Splendid Agony: Celebrating Dyslexia

By T. Durant Fleming

Splendid Agony is an informative, illuminating, and encouraging book that offers valuable insights for people with dyslexia, parents and teachers of people with dyslexia, and anyone who wants to know more about what it's like to go through the American educational system with dyslexia. Full of applicable advice, powerful analogies, and persona

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822901940

Book preview

Foreword by John Murphy,

Head of School at Bodine

M

y mother graduated at the top of her class in 1940 from Central High School in Memphis, Tennessee. On the day I was chosen to become the head of school at Bodine School, she confessed she believed that dyslexia was not real. Her solution: Johnny, sit them down and make them read. The smartest woman in my life told me that my career path was a scam. We’ve come a long, long way.

This year I am celebrating my fortieth year in education. Starting as a high school chemistry teacher, I spent twenty-eight years as the principal of an all-boys’ school, and then came my proudest accomplishment—becoming head of school at Bodine. The mission of Bodine School is to lead the Mid-South in teaching students with dyslexia to read and succeed. Every day is a transformational experience for the children at Bodine. We have a wonderfully dedicated staff and a very focused and effective curriculum, and our students leave us reading and writing at their grade level. Working with our parents, staff, and students is tremendously rewarding.

Durant Fleming and I have been friends since our freshman year of high school. We both loved being involved at the school, so our paths were often intertwined. Durant was dynamic, fun-loving, and popular with students and teachers alike. We lost touch after high school, but a decade later we reconnected in an unexpected way. Durant was now a teacher and an administrator at our alma mater, Christian Brothers High School (CBHS) in Memphis, and this was when his story as a dyslexic person came to light. Few people really knew about his academic struggles. I was blown away to learn that as a dyslexic, after graduating from college in communications, he studied the classics in graduate school, had learned to read Greek, had secured his doctorate, loved to write, had picked up a couple more master’s degrees, and was now a career educator. This is not exactly the stereotypical dyslexic path.

Durant became the go-to educator for the struggling dyslexic students at CBHS as well as an ever-present resource for the staff. He was an oasis of hope and practical encouragement for many parents and their children, many of whom just wanted to quit.

This book is a must-read for dyslexics, educators, learning specialists, and most importantly, the parents of dyslexic learners. It is poignant, wonderfully encouraging, easy to read, and a much-needed addition to the body of literature regarding dyslexia. Every day I have the privilege of working with students with dyslexia and their parents. I understand the struggles and complexities associated with dyslexia up close, and so does Durant.

In this book you will see that from time to time, Durant uses the phrase The first time I was in third grade. This short phrase sets the tone for this entire book. This is a uniquely transparent story of a real, genuinely struggling dyslexic learner. The stories within this book are at times painfully honest and wonderfully insightful, and they give the reader a rare glimpse into the curious, and sometimes confounding, world of dyslexia. The struggles of a dyslexic student are very real, and this author invites you to experience this with him, communicating in the first person and often with wit.

Many of my students at Bodine and their parents feel isolated and stressed. This book understands this and addresses it with frankness and sympathy. I read this book in two sittings and felt encouraged and hopeful. Every chapter offers real-life experiences along with timeless principles that are very useful for navigating the unique journey called dyslexia. Thank you, Durant, for your bravery in producing this book, and thank you for honestly sharing your unique story with us. I believe this work will benefit the lives of future students.

John Murphy, Head of School

Bodine School, Germantown, Tennessee

[phone] / bodineschool.org

Surviving Another Day: The First

Time I Was in Third Grade

M

y pulse thumped as Mrs. Watkins reached into her important-looking desk and drew out the dreaded cards. The stack was about two inches thick, and the cards were long and mean. We didn’t drill multiplication tables every day. Mrs. Watkins saved this ritual of cruelty for Wednesdays and Fridays. I did not like Wednesdays and Fridays. On these days the whole world tightened up and breakfast didn’t taste the way it usually did. Proceeding down each row with mathematical precision, Mrs. Watkins would hold the rectangular multiplication card up with a stiff, bony hand, giving each student exactly five seconds to chirp out the answer. She would look at the student, then at the watch, back at the student, and then at the watch.

If the young man could not produce an answer, she would proclaim Next in a passionless staccato, announcing one student’s defeat and the beginning of the next student’s moment of truth. Up and down the rows she would go in this strange harvest of knowledge. There were times when it seemed endless. I wasn’t sure how the other students did it…eight times six…forty-eight…It was like some strange form of magic…nine times five…forty-five…How did they know how all these numbers interlocked…six times seven…forty-two…and how did they answer so quickly? Somehow these classmates had learned the secret ways of conjuring these numbers. I had not, and I wasn’t sure that I ever would.

My mind would often wander. Do soldiers have to be able to multiply?…Maybe I can be a soldier…Last night I saw a documentary about monks in Tibet…They seemed like nice people and I didn’t see them multiplying…I could be a monk…I wonder if they play football in Tibet…seven times eight…fifty-six…Oh no, here it comes… I snapped back, realizing this odd mashing of numbers was only two rows away and steadily moving my way. That day, as the long cards were unsheathed from the right-hand drawer of Mrs. Watkins’s important-looking desk, I purposed to do something I had never done before. I decided to choose a number. It would have to be a good number, one I felt comfortable with—not too big, not too small, and definitely even. I just didn’t think an odd number would do the job. As the inevitable encounter with the long cards drew nearer, my mind raced and finally settled on a number…It would be thirty-two…Thirty-two it was. I felt better already…I had an answer…and when the long cards and the stopwatch and the bony hand came to me, I would have an answer…and it would be thirty-two.

I was now only two classmates away, and it was going to come quickly. Philip Edmonson and Scooter Adams never missed…As they both instantly divined the proper answers, it was now my turn. Blocking out the noise of my quickening pulse, I sat up straight at my right-handed desk as the thin hand revealed my card and the seconds began…I committed with a dry voice…Thirty-two, Mrs. Watkins…The answer is thirty-two.

Very good, she said as she produced the next card and moved on to the poor soul sitting behind me.

I had done it. Somehow, some way, I had hit the right number. Thank you, I thought toward my Creator, who must truly love children. As the number harvest plowed down the next row, the whole world loosened up a bit. I sat back, exhaled, and smiled. I had done it. I had survived another day.

First Things: Some Helpful

Background

T

he short story you just read, Surviving Another Day, was a true event. Reliving that moment, even as an adult, is not easy. It speaks to the intensity and confusion behind dyslexia in the face of learning. That event took place the first time I was in third grade. This was the year when my parents and educators identified that, academically, something just was not right. I begrudgingly began going to reading specialists that year. I did not make it easy on the very folks who attempted to help me. Like a child biting the hand of a dentist, I was going to put up a fight because I knew their intent was to keep me in school, not to deliver me from it. I would much rather have joined the French Foreign Legion, and if they didn’t accept children in the Foreign Legion, maybe I could enlist as a drummer boy. If learning to play a war drum meant liberation from school, that would be a piece of cake. But no, please, no more school. The goal of this brief short story is to give the reader a momentary glimpse of what it is like to enter the dyslexic mind of a frightened and confused third grader who is doing his best just to hang on. I penned this piece later in life once I understood how profoundly my dyslexia had affected my youth and academic path. Actually, it was the writing of this short story that led to the production of this book. Having shared this account with a number of parents with dyslexic children, I discovered they always wanted to know more—more about this curious condition that, for some reason beyond their control, had singled out their child.

This book would not exist if it were not for my unusually gifted and wonderfully persistent parents, Anne and Irv Fleming. Knowing that I was different from my three brothers, they cared so much that they made absolutely no excuses for me. I like to say, They were stubborn in the right direction. They continued to challenge me academically; they just went about it in a different way. And that is what this book is about. Graciously, they did not resign or back off…never…ever. (My ever-determined mother even enrolled me in a speed-reading course when I was in junior high school. Picture that: a struggling dyslexic—who is at best indifferent, if not outright hostile, toward education—in a speed-reading class! I thought my mother had lost her mind, but I knew it also meant that she believed in me. This was a creative attempt to attack the multifaceted issue of dyslexia from another angle. She was calling for a bayonet charge rather than digging into a safe defensive position. Ironically, I actually used those speed-reading skills while reading tens of thousands of pages in