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My Story : Will Cloake

 

Just for the record, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Criminology and Criminal Justice) and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB—2nd class honours). Since then I have completed my registration course as a lawyer and work for the Office of the Department of Public Prosecutions in that capacity.
You may want to know how a dyslexic like me got to do this. I guess even modestly speaking I consider myself successful and would like to share with you what worked and what didn’t work for me to secure this achievement.


What I remember about school

Things I remember are that at school I felt different because I couldn’t master spelling and in everything that I was tested on I could not do. I was aware that when I attended special classes that other students perceived me as belonging to that group. I felt different to other students because I did different work in the school context and was definitely not part of the mainstream curriculum.  On the other hand at sport, in free time, and at art I certainly did not feel  different.

All aspects of schoolwork that required any reading or writing was extremely difficult for me – I simply couldn’t do it and when I did accomplish something it took an enormous amount of effort and  concentration and the outcome was noticeably inferior to most of the other students in my class. On the other hand, I enjoyed gaining knowledge through listening and did not find oral responses and presentations at all worrying.

I remember at primary school going to both Wilston State School and the Steiner School. What sticks out in my mind about school days is playing sport in  particular handball and cricket, fighting in the  playground and the people both students and  teachers. Doing exams separately from everyone else, learning Braille, intensive reading classes in Grade 5, and numerous project topics that I really enjoyed and being really good at the game "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego ?" - all surface in the brain.

Classes outside school with Shan McNeill were characterized by games and fun reading ativities.  What really helped me to learn was when teachers structured my learning so that I did not have to read to get the information – teacher explaining, watching videos, question/sessions.

The corollary of this – having to read or research in the library and taking notes was most unhelpful and demotivating for me.

In High School those same techniques were what was helpful. High School seemed much easier for me because different teachers had different methods.The Independent Learning Centre made a huge difference to how I was supported with schoolwork and provision of a reader/writer for assessments. My perception is that more teachers had a grasp on how they could structure their teaching to help all students. I really missed team sports at the high school I went to as they didn’t participate in that form of sport. The subject I consistently disliked most throughout my schooling was music. I did not participate in the OP (TE Score) process and I do not see that not doing this has had any negative effect. In fact I started university studies in the later part of Year 10.

The advantages of studying at Uni were limited interaction with teachers, being able to set up my own independent study approaches. Performa is based much more on comprehension and much of the assessment was orally based. Research assignments could be dictated and checked and for examinations I always had a reader/writer.

In retrospect I consider myself incredibly lucky to have good comprehension, a reluctance to give up, and good organizational skills - these have been the backbone of my success. I believe that learning Braille helped me break through some links that helped my reading and I know that the prescribing of Dex Amphetamine in years 11 and 12 made a significant contribution to my ability to focus and concentrate for longer periods.

And these are just some of my perspectives! During the thinking process for this piece I felt that my parents would have some useful reflections to share.

What my Parents now Think Worked

They said that it was hard to really think about this as I had achieved my goals and it was a wry temptation to say that the whole of life plan that we had together worked brilliantly but they would give it some thought. Here is what my mother and father (Patsy and Roger Cloake) have to say:

“We are very proud of William’s achievements and dedication and we are conscious that we made decisions that only we could make, because of our family Circumstances; so we say what we think worked with some degree of caution because it will not suit everyone’s situation. It is highly appropriate that we should say here that our plan emerged along the journey and was generously informed by countless professionals, friends and family with much reading and researching on our part. Our involvement with SPELD Qld  was critical in making sure that we were up to speed with what was happening in the education sector and Patsy’s work at Griffith informed the relevant impacts of the Anti-Discrimination and Disability Legislation emerging in the late 1980’s.

When we knew William had dyslexia  we decided right from the start that we would manage his education because the condition constituted a whole of life one. Taking responsibility for his education worked in terms of our legal obligations because Patsy was a teacher at that time in learning support at Griffith University. First and foremost we decided that we needed to preserve William’s self esteem at all costs so as early as Year 1 we decided that he would never do any unaccommodated testing such as Spelling Tests or Table Tests at school. To make this happen we had an initial WISC assessment done by a qualified friend and used this as a basis to request Will’s exemption from testing.
We continued to protect fiercely his good feelings about himself throughout his schooling and we continued to make sure that we had timely and relevant continuing assessments - both psychological and medical - informing us more precisely of his learning disabilities and what supports we should be advocating for his education.

We deliberately chose to have this done privately so that we, including William, owned this knowledge and were the advocates for what he required. In retrospect this probably worked out for the best,  but it was a very tough call at the time and we had to be very strong, articulate and unswerving in our advocacy with some educators in both the primary and secondary context. Often in this process we really put some teachers off side; this was addressed by reducing Will’s attendance in primary schooling and by Will carefully choosing subjects in secondary schooling.

Given Will’s personality we assessed he should be involved fully in the knowledge and where appropriate the advocacy of his condition as we believed that he would have to manage dyslexia all his life so it would be best if he viewed it as an opportunity to learn more skills and hone them well at an early age.

Deciding that we would profile Will’s strengths and support his disabilities meant that very early in the game we gave away the idea of constant remediation; an anathema to Will and his self-esteem. Instead we organized how we could broaden his learning experience away from the school environment with specialist teacher, Shan McNeill, and activities which we arranged and Patsy conducted during school time – visits to museums, art galleries, national parks, any displays of interest, playing games like chess, movies – anything that visually stimulated and provided grist for William to talk about, evaluate, and/or creatively to deal with.

We carefully selected the schools that Will attended and tried where possible to influence the selection of appropriately informed and mentoring style teachers. When on one occasion the selection we thought we had for the whole of primary school did not come to fruition we made another decision and adjusted accordingly. For us there were nine stand out gem educators during Will’s 12 years of school contact, the rest really didn’t have their head space attuned to learning disabilities and a few were just downright clots – life really.

Despite considerable pressure otherwise we did two things that made Will’s tertiary study easier. In primary school we insisted on an educational assessment so that Will would have a history of documented equitable accommodations – which really amounted to reader and writer for all testing. Then very early in Will’s secondary education we decided that he would not participate in the Tertiary Entrance (TE) process. With Will’s agreement he enrolled late in year 10 in the Open University - selecting subjects from the Griffith Criminology BA Degree. During years 11 and 12 he completed very successfully the First Year of this Program ably supported by the professional and superb Disability Unit at Griffith; University study from the advocacy and equitable accommodations aspects was a breeze. We were seriously chuffed when Will was offered a place in the Griffith Law Program after completion of his second year Uni study.

Throughout the whole journey between ourselves and in our outside interactions we tried to be guided by the real life Confucian principles of deference, tolerance, making good on your promise, diligence and generosity spiced up by using humour wherever possible.

Were there costs? Yes, but no more than any reasonable parent makes for each of their children. Maybe from others perspectives there are or will be negative impacts on Will – time and life will tell. Were we lucky? Yes, we had a plethora of all sorts of resources that we stewarded and nurtured and we had a very intelligent and in the main very cooperative companion in Will.”


The standout advice from me in dealing with dyslexia and the educational process is:

Parents list
  • View the whole process as an opportunity.
  • Know what you are dealing with – get accurate assessments.
  • Preserve your child’s self-esteem.
  • Build on her/his learning strengths.
  • Support/manage her/his learning deficits
  • Have a whole of life and educational plan that includes heavy input from your child
  • Get up to speed on advocacy strategies or who can manage these for you.

My list
  • You need to be an expert on your child’s learning disability.
  • You need to get your child’s disability assessed and documented.
  • Your child needs to be informed about the situation and needs to be nearly as good an expert as you are.
  • You need to help your child understand that they are going to be treated differently at school by both the administration and the students.
  • You have to work within the system and find the little things that make the difference to your child’s progress.
  • You must be flexible.
  • Don’t get stuck with the idea that your child has to do the OP.

 

What is the conclusion:

Bit embarrassing but that’s parents for you. As you can appreciate my life is still emerging and I still have to manage my dyslexia. At present I manage by relying on the fact that I do not have to do any handwriting for any work other than for my own use. I use the computer to spell check. I rely heavily on proformas to the extent that I have my own proformas as well as our office ones. I feel comfortable in asking workmates to check my work and in asking them for spelling advice.

Postcript
I can only add that if you have any questions that you would like me to respond to I would be most happy to do that via Lynda Werda at SPELD Qld. Inc.