This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 132 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we're going to talk about how teachers can recognize possible signs of

dyslexia in students and what to do next to help them be more successful.

When I was a regular classroom teacher, my knowledge of specific learning disabilities

was limited at best.

My teacher prep program required one course in special education.

It was very broad, very general, and I barely remembered anything I learned in it.

This means I was woefully ill-equipped to support the students in my room with special needs,

those who arrived with a formal diagnosis and those who didn't.

I mean I literally knew nothing, no special strategies, no alternative methods of instruction.

My plan was to just do whatever the IEP told me to do, which mostly involved shortening

assignments for those students, giving them extra time, or occasionally reading things

out loud to them.

I didn't really get why these things were helpful, and I did them with limited success.

So that's the big problem.

If my experience matches those of other teachers, and a 2019 report from the National Center

for Learning Disabilities says it does, then a whole lot of students are spending a whole

lot of time in classrooms with teachers who have only the faintest idea of how to support

them.

Yes, of course every school has special ed teachers, but if students with special needs are spending

more and more time in mainstream classrooms, we can't ask the special ed teachers to

be the only ones doing this work.

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