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 For more case studies purchase the Dyslexia Consultants Mailbag. Here you will discover 100 letters to and from Christina Alexander including many, many very descriptive thank yous that show how Christina's resources have given hope and brightened the lives of numerous children, teenagers and adults all over Australia. 1. A case study: Country Lions, Town Mice (from A Dyslexia Consultant's Mailbag: 100 Letters Answered Fixing the problem of learning difficulties by a simultaneous mustisensory method is easy with purpose-designed material wherever you live. However, isolated rural people are more used to doing without experts and managing on their own so sometimes have an advantage over townspeople in many phases of life including education. Town people can be overwhelmed by expertise and give up. But not necessarily. The three case histories below illustrate this. The first case was of a town parent who gave up under the weight of too much advice. The second, Ned's mother, did very well, though in a negative environment, working by distance education with Christina Alexander and the Banana Books. The third was a town mother who carved her way to success through a maze of advice. Town parent A town mother with two children, 15 and 9 years of age in great dyslexia difficulties just phoned. Although the 15-year-old is at the legal age to leave school so no paperwork would be involved in doing so, she is horrified at the idea of taking him out of school to improve his basics by distance learning before returning him to do work to his mental standard. The 9-year-old is to again repeat Grade 3, although the methods will be the same as before. Like putting something through a machine, finding it doesn't work so putting it through again, and again. What for? The poor woman had the usual stories of her husband depending on her to read the newspapers aloud, write all the letters and deal with all paperwork because he is like his sons. The boys have spent thousands of hours on rote-learning spelling lists that were learned and lost and thousands more on trying to compose essays or construct assignments with laborious, awful writing/printing and all-night sessions to present something mediocre that involved time and effort out of all proportion to the result. The mother is afraid of the remedial teacher because the children forget the work their mother has taught and it is supposed she is slack and makes no attempt to assist. I suggested that father and sons, with her supervision, and a rota of family help, could fix up their basics but she is convinced it's no use. Country parent A country mother drove for nine hours over dusty rutted roads to attend a seminar I was conducting in liaison with the Minister for Technical and Further Education. Her 14-year-old son, Ned, was being tormented and chronically underachieving at a boarding school. Her husband is illiterate and refuses to acknowledge there is anything more to the child's under-achievement than sloth or dreaminess. After apt assessment, when the boy was found to have a processing difficulty, this mother took action. She negotiated with the school for a year off to fix up the basics. After fights with the headmaster, English teacher, Remedial teacher, who all promised wonderful programmes at the school for her son, she advised that the school had had two years and had not been successful so she would take him out. She hired governesses for her other children to leave time between cattle mustering and domestic duties to teach her son. He was not of legal age to leave school yet, so she went through the legal procedures which follow. The governesses were unsatisfactory, her husband sceptical and she was some time in hospital because of broken ribs from a fall from a horse. At the end of the year a Guidance Officer at a large reputable school tested the boy and determined he was now performing at the average for his age. He returned to the boarding school and is happy. Nobody torments him now for school is like a fowl yard where the weak are picked on, sometimes to death. I reproduce test results and communications because this case and its outcome could be a blueprint for so many others. I should warn that some bureaucrats may be obstructive, others helpful. It's very much a matter of luck. If unlucky, don't let that deter if 'time out' seems best. Town parent This lady was lucky for the Director General of Education for her region was an understanding, compassionate and PRACTICAL man, as well as an honest one who knew that nothing in state or private schools had proved able to save the boy, and he helped enormously with tedious paperwork and took a personal interest in the case. It can be otherwise, I repeat, but don't be put off. Think of your child's future. A primary school teacher (Australian) and his American-trained teacher wife thought, that since they were trained teachers employed by the Education Department getting permission to take their acutely dyslectic son out of school to fix his 3R's would be a formality or just a rubber stamp. But the area supervisor was a blunt, cynical clod. He opinioned that dyslectics are hopeless and nothing can be done. To her credit, the American-born mother successfully fought his negativity, ignorance and attitude. He was silent for five minutes after her intellectual and passionate repudiation witnesses tell me! I should add that this was a town situation, so perhaps it is no wonder town mice more often throw in the towel and let authority deprive their young of a decent life. In this case the father had at first attributed his son's school failure to the lax discipline of a colleague of gentle manner who was close to retirement. He therefore, against his principles, took the boy into his class when he repeated a grade. Increased discipline made no difference. The intellectually able boy became violent and obnoxious in behaviour and this was a large contributing factor in the parents' marital separation. Some phone conversations were so long while I re-educated two teachers that callers during these marathons would contact 'faults and difficulties' to be told a conversation was in progress. Then the doctor explained that the cause of the temporary partial paralysis of my hand was due to stress to the ulna nerve (near the elbow) from resting the arm on the phone table for long periods. The teachers had taken their son out of school and recruited lay help to relieve the mother who had given up teaching to help her son, while the paper work was still in the pipelines for permission to withdraw their son. By the time official permission was granted the boy had overcome his 3R's, troubles and was back in the classroom. I am happy to report that his return to school, now once more the happy, ebullient character of former times, his parents had reconciled. It has been found that the boy's paternal grandmother, a community leader, is a hopeless speller and writes illegibly and incoherently. So the books are carefully stashed away ready for the next generation when George's children may need them. They have "A Boodle of Doodles" stashed away too, believing in an ounce of prevention .... But, leaving nothing to chance they are determined their grandchildren will go through both kits LD or not. They stimulate and extend all anyway to enjoy words and numbers. Follow up for Ned from Christina I was delighted at your phone call. Ned is responding brilliantly to the Banana Books considering the short time he has 'been on them'. You are doing a good job. If only the other local parents would help their children. Education for dyslectic children should be a right and offered in school without all the anguish to all concerned. I have never been so busy as this year. More parents seem to be aware and to demand answers. The run-around they endure and the worry is not good enough. Yesterday a family came, in which Grade 9 and Grade 11 students had Grade 3 reading ages and above average intelligence. They had spent a fortune on all sorts of cures from diet to exercise and been told by guidance officers at the end of primary school that their condition was hopeless. Lately lots of teachers want me to train them or set up clinics that breed like rabbits or proliferate like MacDonald's hamburger restaurants. But I find teachers are impossible to thoroughly train because they revert to the old ways drilled into them as young teachers-in-training. Their diploma depends on it perhaps? Security? Psychology? Yet I feel I must try to give them the knowledge considering their pivotal position in determining the future of generations to come if the implications of their tutelage is fully appreciated. I wondered if you could keep a comprehensive journal on your day to day management in teaching? It could be a blueprint for other brave parents and give them courage. You could back-track to the beginning. It could be a very interesting account and valuable. ('Warts and all' of course!) The Association for Gifted and Talented Children (Queensland) has asked me to offer papers on my work at Griffith University in June when they hold a state wide conference there. I have a 4-year-old prevention scheme called 'A Boodle of Doodles' which has been successfully tested. It's a collection of cylinders, scrolls, opened out chaff bags, written and drawn on, all in a huge 'boodle' or bag. I might explain that, and the storybook maths for verbally gifted or, perhaps, my "nuts to spelling lists" literacy stew ... or other aspects of the twelve strand conglomerate. Congratulations on what you are doing. I might someday do a conference paper on it in tribute to your bravery under pressure if you give me permission and lend me your journal ... With kind regards and best wishes to you all, *Postscript Ned is ready to use the 'Story Lines' chart to help arrange his ideas coherently on paper. The four main kinds are useful and can be found at the back of the literacy books. From the Country Lioness I was very pleased to receive your letter - your enthusiasm is infectious. It's good to hear you are spreading the word so widely. My governess, Carole, and I have been keeping a diary, and this afternoon have composed notes about the work. I have a couple of questions for you. Firstly I am unsure about how much writing Ned should be doing other than the diary he is keeping. At this stage he is doing only 8-10 lines in it as well as some dictation with problem words given after. Also Carole is having trouble explaining fractions and can't find the explanation. She feels a bit nervous about other new concepts which will come up in future. We have almost finished 'From My Tree House' and Ned's reading has improved quite a good deal already. He is trying hard in the spelling and the punctuation is better, but his ability to sit down and write for any length of time is poor, which is why I am wondering if we are doing enough. We spend an hour on literacy and Carole spends an hour on numeracy each day. That is aside from the exercises, sport and Secondary Education Subjects. Ned sends his regards and we hope to hear from you soon. *A reply was sent explaining that the fractions are in Book 9 'Winged Alligators Eat Dandelions' Level Two, Vol 2 of The Big Fat Beaut Book and that he should build up to ten pages of journal daily with the daily dose of jawbuster words from spelling twisters or stack stories. Gradually though. Letter from Ned in Copperplate (and only a few slurps of whiteout!!!) Thankyou for the photo of your horse. I've sent you a photo of Telos and Minty. The Chestnut filly that Dad owns is called Telos. She is 20 months old and she won 2nd prize in the stock horse, under 3 years class. Vanessa's little pony is called Bucas Minstral and I call him Minty. He is 3 years old and an Australian Stud Book pony. I'm training him for Vanessa. I'm going to take him round the shows. We have 7 dogs. Six of them are working cattle dogs, and one a house dog. She is a Jack Russell. We have one cat. From Country Lioness (A short note from the country lioness with Ned's story from the 'stack' stimulus story: 'Newsflash: Shaggy dog digs up dinosaur!!' which comes in Book 2, 'You Wouldn't Read About!' Vol 1, Level One of The Big Fat Beaut Book.) Ned has added the poem and story for your interest. The story contains the day's spelling words, and the poem was a fun thing he did with Carole. We aren't doing any Secondary Ed now, as we feel far more work needs to be done with story writing, dictation, etc. I can notice a difference already - the self-expression is better, and the liquid paper isn't getting such a caning. Have a lovely Easter. STORY One morning a crazy old curator opened his little bag. Inside was a key, but!!! Inadvertently the curator dropped the key and a bower bird stole the key. The nonchalant curator didn't care, he just found a spare key. The bower bird came back and flew right into the museum and stole the vary rare Diprotodont bone, for the hoard in his bower. The disillusioned curator knew he had a crisis. Next morning the daring bird came back. The old manager got his gun and shot the precocious bird. Now he problem was definitely solved. He went to the parapet and lay down to try and regain his energy. POEM Fishing Fish jump out of water. From the Son of a Town Lioness (Who proves there are always exceptions) The proof of the pudding ... Stories by Harry Winter when in Grade 6 Here are a clutch of stories emanating from the model ones in the literacy section Vol 1 of The Big Fat Beaut Book. The writer had illegible handwriting, no spelling of any words beyond one syllable and inability to frame a coherent story or sentence of more than one and a half lines. High IQ notwithstanding. Note that the stories show the release of his mental energy and imagination ON PAPER and though he uses my carefully peppered long words likely to trouble, the ideas are his own and he has made no spelling mistakes. Today he is finishing a university degree. He was in Year 5 when I met him and his mother did the work with him before the manuscripts were books. These stories were done after twelve months work on my screeds, he still had half the programme to go in literacy. He continued full-time school concurrently. The numeracy was not yet invented, when it was, he did that too. His non-LD brothers nowadays find it quicker to ask him how to spell big words than use dictionaries or spellchecks on the PC! ALLIGATOR SAM Once upon a time there lived an alligator hunter of astronomical size called Alligator Sam. His job was to manufacture unwearable shoes and unusable hand bags from alligator skin. He ate indigestible kerosene-covered poison peaches with complete effortlessness and gave the receipt to the gastronomical society. They found it hard to get the main ingredient which was kerosene, so they used methylated spirits instead and the result was absolutely indescribable. NIGHTMARE Tommy gets into bed cuddling his Teddy Bear. He starts to dream that his pet bluetail fly is in terrible trouble because he put a sweet-smelling chicken in a basket full of spring onions. Later he dreamt that his favourite crocodile tears evaporated into pea-soup fog and then condensed onto saucers and plates of peaches-and-cream. Then he dreamt that he was standing in the middle of a street in a wild west town judging the final showdown between Bill the Kid and Billy the Goat. He could hear shaking shutters and clinking stirrups. In slow motion he saw Billy the Kid blowing up balloons and Billy the Goat, wearing blinkers, shelling peas. ROOSTERS A humble farm was scandalously predicting scrumptious roosters. They pump them up with air to make them look enormous, put them in quaintly decorated plastic bags and send them to the shop. Mr. Bill Bill chose two bags with hearts and flowers on them and put them into the boot of his car. On the way home the car bounced and bumped over tonnes of bouncy balls which had fallen off a truck. In the boot there were suddenly two horrifyingly loud bangs. Mr. Bill Bill put on the brakes, opened the boot and was hit in the face by one deflating chicken after another!!!! ONE MORNING One morning we decided to go and see the museum. When we got there the first thing we saw was a fireman in overalls shovelling snow although it was the summer season. He was shovelling it out of the museum into the street. They had forgotten to turn off the snow-making machine and the museum was full of snow. We built some snowmen and threw snowballs at them but some of the snowballs missed the snowmen and broke some of the windows of the museum. The museum-owner sent his Great Danes after us. We started running but we fell over our snowballs and when the dogs were just about on us it all turned out to be a dream. CHEESE Tom Brown is eating green cheese and writing a dictionary on the moon. He is all alone except for his green homesick canary which is warbling in his space-age cage. Tom Brown had been on the moon for three years and had lived entirely on green cheese so he had eaten a huge hole in the moon. One day he slipped and fell to the bottom. He lost his spectacles. When
he landed he landed on something hard and then suddenly his spectacles
fell back onto his eyes. He saw that he had fallen into a cave of platinum.
When he saw this he rushed off to his space-ship and collected a big box
and some rope. He filled the box with platinum. When he returned to earth
he bought a ton of confectionary and had a reputation as a Million-Billionaire!!!!!
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