Ready to learn!
About the amazing dyslexic brain and how you can turn this weakness into a strength? Or learn how YOU can support a dyslexic person in your life, be that your student or your child.
Below, you will learn…
Why I decided to make this course, and the process and research that went into making it.
Why did I decide to make this course?
I have very severe dyslexia and have struggled with it my whole life. Along the way, I encountered plenty of teachers who thought they understood it — offering things like dyslexia-friendly fonts or coloured paper, which sound helpful but aren't actually backed by scientific research. Other times it was simply "just try harder," as if that was a solution no one had thought of before. I began with an idea and a frustration at the education system I had grown up in. I wanted to improve other people's understanding of this disability and cut through the misinformation with research-backed strategies supported by real science.
Process
Once I had the idea, I started by building a lesson plan, then spent a long time researching and reading through countless papers to make sure everything I included was actually backed by science, not just popular myths. From there, I moved into filming, which turned out to be its own challenge. I found it harder than expected to get my ideas out of my head and onto camera in a way that actually made sense. Along the way, I ended up restructuring the lesson plan itself, reshaping it so the course would flow better and make more sense for whoever was watching.
Challenges
Making this course has had to fit around a lot else. Between trips like South Passage and Uluru, the demands of my Big Picture style of Year 12, outlearning experiences, and LeaderUp, time has always been stretched thin — and everything about making this course has taken far longer than I expected. Speaking to the camera doesn't come naturally either; it's a strange thing to explain ideas clearly to a lens instead of a person. Pushing through that and continuing to work on the course, even when the schedule isn't on my side, has been one of the bigger wins of this project so far. The course isn't finished yet, but it's well underway.