Sally Shaywitz was home with three children under the age of five when she was asked to take a position at Yale School of Medicine that would focus on learning difficulties.
The question of why some kids struggle in school was not exactly a hotbed of medical research in the 1970s, but Shaywitz, a developmental pediatrician, said yes to the offer.
“Two things struck me from the start,” said Shaywitz, whose husband, a child neurologist, was already at Yale. “One was how little science was available at the time, and two, how there was not much information on what happened to kids whose struggles have not come to anyone’s attention.”
So began Shaywitz’s quest to better understand dyslexia, an all-too-common learning disorder that can cause severe reading difficulties in even the brightest of kids. Sally Shaywitz and her husband, Bennett Shaywitz, joined forces that eventually led to the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, a name that reflects the pair’s belief that there’s also an upside to dyslexia: People with dyslexia tend to be creative and out-of-the-box thinkers, the very characteristics that can mask the fact that a child is having a tough time reading.
Yale Researchers Sally and Bennett Shaywitz Bust Dyslexia Myths – Forward.com
No comments:
Post a Comment