To the Editor:

My name is Kinley Nagle.  I am a certified special education teacher with dyslexia.  My ground-breaking work is about the unexplored potential in our children, ourselves and society.  When I recognized that my students’ emotional needs were interfering with their learning I provided them with the necessary emotional support, tools and teaching strategies to thrive, resulting in a 90 percent success rate in my resource and self-contained classrooms.

Experts support my research which identifies our society as the cause of great pain, fear and isolation in our children which leads to learning disabilities and mental illness. Our children are not born with learning disabilities.  Dr. Carolyn Myss in Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can talks about the significant role which our environment plays in our development.  “In our quest to become physically and spiritually strong, we have forgotten that our emotional journey is relatively new and that our physical bodies are still subject to powerful dominance by our environment and by the rapidly changing, unsettling patterns in our society.”  Dr Bruce Lipton even says that what we think affects our DNA.  

My innovative ideas evolved from my life experiences.  As a special education teacher with dyslexia I worked the Al-Anon 12 step program and researched experts in the field of psychology, addiction, and healing.  I then combined my recovery strategies with my teaching strategies and implemented them into my classroom.   I have the answers which will transform our schools and stop the violence.

We have bright teachers, intelligent children and excellent programs but until we start talking honestly about the devastating effects that our society is having emotionally on our children and their learning all of our hard work will not come to fruition.  We each play a significant role in the evolution of life on this earth and must act in spite of our fears not out of our fears, so that we may become emotionally available to our children.  

Our children know to be afraid.  They can’t speak honestly to adults about bullying because we, as adults, are not honest with ourselves or each other.  When adults bully it causes great fear, pain, learning disabilities and mental illness in our children.  It creates unsafe work, home and learning environments where insecure, immature and aggressive adult behavior goes unquestioned, resulting in unsound perfectionistic practices like over-testing, which interfere with academic success and needed change.  We must educate the public and support our teachers, raising self-esteem and confidence for all involved.

My work must be implemented into the public schools.  It is needed to broach the topic of old limiting fears and beliefs which interfere with learning.   My goal is to educate and create safe environments for our children and for learning that will foster strong and confident children and adults needed to make our nation strong and competitive academically.   Dr Myss says, “Our society needs to learn how to love people when they are strong not just when they are weak.”                   

Sincerely,

Kinley Nagle

8 Glover Avenue, Newtown              May 20, 2013