Focus On Dyslexia
Focus On Dyslexia
To the Editor:
What an exciting evening and fabulous turnout for the Connecticut Film Festivalâs showing of Dislecksia, the Movie! Harvey Hubble made a documentary that was not only informative, but highly entertaining as well. The thought-provoking documentary led to a very interesting panel discussion, where the audience had more questions than could be answered in the time given. The reception at the Newtown Inn was the perfect setting for individual as well as group discussions to complete the evening. The positive energy that was evident was truly inspiring.
A group of special education teachers from Fairfield as well as educators and administrators from other districts were in attendance. Chris Lyddy, who was also present, had a lot of positive feedback in regards to the movie. I was disheartened to see that although every teacher, administrator, and board member in Newtown was sent a flyer and The Bee published several articles pertaining to the movie, not one of them showed up. Although I know that there are people in our school system that care about our children, what message does this send?
Dyslexia might not be something that people are aware of or concerned with. You may think that you donât know of anyone thatâs dyslexic, but did you know that statistically one out of every seven people is dyslexic? That roughly translates to a little more than 14 percent, or, out of the 5,668 students in Newtown, approximately 800 are dyslexic. How much longer can we ignore this huge number of students? These are intelligent children who are eager and able to learn, they just need to learn in a different way. The studies have been done, the research is available, the solutions are out there, and we just need to educate ourselves by accessing this information to help this large part of our society. But how can we do that when our educators arenât willing to acknowledge that there is an issue to be discussed?
Suzanne Lang
3 Orchard Lane, Newtown                                              April 27, 2009