This Monday, we had the privilege of celebrating another Mark-It-Read Day at our school, bringing students together for a movie and pizza night, decking our classroom doors out in red, and shining red Christmas lights and spotlights across the front of the school. It was a beautiful occasion where the parents, students, and teachers of our school came together to celebrate what we've accomplished as Roadways and, most of all, to celebrate the dyslexic students who make our school so special and unique.

            Dyslexia can of course provide students with a lot of challenges: reading, writing, and math can all transform from simple tasks to epic quests. Perhaps the greatest challenge, though, can be other's perception of those same struggles, especially adults. It's difficult for adults to relate to children on the best of days, and easy to feel frustrated with kids who are having trouble with what adults perceive as simple tasks. It's common for adults to label those kids as lazy, as goofballs, as non-carers and procrastinators. Judgement is easy. Understanding is hard.

            A special guest visited our school on Monday to share with our students about her struggles with dyslexia and how she's been coping at age 16, attending high school here in Saskatoon. Cora Hills was particularly wonderful to hear from as she's a former student of Roadways. It's rare that a student returns to share with teachers the impact they made on them as young children, and Cora had lots of insight about how Roadways helped her understand how to learn, how her dyslexia has changed with age, what strategies help her to work through challenges, how learning to use technology has been such a boon to her, as well as how her dyslexia is still a daily struggle. Cora's advice for students included learning to laugh at their struggles rather than allowing them to get her down, to connect with others who share their struggles, and to work to understand how they best learn. And her advice for adults, both parents and teachers, could be summed up in one simple word: patience.

            Mark-It-Read Day, as always, proved to be an day for celebration and an opportunity to gain a better understanding of one another here in our little community of learners. Even after many years of teaching, we still have lots to learn from one another and many more ways to show kids with dyslexia that we care, that we’re here for them, and that we will try to understand. Remember to practice patience and remember to mark it read!