Originally Posted by blackcat
When I tutored in a school last year, I researched things like crazy... One kid reported double vision when he was reading and had some major tracking issues, so I researched it, and figured out his reading speed almost doubled if a blue or yellow overlay was stuck on top of the reading passage. I even recorded his reading speed with and without the overlay and reported my findings to the teacher, and she barely seemed interested. Another girl I had (a 9 year old) had many symptoms of dyslexia and also could not walk down steps alternating feet or do basic things in Phy Ed. I kept bringing this up with hints that she should be evaluated or someone should talk to her mother, and mentioned that she has many symptoms of Developmental Coordination Disorder like my DS, except she was worse (and I even printed a thing out and gave it to her teacher). I got blank stares or shrugs from people. No one was concerned or inquisitive about what this girl's problem could be. I had another third grade girl who didn't know basic vocabularly words like "branch" (as in the branch of a tree). After I nagged them for months and said how concerned I was, in Spring they finally agreed to do an eval in the fall (hopefully they are doing it now!). There were numerous other examples like that. And now I'm seeing the same thing in my kids' school. The teachers... don't seem to take much initiative to do anything to get them special help or figure out what is getting in the way of their learning.
The world would be a better place with more people like you! How to get people excited about the differences one person can make, in touching others' lives?