SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The city faces unique challenges when it comes to assisting children with reading and writing disorders, educators say. At best, students are diagnosed by age nine - at worst they reach adulthood without treatment.

Long-time teacher and literacy council member Lisa Campbell knew her children would adopt her love of literature. Having read to her daughter Maria, now eight, since she was a baby, it came as a shock when she got to kindergarten knowing letters and sounds but was unable to put them together to recognize words. Two years later, Maria was diagnosed with dyslexia.

Although she and her family now live in Winnipeg, Campbell, a former Yellowknifer, has been blogging about her experience diagnosing Maria's reading disorder on the NWT Literacy website.

The term dyslexia is considered outmoded by contemporary educators, deemed too narrow when it comes to identifying a spectrum of reading and writing challenges; however, this has not led to easier or quicker methods of diagnosis for children. The disorder itself is characterized by difficulty identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words.

Although signs of dyslexia can be present as early as kindergarten, assessments are not typically completed until Grade 3 as a two-grade deficit is required for diagnosis. This can be frustrating as a parent, says Campbell.

Because she could memorize words and follow patterns, teachers assumed Maria was reading at grade level - when shown a word out of context, however, she could not read it at all, Campbell explained.

"She came home just sobbing saying, 'I'm dumb,'" Campbell said.

Merril Dean acts as both the student services co-ordinator and educational psychologist at Yellowknife Catholic Schools. She says because the spectrum of learning disabilities is so broad, dyslexia actually accounts for a small percentage. But without the proper resources it's difficult to dedicate the amount of time required to differentiate between dyslexia, reading comprehension issues, language disorders and anxiety-induced struggles.

"Children with a lot of anxiety have difficulty learning, children who experience depression have difficulty learning so you have to look at the whole child and say, if this child is not making progress, why not?" she said.

"Two children may show the same results in terms of difficulty reading, but the underlying cause of what is creating that problem in reading is different."

Because the city is the largest hub in the territory, families across the NWT who have children with disabilities will often relocate to Yellowknife, according to Anita Griffore, supervisor of instruction at Yellowknife Education District No. 1.

She says the school board is allotted a certain amount of funding from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to assist children with special needs, but this includes all special needs. Funding is also population-based and despite they city's small size, Yellowknife has a higher percentage of children who are struggling, said Griffore.

"We're kind of a magnet community so if you're a long-term resident of the NWT and you have a child with disabilities, very often people will relocate to Yellowknife because there's support services," she explained. "Our proportion in the Yellowknife school system sometimes is high and that means the funding is stretched."

Griffore added because of this, many students who fall into grey areas often suffer the most.

"Our resources always have to be prioritized so as a result of that often it's the kids who are just not making grade level that you don't have the resources for," she said. "The kids that are really needy and falling well below grade level, they are always going to get support because they can't function without it."

She said treatment of reading disorders such as dyslexia is a lifelong process and the transience of the city's population makes tracking and maintaining skills difficult.

"You spend a lot of time and you do assessments and interventions and kids move and you get new kids in and you have to start from square one again," said Griffore.

Campbell said Maria's school refused to test her so they reached out to a dyslexia learning centre and she was diagnosed with moderate to severe dyslexia. Campbell said it was a relief to finally have some answers, but she knew not every child would be so lucky - particularly in Yellowknife, where such centres do not exist.

"We had the finances to pay for tutors. We had the finances to pay for testing, but what about people who don't?" she told Yellowknifer, adding the service had to be funded out-of-pocket at a cost climbing well over $1,000.

Griffore says the school board is working to train more staff to identify and treat learning disorders so they do not have to seek out private institutions. She says isolating children from an inclusive classroom environment may do more harm than good in the long run.

"They're not as effective as they claim and part of the issue is that kids are taught in segregation and taught very specific splinter skills," she says. "They don't integrate very well back into the real work in the classroom."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.