Inside Dyslexia: A Dynamic View of Learning Disorders
By Liza Young
Attaining a real understanding of the perspectives of children
with learning disabilities is a daunting task. Having themselves
grown up with dyslexia, filmmakers Josh Easdon and Nate Hamlin
are powerfully aware of the educational significance of witnessing
a true perspective of children facing disabilities. To shed
light on the worlds of students with learning disorders, Easdon
and Hamlin created Inside Dyslexia, a documentary film that
provides a keen view of the trials, but also the triumphs of
students with learning disabilities.
Co-producing Inside Dyslexia was a task Easdon and Hamlin did
not take lightly. Nine years in the making, the final product
is a film that portrays, over the course of two years, three
students, with different learning disorders, united by the
theme of facing major challenges, but with arsenals of courage,
wit, and the support from friends and family.
Ten years old at the start of the documentary, Amanda, a student
at the Mary Mcdowell School for Children with learning disabilities
has dyscalulia; she struggles with math problems that most
students find basic. The emotional repercussions of the learning
disability are seen through acting out in class, displaying
behavior such as hiding under desks, and being attached to
adults.
Amanda is, however, creative—“Adventure is my middle
name,” she says. She descriptively explains that the “wiring
in her brain is gold except for one wire which is silver,” the
wire for math. Receiving critical attention at school and the
support of her parents, Amanda appears at a roundtable discussion
following the film. We learn that she recently received an
award in the subject area once her tormentor—math, and
she hopes to begin a career in film.
A student at the Churchill School, Carmen, who first appears
in the film at the age of 12, is dyslexic and fits the profile
of such students, memorizing books from a very young age so
as to mask the issue of decoding problems. Carmen relates early
childhood memories of having memorized a series of Dr. Seuss
books.
Her father had noticed she had some difficulty when she was
a toddler, but the schools did not pick up on the problem until
around the second grade. Carmen is bright, having a high vocabulary
and an excellent memory. Her teacher describes Carmen’s
plight as her having the comprehensive skills to read on a
higher level, but insufficient skills to get passed decoding.
Carmen appears to have a strong sense of self-esteem and resilience—“I
don’t care if you don’t want to be my friend because
I have trouble reading—If that’s the case, you
never were my friend anyway.” Today she has reached the
point of securing her future; she is working on college applications
while a student at the recently established Churchill High
School.
Gio, a 15-year-old student—when first appearing onscreen—at
the Central Park East Secondary School, has Attention Deficit
Disorder (ADD) and faces difficulty with concentration and
organization. His humanities teacher describes him as more
of a visual learner and having better comprehension in one-on-one
settings than in the general classroom setting. Towards the
end of the school year he is in danger of failing if he doesn’t
get organized and keep up with assignments.
Gio, guided by the “tough love” approach of his
mom and teachers, tapped into all his resources to navigate
difficulties. By the end of the film, we find that Gio has
made significant improvements academically and socially.
Displaying an enlightened perspective, Gio states that he is
fortunate to have a learning disability: “It got me more
attention.” He has a point—as described by his
resource room teacher, many children with mild learning problems
fall through the cracks. The acuteness of Gio’s disability
sharpened the attention of adults, and ultimately his own,
towards tackling the problem.
Seeing him onstage following the screening, we find a sophisticated
young man who is a student at NYC Tech with a double major,
including computer science.
Easdon and Hamlin point out in the film that learning disorders
never go away, “that you must learn to build structures,
go around them…over time you embrace it…it becomes
part of your life.” At the same time, in tune with Gray’s
Ode To Adversity, their film illustrates that people often
rise to their greatest potential in the face of great challenges.#
