Originally published in The Dyslexic Reader,
Issue 15 Copyright (c) Fall 1998-year DDAI.
I Have Seen Miracles This Year
Claudia Bennett, with her fourth
and fifth grade students
By Claudia Kay Bennett
I am a full time Resource Specialist for Los Angeles Unified School District, at El Oro Way Elementary School. I have been teaching for 16 years, and have three children, including two who are dyslexic and identified as ADD. I began as a Special Day Class teacher in 1989, teaching severely disabled readers for 5 years. I have now been teaching RSP for four years.
I work with students from first grade to fifth grade, both in the full inclusion model and pull out model. These include many high risk students, who cross all the socio-economic and racial lines.
I have a strong balanced literacy program and have done staff developments with the California Reading Project, been trained by Rigby as a Trainers-Trainer, and attended numerous conferences given by wonderful master teachers which I have learned much from. I was selected by California State University Northridge as an exemplary language arts teacher (reading and written language) in January, 1997. Professor Sears cam out from CSUN last spring and video-taped my students as I taught reading. They used this as part of a training film for their teacher training program. This was all prior to my reading The Gift of Dyslexia.
First graders working with clay at
El Ore Way Elementary School
Although my reading program has been a strong one, I was conscious that I was unable to reach severely dyslexic students. I do not know of any teacher who is practicing methodology that reaches these students. I have felt a tremendous amount of sadness over this. Wonderfully bright students, that I knew I did not reach in helping them to make sound-symbol connections.
When I read The Gift of Dyslexia last summer, I was ecstatic! I read the book three times, pulling it apart and rebuilding it as I worked through the steps.
I started employing methods from the book as soon as school began in September. We have seen miracles occur since then. Students we could never reach before are reading! We have seen students make as much as six months progress, where none had been made in the two, three or four years in the regular education classroom setting using traditional methodology; all the way up to two and three years of progress in reading-decoding, spelling and reading comprehension in less than a year.
I have been spreading the goodness f Davis methods with everyone! I have had teachers come to me privately at school, crying, saying, “I heard you talking, and that was me in school! I need to learn more about this from you!”
The Gift of Dyslexia. has brought tremendous joy into my teaching experience. This book has been an incredible blessing to me. I have entire families who have been affected and are so grateful. It has given me tools that are changing the lives of students and their families!