By Noah Jacobson, Sophia Bergey & Hannah Woehrle
Focus
Midland HS
1st Place Division 2, News Writing
Informative Feature
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Leads capture attention, arouses curiosity
- Topic relevant to interests and/or welfare of school or students
- Thorough investigation through research and interviews
- Combines basics of good news and feature writing
- Organized with smooth transitions
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Uses proper diction and grammar
- Balanced and fair presentation
When freshman Alyse Barton was in 5th grade, she traveled to Lansing to be tested for dyslexia. After several rounds of math problems and reading questions, she was informed that she was dyslexic. However, this did not come as a surprise to her. “I started to notice that I wrote my b’s and d’s backwards and I switched my m’s and w’s and my p’s and q’s,” Barton said. Dyslexia is defined as the discrepancy between intelligence and achievement. Having dyslexia can, among other things, make it harder for people to read, write, and spell. Barton is one of the 20-25 percent of the population who have this reading disability. Aside from switching letters, Barton said she finds herself taking longer to complete her schoolwork, and struggles with spelling. Barton also said that reading out loud in class is a challenge. “It takes me so much longer than other people to do my homework,” Barton said. “For most people, if it takes them like an hour to do their homework, then for me it probably takes more like two or three more hours to do it.” Jennifer Ruegsegger, a special education teacher who specializes in English, said students with dyslexia and other disabilities frequently struggle with time. She said that it might take them more time to process information, and that oftentimes they focus on the wrong information. “Sometimes with a learning disability, you might focus on the wrong things, the wrong information or information that’s not as important,” Ruegsegger said. “We do a lot of practice with that. For example, when we read a passage in here I’m like ‘Okay what’s the important information?’ So I think distraction and time management is a big issue for students with a learning disability.” Before coming to high school, Barton would go to a special learning class during her school day. This would require her to go into a separate room and receive help in a personalized setting. Even though this would help her with her reading, Barton said that she felt dumber than the other students who did not need extra help. Thayon Barton, Alyse’s mother, has worked with her for many years and has seen how Alyse’s dyslexia has challenged her. “She fell behind in school in the earlier years and she would go into the special learning class and she’d be taken out of the main classroom,” Thayon said. Alyse said that after a while the other kids would call her stupid because she would need extra help. Even though she had friends at her school, she said that she got bullied because of her dyslexia. “When I was in elementary school, I was always really sad,” Alyse said. “I didn’t want to go to school and I always begged my mom, ‘Please I don’t want to go to school.’” Thayon said that it was very difficult to watch her daughter go through this. She said that she wished she could take it for her, but that they went through it together. “Kids would call her stupid and so that was really hard,” Thayon said. “She’d come home and say, ‘Mom am I stupid?’ I would say, ‘Come on. No honey. You’re really smart. Matter of fact, you’re probably smarter than a lot of those kids and you’re a much harder worker because you’re doing twice as much time into homework to get the same grades they are.’” Despite having dyslexia, Alyse still gets good grades and was even on the All-A Honor Roll at Northeast. Both Alyse and Thayon attribute this to Alyse’s hard work. Thayon said that she has noticed that Alyse’s reading has improved and that this is because she has worked so hard on it. “She’s really a hard worker,” Thayon said. “She’s really optimistic because she’s had to learn to be, and so that’s affected her.” Nancy Williams, center director at the Children’s Dyslexia Center of the Great Lakes Bay Region, has studied dyslexia for 22 years and works to help dyslexic students gain proficiency in reading and writing by using multi-sensory teaching methods. She said that many students with dyslexia have average to above average intelligence scores on testing but low achievement scores in spelling, reading and math. They aren’t able to produce the work that their intelligence levels say they should. “It’s the most under-diagnosed and the most frustrating,” Williams said. “The dyslexic students are really smart, know that they should be able to do the things that are being asked of them, and they can’t.” Williams said that kids come into their center in grades 3-6, when reading is becoming important enough that they can’t just guess and cope their way through assignments. She said they seem to be very smart but are struggling in school, and that this is when parents start to push that something is wrong and that they are working too hard. This is when multi-sensory teaching comes into play. “We do a lot of things with visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile learning,” Williams said. “Our whole purpose is to create neural pathways from the right side of the brain to the left side of the brain to connect the areas that the dyslexic brain uses for language to the actual language centers in the brain.” Williams said that by using multisensory teaching methods, they are able to access both sides of the brain. If they access the learning components of the brain, and connect it to the language side of the brain, it works very quickly and it works very easily. She also added that the multi-sensory ways of teaching benefits 100 percent of students, not just those with dyslexia. “Non-dyslexics really focus their left side of their brain when they’re engaged in language,” Williams said. “Dyslexics will focus their right side of the brain. They’ll always focus their right side of the brain. But if they’re taught in a multi-sensory way, they will actually use both the left and the right side of the brain. That’s really the key for them to successfully manage their dyslexia.” Ruegsegger said that students who have dyslexia, such as Alyse, are at a disadvantage because much of the material they receive is written, and it can be harder to decode it. To help with this, students with a documented learning disability may receive an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that allows them to receive personalized help. This could come in the form of being given extra time to work on tests, or having a teacher like Ruegsegger to check in on them and help them construct their schedule. “I have 16 kids that I have to really focus on making sure they’re doing well in their classes and other school responsibilities, which is another big help for students with a learning disability,”
Ruegsegger said. Even though she believes people should be more understanding and patient with people who have a learning disability, she thinks that there’s been a positive shift in how people view learning disabilities. She said that even 30 years ago when she was in high school if somebody had a learning disability, they often didn’t get the help they needed since people didn’t understand it as well. “I think over time people have realized that you can have a lot of intelligence and still have a learning disability and I think it’s just not so stigmatized now,” Ruegsegger said. Williams said that much of the stigma around dyslexia comes from a lack of understanding. She added that the dyslexic brain’s way of thinking is essential to society and believes that if more people were educated about dyslexia, that would help erase the stigma. “Most people will say ‘Oh my kid still writes their 3’s backwards I think they have dyslexia,’” Williams said. “That’s such an inconsistent manner of seeing whether or not someone has dyslexia. It’s much more all-encompassing for them, and the word ‘dyslexia’ is misunderstood and feared.” Alyse agrees that people could be more understanding of her situation. She wishes her classmates understood just how much harder it is to read and write with dyslexia and that she has to work so much harder because of it. “I kind of wish that people would understand what I have to go through every day,” Alyse said. However, Alyse said that having dyslexia has made her a hard worker and a more responsible person. Thayon agrees that she has benefited in other aspects of her life as a result of all the work ethic she has gained. “She’s never going to take things for granted and she’s always going to be a hard worker and those are things that are going to be beneficial throughout life,” Thayon said. “To see her work hard and not get disappointed in herself and just pick herself up and keep trying. I’m so proud of her.