"I wish I had done this course five years ago when I first start­ed teach­ing. As a young teacher, I of­ten go home at the end of the day feel­ing I have failed the chil­dren who need help most. This will no longer be the case," said Ains­ley Ameer­ali, Stan­dard Three teacher at Diego Mar­tin Boys RC School.While their stu­dents were en­joy­ing the long school va­ca­tion, 62 teach­ers from pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor, were stu­dents them­selves in class­rooms be­ing trained by the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed two pro­grammes in spe­cial teach­ing skills to en­hance the qual­i­ty and stan­dard of teach­ing and read­ing in the com­ing school year.In Ju­ly, 23 teach­ers from San Fer­nan­do, Blan­chisseuse, the East-West cor­ri­dor and Port-of-Spain at­tend­ed a three-week train­ing course, Teach­ing Peo­ple with Dyslex­ia. This in­ten­sive pro­gramme equips teach­ers with the skills to iden­ti­fy stu­dents whose dif­fi­cul­ty with read­ing is caused by dyslex­ia, and, through a spe­cial pro­gramme, help the stu­dent to over­come that learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty and be­come pro­fi­cient read­ers.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so had the ben­e­fit of a ses­sion with Allyson Hamel-Smith, ed­u­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist, who led them through the Emo­tion­al and Be­hav­iour­al Re­sults of Fail­ure.As course tu­tor, Cathryn Kelshall said: "Even mild­ly dyslex­ic stu­dents ex­pe­ri­ence school as stress­ful and un­ful­fill­ing from the day they en­ter school at five. With their learn­ing needs un­met, most dyslex­ic stu­dents nev­er go on to achieve their po­ten­tial."Glob­al­ly, the size of the dyslex­ic pop­u­la­tion is es­ti­mat­ed at about one in ten peo­ple. Sta­tis­tics for Trinidad and To­ba­go have not been gath­ered, but there is much ev­i­dence that our sit­u­a­tion is not dif­fer­ent.

Since the in­cep­tion of this teacher-train­ing pro­gramme in 1991, the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion has trained more than four hun­dred teach­ers.Dr Tim Con­way, a USA-based neu­ro-psy­chol­o­gist, led 39 teach­ers through the sec­ond hands-on work­shop style course-the LiPS (Lin­damood Phone­mic Se­quenc­ing). The LiPS pro­gramme us­es the feel and shape of the mouth to help these stu­dents de­vel­op phone­mic aware­ness. These pro­ce­dures are ef­fec­tive for all ages and fur­ther­more al­so in­crease lan­guage ac­qui­si­tion and per­for­mance in read­ing and spelling. Dr Con­way vis­its Trinidad twice a year at the re­quest of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion, to fa­cil­i­tate two teacher-train­ing pro­grammes, the LiPS pro­gramme in Au­gust, and the Vi­su­al­is­ing and Ver­bal­is­ing course at East­er. This lat­ter course trains in com­pre­hen­sion and ex­pres­sive lan­guage skills.

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The Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion is an NGO with char­i­ta­ble sta­tus. Through fund-rais­ing and gen­er­ous cor­po­rate sup­port, all cours­es are of­fered to par­tic­i­pants at a high­ly sub­sidised rate to the ben­e­fit of the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. Cathryn Kelshall, chair of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion, ex­pressed her ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the

sup­port the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceives. The as­so­ci­a­tion has a wider role in sup­port­ing peo­ple with dyslex­ia. It al­so spon­sors a bur­sary fund to help dyslex­ic stu­dents by pay­ing fees for pri­vate in­di­vid­ual tu­ition in read­ing by trained teach­ers. Oth­er sup­port ser­vices from the vol­un­teer­staffed of­fice in­clude test­ing and re­fer­ral and a

well-stocked taped-book and CD-book li­brary for young peo­ple and adults. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, call 625-5689 or vis­it the voic­e­sup­port­ed Web site of the Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion www.dyslex­i­att.org.