Recently, in Janet Steffenhagen’s blog, she shared with the readers an email sent to her by a mother whose child is learning disabled. What followed was a great deal of heated discussion and even I submitted a post to support this “long suffering” mom, Teresa Corsie. To make a long story short, basically, Teresa’s son had a terrible time in public school and was not getting appropriate help. Finally, the parents took him to James Cameron, a school specializing in teaching children with learning disabilities. Now the child is doing well.

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As I sat in my office thinking over the details for my office dedication ceremony tomorrow, I couldn’t help thinking about the words of St. Augustine…

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

It was back in 1998 that I had a direct confrontation with some school administrators because of my friend’s son. The vice principal of the school basically told me that “even if the boy had dyslexia – whatever that was – there was nothing they could do about it.” I was angry about the attitude displayed by this vice principle. In fact, I was so angry that, years later, I ended up with a Ph.D. from UBC specializing in learning disabilities.

I honestly hope that mis-diagnosed cases of ESL children with a language-based learning disability such as dyslexia will be more and more rare in future. There is a lot of work ahead of us. My friend, Dr. Susan Kwan, a board member at SUCCESS, is a supporter for educating the public about dyslexia. This April, I will be speaking at the Dyslexia Conference organized by Dr. Kwan for the Chinese speaking public. I will share more details here at my blog as the information becomes available.

Tags: Education
Posted in Blog