Sarah Evans – Dyslexia

Transcript

Alis Rocca [00:00:06]

Nip in the Bud produces information and real life experience films, podcasts and resources to raise awareness of children’s mental health and to increase early intervention. Today I am in conversation with Sarah Evans. Sarah has been involved in education for over 15 years. She started her career as a small business owner, designing and making women’s fashion and textiles. Whilst raising her family, she moved into the education and wellbeing sectors, starting out as a pregnancy and post-natal yoga teacher and moving on to teaching Art and Design in adult education. Sarah went on to study a masters degree in Illustration and during the Covid lockdown she completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education in Secondary Art and Design. Sarah is currently studying a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication with the University of the Arts, London, lecturing at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art. As well as this, she also teaches at a specialist school named Flexi School Dyslexia in Kent, where learning is designed to nurture children diagnosed with dyslexia and co-occurring issues.  At Flexi School Dyslexia they believe that it’s essential to deal with the approach to learning, as well as filling the gaps in learning for each and every individual. Sarah was raised between London and Lagos, Nigeria and is now based in Kent, England. Through her socially engaged creative practice and critical pedagogy, Sarah’s passion for teaching and learning, opens spaces for holistic creative education that centres on neurodivergence, inclusion and most of all, fun. Hi Sarah, welcome and thank you for joining me in conversation today. Can you start off just by telling us what led you to wanting to become a teacher?

Sarah Evans [00:02:11]

Hi, there, hi Alis, it’s nice to be here. For me, I wanted to become a teacher because I really like working with people. I like working with children. As my background is in art and design, I thought that teaching art and design is a great way to work collaboratively with people. But also, for me, teaching is great because I’m always learning when I’m teaching and I really like the exchange that happens when I’m teaching. So different age groups, I’ve taught children, adults, teenagers, and yeah, I just really love the exchange and the sort of, the knowledge that I gain from teaching as well. Yes.

Alis Rocca [00:02:53]

And I know you’re not in mainstream at the moment, so we’ll come on to that, but what was your experience of teaching in a mainstream school?

Sarah Evans [00:03:03]

I did a year of teacher training, and that was across two schools. My experience is that it was quite prescriptive. I found that the style of teaching didn’t really fit with my own, sort of pedagogy, really, in the way I wanted to teach. It was very much teaching to the test. Kids, obviously, they need to, pass exams, GCSEs, A-levels, and beyond. However, for me, teaching where I was, in art and design, I found it quite prescriptive and I didn’t feel that it was actually nurturing children’s creativity in a way that I thought could, you know, is possible within the parameters of a school curriculum. So, I didn’t stay for long in mainstream school, just for those reasons, really, I want,  I like to teach in an environment where, because I’m an artist, where that’s, you know, that’s nurtured and that’s allowed to happen and evolve and unfurl through the teaching rather than, this is what you’re doing, do that. You know what I mean?  So that was my experience in mainstream. So not teaching in mainstream anymore.

Alis Rocca [00:04:22]

So what’s led you then to teach in a special school? What, where was that change in your career? At what points did you think, “Actually, no this is enough for me I need to move into a different environment”?

Sarah Evans [00:04:35]

It was really after I’d finished my PGCE and I was looking for work as an art teacher. And this ad came up, a job ad and I read through it and I read that it’s small, class sizes, it’s teaching children who’ve got dyslexia. And I thought, that sounds interesting and I thought it would probably be a challenge because I didn’t have a lot of training in teaching children with specific learning differences. What I really liked I suppose was the set up with the school and the fact that it’s not the way that they teach in mainstream school, it’s very much student centred. It’s teaching children about themselves as well as, you know, the formal learning and I’ve loved it. I’ve been there for two years and I really love it. It really fits with the way I want to teach.

Alis Rocca [00:05:36]

Sarah, when we were talking earlier, you talked about it being holistic. What do you mean by having a holistic approach to teaching children?

Sarah Evans [00:05:46]

Well, for me, it means going beyond the lesson plan. Going beyond the curriculum. And I suppose addressing the fact that children learn in so many different ways. And also it’s not just about learning your reading and writing and spelling, it’s about learning about yourself and building children’s self-confidence. A lot of kids come out of mainstream school or, while they’re in mainstream school, and their confidence is really crushed. Literally. And for me, I think it’s not just me in the school, the philosophy is that we are teaching the children about themselves, about their dyslexia.  The fact that dyslexia is a gift, it’s not a disability or a defect and that’s what holistic means to me. It means building the person, the whole of the person rather than just learning the ABCs.

Alis Rocca [00:06:48]

And you mentioned creativity there. What do you, how do you think it’s important? Why do you think nurturing creativity is important? How would you do that?

Sarah Evans [00:07:00]

Well, I think we’re all creative. I think everyone’s creative in some way, and it doesn’t have to be, you know, in the formal sense, art and design. But creative thinking, where we are problem solving all the time, and we’re kind of, I suppose, exploring different ways of doing things. For me, that’s creativity. It’s not, it’s not so linear, I suppose is a quick way to describe it. It’s thinking almost in a cyclical way where you’re trying lots of different things out, making mistakes, failing. Realising what went wrong and how to do it differently next time. For me that’s creativity. And I mean not just art and design, but  think creative thinking.

Alis Rocca [00:07:47]

A broader sense of that, is there anything that you do as a teacher and indeed as a mum that helps to broaden that, aspects of creativity and making sure that you’re embedding that in the children that you work with.

Sarah Evans [00:08:05]

I guess for me, the way I approach that is to encourage children to think about what they’re doing, because I think all of us do that, don’t we? We kind of, will do something and then just push it aside and then do the next thing. I think what I like to do is really kind of evaluate, encourage children to evaluate what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it, and what are the results of what you’re doing there, and how can you use what you’ve learned from that to move forward to the next task or to the next, you know, to the next piece of learning or the next way of behaving, or the next way of speaking.  A good way to describe it. Encouraging children to be self-aware so that they’re not just doing things without thinking about it.

Alis Rocca [00:09:04]

And is there ever a point where you’d think they’re too young to to have that sense of self-awareness?

Sarah Evans [00:09:13]

Definitely some kids come to our school and they’re, what year 3 or year 4 and  their experience of mainstream school is sometimes not great. Most of the time they don’t like school, they don’t like going to school. And sometimes the youngest of our pupils, sometimes they are literally just not ready because I think it takes a little bit of maturity to even just begin to start, sort of reflecting, self-reflecting. But I think it can still happen in very young children. It depends on the individual, really. If that does happen, sometimes we say to the parents, maybe come back in a year, when your child is ready for this kind of learning because, obviously we are there to guide them and to help them, but we can’t do it for them. You know, in any learning situation, that person has to be ready to take that on and, and learn it themselves and, engage with it.

Alis Rocca [00:10:20]

So let’s dig a little bit deeper Sarah, into what you currently do. Can you tell us what your role is and the tell us a bit about the school that you work in now.

Sarah Evans [00:10:30]

Okay. Yes, I work at a school called Flexi School Dyslexia and it’s based in Kent. My role there is a specialist learning support teacher. And my role really is to design plan and deliver learning around literacy, sometimes numeracy. We also teach children about dyslexia and what dyslexia looks like, how it manifests physically in their bodies, in their behaviour, in their learning what a dyslexic brain type is like and how it differs from neurotypical brain type. So it’s more teaching around what are your strengths? What do you find really difficult? How can we get through those? How can you use your strengths? So yeah, it’s very holistic. It’s very student centred. Each lesson is kind of open, we make a plan. If something happens during that lesson, we sometimes, we quite often abandon the plan. And, you know, the learning shifts. If something’s happened, if there’s been a specific behaviour or someone’s finding something particularly difficult, we might just focus on that one aspect and instead of trying to complete the whole lesson plan, you know what I mean? So it’s quite fluid.

Alis Rocca [00:12:01]

How do the students respond to that fluidity?

Sarah Evans [00:12:05]

I think they like it. I mean, it works because it’s not just trying to get something done. And I think quite often when I’m teaching, students especially, you know, dyslexia means that quite often students are really fidgety, find it hard to keep still. So if that’s happening, if there’s like one or two or three, all the students, just looking really fidgety and not comfortable, we’ll change it and just move on and just get them up, go outside, do something outside that still related to the learning. But it’s kind of just responding to the children’s needs as they arise.

Alis Rocca [00:12:54]

And you said earlier that some of the children that come to you have got a negative perspective of schools. They’ve been in mainstream. Maybe they don’t like school as a result of their experiences there. How do you manage that? How do you move them to a place where they are ready to learn, ready and willing to be coming into your school and open to this new way of being?

Sarah Evans [00:13:20]

I think we do that by pointing out to them what’s happening if they’re becoming fidgety, or if they’re not enjoying the learning, or if they’re finding something particularly difficult. We’ll kind of unpack it and say, okay, so that there might be a word like, I don’t know, home. Okay. So they’re learning how to spell home, and they’re not understanding why there’s an ‘E’ at the end of that word because we don’t pronounce the ‘E’, but is there for a reason. It changes the sound of the ‘O’ from an off sound to an ‘O’ sound. And that’s the reason why the ‘E’ is there. So we kind of really break it down. So that they’re learning why they’re finding this difficult. And we also teach things like brain training. We call it brain training, where we’re kind of teaching the kids to recognise why they can’t concentrate and how they can improve their concentration. Because, you know, a lot of the problems they have at mainstream school are down to the fact that there’s very limited space of time for the teachers to teach, and they’ve got to teach that certain thing in the national curriculum. And some children, especially dyslexic children, find the pace of that really too fast. And that’s why they’re not learning and they’re falling behind constantly, because the teacher has got to keep going with this curriculum. But they’re falling behind and sometimes I think probably the teacher doesn’t have the resources or the time to address those needs in the mainstream setting. So we kind of explain all of that to the children. This is why you find it difficult in school. Reading out loud, you know, that’s not nice, that puts you on the spot, makes you nervous. Therefore you don’t enjoy reading. So we spend like a whole term just reading with the children in a very relaxed, un-pressured way, so that they can start to enjoy reading. It’s just, I think explaining the situation in mainstream schools that way of teaching is for a certain brain type, a neurotypical brain type. And dyslexic children don’t learn in that way and that’s why they find it difficult to keep up at school. So it’s just equipping them with different strategies to help them with spelling, to help them with concentration, to help them manage their emotions as well and their stress levels. So again, it’s that self-awareness thing teaching them that this is happening for this reason, if these are some of the ways that, you can help yourself, like might be take five deep breaths. If you’re finding yourself getting stressed at school because you’ve been asked to do something, you know you’re going to find that really hard. Take some deep breaths. Allow yourself a bit of headspace to calm down, because when you’re stressed, you’re not thinking straight. So little strategies, little things, lots of little things to help them manage and, work better in mainstream school and actually start to enjoy learning, because at the end of the day, they have to learn it so that they can succeed in life, get a good job, have good relationships, etc…

Alis Rocca [00:16:40]

You talked a little bit earlier about the dyslexic brain. What is the dyslexic brain like?

Sarah Evans [00:16:48]

So I would describe the dyslexic brain as kind of like panning out of the world, almost. It’s almost seeing things from it, a really sort of long distance. I mean, typically dyslexic people have trouble with short term memory, working memory, retaining information, which is vital for learning. Also, the dyslexic brain is very creative. We think in pictures almost is a good way to describe it, so visually. So if you said ‘apple’ to me,  a picture of an apple will come up in my head. And that’s typical for dyslexic people. Also dyslexia is, there’s differences with sort of managing time. So, executive functioning where you’ve got to manage your emotions, you’ve got to manage your time and the tasks that you need to do. And dyslexic people can often find that quite difficult and feel overwhelmed. I mean, one of the great things dyslexic people are good at is problem solving, creative thinking that I’ve spoken about before, where we can sort of think outside of the box and think slightly differently, not in a linear way, where it’s step one, step two, step three. You might start at step two and go back to step one, and then go to step ten and then come back to that four, if you know what I mean. So it’s not a linear way of thinking. It’s kind of, almost like 3D, like virtual reality I think is a good way to describe it, where you’re kind of seeing everything  as a whole, like in all directions at the same time, almost. That’s why I think things can be overwhelming sometimes if they’re not explained in a way or presented in a way, that’s not like that. That doesn’t fit the way we think we like. That’s a lot of strength. I mean, a lot of really successful people are dyslexic, a lot of creative people are very creative thinkers.

Alis Rocca [00:18:57]

I love that description. And it’s clear that more teachers in mainstream need to have an understanding of that dyslexic brain, because you sum that up so beautifully. And I can see how with that knowledge, you can plan lessons in a completely different way that’s going to allow that variety and allow it not having to be linear. And I think so many of us as teachers have been taught to plan your lessons in a really linear pattern. And if the children aren’t following in that pattern, then it’s almost like they’re in the wrong and we need to pull them back into line. But what you’re talking about there is, is that freedom. And you’ve used the term student centred a few times in our conversation so far, and I think what that really sums that up is thinking, okay, how is this particular child seeing what I’m trying to teach them and then going with that, going with that flow and having that fluidity. What would you say are the main myths around dyslexia that you feel you need to debunk?

Sarah Evans [00:20:06]

I think the first thing is that it’s just about reading and writing and spelling. Yes, dyslexic people do find reading, writing and spelling difficult. We need more time typically. However, it’s not just about reading and writing, it’s also about, I’ve mentioned before, executive functioning, or organisation. We organise ourselves in a different way. So you know when you get, you might see someone’s work desk and they say, someone might say, what a mess. You know it can look like that. But what’s happening is that, it’s just lots of things happening at the same time. And I think people think, people might think, “oh what a mess”, but it’s not a mess because we know exactly where each piece of paper is or why that pen is there. So I think there’s myths around, I think it’s seen as a negative. I mean in the Disability Act is classed as a Disability by Law. However that’s a really negative take on it. Dyslexic people have a different way of thinking, and I think people think it’s just about reading and writing, and they can’t read and write, therefore, you know, they’re not clever. You know, dyslexic people, it’s not an intelligence thing. I think that’s the main thing. It’s not about intelligence. I mean, Richard Branson, Lewis Hamilton, Einstein, so many great brains are dyslexic and have been in history, so that there’s a myth that it’s somehow your brain doesn’t work properly. It does. Our brains work really, really well. It just differently to how the whole world is literally designed.

Alis Rocca [00:22:04]

Really interesting. And that goes back to what you were saying earlier about, often, not all, but often in mainstream, it’s about getting children to do a test, whatever that test is, whether we’re talking SATs in year six or GCSEs. And what you’re sharing there is that actually we don’t need to always be looking at that as our baseline. We don’t need to be judging or grading our children in that way but actually there’s lots of other things that they can bring to the table.

Sarah Evans [00:22:35]

Like the whole education system, I think needs to be, there needs to be an overhaul. I mean, …

Alis Rocca [00:22:40]

Would you what would you do if you could overhaul it. What would it look like for you?

Sarah Evans [00:22:46]

Oh well there would be, for a start, it wouldn’t be sitting on chairs for 45 minutes at a time. There’d be a lot more sort of active learning where you’re moving around. There’d be a lot more  visual learning. So it’s not just about words. Yes, we need words. We need to be able to write sentences, like for example, mind mapping I think is a brilliant tool and not just for dyslexic people, but note taking doesn’t have to be in written form. You can do drawings, you can use symbols or colours, to help you remember important information and more visuals and more sort of fluidity. I mean, we need to get to those goals. We need to get to targets. However, I think students have more say as well on how they want to learn and what they find useful, how they learn best. You know, I think teachers, I’m not into teacher bashing at all, I think teachers are amazing. I think teachers have a very difficult role  in mainstream schools. And I think teachers are some of the most important people in our lives. It is the structure, the way,  and also financially, I think there’s less resources than what is actually needed. So more money really, to spend on resources for children to use, whether that’s technological or physical,  stuff to make.

Alis Rocca [00:24:33]

Yeah.

Sarah Evans [00:24:34]

I mean, that’s really quite a deep question.

Alis Rocca [00:24:38]

And you did really well with it. So let’s have a think about some strategies that you do use. And you do use that support the children you work with. Could you give examples of what you do and any resources that you do use. So maybe anyone listening, so whether they’re parents or educators, could take some of your ideas away and even though we can’t overhaul the whole education system, we can share some good tips.

Sarah Evans [00:25:09]

Okay. So some of the things we use are, like I said, visual ways of learning. So if it’s around spelling, children a lot of times, they make what we call visual posters. So if they’re learning a particular word like ‘home’, I’ll use that example again, they might draw a picture of a house. So that there’s a visual attached to the word, so that could apply to, in history for example, that could apply to a specific date or specific person where, you know, children are allowed to attach visual imagery to the learning because that is going to help them to remember that information. It’s in visual form. We also use lots of multisensory tools, learning tools. I mean we say a lot, this is a tool, not a toy. So things like Play-Doh, we use paint, we use water bottles so that they write, they go outside and use a water bottle to spell words out. So drawing the word out using water. We use things like 3D letters, so the spelling it’s not just about writing on a piece of paper. We have alphabets, we have sets of alphabet letters, but they’re 3D, they’re physical, so children can hold them, they can touch them. So they’re using their senses. They’re using the touch, they smell, they can see it. They can hear how it sounds when the fingers move around that letter. So lots of multi-sensory, mind mapping is another one that we use for advanced literacy sessions.

Alis Rocca [00:27:03]

What does that look like, mind mapping?

Sarah Evans [00:27:05]

So mind mapping is, I suppose the way to describe it would be, like a diagram or like a, a spider gram. So if the children are learning, for example, about kings and queens of England, for example, we’ll do something where they will have like a circle in the middle of the page and that’s the subject.  And out of that circle come the legs, like, spiders. Spiders legs. And then there’s more circles attached to the ends of those legs.  From there, coming out from the centre, you’ll have maybe six different kings and queens. Okay. And then that’ll extend again. So more legs coming off those circles. And then that can be like dates. And they can attach an image to each digit. So number one might be a snake. So if they have to remember 1876, for example, the one is a snake, the eight might be two beach balls. Do you understand what I mean? The digits themselves are images like animals or objects. So in that way, because it’s visual, it helps them to remember those important pieces of information. Really good tool.

Alis Rocca [00:28:42]

That’s brilliant.  Really nice.

Sarah Evans [00:28:43]

I think it’s called Assistive technology, a piece of software that we use for our older children and children that are doing their GCSE’s, and some of the younger kids as well. It’s a digital software, so you can get it on your phone as an app. And that’s a good way of notetaking because again, it’s attaching a symbol or an image to a specific word or specific date that you might have to remember. So there’s technology out there as well. So assistive technology, it’s really useful to use.

Alis Rocca [00:29:23]

That’s brilliant. Thank you for that. Any other strategies that you use?  You talked a little bit about the working memory. How do you help children to develop their working memory?

Sarah Evans [00:29:38]

So we do a thing, it’s in the summer term, we do something called, barefoot running.

Alis Rocca [00:29:43]

Oh, yeah. Tell us about that.

Sarah Evans [00:29:45]

Okay. Yes. It’s so much fun. They actually really love it. So it’s been proven scientifically that, walking around, barefoot improves working memory by 20%. If you’re walking around for, I think it’s like 20 minutes a day, your working memory will improve by 20%. So the children go outside, they run around the field because there’s a lovely big field at the front of the school. They just do a run around the outside, and then they do an obstacle course where they’re jumping over obstacles, they’re weaving in and out of poles like a slalom. They do skipping. And this is all barefoot, sometimes they’re like, “I don’t want to take my socks off, I don’t want to take my socks off”,

Sarah Evans [00:30:36]

Like, no, this is why we’re doing it, and we explain it to them. This is why we’re doing it. Because this is going to help you work from memory. And, by that I mean, they love it, they really enjoy it. So, I mean, it sounds…

Alis Rocca [00:30:49]

Like such fun.

Sarah Evans [00:30:51]

It really is such fun. It sounds natural, but, I mean, there’s scientific proof that this actually does improve your working memory, but also we give them information about eating the right sorts of foods. Things like red berries, oily fish, things that are fuelling their brain and their memory. We give them information about that as well.

Alis Rocca [00:31:13]

So this sounds like a lot bigger than just the academic side, and it sounds like you’re preparing them for life. Are there any other things that you do that help prepare them for themselves as adults, when they eventually leave you and leave school?

Sarah Evans [00:31:30]

I was a yoga teacher for 15 years, and something we actually teach at the school as well, is around mindfulness. And this helps with concentration levels. So we’ll do things like call it training your puppy. So, you know, a lot of the kids are like little puppies. And they want to run around and jump around and lark around, which is great and it’s completely natural. It’s lovely. So it’s their energy. However, when it comes to learning certain things, they need to pull their puppy in. So to rein your puppy in and we do things like mindful breathing. So they’ll lie on the floor, on their backs and they will literally just focus on breathing. And we use specific sort of programs that help them, that talk them through the breathing process. How to focus their mind, how to, have an awareness of their body, where their breath is. Are they fidgeting? Why they’re fidgeting. What’s happening there? What’s going on? And it just helps them to just have a sense that, because a lot of times, I mean, I do it, I fidget a lot, and it helps me concentrate. And our children need to do that as well. So we’ll give them blue tac sometimes so that they can fidget with the blue tac underneath the desk. And just that little movement with their fingers means that they can focus better, and they can listen to what’s being said by their teacher or other students. It’s important as well that they listen to each other, and learn from each other a lot as well. And I mean, things like that are just, sometimes people just aren’t aware that they’re doing stuff. So it’s just bringing that awareness to what you’re doing and teaching them like this is a way that you can learn to manage that and sort of control that, so that it’s not distracting you.

Alis Rocca [00:33:34]

Absolutely you can see how that can just go into adult life as well and you taking those tools with you.

Sarah Evans [00:33:40]

Completely. It’s something that I think is important for any situation. I mean, you name it, whether it’s a learning situation or a social situation. And stress, dealing with stress as well, which obviously that’s going to happen throughout life. So it’s learning ways to sort of manage stress, manage anxieties. It does work, so if they spent a year or two years, they’re completely changed as children.

Alis Rocca [00:34:13]

That’s wonderful to hear. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience of dyslexia? Because I know that you got a diagnosis. Can you just talk us through what it felt like for you being in school? And how dyslexia presented in you?

Sarah Evans [00:34:31]

Sure. So I was diagnosed with dyslexia back in February of this year, so I didn’t know I was dyslexic throughout my life. I’m in my late 40s now, so, I mean, I kind of felt different. I think that’s just the way that I might describe it. I felt like I would be distracted quite a lot and, I can be talking to someone and I’m sort of looking at them and sort of hearing what they’re saying, but I’m not listening. My brain is thinking about something else. So for me, dyslexia, like I understand what that is now and some of that is dyslexia but so I kind of just thought that I was just easily distracted or not very good at talking to people or, you know, not interested in what people were talking to me about. But having a dyslexia diagnosis helps me to understand the way I think. I’m visual. Completely visual. I’m a designer. I’m an artist, I create stuff, that’s what I love doing. And I suppose the reading and writing thing, I was fine in school, actually, but I always took quite a long time to do things. So exams, you know, I don’t think I completed one single paper of my GCSE’s, so I got pretty good results, but I didn’t have enough time just processing information. It just takes me longer. I don’t see it as a deficit or something that’s wrong with me. It’s just that’s the way I am. That’s the way I think. And I think I’ve got good skills. I’m pretty good at communicating with people I think, I like talking to people, I just know that certain things take me longer and I need to give myself more time. So I need to be more organised and not leave things till the last minute and then I’m stressed because I’m gonna run out of time. Also, I think an important thing that I’ve learnt is to let people know if I find something difficult. And I think that’s something that a lot of us don’t do enough.

Alis Rocca [00:36:27]

Oh, right.

Sarah Evans [00:36:28]

Well, I’m finding this really difficult. Do you mind if we do it a different way, or do you mind if we give this task an extra hour than planned? And I think sometimes that’s a good approach and not just for, but foryou ng children, like, say, if you find something difficult. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, that’s what we’re here for, that’s what your family’s there for, your siblings, your friends, your teachers. It’s good to help each other. So kindness and kindness to yourself is all right. I’m not weak. I’m not stupid. I just need help and support, and that is absolutely fine. I think that’s natural.

Alis Rocca [00:37:11]

Well, what are the main challenges you’ve had to deal with as an adult with dyslexia? I know you’ve continued to study. You’ve studied in different areas, both in the art and design world and obviously studied to become a yoga teacher and you studied to become a teacher. How have you found all of that as a path to follow? As a woman with dyslexia.

Sarah Evans [00:37:38]

I mean, I’ve always been self-employed as an artist, a designer. I was all self-employed. So being my own boss was helpful because it means I can do things at my own pace. As a teacher, obviously I’m not my own boss. I’ve got a boss. I have to do things the way I’m told to do things. I think what it means for me is that the difficulty comes when I don’t know what’s going on. I think I need to be fully aware of the situation. I like to be able to be the boss. I’d like to be able to steer my learning and my work. However, it doesn’t always go like that and I’ve had to learn to be much more flexible. I think as a parent, and as a professional, flexibility is so important because people are complex and working with people isn’t always straightforward. So flexibility is something that helps me to just go, okay, you can have a plan. However, have a plan B and a plan C and D, because it might not go that way. So just be prepared and have something else, and it’s not a problem if it doesn’t go that way. I think something that I have found quite difficult is when things don’t go to plan. But I think being a parent, things don’t go as planned quite a lot. And I’ve just learnt that, oh it’s fine. We’ll just do it a different way or we’ll do something else. I used to get really stressed and quite anxious if things weren’t going the way I thought they were going to go. But yeah, I’ve just learnt that it is fine and I don’t need to stress and worry. And there’s always an alternative.

Alis Rocca [00:39:26]

That’s brilliant. Thank you. So we’re coming to the end of our conversation. It’s been really lovely talking to you about dyslexia, both from the perspective of you as an educator, but also as somebody who’s a mum and who has been diagnosed with dyslexia? Our audience is likely to be, either parents or educators, what key thing would you want a listener to take away from today’s conversation?

Sarah Evans [00:39:57]

I would say if your child is dyslexic, you need to do things differently. But also one thing I think is really important is to listen to your child, whether you’re a parent or a teacher or you work with children in any way, is to listen to what they’re saying and also take on board what they’re saying. If they’re not wanting to do something, it’s not because they’re lazy, it’s not because they can’t be bothered or they don’t want to. It might be just the way that you’re presenting to them, it’s just really difficult for them to process and they literally can’t do it that way. I mean, I didn’t receive a lot of training as a teacher on specific learning differences. I would say read up on it. You know, there’s loads of podcasts out there for learning about neurodiversity, learning about dyslexia. I’d say read up and when you hear people’s experiences and people’s knowledge and also some of the research that’s been done, you begin to understand what dyslexia actually means in real life and when, I think, you’ve got that knowledge, you do start to think differently about how you teach, how you parent, how you engage with the world. And even if your child doesn’t have a dyslexic diagnosis, your child might be neurodiverse in a different way. It might be ADD or ADHD and I think what’s key really is listening to the children, listening to them, taking on board what they say, and educating yourself because that information might not be readily available to you from your employer or your family. Some families have these myths that dyslexia is something bad, and I’m not in denial that there can be shame attached to it.  All that should be just put aside. Dyslexia isn’t a defect. There’s nothing wrong with us. Those of us with dyslexia, it’s just a different way of thinking and of experiencing the world. And there’s so many positives there as well. If your child’s dyslexic, they’ve got some amazing thing that they know how to do. Encourage that.

Alis Rocca [00:42:02]

Absolutely, so it’s listen to them, learn more yourself and encourage them. Sarah thank you so much for your time today. And thank you for all the work that you do with the children and the families that you work with. It’s wonderful to hear the impact that you’re making on so many lives. So thank you for that.

Sarah Evans [00:42:22]

You’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. It’s been really enjoyable, actually. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak about what I do and about my dyslexia. Thank you.

Alis Rocca [00:42:33]

Hope you enjoyed today’s conversation and are able to take something interesting and positive away from it. Our podcasts are sensitively produced and give evidence based information, whether from academic research and experts in their fields or from lived experiences. They are created to help others spot early signs of distress, and may require further monitoring and information on how to follow up and get help. Learning about child’s mental health and understanding how to recognise potential disorders is an important first step for everyone caring for children and young people. Please visit our website, Nipinthebud.org and go to our ‘Where to Get help’ page for organisations which can provide both support and further information to help you and those you care for. Any specific links that we’ve spoken about today can be found in the show notes. Finally, you can find Nip in the Bud on all the socials and get more information and further support. Don’t forget to subscribe, like and share with someone who you think may benefit from all that Nip in the Bud has to offer. See you next time.