The Dark Place of Dyslexia

“I had no guidance at my old school. They just told you what to do and then yelled at you. It felt like I never did anything right.” 

That was the first time Gus Gilbert used his voice to share what school was like. He was 10 years old. We had just recently met.  I’ve lost the context, but we were filming something in the office and I clearly remember asking him if he would like to say anything. With pursed lips, he shook his head no, but he stayed in the room. He listened to other students talk and then leaned closer to me and whispered, “I want to say something.” I could see the courage he was mustering. When he spoke the above lines, we could all feel his sadness wash over us. How had he made it to 5th grade feeling so hopeless and beat down by learning? Until you and Ms. Kowcheck, I never opened up to anyone. I was someone x would hold it all in until I would just explode. 

It is not ok for a ten-year-old to feel this way about learning.

I have said it before, I am not in the business of surviving school. I did not choose to go into education in 1989 to be part of a system that could do very little for children with learning differences other than help them limp through until high school graduation. I don’t know any teacher who would want that. Neither does Gus. He doesn’t blame his teachers. He sees that they were not given the materials or the training to know how to help him – even if they wanted to. Once you listen with empathy to a child say, “I can’t read this” or “I don’t get it,” you drop the filters of expectations or due dates, and your life in education changes. Your perception of potential shifts. You see the child, not the behavior. And soon you begin to see all children differently. 

Gus: I did not like school before you and I met.

I was getting in trouble and stuff a lot in fourth grade, looking for attention. My teacher that I had at the time didn’t understand me. She didn’t think I was trying, and I was trying my hardest. She would make me do a lot of things that I did not want to do – not because I was just not wanting to participate, but because I couldn’t do them like the other kids. And it damaged my self-esteem a lot. It made me act out and find other ways to get approval from people that I was not always proud of.

It’s easier to have kids laugh at you for something that eight-year-olds find funny than it is to have them laugh at you because you can’t read or do the same math problem as them. For me, when I knew that I was going to have to do something that I could take a chance on getting laughed at for the reason that I couldn’t do it, I would act out and get myself in trouble before I had to do that.

I was not exactly the nicest kid that year… because if they didn’t get close to me, then I couldn’t get hurt. 

While it is heartbreaking to hear The Gus Gilbert Story, as I often call it, it is a gift for all of us in education that he is able to use his voice to inspire us to action. At 19 now, Gus can articulate how the pressure to conform to conventional methods of learning created a cycle of low self-esteem and behavioral issues. His fear of public humiliation and the inability to keep up with classmates were his constant companions.  They kept everything joyful at arms length. How dark and lonely school was for him. He never opened up to anyone – never talked about his fear, his pain or his loneliness.  He was never asked either. At 10, he entered our orbit. He met Theresa Kowcheck, the woman of joy. By the end of his very first day at Wheeling Country Day School, the children and a group of adults made Gus feel like he was safe. He once said, “There is a different kind of love.” In his version of the story, we saved him. In my version, he changed us. Once you listen to Gus talk about school, you want to make school a more inclusive and supportive place for all learners. Conformity becomes taboo.

Liz: So we were together for two short years. But in two years, you inspired me more than you’ll ever understand. You helped me look at kids more completely, You helped me understand how wrong adults can be if they judge a child by assessments or scores. The heartbreaking part for me is I feel like we did a lot of great work together for you and then for a lot of kids that followed you. But when you left us and went to middle school, things went back downhill really fast.

Gus: When you’re eight years old, yeah, that stuff bothers you, but it only bothers you to a certain extent. When you start getting older and you start to understand stuff a little more, then you’re really able to tell that you are set off to the side from other kids and stuff. I just wanted to fit in.

What I should have done, and now that I’m older, I’ve realized it and I’ve been getting better with it, but I should have just embraced who I was and let people, if they want to make fun of me or whatever, then I know that those aren’t the people that I need. Then the people that were still good to me, then those are the people I should have kept.

Liz: What would you say to 13-year-old Gus right now, if you could? 

Gus: Be yourself. Your guilt and everything. I had a lot of guilt with myself because I wasn’t true with people, and I couldn’t feel that I could be true with people. That played into some of my anger, and I was angry that I couldn’t feel that I could be true with people. That’s probably what I would tell him was just be yourself and let the haters hate, I guess.

Liz: Were you true with yourself?

Gus: Oh, no. Gosh, no. I have been, still am struggling with it, my worst enemy. I beat on myself pretty bad, and that’s something that I still got to fix. Definitely not as bad as I was back then, but that’s probably one of my biggest problems is myself, be myself.

Gus candidly shares the internal conflicts he faced during adolescence and still battles today. He speaks of the guilt and anger that stemmed from not being true to himself. I see the story so differently. We stacked the cards against him. He tried to be true to himself, but our educational system wasn’t true to him. He knows that. He was judged and labeled by his weakness.

Gus: Either you were in regular Ed classes or you were in the special Ed classes. It’s hard to say without… I don’t want to sound rude, But I wasn’t that far off from the regular class. I just was not able to keep up in reading. In math, I didn’t struggle, really. But it was just English. Then they put me in those classes where I was completely away from all my friends. I’ll never forget I came home actually mad at my mom. It was because I was in math class my eighth grade year, and they had me on this Excel website, and I had to match shapes in that box, like babies play with, a triangle through a triangle and a star through a star. I’m like, “How is this helping me? I just dropped back five years from where I was at last year.” 

I feel bad for all the time I got on her because she was in the same hard spot I was in. Honestly harder. Granted, thank God, I’ve had two great parents who have put up with, surely enough. But you never want to see your kid sad and angry, especially at that age… the amount of anger I was carrying around. Now that I look back on stuff, I know it hurt my mom, and not in the sense that she was truly upset with me, but she just wanted to see me happy. Then there was no real way that she could help because it’s really hard for one voice to do something with something that big.

Liz: Your mom went through a lot. I remember very clearly her sitting down with me and saying, You’ve got to start a middle school. You can’t let other kids go back into the system like Gus did. That’s a courageous voice.

You did tell me once your mom was your hero.

Gus: Oh, for sure. Still is. Still getting me out of …keeping me… trying to keep me on the right track. And I’ve been doing well. Everyone slips through the crack every once in a while.

My mom always tells me when I’m in hard places or whatever to… How did she word that? Because I was feeling sorry for myself one day, and we were just talking and everything. She told me that God has a plan with everyone. Even though you haven’t seen it yet or been happy with it yet, everything’s going to turn out for you… and you’re going to be able to look back and see what challenges you had to help other people. I’ve really been trying to use that. Bad stuff that does happen, just learn from it and come out better from it and hope that other people see it and not have to go through it. That’s what I took from that. That’s a huge gift. My mom is my rock. 

We all acknowledge Gus’s mother, Julie, as the enduring hero. Despite his occasional slips and struggles, her steadfast presence serves as a beacon, keeping him on the right path. Every time Julie’s heart broke for her son, her determination grew stronger. She wouldn’t let him disappear behind a wall of shame. Theirs is a testament to the power of unconditional love and the significant impact parents can have as their children’s first and strongest advocates in the educational system. She never gave up. No matter what curveball Gus threw, she was there for it.  After struggling through school and barely surviving senior year, Gus had fantastic choices for the years ahead of him. He was offered an apprenticeship but was also accepted at Rosedale Technical College. He chose to go back to school.

Gus: I really just wanted to prove that there was a schooling that I was good at. I’ve been doing great there, too. I wanted to do that. I could tell, even with that great job coming up, my mom still wanted me to go to diesel college. Honestly, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

Liz: Your mom says you have a 3.6. Is that right?

Gus: Yeah, that was my last report card. That’s the highest report card I have had since kindergarten. I don’t even think that we had grades in kindergarten.

Liz: And grades don’t matter, but given what schools have done to you, it certainly is nice to win at their game.

Gus: Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed that. Like I said, I got pretty good motivation to do this, and I just want to prove that I can do it. 

Gus has more than proven himself. He had proved himself to me when he was 10. He was brave, humble, grateful and brilliant …especially with his hands. We could read hundreds of articles on the need to support students with learning differences or listen to dozens of workshops espouse the importance of including all children, but when you hear Gus’ story, you cannot sit on the sidelines any longer. I call it The Gus Gilbert Story because he broke the dam – never again could I stand by and watch a child struggle and not do everything in my power to support the learning.  Gus’ biggest obstacle was never his dyslexia – it was the way other people saw him or at least labeled him. It led to his feeling like he was somehow less than everyone else. The day someone at a school finally saw him as capable instead of broken, everything changed. 

Gus: It was definitely you and Ms. Kowcheck. Then obviously, the guys, Mr. Michael and Mr. K and Coach Joe. Tell Coach Joe that he still isn’t as good as me in football. Mr. Hladek, too. 

I think he is calling for a rematch, gentlemen. 

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