A Diagnosis Is Just the Name on the Crayon. What Happens Next Is the Whole Thing.

She was homeschooled through elementary school, so the trouble stayed private for a while. Then she entered a public school in seventh grade, landed in the resource program, and learned exactly how children label each other. Classmates had a slur for kids in that room. It is not worth reprinting here. She remembers it thirty years on.

At home, the explanation was simpler. Her mother had her IQ tested, the score came back high, and the conclusion drawn was that she was lazy.

That was something that I heard a lot growing up.

She was finally tested in ninth grade. Getting it done meant a drive across state lines to Tyler, Texas, because that is where someone could do it.

What happened after the diagnosis is a useful reminder that being identified is not the same as being helped. The prevailing theory at the time was mixed brain dominance, so the remediation matched the theory.

Learning to crawl as a ninth grader is really socially awkward. And wearing glasses with one eye blotted out. How do you explain that to your friends?

It was really trying, and from that pain, dyslexia became my greatest passion.

One teacher made enough of an impression that she went to college planning to teach special education. She taught in a Title I school. She has three children, and all three are dyslexic, which is unsurprising once you know the research: about 45 percent of children who have a first-degree relative with dyslexia develop it themselves, compared with just under 12 percent of children without that family history, according to a 2016 meta-analysis by Snowling and Melby-Lervåg.

The best thing is that I've been able to be a part of their journey, their educational journey, and I have got to watch them succeed instead of struggle.

Succeed instead of struggle. That is the whole thesis of the nonprofit in six words.

Stop being afraid of the diagnosis

A lot of parents hesitate at the door. They worry about what a label will do to a child, or what to call it, or whether naming it makes it real.

She has the best answer to that anyone in this series has given.

It is literally labeling a crayon lavender. We just need to know the name, and then we can get the right help and move on. Don't be afraid of a diagnosis.

And, on the size of the thing:

Dyslexia is not a mountain. It is a bump in the road. It can be overcome.

She is also emphatic about what dyslexia is not. It is not a measure of ability. Dyslexia occurs at every level of intelligence, including among gifted students, and people with dyslexia are frequently fast, creative thinkers with strong reasoning skills, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

Dyslexic kids have huge gifts. They're very creative. They have so many gifts, but literacy is their biggest hurdle, and once they jump that, they're golden.

The gap nobody warns parents about

Here is where this interview turns, and where it matters most for anyone deciding whether to fund this work.

Families fight to get tested. They pay, or a nonprofit pays. They walk out with a diagnosis and a reasonable expectation that the system takes it from there.

A lot of times they leave with the diagnosis of dyslexia, and they think, okay, well, the school is gonna make the accommodations, and they're gonna get the intervention. But the intervention the school gives is not moving the needle like we need it to move.

That is not an abstract complaint. In Alabama, 28 percent of fourth-grade public school students scored at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading in 2024, and 58 percent at or above NAEP Basic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics state snapshot. Which means roughly four in ten Alabama fourth-graders were below the basic level.

Dyslexia does not account for all of that. It accounts for a lot of it. Dyslexia is the most common of all neuro-cognitive learning differences, affecting about 20 percent of the population and representing 80 to 90 percent of all learning disabilities, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

And the kind of instruction that works for dyslexia is specific. Structured, explicit, sequenced, multisensory, and delivered with enough intensity and frequency to change how a brain processes print. A general homework club does not do that. Neither does a reading block staffed by someone who got a single day of training, which is what she describes seeing.

The literacy specialist is trained for a day. That's not really enough training, in my opinion, to make the difference that child or children need.

Why intervention is an emergency, not a plan

Ask her how fast a family should move after a diagnosis and she does not hedge.

It is so important that we get that intervention immediately after we get the diagnosis, because we cannot let time slip through our hands. Every day a child goes to school, they're getting further and further behind if they don't have the appropriate intervention. Everything builds. The foundation builds upon, builds upon, builds upon. So we need that foundation shored up as soon as possible.

A lot of times I say that once we get the diagnosis, it is an emergency situation.

The research backs the urgency precisely. Between 56 and 92 percent of at-risk beginning readers reach average reading ability when they receive intensive early intervention, according to a 2020 review in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The same review describes the dyslexia paradox: children are typically identified at the end of second grade or later, well after the most effective window has begun to close. Reading Rockets, summarizing National Institutes of Health research, puts the arithmetic bluntly. The window is kindergarten and first grade, and intervention delivered in fourth grade takes roughly four times as long to produce the same gain.

Which brings her to the two words she wants retired from education.

A lot of teachers are like, well, we'll wait and see. That really should never come out of a teacher's mouth.

What waiting actually costs a child

The part of this interview that lands hardest has nothing to do with test scores.

If you go the first part of your life every single day to school, and you are deemed a constant failure, that stays with you for the rest of your life. That's really hard to overcome.

Her own childhood is the proof. High IQ, called lazy, slurred by classmates, remediated with exercises built on a theory that has since been discarded. She became a teacher anyway. Most children do not get to convert that into a career.

And the cost compounds across a generation, because reading is how a parent advocates for the next reader in the family. About 21 percent of adults in the United States, roughly 43 million people, have low English literacy skills, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, drawing on the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. A parent who cannot easily read an IEP is not in a strong position to challenge one.

Literacy is so important, and especially to minority communities. There is a huge need to help students that are in the minority and that really don't have the funds to get the intervention and get the testing.

That is the equity argument, stated by someone who taught in a Title I school and now works with these families directly. Whether a child learns to read should not track household income. Right now it does.

Awareness is not a soft goal

She is impatient about how far behind the conversation still is.

It just totally dumbfounds me that in 2026 we're still worried about dyslexia awareness. We are still really struggling to get students tested in a timely way.

But she also names what awareness is actually for, and it is not warm feelings.

I think that if we had more awareness, maybe parents would advocate for their children more. They would know, this is what my child needs. He needs A, B, and C intervention. We need these accommodations. I think that it would force the schools, public and private, to really fight for those changes in education.

Awareness, in her framing, is a lever. Informed parents make better asks. Better asks change what schools staff and fund. Alabama already gives parents the mechanism: the Alabama Literacy Act requires a universal reading screener in kindergarten through third grade, and under the Alabama Administrative Code a school's Problem Solving Team must conduct dyslexia-specific screening, put an intervention plan in writing, notify parents of goals and progress, and consider independent evaluations a parent provides. Most parents do not know any of that exists. That is a marketing problem as much as an education problem.

The kid who decided he was a genius

Ask her why any of this is worth funding and she tells you about a student.

He was like, I am a genius. Once he had finished therapy with me, he was like, I'm so smart. I can read chapter books, no problem. I'm making A's in school. I'm writing things.

Just to watch him go from despondency to sheer happiness and self-confidence, it really is an addicting thing.

Nothing about that child changed except that someone taught him to read the way his brain needed to be taught.

Where The Dyslexic Difference comes in

Her closing argument is the clearest statement of the nonprofit's next phase that exists anywhere in this project.

The Dyslexic Difference comes in and provides a bridge for those families.

That is why you should support The Dyslexic Difference. Angel's initial focus was getting the children tested, and now we're seeing that the school isn't rising to the bar and getting the intervention that is so necessary.

Testing opened the door. Intervention is the room on the other side of it, and it is the expensive room. That is what donations fund now.

The Dyslexic Difference funds dyslexia evaluations and tutoring for children in the Huntsville area and connects parents with resources. If you suspect your child is dyslexic, start here. If you can cover a cost another family cannot, a donation pays for a real evaluation or a real block of tutoring for a child in this community.

A portion of every bag and every cup sold at Angel's Island Coffee goes to exactly that.

Brewed with purpose. Part of every bag funds dyslexia testing and tutoring for local children.