In this talk, author and literacy advocate Lois Letchford recounts her lived experience of dyslexia, beginning with her early schooling in a one‑teacher rural school in Southeast Queensland in the 1960s. She describes being placed in the wrong grade, the embarrassment of repeating a year, and how she excelled at rote tasks (letter‑sound matching, sight‑word reproduction) while failing to comprehend what she read independently. Letchford highlights the cultural disconnect between the standardized Dick and Jane reading texts—featuring white dogs on leashes, coats, and shoes—and her own farm‑yard reality, which alienated her and deepened her reading difficulties. She argues that the conventional focus on the child’s “deficit” overlooks systemic instructional flaws, noting that teachers today still use the same outdated methods despite broader responsibilities. The talk culminates in a call to re‑examine reading pedagogy, draw on contemporary research, and shift the question from “Is the child dyslexic?” to “What must we change in how we teach reading?” Letchford ends with a plea for viewers to share the message to improve literacy support for dyslexic learners.
Chapters
Hello, I am Lois Letchford, author of the book Reversed: A Memoir and literacy problem solver, here today talking about my dyslexic story. My story, because it impacts me as an adult, it impacts me as a teacher, and it impacts me as a person. What happened? How do I know I'm dyslexic, even though I know I've never been officially tested? It's what we do, isn't it? We survive school. I went to school in the early 1960s as a young, nearly 5-year-old. I went to a one-teacher school in Southeast Queensland, Australia, which becomes really important. And I went to school with my older brother and my older sister. And you do what everyone else does. You learn the letters and sounds, you learn the sight words, and I clearly remember learning the sight words. After being in school for about a year and a half, our little school closed and we went to the next town, the town of Lowood in Southeast Queensland, about 5 miles away. We got on a bus, went to school, and on the first day they just asked us, what grade are you in? And I said, I'm in grade 2. I was in my second year of school, so I knew I was in second grade. And after a few days, obviously, the official rolls came and the teachers stood at the front of the class and she said to me, Lois, and since when have you been in second grade? You know, here as an adult, I can still feel the blush in my cheeks. As I was utterly embarrassed by what the teacher said. I was embarrassed that I had to move from 2nd grade into 1st grade, and I was embarrassed that I didn't know what grade I was in. I didn't know I was being asked to repeat, and that's what I remember is the utter embarrassment. Obviously the teacher knew I was struggling. I didn't know that. I seemed to be doing alright. I could do what they asked. And doing what they asked really is a really interesting phenomenon because I was always one of the top 3 in the class throughout the early years in school. And you have to ask why. Because the things they were asking were things I could do fairly easily. Which was reproduce the words, reproduce the sounds, reproduce how you write these things. I could do it. Took a lot of effort on my part. I still remember school being very effortful, but it— I could do it, and I could do it until they asked a comprehension question. No, that's a lie. If you asked me a comprehension question orally, I had it. I could do it. It's when I came to read independently and they asked a question, that was when I was totally lost. I didn't understand anything of what I was reading, and that left me in a hole. And now you have to ask many questions. Many questions come up. The books we had, the only books I could access, were the Dick and Jane series. Standardised teaching material that went around the world. Every child learned to read through Dick and Jane. I learned to read words, and if you look at the pictures, I can clearly remember some of the struggles that I had with the characters in the book. A child's world at the age of 6 is very small. It's as big as, as what they've seen. It's not very big. I would not have seen a world map. I wouldn't have known about the rest of the world. So what do I know about the world from my point of view, my 6-year-old point of view? I knew that it was hot most of the time. We rarely wore coats. We wore coats throughout winter. And then of course, Queensland— We were in Queensland. You know where Queensland is? So we are sub-tropical. It's hot 9 months of the year. And we were poor, which meant we wore— never wore shoes and socks to school. We wore shoes and socks to go to church on Sunday. And that was typical. There wasn't any child going to school in shoes and socks. So when I look at these Dick and Jane books, I was confused. That's the only word I can use. I was confused. Obviously, they were human. Obviously, they were a boy and a girl. Yes, I could see that. Their animals. The dog that was white, Nip and Fluff. White, and the dog was on a lead. This was a whole new world to me. A world which I didn't understand. The world I came from, we had dogs. Our dogs worked. They were never on leads. They rounded up the cows. They were cattle kelpie dogs, real working dogs from Australia 1960s. They did everything that was asked of them. Never were they on a lead. Never were they white. Rarely were they washed. If they washed, they swam in the dam. They cleaned themselves. So I had a total conflict between what was happening in the books and what was happening in my world. And what it did for me was Was alienate me. It made me wonder where these people were from. And because as a child we weren't getting out much, we didn't see much, we lived in our little community on a farm and we would go to the town for the next— for church. And when I was 6 or 7, we were going to the city. I don't remember that. I just remember we had this very small world. So when you meet up with people like Dick and Jane who were doing things like wearing shoes and socks and wearing coats in every picture and having white dogs on leads that would run after you, I was, where do they come from? Where do they come from? So that left me confused. And now here's the second problem we have. Everyone else learned to read through using Dick and Jane. It's a blame game. What is wrong with her? And that's the scenario I think we really have to start looking at. What is wrong with that child? Because that's the wrong question to ask. We have to start saying, What do we have to change about the teaching? And that's the third point. What do we have to change about the teaching? Teachers today are asked to do a lot. They're doing much more than just teaching children to read. Yet we're still teaching children to read in the same way Really that I learned to read or attempted to learn to read 40 years ago, 50 years ago. That's a problem. Teachers, parents, when a child doesn't succeed as we expect, what's our first question? Is the first question, is the child dyslexic? What are we learning from our history, from the textbooks, from the science, from the academic papers that we can take with us to help children like me who struggled with reading? That's the question I'm going to leave you today. What are we learning? Why are we repeating the same mistakes from the past? Thank you. Hit like, hit subscribe, and stay tuned and share this with others as we look at reading and how important it is that we teach our young children who are dyslexic to read.
