A friend of mine is a physical education teacher at a state school for children with special needs and she is a mother to a dyslexic 18- year old boy. I met her two years ago. She told me that her son never did well at school and he actually hated it because he felt “useless” and “hopeless”. Every time she talked about her son’s learning difficulty and the greek school system inability to accommodate his needs she flashed and got really angry. She was the one that “hit a nerve” and awakened me. I kind of felt guilty … I remember that I kept asking about the way the people with SPLD feel , think and what they expect or need. It was then that I started being interested in those students; I discretely gave them more time to think , praised them , elaborated when it came to instructions explanation or had my class summarise the reading texts. It worked for some of them especially the ones that didn’t suffer from the severe forms of learning difficulties. Of course so much more could be done. Yet it was a start.
Reading my colleagues’' experiences I see myself in all these situations . I couldn't agree more that the students with SPLD are so misbehaved and underestimated in the greek school and that they need personal tutoring.
Being involved with this course for two weeks now has made me think more deeply … For instance I was thinking that if we taught “ ordinary” students the way a dyslexic is to be taught then all students might be benefited. Think of a clear cut lesson where a multisensory learning process is used. Not bad at all eh? Moreover I think it is significant to bring up the issue of parents! I am positive that they can play a great big deal in assisting their kids as long as they accept that there is an issue there. We have had such a case at the high school I work this year; the father of a boy thinks that his son will be stigmatized if he is diagnosed as dyslexic so he prefers to let him be a school struggler for good.
So I think that awareness should be arisen to all of us involved in the learning process and always be alert.