Corrected: A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Rachel Ganz.
If, as a teacher, your student asks you what dyslexia is, can you answer? What about dyscalculia?
Most students with learning differences are going to spend the majority of their time in general education classrooms. That means their teachers need to be prepared to talk with them about why they struggle to read, write, or do math so students are equipped with the knowledge needed to learn and advocate for themselves to the best of their abilities.
Unfortunately, many general education teachers are not prepared for those conversations, say experts.
That’s for a variety of reasons. There’s lingering stigma around using terms like dyslexia. Myths and misconceptions about how brains function abound among educators. And teacher-preparation programs don’t often give budding educators a grounding in the basics of common learning differences, said Holly Lane, the director of the University of Florida Literacy Institute and an associate professor of special education.
Talking to students about their learning disabilities and understanding how those differences will affect their academic progress shouldn’t solely be the purview of special education teachers and school psychologists, she said. But many general education teachers don’t have the understanding, the training, or even the language to have those conversations.
“I hear so often from teachers, ‘this child has an IEP and I don’t know what to do,’ or, ‘I don’t understand the nature of their difficulty,’ and I think the way that a lot of school systems have set up their systems, it’s a mentality of, ‘those kids’ needs are addressed elsewhere and I don’t have to know what to do.’ That’s the problem,” Lane said. “Teachers are spread thin, overworked, and expected to know a whole lot of things—it’s not a slam on teachers.”
Whether a student has dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, or any other neurodivergent condition that makes learning harder for them, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, it helps for them to have a basic understanding of why they struggle to learn or do things when their neurotypical peers don’t. It can improve students’ confidence and their ability to advocate for themselves in the classroom, which is an especially important skill when they get into high school, college, and the workforce, say experts.
Helping students—and teachers—understand learning differences starts with naming them, said Robin Zikmund, a parent of a high school student with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADHD. Zikmund is also the founder of the Idaho chapter of Decoding Dyslexia, an advocacy organization.
She has met many teachers and other school staff who shy away from using “the D words,” Zikmund said.
But for her and her son, learning that there were labels—and ultimately a reason—that he struggled academically was a huge relief. Zikmund’s son was officially diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia when he was in 3rd grade. It was his struggles with reading that prompted Zikmund to get her son evaluated independently by a neuropsychologist.
“By the time you’re in 3rd grade, children are reading to learn, they’re no longer learning to read. You know how mean kids are—he couldn’t read, and it started to stand out,” Zikmund said. “He came home to me at 9 years old, [and said], ‘Mom what is wrong with me? I just want to kill myself.’”
When her son learned the word for what ailed him, it was “everything,” Zikmund said. She bought children’s books about dyslexia to read to him. She told him dyslexia is probably hereditary and that it’s not that uncommon.
“I had that conversation and it was such a game changer,” she said. “You could see it in his eyes, like, ‘oh, I’m not just dumb?’”
But using correct terminology can be fraught. Students may not want their learning difference discussed publicly in class, and parents may fret about their child being saddled with what they perceive to be a negative label, said Zikmund. And teachers should never say a student has dyslexia without a formal diagnosis or evaluation.
But, Zikmund said, it’s critical for terms like dyslexia to be at the very least used on internal documents, like an individualized education program, or IEP, and in discussions among educators and parents working with a student with a learning difference.
The U.S. Department of Education issued guidance in 2015 clarifying that schools could use terms like dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia when developing IEPs for students.
Even among a student population almost entirely made up of students with dyslexia, Maria Paluselli has found that parents can be tentative about using labels. Paluselli is the CEO of Provident Charter School in Pittsburgh, which specializes in serving students with dyslexia.
Dyslexia can be an emotionally raw topic for families and students, she said.
“You might have 10 people who want you to talk about it; you might have 10 others who say that’s something for me to discuss with my child, why are you going there?”
Why teachers need to know what’s happening inside the brains of their students
Students with learning differences benefit from knowing more about how their brains function—that specific areas in the brain related to, say, language, quantity, and motor skills process information differently—and how common specific learning disabilities like dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia are.
Dyslexia and dyscalculia both affect 3 to 7 percent of people, with some estimates suggesting that 1 in 5 people have dyslexia. Similarly, estimates for how many people have dysgraphia range between 5 and 20 percent.
That doesn’t mean that teachers need to be prepared to launch into lectures on neuroscience, said Edward Hubbard, an associate professor in educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. But it is important for teachers to impart to their students that their learning challenges are related to biology, not their intelligence or willpower.
It’s vital for students to understand that brains are not static—they change, said Hubbard. Teachers are in an ideal position to help students learn how they learn.
Students should understand the idea of brain plasticity and “how much the brain can change in response to learning, and the idea that with extra support, with extra practice, you will be able to get better at these skills,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be as good as somebody who doesn’t have the same sort of setbacks or difficulties to overcome. But you can get a lot better.”
Having a deeper understanding of their learning differences helps students advocate for themselves and their needs, especially as they get older when they may have to describe their condition and the accommodations they need to teachers, professors, and bosses.
That’s why teaching students how to advocate for themselves—as well as refining their studying and test-taking skills—is a major focus for 7th and 8th graders at Provident Charter School before they graduate and head to a regular high school, said Paluselli.
“Your family knows [you have dyslexia], we know this, but you’re going to a different school and you need to be able to speak up for yourself,” she said.
All of this means that students benefit greatly if their teachers also have some baseline understanding of how the brains of students with learning differences work differently. While teachers don’t need to be able to name the intraparietal sulcus, a part of the brain related to dyscalculia, Hubbard said, they should know enough about how dyscalculia affects students’ math learning. That helps them tailor their instruction to the students’ needs.
“When we start to think about why kids struggle, a lot of people will say, ‘all we need to know is if they’re succeeding or not. Isn’t that enough?’’’ said Hubbard.
He answers that question with an analogy.
“If I go out to the garage and my car doesn’t start, it might be useful for me to know if it’s out of gas or if the battery is dead. Because I’m going to do very different things to fix [it],” he said. “I am not very mechanically inclined, but I have to know a little bit about what is happening under the hood to decide what is going to be the right strategy to solve this problem.”
Teachers should be able and willing to dispel common myths around learning differences for their students—or at the very least not perpetuate them, Hubbard said.
Surveys of teachers in England, the United States, and the Netherlands have shown widespread beliefs about the brain that aren’t true, he said. One of the most entrenched “neuromyths” is the belief that students are either visual or auditory learners.
“I see a lot of preservice teachers taking my classes, and they are often surprised by some of the things they have heard about that aren’t true,” Hubbard said. “They often have heard about dyslexia, but they are often gratified to find out about dyscalculia and get some insights into why some kids may struggle.”
Debunking common myths and misconceptions about learning differences
Widespread myths about dyslexia include the belief that dyslexia is more common among boys, that it only affects English speakers, that children will grow out of it. Another one is that dyslexia is related to vision and that giving students text in a specific font will help them read, said Lane.
Although not the same as a myth, Lane worries about a trend that is generally seen as a best practice: telling students that while their learning difference will cause them to struggle in some academic pursuits, it will lead them to excel in others.
“You can be very smart and have dyslexia, but there’s a tendency almost to overplay that part,” she said. “That’s a really common approach that people will say to kids: ‘All these really smart people with all these really great talents have dyslexia.’”
But that can make kids feel worse, Lane said. “People talk about dyslexia being a gift,” she said. “I think that’s a problem, because for a lot of kids there’s nothing gift-like about it. It can be a real challenge.”
Taken together, this advice might start feeling like an impossible tightrope to walk:
- Don’t shy away from talking openly with students about their learning differences, but not if it makes them uncomfortable;
- Be honest about how the makeup of their brain may make learning certain things more difficult for the rest of their lives, but don’t stigmatize them; and
- Encourage a growth mindset and an understanding of the plasticity of their brains, but don’t prime them for failure by building them up too much.
It seems like a mess of contradictions, said Peter Faustino, the president of the National Association of School Psychologists, but it’s a mess that teachers are likely used to navigating.
Every student, whether they are in special education or not, learns differently, said Faustino. Teachers need to take their lead and cues from the student on how much information they need about the inner workings of their brains and the specifics of their learning difference, he said.
“Learning is a complex set of processes,” he said. “We want a student to pay attention to something, we have to input the information through their senses, they have to organize it, and then we want them to retrieve that information at some point. That looks very different for every single person. When we have a challenge in doing a task, it’s really the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.”
But just as important as understanding students’ learning differences, is that general education teachers develop strong relationships with them, said Benjamin Tillotson, a long-time special education teacher in Salt Lake City.
It can be hard for students to open up about their disability, he said, because often times their learning differences only come up in school when they’re failing at something, he said.
“That sets up a negative pattern in the student’s mind and in this educational relationship,” he said.
Teachers should get ahead of that, he said, by talking with students early about their learning difference and what they need to be successful in an upbeat, forward-looking way.
“It’s about fostering not only a relationship with a student, but I’m creating a safe environment for them to communicate that they have a disability, and not punishing them.”
Educating the rest of the class—and teachers—about learning differences
Talking about how everyone has strengths and weaknesses is a good way to message learning differences to all students.
Teachers have an important role in normalizing learning differences for the rest of the class, said Rachel Ganz, a pediatric neuropsychologist for the Child Mind Institute. Teachers shouldn’t focus solely on the students who have them.
She recommends teachers use phrases like, “Johnny learns differently than Sarah,” she said, or “Sarah might need to sit in a quiet setting to read.” Say that students have different brains, she said, just like they have different hobbies, likes, and dislikes.
“Talking about it openly as a class, I think, leads to more acceptance and, hopefully, for students to advocate for themselves,” she said.
If teachers feel out of their depth talking about learning differences with their students, they don’t have to do it alone. They should ask for help, said Paluselli. She recommends teachers lean on in-house experts, such as a school psychologist, to talk to the class about learning differences and other neurodivergent conditions.
Zikmund, the parent, said she really appreciated when her son’s 4th grade teacher invited her into his classroom to give a talk about dyslexia. Zikmund handed out pencils to the students, with one out of every five pencils being red instead of the standard yellow, to represent some estimates of how common the characteristics of dyslexia are. She said students were curious and nonjudgmental, and she felt like the exercise helped create a more hospitable environment for her son to learn in.
Including the entire class in discussions about how people’s brains are wired differently, affecting how they learn, helps create a positive classroom culture where students with learning differences feel comfortable enough to try and fail, rather than stigmatized, said Faustino. It can also help students develop those all-important self-advocacy skills, he said.
Teacher-prep programs fall short in grounding all teachers in learning differences
While experts say it’s valuable for general education teachers to have a baseline understanding of what common learning differences are, how they present, and how to work with students who have them, teachers often aren’t receiving that guidance in their teacher-prep programs, said Lane.
All educators in a school should have some familiarity with common neurodivergent disorders and their students’ IEPs, said Zikmund. She remembers her son coming home from school “in a puddle” because the music teacher didn’t understand his dyslexia and embarrassed him in front of the class because he couldn’t read music.
Not requiring preservice teachers to learn about learning differences in schools of education is a missed opportunity and not good practice, Lane said. Every teacher will encounter and need to know how to teach students with learning differences. Between 10 and 20 percent of students in any given class could have a learning difference, Lane said, whether or not they have been evaluated or diagnosed.
And what works for students with learning differences usually works for everyone, she said.
“Very seldom is there a particular instructional practice that a child with a disability needs that wouldn’t also help some other child in your classroom or maybe all children,” Lane said. “It’s not just like you’re learning something just for those specific children. Those are practices that are going to be beneficial to everyone—they’re not going to be harmful to anyone.”
