I have dyslexia and legitimately didn’t learn how to read until I was about 13 years old. I mean, I got by on memorizing clusters of familiar looking phrases. Vibes-based reading. Oh and lots of cheating and lying about homework.
Two decades later, I still struggle compared to my peers. But I have had the privilege and luck to learn strategies to make up the difference.
I’m also an elementary school teacher. There’s only so hours I can try to teach my students to read. One of the biggest determining factors for reading ability/comprehension is how much vocabulary children are exposed to at an early age (0-4 years old). Reading to young children is crucial for language development, reading ability, and a slue of related skills. I don’t know enough about linguistics to know this for sure, but I’m assuming most of my students have parents with restricted vocabulary. And probably just not talked to enough as babies. Something just has to have affected their kids cognition in pernicious ways. Them getting COVID 8 or 9 times in their lives probably hasn’t helped either.
So the other week with my fifth graders we’re doing intro geometry stuff. I said something like, “A cylinder is just like the rectangular prism. It’s just that its base is a circle.” And like okay, I’ve been trying for half an hour trying to distill the absolute cluster fuck this caused in my students brains.
“It’s similar to this coffee mug. See? It has a circular base and it’s a prism. I know you’re thinking a prism has to look like the rectangular prism. It might be helpful to think of the cylinder as a circular prism.” I said, exasperated.
“What are you even saying?” a child asks rhetorically.
I eventually have to say something like, “Listen, if you can’t understand this it’s a skill issue and kinda cringe.” There’s a million little things that are hard to put into words how utterly dysfunctional some of these kids brains are and will be later in life.
Oh and I have to speak to these children’s parents on the reg, which is its own sort of hell.