Entry:  044 Name:  Julie Age:  Adult Champion: My Children When our children were starting school, we made sure we ticked all the boxes...

My Red Letter 2017 - L044 - Julie

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Entry: 044
Name: Julie
Age: Adult
Champion: My Children

When our children were starting school, we made sure we ticked all the boxes for them; 
New Uniforms ✔
New shoes and socks ✔
Carefully combed hair ✔
New lunchbox with Healthy snacks ✔
New backpack (& cute skinny Legs hardly able to hold up giant backpack) ✔
Pencil Cases filled with colourful pencils ✔
Enthusiasm ✔
Lust for learning ✔
Bright eyes excited about what lay ahead. ✔  
Complete and utter trust in the Australian Education System ✔



Sadly though, within months of them starting school we began to hear things such as;
“don’t worry, it’s usual for the boys to trail a bit”
“not on task”
“he is disruptive”
“he just doesn’t seem interested” 
“You may have to just accept that he will never be at the top of the class”
“I wish every student worked as hard as her”
“she seems to get a lot of ‘tummy aches’?” 
“she will get it’.
“just read to her”
“don’t worry, there are others who are more behind”

After 9 years of school for our son and 6 years for our daughter our own research finally gave us the answers.

Dyslexia.

And then we heard; 
“I’ve never taught a child with dyslexia before”. 
“there is no funding for dyslexia”
“your child is not eligible for one on one time”
“I don’t know anything about how to teach a child with dyslexia”.
“I can print it on coloured paper” (which by the way is a widely misunderstood myth of dyslexia)

Sadly even once we knew how to help them, the system still failed them. No appropriately trained teachers, no funding set aside to help. Just brick walls (but with large enough cracks for them to continue to fall through).

Ironically the year my son started school (2005), there was a National Inquiry into the teaching of Literacy. This Inquiry made 20 Recommendations to be implemented. These Recommendations would have changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australian kids. Yet to this day not one of these recommendations have been implemented. 

That complete and utter trust in the Australian Education System has long gone. The powers that be know what is needed, they have known since 2005, yet they have chosen to ignore it, and in doing so they have chosen to ignore these hundreds of thousands of Australian kids!

My children are my dyslexia champions because every day we send them to school they are fighting a battle against the system. The very system that was supposed to help them.
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