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AUGUST 2005

Inside Dyslexia: A Dynamic View of Learning Disorders

By Liza Young


Attaining a real understanding of the perspectives of children with learning disabilities is a daunting task. Having themselves grown up with dyslexia, filmmakers Josh Easdon and Nate Hamlin are powerfully aware of the educational significance of witnessing a true perspective of children facing disabilities. To shed light on the worlds of students with learning disorders, Easdon and Hamlin created Inside Dyslexia, a documentary film that provides a keen view of the trials, but also the triumphs of students with learning disabilities.

Co-producing Inside Dyslexia was a task Easdon and Hamlin did not take lightly. Nine years in the making, the final product is a film that portrays, over the course of two years, three students, with different learning disorders, united by the theme of facing major challenges, but with arsenals of courage, wit, and the support from friends and family.
Ten years old at the start of the documentary, Amanda, a student at the Mary Mcdowell School for Children with learning disabilities has dyscalulia; she struggles with math problems that most students find basic. The emotional repercussions of the learning disability are seen through acting out in class, displaying behavior such as hiding under desks, and being attached to adults.

Amanda is, however, creative—“Adventure is my middle name,” she says. She descriptively explains that the “wiring in her brain is gold except for one wire which is silver,” the wire for math. Receiving critical attention at school and the support of her parents, Amanda appears at a roundtable discussion following the film. We learn that she recently received an award in the subject area once her tormentor—math, and she hopes to begin a career in film.

A student at the Churchill School, Carmen, who first appears in the film at the age of 12, is dyslexic and fits the profile of such students, memorizing books from a very young age so as to mask the issue of decoding problems. Carmen relates early childhood memories of having memorized a series of Dr. Seuss books.
Her father had noticed she had some difficulty when she was a toddler, but the schools did not pick up on the problem until around the second grade. Carmen is bright, having a high vocabulary and an excellent memory. Her teacher describes Carmen’s plight as her having the comprehensive skills to read on a higher level, but insufficient skills to get passed decoding.

Carmen appears to have a strong sense of self-esteem and resilience—“I don’t care if you don’t want to be my friend because I have trouble reading—If that’s the case, you never were my friend anyway.” Today she has reached the point of securing her future; she is working on college applications while a student at the recently established Churchill High School.

Gio, a 15-year-old student—when first appearing onscreen—at the Central Park East Secondary School, has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and faces difficulty with concentration and organization. His humanities teacher describes him as more of a visual learner and having better comprehension in one-on-one settings than in the general classroom setting. Towards the end of the school year he is in danger of failing if he doesn’t get organized and keep up with assignments.
Gio, guided by the “tough love” approach of his mom and teachers, tapped into all his resources to navigate difficulties. By the end of the film, we find that Gio has made significant improvements academically and socially.
Displaying an enlightened perspective, Gio states that he is fortunate to have a learning disability: “It got me more attention.” He has a point—as described by his resource room teacher, many children with mild learning problems fall through the cracks. The acuteness of Gio’s disability sharpened the attention of adults, and ultimately his own, towards tackling the problem.

Seeing him onstage following the screening, we find a sophisticated young man who is a student at NYC Tech with a double major, including computer science.
Easdon and Hamlin point out in the film that learning disorders never go away, “that you must learn to build structures, go around them…over time you embrace it…it becomes part of your life.” At the same time, in tune with Gray’s Ode To Adversity, their film illustrates that people often rise to their greatest potential in the face of great challenges.#

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