Marcie Mahan of Martinsville has twins — a boy and a girl named Jace and Keara. They share a lot of things other than just their birthday, but they are as different as can be when it comes to learning.
Before they started school, Keara was the first to learn to talk, know her ABCs and count. She was more articulate and had a better vocabulary.
So, Marcie was shocked when she sent them to school and Keara started having trouble.
“They told us she was behind,” Marcie said. “We worked hard over the summer and then we got to first grade and she was still struggling with sounds of letters and recognition of letters.
“Then I noticed she was flipping some of her letters and I began asking about dyslexia. But the teachers said, ‘she doesn’t flip her numbers or all of her letters, that’s not the problem.’
“It’s a teacher, so you trust them.”
The troubles continued, but then in second grade Keara’s teacher came out to the car to express concerns and whispered to Marcie, “Have you considered that she might have dyslexia?”
“I told her, ‘Well, yes, I have,’” Marcie said. “I asked her, ‘What do I do?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know.’”
Finally, someone was pointing her in a direction she could research to find ways to help her daughter. She managed to get Keara tested for dyslexia and got a positive diagnosis for the condition in which students struggle with letter recognition and decoding words.
Marcie has spent the last two years relentlessly following the advice of professionals who know how to teach people with dyslexia. It has helped her daughter tremendously.
But Marcie still asks, what if the teacher in first grade had recognized Keara’s needs? Would she be further along in her education? Why didn’t her teacher recognize the signs?
“I’ve talked to my sister who is a teacher, and she said she didn’t learn anything about dyslexia in college,” Marcie said.
So, when she heard about House Bill 1108, authored by State Rep. Woody Burton and sponsored by State Sen. Rod Bray in the Senate, she was fully on board in supporting the bill.
The bill provides a definition of dyslexia and requires teachers to be trained to recognize it so they can put students on the right reading and learning track earlier. The programing required by the bill is similar to Ohio’s dyslexia pilot program that was enacted in 2011. It requires school districts to provide early screening and intervention services for children with risk factors for dyslexia.
The program’s goal is to give reading assistance to children exhibiting signs of dyslexia and to evaluate whether the programs can reduce future special education costs. It passed through the house earlier this legislative session and made it out of a Senate committee Wednesday with an amendment meant to ensure that the definition of dyslexia is “aligned with special education practices founded in Indiana code.”
Marcie has made several trips to the Indiana Statehouse to lobby for HB 1108 and to testify on its behalf. She was there Wednesday as well, along with Keara, to support it.
“When you go to a school and say the word dyslexia, they will tell you they don’t use that word, or that it’s not real,” Marcie said. “This bill is the first step, really, to get schools to recognize dyslexia.
“If they would identify early with screening and get kids proper instruction, they would learn to read and spell, and you’d end up having fewer children in special education classes and less failures in standardized testing.
“The later you catch it, the harder it is to turn around.”
Though HB 1108 has passed through the House and now heads to the full Senate for a vote, it still faces opposition. School districts would incur the cost of teacher training programs with the amendment that was added in Senate committee. Because of that amendment, the bill must go back to the House for a vote before it would hit the governor’s desk to be signed into law.
Marcie is hopeful the bill will clear all the hurdles so others like Keara can get help earlier, she said.
“My daughter will learn to read accurately, but never automatically,” Marcie said. “She will read slower and it’s going to take her more time. But if teachers are taught what the signs are and what dyslexia means, perhaps they will catch it sooner and perhaps they will stop doing things that destroy the children’s self-esteem.”