This week we are celebrating Dyslexia Week, with this year’s theme focussing on Invisible Dyslexia.
Dyslexia comes with many challenges, but many people in our community feel like their struggles are unseen. Because dyslexia itself isn’t visible, individuals with dyslexia often feel unsupported, unwanted and invisible. From the child at school struggling to keep up with the rest of their friends, to the office worker feeling like they don’t belong.
Dyslexia also too often goes hand in hand with other invisible challenges such as struggling with their mental health and discrimination in the workplace. Legislation can also fail to consider the dyslexic perspective and under-represented groups become lost.
That’s why this dyslexia week we are focusing on Invisible Dyslexia, to explore the entire theme of visibility within our community and with our colleagues and patients. To highlight the issues surrounding Invisible Dyslexia, we’ve spoken to two colleagues who want to share their story with you.
Hawa is a Research Support Officer at ELHT. Here is here story:
“Hi, my name is Hawa Desai and I’d like to share with you my personal story of living with dyslexia.
I left high school with some CSE qualifications that actually didn’t class as a recognisable grade, even though I worked really hard to get these. Following this, I went on to college and did a couple of courses – I wanted to be a typist at first but wasn’t successful as I couldn’t do shorthand and type fast enough (this could be due to dyspraxia, another hidden disability). Then I went on to do a course in the retail sector, which too was a bit of a failure.
Whilst at school and college I struggled to concentrate and was always disturbing the class, always catching the teacher’s eyes. I also got picked on and bullied as I was different to the rest, this made life a lot harder as I hated school. I got told by my teacher’s I was lazy, disruptive, that I was not willing to learn and would get nowhere in life.
In 2000 I had enough and I needed challenge in life, so I worked in a school as catering staff and then as a dinner lady. I then moved on to helping out voluntarily in classrooms. In 2005 I landed a job in home care and offered care to old and disabled adults. I then had the urge to gain some qualifications, so I enquired and did my adult English and Maths equivalent to GCSE. I passed them which gave me encouragement to go further and I also gained a bit of experience working on the computers. By this time I had moved on to doing home care and helping out at school a lot more, both part time jobs.
Following my success at my GCSE’s, I then decided to do my NVQ level 2 in Child Care, which I got a lot of support doing. I passed that and went on to also complete my NVQ Level 3. The NVQ 3 qualification allowed me to apply for jobs in hospitals and I was actually offered a choice in roles so I chose to work in Dietetics.
When my youngest left school, I decided I wanted to do a foundation degree in adult care, so applied for a course which I successfully gained entry for. Both my daughters had picked up by this time that I had Dyslexia and kept telling me this, but I just shrugged it off. However, I struggled quite a bit on this course so took both my daughters advice and went to the University support centre. I told them what my daughter’s had picked up, that I was struggling to grasp things and I needed more support.
I had an assessment and after it, at the age of 40, I found out both my daughter’s intuition was correct, I had Dyslexia. I cried in front of the assessor and he told me it was nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of famous people and ordinary people have it, it’s a hidden disability that hardly gets picked up unless you get assessed. He also told me Albert Einstein was dyslexic, he loved mathematics and science, but he disliked grammar and always had problems with spelling. I was very upset as I felt it was picked up too late. I told my manger and my team in Dietetics that I was Dyslexic and they gave me a lot of support.
I was given additional support and equipment at university and with the aid of this and working until early hours of the morning (as I was working 4 days a week and going to university 1 day, plus I was a single parent to 2 girls under the age of 18), I passed my course and I decided I didn’t want to stop there and I wanted to top it up with a BA Masters.
Whilst doing my BA I had a lot of family challenges, both my daughters had health issues and it was easy to give up as I was a single parent, but my daughters, tutors at the University Centre and work were being very supportive and I continued to muddle through. I was given an option to take another year to qualify as it was quite a struggle but I said ‘no’ as I didn’t want to lose my motivation. I did pass my course alongside my fellow learners and I achieved a grade II in BA honours. I was extremely proud as all my hard effort was paid off. My daughters were very proud of me, my work were too and they told me getting a grade II whilst working full time and being a single mum to two poory girls was inspirational.
I, Hawa Desai, against the odds of my teachers, had proved I am not lazy or disruptive, but in fact I was willing to learn with the extra support. I proved them wrong, I was capable.
My message goes out to everyone out there, if you are struggling to study or with the learning side of things, it’s not because you are incomprehensible, it’s most likely you have a different way of learning and a hidden disability that has not been picked up yet.”
