Singular Minds
August 1, 2005 • Volume I, Issue 12
Prolinguistica Dyslexia Correction Center
Laura Zink de Diaz
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Quote of the Month
"Education for the very young is properly more about a rich sensory/emotional
life, the filling of the sense memory by a life of direct experience of earth,
wind, water, fire, singing, dancing, and plants and animals, than it is about
learning facts, figures, and formulas. You might get a seven-year-old to memorize
a hundred facts about frogs but until he has been down to the creek to watch
frogs, to catch frogs, he not only will not much care about the hundred frog
facts he has memorized but in a real way he still won’t know what a frog
is. Those facts will be without much meaning, disassociated from a concrete
reality." — Stephen Bertucci, director of the Western Civilization
Foundation's Great Books Program for high school students.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/bertucci3.html
PDCC News
BFirst, apologies for the lateness of this month's edition of Singular Minds.
Simply overwhelmed with "stuff" to do. Apparently I need to make another
model of "order vs. disorder" to help get myself organized!
Public Talk
Thursday, August 25 at 7:00 pm I'll be making another public talk about dyslexia.
If you have friends or acquaintances struggling with dyslexia or a related learning
difficulty, please encourage them to attend and learn more. This month's talk
will be held at Prolinguistica's office in Mount Vernon (1621 Freeway Drive
#206). Call 360-848-9792 for more information.
Clay Fest!
This summer we have substituted Clay Fest for clay nights. These sessions
for current and former clients and their parents, have been going great guns
since mid-July, and have been well attended. A number of youngsters have really
gotten ahead on their models! This coming week, because I have a client full
time, Clay Fest has been cancelled. But next week we'll hold the two final sessions
for the summer on August 16 and 18.
Support
Group
This month's support group meeting will be August 18, at 7 pm.!
New
Offering
Davis Dyslexia Association International has recently authorized licensed Davis
Dyslexia Correction Facilitators to provide a new program called the Davis™
Reading Program for Young Learners. This is a one-to-one facilitated learning
enhancement program for children aged 5 - 8, based around the content of the
Davis Young Learner Kit and Manual. Its aims are:
- to provide lifelong learning skills to younger children through a partnership
between Facilitator, child and parent(s)
- to give one or both of the child's parents, or a support person, sufficient
confidence and skill to continue working with the Kit after the program
- provide children with the conceptual skills needed to develop reading fluency
and comprehension.
I'm excited about offering this to families in our area! Watch for more information
about it in the fall.
Good
Stuff to Read
Parents
of dyslexic kids get break
Howard Gordon, Desert Sun
In a recent ruling, the Internal Revenue Service found that children who have
been diagnosed with dyslexia and went to a school with a program designed to
allow them to deal with their special medical needs have a deductible medical
expense. This is a welcome breakthrough, because it means that if you have a
child with a similar type diagnosis, you will be able to deduct not only the
cost of attending the school, but the cost of meals and lodging supplied by
that school as a medical expense. Read the rest at:
http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005506290308
This suggests that a Davis correction program may now qualify as a medical tax
deduction. The Kiplinger Tax Letter (Vol. 80, No. 12, June 17, 2005) also makes
mention of this change in IRS rules. So check with your tax accountant!
Reading
for Profit
In "Reading for Profit" edited by Bess Altwerger, Steve Strauss cites
research by Anderson, Whipple & Jimerson, 2002 that while children 25 years
ago feared loss of a parent more than retention, today's children fear retention
MORE than they fear loss of a parent. You can download the article at: http://www.nasponline.org/pdf/graderetention.pdf
Recording
for the Blind & Dyslexic
RFB&D's library of academic textbooks on audiotape contains more than 104,000
titles at all academic levels, from kindergarten through post-graduate and professional.
Anyone with a documented disability—including a visual impairment, learning
disability or other physical disability which makes reading standard print difficult
or impossible—is eligible to use RFB&D's audio textbooks by becoming
a member. An individual membership costs $100 for the first year and renewal
is just $35 per year after that. A thank you! to Donna Vance for submitting
this information! If you think your child could benefit from access to audio-textbooks
to help him or her keep up with schoolwork while completing a correction process,
check it out at:
http://www.rfbd.org
Are
America's public libraries on the verge of losing their way?
By Chris Dodge - Utne Magazine
In a land where private ownership is the rule, libraries lend items and offer
help for free. Historically, they've provided things to be shared, not consumed
and thrown away. Good libraries are deeply conservative in that they guard and
archive the culture's diverse wisdom and beauty, its vast oddities and amusements.
But they're also radical bastions of mutual aid. In a "knowledge economy"
where information carries an ever-steeper price, where the rich get wealthier
and the poor have less, libraries are one of the few ways still available for
many to educate themselves -- ideally, an American right. But ... the same forces
that have turned the United States into a fast-food nation could soon drive
the traditional American library out of existence. In a society where everyone's
basic needs for health care, housing, education, clean air and water, meaningful
work, creative expression, and open space are not met, the historical model
of the public library, open to all, is under siege. Critics say it's a crisis
that mirrors a larger one rooted in the failures of capitalism and perhaps democracy
itself. Read the rest of this disturbing article here:
http://www.utne.com/pub/2005_130/promo/11706-1.html
In
other PDCC news...
I've been asked to travel to Quito, Ecuador to provide a Davis program for a
young college student there - Have Tools, Will Travel! If all works out and
I make this trip, I'll be out of the country at the usual time I put together
Singular Minds, so once again, the issue will be late - out in mid-September.
(I seem to be apologizing a lot for lateness this summer!)
That's it for this month. Thanks, and finish up the summer with a bang!
Laura
Next Issue of Singular Minds: September 15, 2005 (-ish)
Got a topic you’d like to see addressed in Singular Minds? E-mail questions,
proposals, letters, and/or stories to: singularminds@prolinguistica.com
Singular Minds
Monthly Newsletter from
Prolinguistica Dyslexia Correction Center
www/pdcc-read.com
www/pdcc-read.com/indice.html (for website in Spanish)
singularminds@prolinguistica.com