After Post Notes
February 2020
As the FIT Writing Studio became the FIT Writing & Speaking Studio, the staff was tasked with identifying specific habits that promote mindfulness while reading and listening to student texts.
During this training, our staff was introduced to this quote:
“Mindfulness is a flexible state of mind in which we are actively engaged in the present, noticing new things and sensitive to context.”
— Ellen J. Langer, Mindful Learning
I chose to reflect upon a few sessions I had that semester with a dyslexic student. I analyzed my own actions and responses when addressing the student’s work. The session was more verbal than my previous sessions.
READING STUDENT WORK
Dyslexia, according to Google, is a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence. According to a very close dyslexic friend, ”reading is mostly affected by large words,” and some times, “words flip.” He mostly “has problems with writing where [he writes] stuff backwards and letters get flipped.” But there is a whole other side to dyslexia, beyond reading, that I wanted to understand. My friend explained his mind as such: “when I was first diagnosed, my dyslexic teacher told me to draw a house. I started with two squiggly lines as the path way, then the door then so on. There are a whole lot of [novelties] like that.”
Interviewing my friend was inspired by working with a dyslexic student here at the Writing & Speaking studio. When working together, I read everything out loud and she provides her interpretation. We often refer to visuals. For instance, one of her advertising communication courses required we brainstorm ways a home network was beneficial. The second time we met, she had made some progress and wrote a paragraph based on the progress we made previously. She created a visual representation of the network and referred to the graphic while I read what she wrote. Similarly to why I read with other students, she could listen to her sentences and identify when phrasing did not make sense. However, unlike other students I have worked with, she adds another step to aid understanding when she cannot read in depth.
I would not claim how I read with this student directly affects how I read with others, but it does open up other strategies for relaying information with students. For instance, a graduate student returning to college after ten years came in to “relearn how to write essays.” What he actually was asking, I learned, was what are the ways he can structure his thoughts. This is where visuals come in handy. Think hamburgers and sandwiches. We drew substance filled structure sandwiches. So healthy, in fact, that we could probably become Olympians on the burger essay diet (I have no right to make that claim either).