Spent the day up dating Dyslexia Pathways web site. Have to say a big thanks to Denise one of our volunteers for looking overs the pages of our site and making corrections and suggestions for up dating it..

Had a great day today. Met four new students and had four very positive dyslexia support sessions. More new students next week plus those who came today. Excellent stuff.

a new year starts

Due to the work I dyslexia work I do I work to the academic year. It been tough financially this summer. I seem to have done a lot of work developing ideas and moving forward with them. Doing a lot of free work through the Dyslexia Pathways web site and phone line. Also do attending meetings with the Preventative Spend committee, Goodison Group etc at the scottish parliament. But little paid work has come through.

Still I cannot complain I didn't start Dyslexia Pathways and do the entrepreneur thing to make a lot of money. Just to be able to support other dyslexics like I was supported and enable them to succeed is great.

Still the university work has started. I have four students for dyslexia support tomorrow. I love it when I meet new students and work with them. If I can see between 10 and 15 students per week from now on I will be happy.

Going to start investigating Crowd Funding as a possible means to take my app further and look at a couple of companies who develop apps to see if I can get them interested.

Might be lucky and get a mentor as well.

I must be daft I am going to start a new company which is not going to be a social enterprise but will have a dyslexia focus. I have a logo design and product designs and ideas to work with.

Being a dyslexia teacher / specialist entails a good deal of counselling work or at least it seems to for me. I would say as much as 30% in counselling. I do have counselling training but wanted to update my skills by starting a new course. Unfortunately I cannot at this time because of costs. Still I have added costs for training in one of the new funding bids I have made so here's hoping for success.

Music

A long time ago before I became a teacher I used to be a musician for a good many years. Had a lot of fun doing it as well.

I gave it all up in 1988 to go back to school and apart from a few weeks playing bass guitar in a band in 2006 I had not done anything musically.

I got a great music programme for my Christmas last year and a couple months ago I started writing new music with it.

So far I have written 11 tracks with about 4 or 5 I am really happy with. I have always been a creative dyslexic and it felt really good to have gotten back into writing music. I am learning more and more about the capabilites of the software and keyboard and hope to continue writing more new compositions in future.

For all you dyslexic musicians out there I have set up a group on Soundcloud where you can posts your music compositions. You do not have to join the site to listen but if you want to add your music to the group you will need to join. It is free for a basic membership which is what I have.

You have to double left click with your mouse to use the link.
My music on Soundcloud

Monday morning

Got up early this morning 5.30am. Hardly got any sleep as well so I am shatterd before I started . However, I completed another funding application for Tesco this morning so thats three in the last few days. This is an application for £4000 to purchase new dyslexia friendly software, a printer and a few other things. It will be around 3 months before I hear anything about this.

Only another 3 or 4 more to do including a couple of lottery ones.

Wish I could find a volunteer with experience of doing this. It's not that I cannot do these applications it just takes me so long to do them. Not getting out the ideas and what I want to write but doing the proof reading and organising it is a real pain because of the dyslexia.

I am not going to moan about this because I don't believe I would be doing or have achieved what I have if I were not dyslexic.

Today I am going to do some work on the dyslexia phone app games using Inspitation mind mapping software. Had a very productive meeting about this last week which I hope will enable me to move on with this. Will have to see if I can find an artist to help realise the avitars I have in mind for this.

Completed two new funding applications on Friday. One for the Innovation fund which I only found out about the day before the closing date for applications. Had to work very hard to write that one and had little time to look for my typical dyslexic errors. Thats the one thing I still find difficult finding my own errors.

The second one was for a Dragons Den event run by Senscot. Senscot is an organisation that supports social enterprises like Dyslexia Pathways and are pretty cool in my view. Dragons Den gives 5 people or organisations to sell their ideas to dragons. Dragons being other successful social entrepreneurs and to the audience.

http://www.senscot.net/

The Dragons Den event is part of the Senscot Annual Ceilidh which we have attended the last two. There have been seven in all so far. Other activities include:

Sell your business and its products in under 3 minutes to other social enterprises. Equally, this is a great networking opportunity. 

Access to free legal advice

Presentations from other successful social entrepreneurs

On the evenng of the first day there is a dinner and dance with music from a ceilidh band

Then there is an opportunity to meet with friends and catch up with the news from other social enterprises.

I have done a dragons den presentation a couple of years ago. It was quite nerve wracking. Not so much presenting to the audience but to the 4 dragons in the panel. I didn't win but enjoyed the experience. So I am giving it a go again this year. Just hope I get selected as there are only 5 places and many many entrants.

MRI scan

Just got back from an MRI scan on my brain gawd what an experience lol. The nurse was very helpful and explained all that was going to happen. I was warned the process was going to be noisey and so to counter that I had to wear a pair of headphones. I was also informed that I could choose from a selection of music to play in the headphones.  Not much of a choice of music all middle of the road stuff like the infamous clog dancin trio ABBA NOOOOOOO!!!!! In the end I went for a 60s and 70s compilation.

First of all I had a lay down on a bed and have a cage clamped down over my head and was asked not to move at all whilst the scan was taking place. Then I was given a panic button that I was to press if I was panicing. I was then pushed into the MRI scanner. To say it was a snug fit would be an understatement. Blimey so glad I am not clausrophobic.

The music started to play and the sound was sooooo tinny with hardly any bass at all ouch. The first song was Wonderful World Louis Armstrong. Now I like this song but I have always associated it with funerals which was quite ironic as I felt like I was in a coffin. Although I am certain there will be more room in my coffin than in the scanner.

Then the scanner started and the noise levels quickly built up so that I could hardly hear them music. As I looked upwards all I could see was the whitness of the inside of the scanner so I just closed my eyes. The noise kinda pulsed which got faster and faster till eventually I coundn't hear the music at all.

The scanner noise reminded me of gadgets in old sci fi programmes like Dr Who. All the gadgets had to make really annoying loud screachy sounds. The noise being there for no other reason than to signify it was working and fururistic. Blimey who would have thought all those Dr writers and writers of sci fi predicted the furute world of gadgets would be soooooooo loud.

A few minutes later the first scan finished and there was a new song playing. I have no idea what it was but it was another cheerful little ditty I don't think. I didnt recognise any of the songs at all apart from the first one.

I have no idea how long I was in the scanner for but it felt like an age. Won't have to wait long for the results though. I will just be happy if they have found a brain.

Well the dyslexia support at the unis has started to come in which will bring with it some much welcomed income.

Hmmmm I have an MRI scan on my brain to go through today. NOT! looking forward to that at all. But hey its has to be done. Maybe I will be lucky and they will find a brain and that I am not just a scarecrow lol

Funding

I have been looking around for various sources of possible funding for the dyslexia focussed phone app and games I have designed. I am currently looking at BuzzBanking. Has anyone got any experience of this and like to share their experience of using it?

I think the app will take between 4 to 10 thousand pounds to develop

Dundee meeting

The meeting at Cultural Enterprise Scotland went well. Got some new leads to follow and some good ideas on how to move forward with my dyslexia phone app and games.

It's getting a bit frustrating that its taking so long to move forward. I would programme it myself if I could but its more than just programming. I have characters for the games that need designing and I do have some rough outlines but I am no artist I have a good idea how I want the app and games to look and how they would work and have some componants of the app ready to go. I have composed some music for it and have my mind map plans.

Like everything else in life you have to keep pluging away at it and hope for a bit of good fortune.

I am off to a meeting in Dundee with a representative from Cultural Enterprise Scotland. Its about the dyslexia focussed phone app I have designed. Hoping for a good meeting with some positive outcomes. Maybe even some leads to funders or a student who may want to buld the app as a project for their course.. I have been working with this for a good while to get it off the drawing board but no luck just yet. Lots of positive feedback about it though.

Had my neices here with us for the last few days they are going to be stayiing for 8 days. Blimey kids are hard work lol but great fun. There is Layla she is just over two years old and Charmaine who is 14. Layla is cheeky she was putting a  peppa pig figure in here mouth and was told to take it out of her mouth. She relied, "not in my mouth on my teeth". Kids lol.

Got a piece of artwork from my brother for my Soundcloud music compositions. Might write a couple more and put tiogether a CD.

Dyslexia discrepency model sigh

Sigh will we ever move away from this dyslexia discrepency model? I am an individual and like every other individual I am good at some things and not so good at others. I do not have a learning disability, specific or otherwise. Would we characterise someone who is not very good at art as being dysartistic, or someone who is bad at driving dysmotoristic? Would they be labled as being disabled? Yes ok, so I found reading difficult, I still do, spelling can be a real pain in the arse, my organisation well I am about as organised as daffy duck. On the other hand I have great problem solving skills, I have fantastic oral presentation skills, I am a creative musician and creative person in general. I believe all the things I am good at are because I am dyslexic. The things I am not so good at hey thats life. I love being dyslexic, I do not want to be cured, I am sick of reading about disability discrepency model of dyslexia. 90% of the time a dyslexia expert opens there mouth its to tell us what we can't do and why we can't do this or that. Who wants to be told being dyslexic means you are disabled or your brain does not work correctly?

You know how irritating it can be to make that crucial dyslexic error? Well I made one not so long ago. I had an appointment today with an apps specialist regard the phone app I have designed. I got there at two pm and the appointment was 11am d'uh lol. The e mail read as follows appointment 12th August 2011 @ 11am. Now read it as 12th August 2 and took that as the time of the appointment.

Funding bids

I have 6 new funding bids to write over the next few weeks. I have done this before and made several successful funding bids in the past. The project I am most proud of was, "Breaking the Barriers of Dyslexia". I did this whilst I was working as co-ordinator for dyslexia at a college in London. I put together the project in response to a number of factors.

Whilst working there I started afternoon dyslexia surgerys for students and staff. It was very successful and the surgerys were always busy. Many of the teachers who came to see me had concerns about their own dyslexia or about the possibility they were dyslexic. one of them knew about the Access to Work scheme managed by Jobcentres.

I was also finding that many male students were just not accessing dyslexia support services at all. The numbers of female students were much higher. As a result I went out into the college to aks students about their perceptions of dyslexia. I have to say their perceptions were not very positive at all particularly amongst male students. I had even had a few teachers approaching me telling me in no uncertain terms what they thought about dyslexia such as they didn't believe it existed.

The profile of dyslexia at the college itself was not high at all. When I got the job as Co-ordinator for dyslexia I was the only full time member of staff providing dyslexia support. There was one other part time member. This was at a college spread over four different sites with a student population of around 10.000. There was not a place for us to work with students and prior to myself taking dyslexia support staff had to walk around the college looking for a quiet class room to work with students in. The college hired me to change this and to be fair I was given free reign and support to change this situation. By the time I left each site had its own dyslexia support room and the team had expanded to two full time staff and three part time.

The basic idea behind, "Breaking the Barriers to Dyslexia", was to provide access to free dyslexia screening, dyslexia assessment and training it dyslexia friendly work practises to staff at the college. It was a 12 week project and my project proposal was accepted and fully funded by the Learning and Skills Counscil in London. At the start we had target to screen 100 members of staff in the end we screened nearly 200. We had a target to provide dyslexia assessments to 8 staff and we ended up assessing 23 staff. We provided training to all assessed staff in dyslexia friendy work stratagies and support with applications for Access to Work funding. Moreover, we had a co-hort of staff who were able to act as mentors and role models to students at the college.

It was a very successful project and one that needs to be repeated in every school, college, university and training provider in the UK.

Well it's Friday to and the weather is wet and manky outside. Had a very positive meeting with the Goodison Group and Scotlands Futures Forum. Must have been well over 100 people there all told. I am never very comfortable meetings like this where there are Lord and Ladies, Directors from large companies and organisations etc. But there were also other teachers, educationalists and I met a number of nice people. I am really just a teacher and I started Dyslexia Pathways so that I could keep using my dyslexia specialist and teaching skills and because I couldn't find any teaching work in a college as a dyslexia teacher. I will go into the meeting in more detail once I get it.

Have o say there was a great luncheon after the event so I got a free lunch from my troubles lol

I have been getting little hints from contacts that it is getting increasing harder to gain funding for disability learning support. The amount of paper work and proof required is getting greater and greater. I have even heard chatter that sudents claiming Students Disabled Allowance may even have to borrow money to pay for hardware such as a laptop etc. If this is so it will make it much tougher for disabled students to succeed at university or even go to university. This is not happening this year but maybe in the next two years.

Some questions for you to answer

As you all know I have put together a new project and a while ago I asked members to write about their experiences. In order to aid this I have put together a series of questions as prompts and make clear what I am looking for. If you can send your answers to my pm box here or to steve_mccue@hotmail.com
1 When were you diagnosed or have you not been diagnosed yet?

2  What problems/discrimination did you have before diagnosis?

3  Did this alter after being diagnosed?

4  What problems/discrimination have you suffered in school (all levels), further   education and/or      work?

5  How does dyslexia affect your everyday life?

6  What helps you deal with your dyslexia effectively?

A long time ago before I went back to school and university I was a musician. Had a lot of fun doing that for a number of years. One day in 1988 I just decided to quit music and go back to see if I could learn. Hardly picked up my bass guitar or six string since then. Not written any lyrics or composed one song.

When I frist moved up to Edinburgh I did get back into playing here and got a lot of fun out of it playing covers with some others here.

About two months ago I got the yearn to start composing again and have written twelve new tracks. I had quite forgotten how much joy I got out of playing music.

I believe the musician stuff I did way back then helped me to overcome barriers that my dyslexia had made unsurmountable to me at school.

I remember I just stopped attending school when I was about 14 just gave up on it. I got into gangs and trouble with the police for a while there

When I was actually old enough to leave school at 16 I did so an angry counfused young man who was a failure. Music changed all that. It showed I was good at something and could achieve and it chilled me out. It got me focussed on doing something positive with my life and away from gang culture altogether.

I have gained a place on a counselling course starting at the end of September 2011. A significant amout of time spend working with dyslexia students involves the use of counselling skills so I thought this might be usefull. It will also add another skill set to my currant ones. Hopefully it will open avenues for more work in the future.

Dyslexia a disability?

The dyslexia adenga is being driven by experts who have a vested interest in dyslexia as a disability rather than dyslexia and ability. Every week it seems some expert or another will have research that show us what we can't do, tell us what we need and basically how clever the experts are. These experts have a very medical model of disability paradigm in that only they know what is good for us. Dyslexia is not a medical issue that a doctor can cure anyone of. There will never be a pill to make it all better and even if there were I would not be taking it. Dyslexia is an education issue, or rather a lack of education issue. If we were taught in schools using multi sensory teaching methods a lot of the issues we face in later life could be overcome. It is our education system that makes dyslexia a disability not dyslexia itself.

I have no problem with the lable disabled as I have two medical conditions that are considered disabilities. But being dyslexic is not a disablity. The professionals will tell you that you have dyslexia like it is an illness, there is something wrong with you. I would say I am dyslexic its a part of me, my psychy, my life and I wouldn't have it any other way

ooops sometimes dyslexia bites back lol

You know how irritating it can be to make that crucial dyslexic error? Well I made one today. I had an appointment today with an apps specialist regard the phone app I have designed. I got there at two pm and the appointment was 11am d'uh lol. The e mail read as follows appointment 12th August 2011 @ 11am. Now read it as 12th August 2 and took that as the time of the appointment.

a little request

I have just completed a new project proposal for a dyslexia mentoring project. The project may well embrace other learning differences but right now I am concentrating on dyslexia. It might help the proposal if we could get brief details from people who have been negatively affected thru non diagnosis of dyslexia at any stage in their lives, or those who have suffered discrimination. Just to add to evidence of need. Just looking for a couple of sentences from anyone willing to get involved with this project. Plese contact me via PM here or at stephen.mccue@dyslexiapathways.co.uk. Many thanks for reading.

A lille biographical introduction

I am very positive about my own dyslexia. Dyslexia is a part of me and whilst it did meant a I struggled at school and was not a great speller and my hand writing was terrible and not readable I wouldn’t want to change anything in my life. Dyslexia is about a different way of thinking and learning and that many schools just do not teach us in ways we can access the learning. It is ironic that many of the strategies that work for dyslexics would work for all is schools making the curriculum more accessible for all.

Like many people with dyslexia I left school with no qualifications. I went from one crappy job to another for a while. I was lucky in that I got involved in music. Not in a big way but music became my live. I kinda dropped out played my bass travelled around with the peace convoy and stuff.

When I was around 35 I decided to leave music and go back to school. I was lucky in that I got on an Access course for a year and I fell in love with learning. This started in 1988 when I took my basic skills and ended in 1995 when I got my PGCE in Inclusive Education. Whilst taking my degree I did some voluntary work going into primary and secondary schools in east London mentoring and thats when I discovered a love for teaching. I also discovered I was dyslexic in my second year at university.

I am dyslexic myself as well as being a dyslexia and inclusive education teacher who was working in Further Education until 2007. In my last teaching post I ran the dyslexia department at a college in London between 2000 and 2007. I qualified with a PGCE in 1995 and was a teacher up until 2007. Whislt I was employed there I became hypothyroid and type two diabetic and had to battle against this as well as going through being bullied over a long period of time by my line manager.

I also developed and managed a number of different projects. My last project, “Breaking the Barriers of Dyslexia”, was basically about screening and assessing college staff for dyslexia. We also offered training in dyslexia friendly work practises and applications to Access to Work. It was a very successful project. Originally there was a target of giving 8 dyslexia assessments over a three month period. In the end we assessed 23 members of staff over a four month period. The idea was that staff could them mentor or act a s dyslexia ambassadors. However, even after all the assessments and training all staff did not want their managers to know they were dyslexia and didn't even want the college prinipal to attend the end of project party.
I am very happy to be dyslexic, in fact I would shout it from the roof tops. I totally believe dyslexia is not a disability and that what disables is society.

Here is an example of this. I was made redundant from my last teaching post. However, the college where I was working kept all the assistive technology I had been given through Access to Work technology that I relied upon to enable me to read and write more efficiently. Even Access to Work would not support me in attempting to take the tech with me. I was effectively made disabled again.

I then moved to Scotland, basically to support my mum who was ill, but to also make a new start in the country where I was born
I took some time off from work basically a little holiday to settle myself here. However, when I felt it was time to get myself back to work I struggled. Firstly, I had no assistive technology and I couldn’t  find anywhere in Scotland where I could gain access to assistive tech so it made filling in application forms very difficult, unless I got somebody to fill them out for me. With my assistive tech and computer theses application forms are an easy thing for me to complete. This is what I mean by its society that disables and not dyslexia itself. It’s an irony that assistive technology is to expensive for many to buy and access. I certainly couldn’t have afforded to buy the computer and software myself.

In the end I was lucky enough to get cash from a charity to buy a computer and printer. I started looking for teaching posts, hourly paid teaching etc. But I had no luck at all. Oh yes colleges took me on for hourly paid work but I got not one hour of teaching in two years. I went to a local college and was basically told I wouldn't get any teaching work because my qualifications and 12 years teaching experience was gained in England. That I wouldn’t understand the Scottish system.

So here I am with my honours degree, my PGCE in Inclusive Education, Dyslexia Diploma and Masters Unit in Multi Sensory e Learning and Dyslexia and 12 years of teaching experience and I couldn'r get one hour of teaching here in Scotland.

I applied to do BRITE training but was not able to do the training because I don't actually work in an FE college here. It seemed everywhere I turned I was being given reason why I can't work. All the barriers I had to overcome in England were there in front of me again.

Whilst doing all this I discovered there is a complete lack of access to dyslexia services for unemployed adults and young people here in Fife and Edinburgh. So I decided to set up Dyslexia Pathways. I was lucky enough to get some work at Heriot Watt university as a dyslexia consultant / teacher. Indeed Dyslexia Pathways has a contract to supply dyslexia services to the university.

I got involved with social enterprise and decided that Dyslexia Pathways become a social enterprise. In October of this year I won Scottish Government £12.000 Level 2 Award from the Social Entrepreneurs Fund. This was great and is helping me deliver services and pay myself for a year. There are other opportunities beckoning here in Scotland and I have an outline for a new project aimed at supporting young people with dyslexia in training and in the transition into employment. I am hoping I can get this off the ground in 2010.

Well I hope I have not put you all to sleep. But I think my story gives some insights into the barriers we have to overcome just to be able to earn a living and just how far we have to come before we have an inclusive society.