LD Expert Podcast with Jill Stowell
PART 2: What Schools Can—and Can’t—Do for Dyslexia...
And the steps that create confident, independent readers
Jill Stowell
Jill Stowell: Imagine… your child is flagged for dyslexia at school. You breathe a sigh of relief — finally, someone sees what you’ve been worried about. But then you think: OK, what happens now? Will the school actually fix it? Or is my child just going to get more time on tests and extra reading practice that doesn’t seem to work?
October is Dyslexia Awareness Month so I’m doing a two-part episode on dyslexia for you.
In Part 1 of our dyslexia episode, we talked about what it feels like to live with dyslexia, what’s really going on underneath, and what you can do as a parent or teacher to help.
Today, in Part 2, we’re going to look honestly at what schools can and can’t do for dyslexia — and more importantly, what kids really need in order to become confident, independent readers.
Welcome to the LD Expert Podcast…….your place for answers and solutions for dyslexia, learning, and attention challenges.
I’m your host, Jill Stowell, founder and executive director of Stowell Learning Centers and author of “Take the Stone Out of the Shoe, A Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning, and Attention Challenges.”
Across the country, more states are screening young students for signs of reading difficulties and risk of dyslexia. In California, beginning this year, Kindergarten through 2nd grade students will be screened annually using state-approved assessment tools. The screening is explicitly not a diagnosis, but it is meant to inform instruction, progress-monitoring, and next steps.
This is a big positive. For decades, children generally weren’t identified for any learning disabilities until third grade or later—after years of struggle, so this early screening is designed to end the “wait to fail” pattern and catch risk early, so that supports can be put in place sooner.
Here’s why this matters for a 5-, 6-, or 7-year-old:
When we catch dyslexia or reading problems early, teachers are less likely to confuse slow work or resistance with poor motivation and more likely to see the behaviors as a need for support — and that makes a huge difference in how a child experiences school.
So let’s talk about what schools typically can (and can’t) do.
After a child is flagged “at risk” most schools respond with RTI or MTSS.
RTI, or Response to Intervention, is really about academics — giving students extra reading or math instruction, checking on their progress, and adjusting based on how they respond.
MTSS, which stands for Multi-Tiered System of Supports, is the bigger umbrella. It includes RTI for academics, but also support for behavior, social-emotional skills, and even things like attendance.
Both MTSS and RTI use a three-tier model:
- Tier 1 is the regular classroom instruction that every student gets.
- Tier 2 is extra small-group support for kids that need a boost.
- And Tier 3 is the most intensive, sometimes one-on-one, help for students who are really struggling.
This model does help many students, and I recommend to our families that they take advantage of every support the school is going to give them.
But there are structural limitations: general education and special education typically don’t have the staffing, time, training, or funding to provide sustained, one-to-one development of underlying processing skills.
Instruction is most often delivered in short blocks and small groups... and focused on access to grade-level curriculum and IEP goals rather than personalized development of foundational processing skills.
That’s the nature of public schools and there’s nothing wrong with that.
We just have to understand the difference between the mandate to teach academic curriculum and the role of specialized learning centers and therapies that are focused on developing the learning skills beneath the surface that allow for ongoing success in academics.
According to the Lindamood research, roughly 25–30% of the population shows a deficit in a subtle but important component of phonological and phonemic awareness—a foundational auditory skill for reading.
In a typical classroom, the majority of students may succeed with classroom instruction, but a significant minority won’t without direct, targeted development of those underlying skills. That’s not an issue of low intelligence or bad curriculum or poor teachers; it’s about lagging foundational processing skills that make everything else harder than it should be when they’re not in place.
What dyslexic students really need to become comfortable, independent readers is skill development with those underlying foundational skills that prepare the brain for reading instruction.
When parents hear “reading help,” they often picture more reading. But for dyslexic learners, “more of the same” isn’t the answer. True remediation strengthens the underlying systems that make reading possible:
So let me give you some examples:
In our program, we stimulate the auditory system by having students listen through headphones to carefully engineered music designed to help the brain pay attention to a full range of sound frequencies.
I want to give a shout out for the program we use - The Listening Program (or TLP) - researched and developed by Advanced Brain Technologies - because it has had a profound impact for our students.
The brain can process a wide range of sound frequencies. The low frequencies help with grounding and regulation. The mid-range frequencies are where most of the speech sounds live. So if you are not processing some of those frequencies in the mid-range, you’re going to have difficulty getting a clear message when listening. Some words like “bat” and “pat” can sound alike. Sounds in words are going to be confusing and phonics won’t stick.
The high frequencies in sounds are energizing to the cortex. These are the frequencies that stimulate motivation and focus and allow us to hear subtle differences in words and intonation.
Students do their TLP listening at home, and in sessions we do active auditory training where the students work on a microphone with headphones—doing directed listening and reading activities—so the brain is practicing precise language and sound discrimination in real time. This kind of audio-vocal training builds the auditory foundation and opens the door for phonics and reading to make sense and stick.
Enhanced Lateralization (Dorothy Van Den Honert) is a powerful tool we use alongside sound therapy and language and reading lessons. Here’s how it works: the left side of the brain is wired for language and reading, but many students with dyslexia end up trying to process words on the right side instead. That creates delays and makes reading harder than it should be. With special headphone settings, we send language to the ear that connects most directly to the left side of the brain, while music keeps the right hemisphere of the brain engaged so it doesn’t interfere. This helps the brain use the correct pathway for reading, making it much easier to learn phonics and reading skills.
Many dyslexic students experience confusion with the alphabet and with visually-similar letters and words.
These students, often, think in pictures. Concrete words (like elephant) spark a mental image, but many small common sight words like the, of, and if don’t. That lack of a mental picture can trigger confusion and disorientation for students and inconsistent reading of those little words.
We use a technique developed by Ron Davis at the Reading Research Council, called symbol mastery, where students build and explore letters and confusing words in clay. Clay is a 3-dimensional medium, and that capitalizes on the dyslexic student’s dimensional thinking ability to help eliminate confusion from those symbols and pieces of the language.
Along with symbol mastery, we use techniques to help eliminate disorientation when looking at the page. Dyslexic students have shared with me that letters on the page sometimes pulsate, run off the page, squish together, or move around. This is extremely uncomfortable. We teach students how to stabilize attention and direction on the page so the visual field stays calm and predictable and easy to look at.
Have you ever seen your child turn their paper sideways so that the text isn’t going left to right but bottom top? When they do this, they are unknowingly avoiding crossing the midline of their body.
Difficulty crossing the midline can disrupt smooth eye movements across the page of print. Part of the learning plan for some of our struggling readers involves balance, rhythm, coordinated movement, and eye-tracking. These are core learning skills that support visual focus and flow for reading and writing.
Like every one of our students, every dyslexic learner comes to us with a different set of strengths and challenges, so each student’s plan looks a little bit different and is personalized specifically for them. But put altogether, this isn’t “more reading.” It’s building underlying skills and preparing the brain for reading and then building reading instruction with strategies that can stimulate the pathways in the brain that good readers use—so students can become comfortable, independent readers who don’t need workarounds to get through the day.
I want to share a video with you that shows what can happen for a profoundly dyslexic student when the underlying skills that reading depends on are developed. For anyone watching the video version of this episode on YouTube, you’ll get to see some of the activities we just talked about.
Now when this student first came to us at 11 years old, he had no reading skills at all — and a whole bag of tricks for avoiding anything that looked like learning. Five years in school taught him that he couldn’t do it, and he was angry and shut down.
I remember the day letters actually started to make sense to him. He was so happy. And once he got that glimpse of himself as a reader everything changed.
It’s still hard, but his effort and his desire to learn now are truly inspiring. I want you to hear his mom’s story, because if your child feels shut down, there is hope.”
[Parent Testimonial Video]
Jill Stowell: Stories like this remind us: when you build the foundation, students don’t just cope—they change.
Early screening is a major step forward—we don’t have to wait for children to fail before we act. But screening is only the start. The real win is getting the right help: supports at school plus targeted, individualized remediation that develops the underlying skills for reading.
If your child has been flagged “at risk,” or if you’re seeing the signs even without a formal flag, we’re here to listen and help. Visit stowellcenter.com or call 877-774-0444 to schedule a consultation. Every child deserves the chance to discover themselves as a reader—and to choose a future not limited by reading struggles.
At Stowell Learning Centers, we help children and adults break free from the constant struggles associated with dyslexia and other learning challenges.
Despite what you may have been told, your child doesn’t have to “just live with it.” And every day doesn’t have to feel like a battle—for them or for you.
If this episode gave you hope or insight, please like, subscribe, or send it to another parent or educator who needs to know: real change is possible.
The story for struggling students can change. Let’s change that narrative together
Show Notes
