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Growing
Up with Dyslexia
by Jennifer Avance |
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This
is the first part of Jennifer's story. Her story continued in the
July 2002 issue, which you can read by clicking here. |
| I was born
in Chicago, Illinois where I lived almost all my life. I was a happy child.
I didn’t know or even think that I had any problems. I thought I had a
perfect life. I had gone to several schools in Chicago and had sat in many classrooms — and I did not learn anything. When I was growing up, not too many teachers cared about their students. If a child did not know how to read, they just got pushed through their classes. The teachers would not even test students to see if they knew how to read. So all the time that I was in school while I lived in Chicago, no one knew that I could not read. In my time, no one knew about the word dyslexia. You know, it’s funny, the reason I’m saying this is because I am a singer. I could pick up a song with no problems. But this was a problem. I didn’t know it until I moved to San Francisco. This is when I discovered the word dyslexia. Now I live here in San Francisco. It seems like I had to start all over again. I was put in junior high school. I had stopped talking to people. I would not even talk to my teacher or my counselors. I was put in the 9th grade. No one there knew that I had a problem with reading, so I was pushed through school once again. Well – no one wanted me to stay in Junior High too long. So they passed me to the next grade until the school decided – ok, she can graduate now. So now I was in high school, and I was still being pushed from grade to grade with no one caring. I even went to summer school thinking that I would get some help there. Well, that was just as bad. I still did not get any help. So high school gave me a diploma. At first I cried for joy until I realized that this was something I did not deserve. But this time no one saw my tears and no one saw my pain. Well years started to pass by. I decided to try again to go back to school once more. This time I went to a different college. I tried real hard to buckle down and study but I just did not understand the work. Well at the new college I found the source of my problem, I found the reason for me not being able to read. By this time I was an adult 23 years old. I can remember back in my childhood how my Mother would scream at me. How she would say, “You can learn how to sing all of these songs, why can’t you learn how to read?” I can remember my mother bringing me beautiful books to read. I would get so mad and rip the books apart. I can remember being compared to some of my family members. Sometimes at night I would cry when no one could see me. Finally, there was a teacher who was concerned about me. She was concerned because she noticed that I did not have any study skills. She even noticed that I would never volunteer to read. And she knew not to ask me to come to the front of the class to spell anything. I can remember how embarrassed I would be when the teachers would ask me a question in front of the whole class. I remember her asking me to come with her to the counselor’s office. Well, I sat in this counselor’s office, she talked to me for awhile. She told me that she would like to give me a few tests. I agreed to take the tests. I can not remember what they were. After the tests were over, she told me a very strange word – dyslexia. I started to scream and cry because I thought I had some kind of horrible disease. |