Help for Those Who
“Think Differently”
By Edie Orenstein
To say I have a passion for learning is wholly true, but it is not the entire story. I have a business built on enthusiasm, imagination and years of hard work. Those of you who know me well are familiar with my eccentric ways, and the challenges I've struggled with as long as I've been around.
I "see" things differently - and always have. Sometimes I don't "see" at all - or I see things that aren't even there. Reading can be impossible, though writing comes easily, and flows like conversation. Adding and subtracting are hard, but I am able to lace together vast amounts of business information into a coherent image, in a way that I've been told is actually a form of Calculus.
I have been described as dyslexic... but I prefer to call it multi-dimensional, picture, or experiential thinking.
The normal, prescribed mode of education simply didn't work for me - I left school in early adolescence understanding very little about the mechanical, institutional details that living in the western world requires. Yet I've been able to follow my own path, and make up my own ways. And I've managed to be incredibly successful doing what I love, and in ways that make sense to ME.
I doubt that any of this would have been possible without a trip I took to San Francisco about 15 years ago to learn at a centre founded by Ronald Davis, the author of a book called The Gift of Dyslexia, The Gift of Learning and the soon to be published The Seeds Of Genius. He is coming here to speak in November at a fundraiser, and I will be there too. I will be dancing in celebration of learning how and to thank him personally. If any of you know someone who learns “differently,” please join us.
For more information:
Whole Dyslexics Society of BC
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Gift of dyslexia calls
for shift in attitudes
When he was a child, he failed miserably in school and was considered retarded. At 17 he could barely talk in sentences and he remained functionally illiterate until the age of 38.
Today, Ron Davis helps thousands of people around the world overcome problems with language-based learning difficulties through the Davis Dyslexia Correction program.
Davis, author of The Gift of Dyslexia, will be in Vancouver Nov. 3 to deliver the keynote address at an event at UBC called Shift, designed to shift attitudes toward dyslexia and other learning disabilities.
“Dyslexia is a gift because dyslexic people are visual, multi-dimensional thinkers, intuitive, creative and very skilled at hands-on learning,” says Davis. “But because they think in pictures rather than words, they sometimes have difficulty understanding letters, numbers, symbols, and written words.”
“We want to shift people's ideas, to show that the focus should be on changing the education system so it addresses the way students learn,” says Sue Hall of North Vancouver. Hall is one of more than 400 Davis Correction Facilitators world-wide and founder of the non-profit Whole Dyslexic Society of B.C.
For more information, visit the Whole Dyslexics Society of BC
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