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I have dyslexia. I have dyslexia/ADD. My learning difference is dyslexia.
I sorta process things slower
than other kids
or people.
I just remember sitting in class and just not understanding anything.
Everyone else could do something so easily while I was struggling along. Am I stupid?
I didn't want to participate in school, I didn't want to go to school because it was so frustrating for me
The idea for building Eye to Eye is that the turner phrase that has been shared for me and to so many other students
who have learning differences is
"You're less than" The location of the problem of having a learning disability is within you
and so we want to change the location of that problem, we want to change the message.
Eye to Eye first is a mentoring movement for different thinkers.
And what that means is that we build chapters throughout the country
where college students and high school students who have dyslexia and ADD
go into elementary, middle school and high school classrooms and hang out with kids who
also have dyslexia and ADD
They do one on one mentoring in a group setting, so they can see a pathway for
their success.
So every single week there is a new art project.
When I come to Eye to Eye I get really excited because I wonder what the art project is going to be today.
Art helps create conversations about learning differences and the struggles that go along with them.
It gets kids talking, it really gets them to open up
You see a huge difference and you see them thrive,
especially from the begining of the year, its amazing.
I kinda didn't want to do it at the start because my mom told me it was a learning program but
then I got to try in and was like this is so much fun. Well it feels fun cuse it
cuse you find out they have the same disorder as you
and then you don't feel that you're the only person.
And it's nice to
meet people who think
the same way you do
I was working with this one mentee Joe of my first year
and about a week before we ended
his homeroom teacher came up to me and told me
that Joe was behaving in school, turning in his homework on time
acting appropriately compaired to when we first came in
Joe was aggressive, rude
never turning in his homework
and was generally disruptive to learning environment
and to me
it's astonishing that sitting down working with a kid putting art
projects together
and talking with them
could have such a transformative effect on him
As a mentor
seeing these changes in the student it makes you feel better about your own self
makes you feel better in class
the ability to prevent someone else from going through the struggles that you went through
I think is the most amazing thing someone can do with their life.
It's the hardest thing for a parent watching your child struggle
and you don't have
easy solutions for them
We can try to give our children a lot of support in terms of tutors
and actual academic support but a lot of times what they need is morale boosters. She fell in
love with the first mentor she ever had
and she had so much fun doing the different art projects
and the thing that she came out with towards the end of that first year, she said
"Mom, they have learning difficulties too, and they have figured out ways to work around it and I am too.
Our mentors are literally bearers of hope
when someone can come into the life of a little kid and say I've been there
and here's where you can go and so when our mentors pass on that hope to our
mentees
hope is energy!
hope is everything, you can live off hope for years
and that's what we are able to give.
our little kids
and ultimately our teachers, our parents and our communities
that's what i think um... is the power of this idea that is Eye to Eye, is hope.