Kate Griggs is the founder of a charity called Made
By Dyslexia that campaigns to change how dyslexia is understood and how dyslexic kids are taught in schools. Kate and her team have achieved an incredible impact and to date, Made By Dyslexia’s training has been
taken by over a million teachers worldwide, impacting the education – and life chances – of tens of millions of children across the globe.
In many ways, Kate’s entire life has been shaped by dyslexia. Even though her older brother Tom had been diagnosed as dyslexic, Kate struggled in silence, echoing Chef Philli’s experience of coping without support, despite her brother’s dyslexia being recognised. ‘Like a lot of girls, I just kept my head down and tried to work hard, but I was failing miserably and feeling really stupid because I couldn’t do the work the other kids could do.’
To help Tom, her parents paid for the Orton-Gillingham method that uses multisensory phonics to teach reading. Kate absorbed some of Tom’s lessons and when she started school, her reading wasn’t too bad.
‘But my comprehension was terrible, my maths was terrible, my sequential memory was terrible. I didn’t know my times tables. Like a typical dyslexic, when the round- robin reading was happening, I’d be sitting there waiting for my turn, knowing that I’d be able to read it but I’d be stumbling over my words.’
Nevertheless, her dyslexia wasn’t picked up. Like a lot of kids, Kate loved animals and wanted to be a vet when she grew up. She knew she’d need to be good at biology to become one, and thankfully she really enjoyed those classes. ‘My biology teacher was also my maths teacher, and I hated maths, I was terrible at it, and when I said
I wanted to be a vet, she said, “Oh, you’re not clever enough to do that”.’ What a crushing thing to say to an enthusiastic child.
Read more in The Dyslexic Edge: https://amzn.eu/d/ce4d770
