Make It a Red Letter Day - Dyslexia Awareness
Make It A Red Letter Day
As many readers of my blog will know, I am very passionate about advocating for those with dyslexia. My advocating (and blog writing) has taken a bit of a back seat recently as my family and I have had a very busy year. In May we had a great trip to Japan and Korea, and in June we moved to London. While we settled in to our new home, and I got my girls settled in to school, I didn’t have much time for advocating or blog writing. Being in the northern hemisphere we have also just had summer of course, so after only being at school for 3 weeks (after 9 weeks off) my girls had a 6 week summer holiday. Life has been crazy!!!
However, now that the girls are back at school, we are getting into some kind of routine again, and I’m itching to get back into all things dyslexia. I have also just begun an online course working towards a masters in dyslexia, which will certainly help keep me busy and entertained.
Something that has really inspired me to get back into advocating is a wonderful campaign that is currently being run throughout Australia in preparation for Dyslexia Empowerment Week (October 16-22 2016) called ‘Make it a Red Letter Day’. This campaign aims to increase awareness about dyslexia through a number of heartfelt letters, written by children and adults with dyslexia to their school principal, teacher, state or federal Member of Parliament, a Government leader, the media or a person they feel may have an influence in creating change for dyslexia locally, nationally or internationally. These letters tell the receiver about the struggles that are faced every day by dyslexic learners and they will ask for change at a school, state and national level.
You can see these letters here: Make It a Red Letter Day
Reading through the letters that have been written so far makes me very emotional, as I imagine it will for many readers. These are heart-breaking stories, many from the young children themselves, telling of the struggle they face on a daily basis. They describe the way they are made to feel worthless, feel like failures, the anxiety it creates for them, that school feels like a nightmare for them. These are things that no child should be made to feel.
Many parents have written about their experiences in trying to find an answer to why their child is struggling, how to get the right support, and so often not being able to find it. Asking why it is that most schools just don’t know enough about dyslexia to identify it, or know the right steps to take to help those children to learn to read and write. So often these kids are labelled as the class clown, the trouble-maker, lazy.
If these letters can inspire just one school principal, one teacher, one Member of Parliament or government leader, to consider the impact of dyslexia, to share this message with their colleagues, to discuss it in the staff room, to want to make a change, hopefully this can start creating change where change needs to be made.
Please share the My Red Letter website with friends, your kids’ teachers, your school principal. The more people who can begin to understand the impact of dyslexia on these kids and their families, and to understand that there needs to be change, and what that change needs to be, the more likely it is to happen.
Websites for more information on: