School districts select staff to focus on dyslexia

FAYETTEVILLE -- The discovery of her son's reading struggles were a result of dyslexia sent Kelly Brown, a Fayetteville educator, on a journey about 10 years ago to become trained to teach children with the disorder.

Her interest and continued training to become an instructor of language therapy has put Fayetteville ahead of many districts in Arkansas working to comply with state laws passed in 2013 and 2015 to give attention to the needs of children with dyslexia.

Brown is one of just four certified academic language therapists in Benton and Washington counties and the only one working in a school district. The number of educators receiving training in dyslexia is growing across Northwest Arkansas because of the law.

Brown remembers when her son, now 23, told her on his first day of high school he wasn't smart enough to be there, she said. He was a smart student but struggled with reading since elementary school.

"It's been my mission to make sure no kid feels that way," Brown said. "By the time I figured out what he needed, he's in high school."

Defining dyslexia

Dyslexia is a neurological language-based learning disability that can cause difficulty with spelling, word recognition, pronunciation and reading, according to the International Dyslexia Association. Its severity varies, but people with the disorder commonly struggle to separate different sounds within a word or to learn how letters symbolize sounds.

The law doesn't require schools to diagnose children for dyslexia but mandated schools start screening students for markers of dyslexia in the 2014-15 school year.

The law describes the process for providing services, starting with the classroom teacher, to students identified. This school year, school districts also had to choose a dyslexia program.

Programs designed for children with dyslexia provide a detailed, logical, organized method for learning language at a depth most students will not need, Brown said. Brains of students with dyslexia are wired differently. They do better when learning activities involve not only sight, but listening and movement.

"You have to tell them the logic behind our language," Brown said. "There is rhyme and reason to it. Once you can tell and give them reasons behind it they can make sense of it in their head."

This school year, the law requires school districts to have individuals serving as dyslexia interventionists. Interventionists can be any school district employees trained in a dyslexia program, from fully certified academic language therapists to reading interventionists to aides working under the supervision of a certified teacher.

Learning methods

Penny Ezell, a former colleague of Brown's, left the Fayetteville School District as an instructional facilitator, and in July became a literacy specialist for the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative in Farmington. Her job includes serving as the regional dyslexia contact person, she said.

Ezell learned from Brown while working in Fayetteville and has a seventh-grade son diagnosed with dyslexia at the end of first grade. Her formal training in her new role began this summer with Vicki King, a certified academic language therapist, qualified instructor and the dyslexia specialist for the Arkansas Department of Education, she said.

Ezell also is training in a curriculum for dyslexia but is still deciding whether to pursue a certification, she said. The curriculum provides strategies, such as finger tapping when spelling or pounding a fist for syllables of words. The curriculum teaches about six types of syllables common to the English languages and different types of vowel sounds.

"When you have an average to above average IQ, and you have a struggle like this, it gives them the confidence that they need," Ezell said. "They learn how to attack those words that were so foreign to them before."

Bentonville School District hired Kristen Kossover, who had been a special education teacher for the district, as a dyslexia specialist. Every campus in Bentonville has at least one person serving as a dyslexia interventionist, Kossover said.

Kossover knew little about dyslexia when she started teaching six years ago, but she remembered being certain her struggling readers were intelligent and should be reading on grade level, she said. She began researching and trying to find strategies to help them. The mom of a fourth-grader introduced her to resources from Susan Barton, who has made what can be an overwhelming topic easy to understand for parents.

Barton founded Bright Solutions for Dyslexia, which publishes the Barton Reading & Spelling System, a tutoring system for students with spelling, reading and writing difficulties because of dyslexia or a learning disability.

Then, Bentonville offered an opportunity for her to train to become a certified academic language therapist, she said.

"It's just become a passion of mine," Kossover said.

In Springdale, Brittney Hickman took on a new role this summer as a half-time assistant principal for Helen Tyson Middle School and half-time dyslexia interventionist. Hickman also this summer started a two-year training program to become a dyslexia therapist.

Springdale schools are in the process of identifying children with markers of dyslexia to determine where students have the greatest needs, Hickman said. That information will help in placing interventionists where they are most needed.

"It takes time for the identification of students when you're in a district this large," Hickman said. "The other huge issue is the funding piece. It's going to seem like a slow process, but it's a daily work in progress on our end."

In the Rogers School District, the dyslexia contacts are Virginia Abernathy, assistant superintendent for elementary curriculum and instruction, and Robert Moore, assistant superintendent for secondary curriculum and instruction, said Monica Avery, director of federal programs who also oversees reading programs and the district's use of state money paid to districts based on percentages of low-income children.

At the elementary school level, Summer Swaim and Dawna Rice, two teachers who work with struggling readers, are spending 80 percent of their time on a Reading Recovery program and 20 percent of their time on dyslexia, they said. In August, they began a 12-hour program for a University of Arkansas at Little Rock dyslexia intervention model.

Swaim and Rice are responsible for training nine other elementary teachers in Rogers in their same positions, Avery said.

Seven teachers and six classified staff from the district's secondary schools are participating in Phonics First training, Avery said.

Rice thinks some of the children she has worked with had dyslexia. She could teach them to comprehend and read, but despite her best efforts, they continued to have difficulty with spelling and writing, she said.

"They have self awareness," Rice said. "It's terrible. You know they're smart. You know they have a high IQ."

Not every child with dyslexia markers will need the most intense interventions, but Rice looks forward to her training contributing to those children becoming readers and writers, she said.

"I'm excited that we'll be able to close in the gaps," Rice said. "I think it's going to make a huge difference. I want kids to know that they're smart."

Brown was a teacher with a special education degree in Fayetteville when she began training in 2005 to become a certified academic language therapist, she said. She finished in 2007 and trained in a Take Flight program, a two-year curriculum written by the staff of the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.

Take Flight is designed for use by certified academic language therapists for children, according to the center.

Fayetteville now has seven instructional facilitators and 11 special education teachers trained in an Academic Phonics program, plus 16 instructional aides trained in Barton, Brown said.

Brown is grateful for the expansion of resources and attention on dyslexia, but funding is a concern, she said.

"In Fayetteville, we're fortunate enough to have had the foresight to see this coming and started training people," Brown said. "We had resources that lots of other districts don't have. It is a challenge."

NW News on 10/11/2015