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36 FOCUS - OCTOBER 2015 Reading this article may entertain you. At other times your ability to read may help you earn a comfortable living master new skills or avoid po- tential danger. What would your life be supposing you had been born with an unseen and possibly unrecognized reading disability Imagine in the earliest yearsofyoureducationthatyoufound it dicult to match written letters with their appropriate sounds. Or perhaps your eyes saw the word was on the page but your mind named it as saw. If you experienced those symp- toms you were dyslexic says Bob Almack whose Scugog-based com- pany Online Reading Tutor Services Inc. ORT teaches dyslexic people of all ages and nationalities to read and by grade two you were probably told and more than likely believed yourself that you were intellectually challenged. Dyslexic people Bob explains may be anything but. Many are very smart with av- erage or above-average IQs. They often have special gifts because the dominance of the right side of their brains exceptional creativity artistic or athletic talentusually some form of outside-the-box thinking. The brains left side Bob explains controls language. A genetic condition which cuts across all cultures and lan- guages dyslexia makes reading but not learning he stresses very chal- lenging for those who are right-side dominant. Beyond simply the practical limita- tions created by diculty in master- ing written words dyslexia also has social consequences which reach into adolescence and adulthood. The labelling dyslexics suer theyre often branded as learning- impaired can have dire eects on their self-esteem particularly because it happens in their early formative years.Studiesshowdyslexicsareover- represented in jails and have a much higher incidence of substance abuse depression and unemployment. Through no fault of its own the school system often and quickly leaves these students behind. After grade 3 the curriculum abruptly changes from learning to read to reading to learn. Struggling readers are left in the dust. Our education is highly reading- based so thats the foundational skill for success in that environ- ment. Teachers and this is not a criticism have limited time to provide that level of support to a single student. It is simply not possible for a teacher with 25 students to teach reading to the 15 of his or her stu- dents who are dyslexic. The irony is these kids often have great brains just not good ones for reading. They try to read with the wrong part of their brain. Bob decided to devote his entire energies to improving the situation when he retired in 2009 from Port Perry High School. There he had spe- cialized in teaching dyslexic students to read. His success was recognized in 2007 when the Board trustees award- ed him the Bruce Mather Outstanding Teacher Award. The next year I was hired as a lit- eracy consultant by a BC First Nation and gained experience with students in grades 2 and 3. I recognized the negative impact non-reading had on their lives. In 2011 he launched Online Read- ing Tutor. Our reading software targets the proper location in the brain for opti- mal results. The key is repetition rep- etition repetition. Each student has an individualized learning stream and by monitoring their lessons our tutors adjust the software six days a week. We always have the option of Skype if face-to-face time is necessary. So long as there were no factors unrelated to dyslexia in the persons background and by that I mean ele- ments like substance abuse in utero or a traumatic brain injury we guarantee reading improvement and have a 99 success rate. That conclusions backed up by independent scientic studies. Online Reading Tutor now em- ploys eight teachers from Canada the US and New Zealand and serves students around the globe. Weve helped students in Russia Australia Ireland New Zealand and of course Canada and the United States. Computer technology and the use of Skype has removed those barriers. ORT also offers a free dyslexia screener app on its home page which gives a detailed analysis of decoding skills. We pay a big price as a society by not fully and properly addressing dyslexia. If governments spent public money to teach these people to read youd save taxpayers a lot of dollars in the long run. It is short sighted that the Federal Government has cut the budget for adult literacy while increasing spending on prisons Forty percent of inmates are illiterate Bob stresses the positive angle of his work which has dominated the last 25 years of his life. They have a great deal to contrib- ute. You dont have to look beyond our own back yard to nd an exam- Literacy Gives Dyslexic Kids a Leg Up PHOTOSUBMITTEDBYBOBALMACK An ORT student has greatly improved and is now reading uently.