An Interview with Alyssa Lang: Success Story

Alyssa Lang

2.28.10 - Michael F. Shaughnessy - Alyssa Lang was diagnosed with dyslexia in her junior year in high school, and she struggled and compensated for years by literally memorizing every word she encountered. She graduated with a 4.31 GPA and now attends Notre Dame.

An Interview with Alyssa Lang: Success Story

Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

Alyssa Lang was diagnosed with dyslexia in her junior year in high school, and she struggled and compensated for years by literally memorizing every word she encountered. She graduated with a 4.31 GPA and now attends Notre Dame. She was recently honored in Washington D.C. by the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic organization, along with several other students who have achieved success in spite of their difficulties. She was recently awarded the Learning Through Listening Award by the Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic Organization.  In this interview, she comments on her difficulties, her award and her achievements. Her mother adds a supplement to clarify and elucidate on Alyssa’s journey at the very end of the interview.

1)   Alyssa, first of all, let me offer my personal feelings and indicate to you how sorry I am that it took until your junior year in high school to get diagnosed. I think your case says something about the schools in general, the lack of referrals and the need for good school psychologists. How did you cope in elementary schools?

 In elementary school, I struggled constantly with reading. I was taught to skip over words I didn't know and use context clues to understand a word’s meaning, but pronouncing them was extremely difficult. I was a quiet student, so I avoided participating and never volunteered to read out loud because I just couldn't pronounce the words that other kids my age could. This embarrassed me. 

2)   What did your teachers say to you if anything in elementary school?

My teachers never said anything to me in elementary school. I have always been a quiet, good and determined student, so they never suspected that I had a reading disability. 

3)   How did you finally get diagnosed and how did you feel at that time?

Very early on, my parents recognized I struggled with reading, and I had been to about half a dozen doctors and learning specialists since kindergarten. Finally my junior year had arrived, and the upcoming SAT and ACT made us concerned over how I was going to survive it with my slow reading and processing.

My uncle, who is dyslexic and has a dyslexic daughter, told my mother about Dr. Karen Wicks, who had served as a director of curriculum and instructional development on the College Board - the SAT developers. My mom and I journeyed up to New Jersey to meet her, as a last attempt to discover why I struggled with reading and processing words.

Dr. Wicks gave me a phonetics test in which I had to pronounce nonsense words, and after three attempts she told me to stop, because she saw how much I was struggling. At the end of the six hours of testing she told us that I am dyslexic. She said it was apparent with the phonetics test she gave me – and that if any of the other doctors or specialists had given this one test, I would have been diagnosed immediately with dyslexia. Looking through my records from other doctors and specialists, we later saw that one specialist had actually diagnosed me with dyslexia but put it in medical code and never told us, so we never knew about it.

When Dr. Wicks gave us the news, I immediately began to tear up just thinking about all the doctors, specialists, and tutoring programs I had gone to since kindergarten. We had finally discovered the reason why I had been struggling for so long.

 4)   What did you begin to realize?

After being diagnosed with dyslexia, I understood why I read so poorly out loud, and why I so frequently mispronounced and misspelled words.

 5)   What are you doing now?

While I am in college, there is no time to rewire the way my brain processes words, so I will have to do a specific program for that some time in the upcoming summers. However, I am more than able to survive college with the help of the Recording For the Blind & Dyslexic program. Their audio textbook CDs and text-to-speech downloads make it easy for to get my reading assignments done on time – instead of having to spend my whole weekend struggling and getting caught up.

 
6)   Please tell us about your memory skills - did you intentionally develop them, or was this just a coping strategy or mechanism?

I think my memory skills are somewhat innate (e.g. I could tell you where a word is on a page in relationship to other words on the page). I used those skills as a coping mechanism for reading because I didn't know there was any other way to read.

7)   What does the future hold for you?

I'm not completely sure as of now, but feel very positive. I hope to be involved in some form of business, and plan on graduating from Notre Dame in the next few years.

Alyssa’s Mother Adds the Following Comments :

Alyssa went to Montessori pre-school for 3 years and although she never learned to read in preschool (like her 2 older brothers did)...I was assured all kids learn at different times. We had her tested by a specialist in Haddonfield, New Jersey and no one mentioned dyslexia.

We moved to Plano, Texas and she went to public school 1st grade.  At the end of first grade she was still not reading but always won the "good student" behavior awards.

In 2^nd, grade we switched her to a private Catholic School.

I took her to a speech therapist and more educational consultants to have her tested again. We were told she was a "sight" reader and that some kids can't learn phonics.  No one ever used the word dyslexia. I had her tutored twice a week in reading all year round from 1st grade to 8th grade.

I had called our public school system in Florida to have her tested and there was a 9 month waiting list .In 6th grade we had her privately tested again and we were told she had a reading disorder (DSM-IV) but never identified it as dyslexia. We moved to Jacksonville, Florida and she applied to 2 private schools and was turned down because of her low reading scores on the entrance exams. She attended Catholic school for 6,7,8th grade. She graduated 3rd in her class.

She finally was accepted at the Bolles School (after being turned down previous 2 years)...in part I think because she was a nationally ranked swimmer and the swim coach wanted her on the swim team (Bolles has an internationally recognized swim programs with lots of previous Olympians).

She struggled with the work at Bolles.  She made first Honors every quarter she attended Bolles...from sheer hard work. I have never seen a kid worker harder than Alyssa. (She had won "Best Work Ethic" in Swim World magazine, but the same could be said for her school work). She had figured out at a very early age how to get good grades....she did every extra credit project offered, went to see her teachers during zero hour, developed color coded note cards, etc. But it took its toll on her. She was swimming 20 plus hours a week and keeping up a very rigorous academic schedule. It was not unusual for her to be up until 1 or 2 in the morning and then up at 5:15am for swim practice.

It was too much....at the end of her sophomore year she was recommended for all Honors and AP classes. My husband I were very opposed, but she was so insistent. We figured if it was too hard she could drop down into the regular classes. The AP History class had a tremendous amount of reading....there were not enough hours in the week for Alyssa to finish.

The SAT and ACT tests were looming. We were already researching colleges that did not require standardized tests.

One of my brothers (who had learning struggles his whole life) had a daughter who had dyslexia and recommended a specialist in NJ. Alyssa was tired of seeing specialist, but agreed to fly up there and get tested again. I brought my file of all the previous tests. After 8 hours of testing the specialist told Alyssa she had dyslexia. She tested in the 1% for reading speed for her grade level. Her IQ and visual memory were extremely high...which helped explain how she survived all these years. The specialists told us if a simple nonsense word test had been administered, her reading disorder would have been identified. We were all shocked. Alyssa cried thinking she was somehow defective. It was so late to learn this....and Alyssa had struggled for so many years when she could have gotten help.

The good news was that she got extra time on her ACT. She scored in the 99% on her ACT test. Her grades rapidly improved. Freshman year she had a 4.0 GPA...by the time she graduated she had a 4.6. Having the RFBD books helped her tremendously in the AP History classes. Since she was in a private school, there were no special resources available to help her.

She still has not done any remediation program (like Wilson).