest thing is confidence,
and that may not sound like a lot,
but with reading as a struggle,
and you already are struggling,
and you feel bad about yourself and you're worried
about what the people around you are thinking about,
whether you understand it or whether you're saying it right,
it makes the challenge so much bigger,
and the fact that Andrew's around children
that struggle the same way he does,
he's more comfortable reading to me and saying,
"I don't know what that word is,"
or slaughtering the word, which I love it.
I love when I hear him guess.
I have a child that would never try before.
If he couldn't see a word, he would look at it.
You could not make him try, and now he'll try.
Obviously academics are important to me too,
but what I'm saying is academics go hand in hand
with the confidence.
I really think that he was so insecure that
that in itself was a barrier to him getting
where he needed to be academically.
I cry a lot.
I feel having him at Lakes and Bridges has been
a tremendous blessing for my family,
and it's a feeling that my husband and I are moved to tears
about weekly.
For the first time in a few years,
I'm not concerned anymore that they won't be able to go
to high school, or that they're not gonna have opportunities
for college if that's the path they choose.
For the first time, since Lakes and Bridges,
I feel like they'll have the same opportunities
that all children have.
- I have seen students go from just being horrified
at the thought that you're gonna ask them to read,
but once they've encountered success
and they know that they have the tools
inside their own brain to decode words,
they are proud of it, and they wanna use that skill
and they'll start with reading the stop sign,
and move into bragging a little bit about
what they can read, and then get so excited seeing kids
just using their free time to sit like in the playground
and look at a book, read a book,
because they're so excited about the story
that they're reading.
- One little boy talks about,
there's a book called "The Invisible Boy" that his mother,
who's one of the teachers, has in her classroom,
and when he saw that book he said, "Oh Mama, that was me.
I was invisible until I came here,
and at Lakes and Bridges, they see me."
The first time I heard that story,
I cried and cried.
I could still cry.
It's just amazing.
They have not only the academic struggle
to get a grip on language like learning how to read,
how to write, how to spell,
but there are huge emotional layers,
and for them to be overcoming that,
and to feel like they no longer feel
that they're lazy, or they no longer feel
that they're stupid, they know they're working their hardest
and so all of those things are being reinforced.
- Lakes and Bridges was housed in a school
that wasn't designed to meet the needs of dyslexic students,
but their emotional and academic growth was remarkable.
Now that the renovations were completed,
they started their second year in a new home built
just for them.
I think that what we are doing,
and what we've accomplished this year actually far exceeds
anything I thought we'd be able to do in a first year.
It was difficult to integrate 110 students
from 110 different backgrounds,
not only academically, but socioeconomically,
just the whole thing, and we were able to do it.
- We have students coming from all over the upstate,
and even other parts of the country and of the state,
and so all of the paperwork and coordinating all
of the plans so that they're compliant with timelines,
communicating to teachers about those plans,
communicating the way the district wants those plans handled
and organized and followed through with,
it was very challenging for one person to do that
in a mass amount and I had never done that before.
It was very stressful,
which education is anyway because you feel like you have all
these children's lives on your shoulders, their education,
but then it was also having all the compliance,
because especially with an IEP,
it's actually a legal document,
but we did it and it's one
of the hardest things I've ever done career-wise in my life.
One of our goals at Lakes and Bridges is
that every child's gonna make at least one year's progress.
Teachers are reporting that kids who came in with IEPs,
Individual Education Plans from other school districts,
in the first three months,
many of them had met their year goal,
and they had to be rewritten.
So that either means that the kids are learning much
more quickly than had been anticipated,
or that their other schools had expectations
that were too low.
The biggest revelation for us has been
the social emotional growth that was very quickly apparent.
Kids that had felt like failures,
or had given up on themselves seemed
to find themselves again at Lakes and Bridges,
get new confidence, they were happier,
they were working harder.
Their parents reported that they were excited about coming
to school instead of dreading coming to school,
so that was very reinforcing for us.
- We have students who last year,
through the course of the year,
just didn't want to be here
'cause they missed their friends.
By the end of the school year,
we had students that didn't wanna leave.
We had a situation on the last day of school,
where school got out and it took 15 minutes
of delaying our car line pickup,
because we had two classes
that would not leave their classrooms,
'cause they were in tears,
and they just were not ready to leave school.
They wanted to stay in school.
They weren't ready for the summer
Because we had to delay school a week this year
because of the renovations,
I heard from a lot of the parents
whose kids were actually very upset that we delayed
because they wanted to be back here,
and they wanted to see their friends,
and they wanted to be back in school.
The first day of school this year went very smooth.
I think we had one year under our belt.
We knew more of what to expect,
and being in our own building helped tremendously
to really make us feel like we were in our home,
that we weren't inside somebody else's home.
I think the whole tone is different this year
than it was last year.
There's just a tone of self-confidence overall
throughout the whole school,
from myself on down to the teachers to the student.
We are starting the year right now right at 150,
so enrollment is very well.
We have about 49 students on a waiting list.
What's heartbreaking is that we can't serve those students
who are on the waiting list, because you know
that every single student should be here,
getting the same education as those students
that were lucky enough to get their numbers pulled
in the lottery, and so it is heartbreaking
to know that they're not here with us,
and that we would love for them to be here with us,
but we also have to keep in mind what our space availability
is in this building.
- Here's something I find very sad,
of the applicants for next year,
and we have just finished the application process,
67% of those applicants couldn't come to Lakes and Bridges,
because we don't have room.
While we're renovating a building,
and are very excited about it,
that building is already too small
to even accommodate the kids that wanna come now.
The need's huge.
We have surpassed our dream.
Originally, we were afraid nobody'd wanna come,
and now we're afraid we'll never be able
to accommodate the kids that do wanna come.
- I think the sky's the limit for this school.
The faculty is amazing.
The students are amazing.
The parents are very supportive.
We are creating history and precedence every single day,
and so what you think will happen,
and what is happening don't always match up.
I'd like for us to be known as the school to go to
for dyslexia resources, for information,
for modeling how students should be taught,
and making it just a premier educational site for children
with dyslexia.
- I did not realize until I was trained here
at Lakes and Bridges Charter School
that I had been teaching children
with dyslexia the entire time,
and then once I had that training and in conversations
with school leadership, with the staff,
with people on our staff,
and with children who are dyslexics
and seeing them learn, it made me really have an aha.
"Oh wow, for 13 years that child was a dyslexic,"
"that child was a dyslexic, that child was a dyslexic."
If only I had known how to teach them in this way,
with this method, and with these tools that I now have,
it just makes me think like what could I have done
for those children?
- A law has just been passed in South Carolina
that all kindergarten, first grade children are
to be screened for dyslexia,
but teachers don't know how to teach these children,
so what are they gonna do with these children
in our public schools?
- It's one thing to identify the fact
that children have this learning disability,
but there's another to,
what do we do to get teachers prepared to number one,
identify it, and then to be able to teach to that student?
I had teachers call me, but they said,
"This is a waste of time.
I've never seen anyone with dyslexia,"
and my comeback to them was,
"Well, if you've never seen anyone with dyslexia,
you don't know what you're looking for,
because it is prevalent.
It is there."
- It is likely that every teacher has encountered a student
with dyslexia,
but most teachers are never trained to identify them.
After all, eight out of 10 kids are unaffected.
New laws, like the one passed in South Carolina,
that mandate screening of all students
for dyslexia are a positive step
in getting children the education they need,
but with so few schools like Lakes and Bridges,
and 20% of the population needing that sort of instruction,
the demand for proper education dwarfs the supply.
The increased awareness of dyslexia and the success
of schools like Lakes and Bridges are bringing positive
changes around the country.
- Lakes and Bridges has been a model for other schools
that will be starting up in the next year or two.
We've had interest from Minnesota to North Carolina
to Colorado, even California,
and then of course here in South Carolina
to open up schools on this model.
- Having Lakes and Bridges in the state
of South Carolina is obviously a real benefit.
There's only a few schools in the nation that are targeted
on dyslexia like Lakes and Bridges.
What we really need to do though is try
to figure out how to get more Lakes and Bridges
in South Carolina.
- It's going to be up to local communities
to take the template that has been developed
and make it a reality in those areas.
- I have thought about the question of,
why don't traditional schools provide this service,
and it's a big question and, in some ways,
it's because it's hard,
but if four, five, six people
that know nothing about running a school can start a school
that is as as successful as Lakes and Bridges,
then how hard could it be for a traditional school system
that has all the resources that they would want
to start a program for dyslexic kids?
I mean, it makes no sense to me why we had to do it
when they could.
I can't answer that question.
- There's a national problem with understanding
how children learn, how they should be assessed,
and then going forward,
what do we do?
- Developing a specialized school for students
with dyslexia is unheard of in the public school realm.
Dyslexia is not a word that's spoken usually
in an IEP meeting or an eligibility meeting
in the public school realm.
- Oftentimes a school will throw in just enough
to make the general public think that they are doing
what is necessary,
but they're not willing to really do the research
to go back and offer a research-based program
for these children.
- As a society,
we have to address the needs of all of our learners.
Dyslexia, kids with autism, you go across the board,
but dyslexia is one that should be relatively easy,
because if it's affecting up to 20% of our students.
- We need more teachers who are trained in Orton-Gillingham,
who are trained in multisensory instruction,
and we need far more schools than Lakes and Bridges.
What we need is a replication of this school
everywhere, in not only in our state,
but in all the other states because,
in a general sweeping sense,
we're failing children in America.
We're not teaching them correctly.
- All the children seem to be challenged
with the way things are now,
so why not switch over to an Orton-Gillingham type approach?
It's gonna benefit all the kids.
Dyslexic children are gonna flourish.
Other learners are gonna flourish,
and the whole school district is gonna benefit,
because you're gonna have better readers.
- If a child has multisensory learning,
it enhances the ability for them to learn,
and to retain the learning,
because it involves all of the sense modalities,
so it's the best way for really feeding the brain,
for making a deeper imprint.
When a dyslexic student is in the classroom,
and they don't have multisensory,
it's almost like making an imprint in the sand,
and then it vanishes.
It can't be sustained,
but all children learn better
if they have multisensory instruction,
not just the dyslexic.
- You could go back like to the 1890s.
I have seen the tests that those students had to take,
and they were based on phonics, and spelling,
and it's all structured just like we're doing
in Orton-Gillingham right now.
It could change back.
We could start teaching whole groups,
a good phonics instruction so that kids wouldn't have
to guess.
It wouldn't have to be,
"Do you know this sight word or not?"
There would be a chance for all students
to have the logic and the structure of our language.
I think that would be really good.
I know that people believe
in what we're doing.
It's evident by the long commutes,
by the families that are moving to this area,
by the support that we get,
by the volunteerism we get from people in the community
to help us out when there's projects that need to be done.
- This is probably the best opportunity I've ever had
in order to do something that really mattered to people,
to other people and that really could make a difference,
because we know that some of the most innovative people
in our country, many entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors,
writers are dyslexic,
but what we don't know is how many dyslexic people gave up
on themselves before they were able
to achieve their potential,
so at Lakes and Bridges we have an opportunity
to prevent anybody from failing to reach their potential.
- Dyslexia, it's a condition that affects 20%
of our population, but is largely ignored.
The issue of educating dyslexics is a moral one.
There are millions of bright
and intelligent students suffering through childhood
and expected to perform in school's designed for them
to fail.
Perhaps it's not possible for the public school system
to provide proper instruction for all children.
Perhaps training thousands of teachers
in multisensory education is too difficult a task.
Fortunately, communities across the nation are coming
together to form more schools like Lakes and Bridges
to plug the gaps in our public education system
and ensure no child will ever be written off.
- I get to do more stuff with my parents now
that I don't have as much home.
I don't have any homework.
I get most of my evenings off.
I get to do stuff after school rather than just going home
and doing more work.
- The teachers care about me,
and don't think any different of me than other students
and don't really treat me differently.
They treat everyone the same and as nice
as they treat anyone else.
I've grown from a first grade to a fifth grade level
in the matter of a year.
- We can move around in the carts and stuff
or the chairs and stuff like that.
It's fun.
- When I first moved here from Florida,
it's like a really welcoming community.
Everybody asked me my name and shook my hand
when I walked into the class on my first day of school.
It's like a really positive and safe learning environment
and all the teachers are super helpful.
- I like that we have the raised desk,
and the wobble stools really help whenever I need
to move 'cause when I write I need to move around
to think more.
My confidence is better
from being at Lakes and Bridges Charter School.
- I love reading now.
I've improved a lot lot, 'cause I can actually read now,
so that's amazing.
I'm starting to read a chapter book.
I can read a lot of words in the chapter book,
but my mom has to help me a little,
which that's great 'cause I've really been wanting
to start a chapter book,
but it was really hard,
and now I can read chapter books,
and I've always like looked at the pictures,
and I've always wished I could read and now I can.