Unique Dyslexic Get Creative video

Hello all, hope you all had a restful Christmas and New Year

The Unique Dyslexic Get Creative movie that shows some of the work people created at the five Unique Dyslexic Get Creative workshops. There is an introduction from myself and an introduction to campaign and being positive about dyslexia.

Filmed, scripted, edited and music put together by myself.

I had two heart attacks in the middle of delivering Unique Dyslexic Get Creative. It kinda got in the way a bit. I had planned to make a more extenisve video with more subtitles etc. But I was struggling with meeting Lottery deadlines. Thank you to everyone who funded and supported the work and to all those who came along to the workshops.

Unique Dyslexic Get Creative workshop video

Your comments and feedback are welcomed

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video.

Steve #UniqueDyslexic McCue

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness from me

Supporting the social model of dyslexia.

 

social model of dyslexia and social enterpsie a more empowering, inclusive and positive way forward

just a photo of me with my I am dyslexic logo

Good day to all my blog readers

I believe the medical discrepancy model of Dyslexia has gotten us pretty much nowhere. The dyslexia is about deficites, disorder and discrepency. This model say it's we dyslexics that are the problem. It makes no mention of diversity and difference. 

That's why my social enterprise, Dyslexia Pathways CIC, (Community Interest Company,) promotes and support the social model of Dyslexia. 

We see the social model of dyslexia together with social enterprise offers the dyslexic community a more inclusive, positive and empowering way forward. The social model tells us it is society that disables and here is how society does. 

My own research showed only 19% of dyslexic adults were assessed while at school. That the majority of adults assessed as dyslexic were assessed while at university. 

But you have to remember only about 5% of undergraduates are dyslexic while in the UK research shows around 10% of the population are dyslexic. Society disables us in so many ways and this disabling starts from day one at school for many of us and does not stop even at higher education level.

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness from me

Steve #UniqueDyslexic Mccue

Merry HO HO HO! Christmas

My wife Anne and I

 Hi all,

Nollaig Chridheil, which is Scottish Gaelic for Merry Christmas,( I hope ), to you all from my wife Anne and me, Steve #UniqueDyslexic McCue.

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness

from me and my wife

Funny the different roads we travel during our lives, how we evolve as people.

 

I am a citizen of Planet Earth

Hello to all my Unique Dyslexic blog readers.

Here is a little auto biographical blog from me.

I  qualified as an inclusive education specialist teacher oh wayyy wayyyyy back in 1995. I went to the Bolton Institute of Higher Education and took a years PGCE, Post Graduate Certificate in Education. I really loved the course and working with the student's on the course. I originally applied to do the PGCE course in Greenwich London I lived in London it made sense to do the course there. However I didn't get on the course can't remember why not. I later found out that someone from Bolton didn't get on the PGCE in Bolton but got into Greenwich.

Obviously I passed the course and thus began my teaching career working with students with learning and / of physical disabilities. This meant I could be working with tetraplegic students one day and students with mental health issues the next.

Part of my job including providing pre course tests for students to ensure they had the right level of English and maths to get on a course of an appropriate level. I won't get into the rights and wrongs of this right now. However, I came across quite a few young people described as disaffected learners. This is a euphemism for students who hadn't achieved at school for whatever reason, who were disruptive and or who had gotten into trouble with the police etc. All of them had left school without any qualification what so ever.

The testing showed that many of the student's were not able to attend courses they wanted to attend because of this. Oh yes they could take more basic level English or maths classes but could take any practical based courses because none existed. Almost all these students didn't want to take the basic English and maths courses. They had already tried to do this in school and had failed but they did want to do other courses. Engineering kept on being mentioned when i was talking with them.

At the time I was teaching what were then called vocational access courses so I designed a vocational access course in engineering for these students. It enabled students to do things like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and sound engineering etc. Oh yes English and maths was in there too but it was all based around what they were doing on the course. It was relevant to the students. In the first year we took on a cohort of 12 students.

The hardest part of all this for me was training the engineering teachers in inclusion because none had ever really worked with disaffected students. Or with many disabled students for that matter. So it was all new for them, some felt a course for students who struggled with the basics of English and maths had no validity but others really got into the whole inclusion agenda.

I taught the English and maths side of the course which was fine but I had to learn a lot about engineering to make the learning in class relevant to the students. It soon became obvious to me because of my own dyslexia that over half the students were dyslexic. I needed to do some specialist dyslexia training. It was the start or my journey to specialising in dyslexia.

The college where I was working at the time provided this specialist training and it was fantastic. But I must have become the most tested person for dyslexia. As I was the only dyslexic on the course my classmates all gave me dyslexic tests lol. Then there was the teacher taking the course. I would be writing away or answering a question and the teacher would suddenly put one finger towards her nose whilst poking towards me with another finger on her other hand and exclaim to the whole class, "See look this is how a dyslexic would do this or that". Looking back on it now I can laugh but at the time it was quite disconcerting.

Anyway that's how I started my career as a dyslexia specialist.

Getting back to the students I was working with on the engineering course all passed and went on to other courses in engineering.

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness from me

Steve #Unique Dyslexic McCue

Livin in a neuro diverse World and Universe

 

Livin in a neuro diverse World and Universe

Hello all, hope you are all well?

If society cant handle neuro diversity with neuro diverse people here on Earth. How will society cope with neuro diversity with intelligent live out there in the universe when we we eventually meet it?

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness from me, 

Steve #UniqueDyslexic McCue

The nature nurture of being dyslexic or neuro diverse

 

my initial design for the Unique Dyslexic logo, I wanted the U to intertwine with the D to show uniqueness and dyslexia go hand in hand

Hi blog readers and social media followers

As a dyslexic I have been thinking more about dyslexia as a life experience. 

I experience and make sense of and understand the world through my dyslexic prism. Being dyslexic through eyes, thought processes, decision making and dyslexics senses. There is not a blob in my head that is dyslexic and the rest isn't, it is much more complicated than that.

All of us have different lives have different life experiences as children and adults which can impact on how we manage our lives as a dyslexic.

It's a nature nurture thing. I was born dyslexic no getting away from that thank gawd that's the nature side of dyslexia. 

Then there is the nurture side. Our experience with family, school, friends etc. The nurture side is ongoing and shapes us and who we are through our lives.

Out dyslexia unfriendly education system can leave many dyslexics with feelings low self esteem, self confident, self worth and even long term mental health issues. But we can all overcome these issues. For me personally relationships with friends, reading sci fi comics and books, becoming a musician and computer game player etc all helped me to overcome theses issues. 

But most importantly I had a dyslexia assessment at age 35. This assessment enabled me to make sense of my inability to succeed at school. It enabled me to realise I was not as thick as a brick at school. That is was our dyslexics a unfriendly education system that failed me no myself. Only a dyslexics can comprehend how liberating the realisation of this can be. 

But the effects of experiences at school can still come to the surface. I can still experience periods of low self esteem and depression etc. I can still scold and berate myself for being an idiot. I can say things about my self to myself that would never say about anyone else. 

My own research showed the vast majority of assessed dyslexics, 71%, leave school without being assessed. But so many dyslexics never receive an dyslexia assessment. Nobody really knows how many un-assessed dyslexic adults are out there. But I think this number is very high. 

It's no wonder that so many of us hate being dyslexic, can feel ashamed of being dyslexic. Many will never know the answers to why they feel how they feel. To why that have struggled all through their lives. 

Question to you all:

How do you feel about being dyslexic?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section of this blog.

Anyways thats enough for this blog

Peace love and groovyness to you all

Remember dyslexia is about diversity and difference, its what makes us unique. Humanity and nature have thrived because of diversity and difference.

I know it seems nuts to many dyslexics because of their negative experiences at school but love being dyslexic. 

#PeaceLoveGrooveyness from me

Steve #UniqueDyslexic McCue

Dyslexics can and do succeed but many do so in spite of their education not because of it.

 Dyslexics can and do succeed but many do so in spite of their education not because of it. 

photo above: we must enable dyslexic kids to fly and learn together with their disabled, neuro diverse and non dyslexic peers

We must change how we think about what it means to be dyslexic in a society that disables. We must change how we think and talk about dyslexia.

We have to challenge the current medical discrepancy of dyslexia. It is a model that has nothing positive to say about dyslexia or to dyslexics. It is a model that has only served to trap us behind a narrow one dimensional negative stereotype definition of dyslexia. A definition that totally ignores and stifles our potential and strengths.

That is why I support the social model of dyslexia. It talks about dyslexia in terms of diversity and difference and it recognises that it is society that disables us.

#dyslexia is a difference that reflects #diversity. We need to unleash and nurture that potential not remediate or stifle it.

What are your thoughts on this? please comment

Anyway that's enough from me apart to say my #dyslexia blog has had over 375.000 reads. Ta to all who read and contribute to my blog including guest bloggers. Hope you enjoy and share my latest one.

many thanks for reading and your support

#PeaceLoveGroovyness to all my blog followers and readers

Why not visit my Unique Dyslexic Eye podcast page and join fab dyslexia / neuro diverse clan.

Unique Dyslexic Eye Podcast Page

Be seeing you there soon

Steve #UniqueDyslexic McCue