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Dyslexia is estimated to affect one in five people. For Kaycee Laffey, that means one in every five kids struggle to enter the magical world of books.

“Reading can be an escape into a different reality,” said Laffey, a 91���� graduate student. “For some kids, it’s really important to explore that other side.”

In the summer after her first year as a master’s student in 91����’s Communication Sciences and Disorders program, Laffey started an intensive training course through the Children’s Dyslexia Center in Bangor. Participants take a week-long class over the summer, then start doing sessions with the center’s clients and meeting as a class once per month to hear feedback and ask questions. Through this training program, the center is able to offer free services to children in the community who have a reading disability. 

Laffey is the first 91���� student to take the training as part of her master’s curriculum. Through a newly established partnership between the center and 91����, students like Laffey have the option to take the training to fulfill degree requirements. 

Without this partnership, Laffey doubts she would have had time to complete the training — something she said has given her confidence and tools to use with all of her clients, not just the two she sees twice per week at the center. 

She knew in the first year of her master’s program that she wanted to focus on the literacy side of speech-language pathology. Like most other students who go through the program, she started clinical hours at 91����’s Madelyn E. and Albert D. Conley Speech, Language and Hearing Center, which offers clinical education, research and comprehensive speech, language, literacy and hearing services to the public. 

Judy Stickles, clinical director of the Conley Center and speech-language pathologist for 43 years, said foundational coursework and clinical practicum experiences in child language and literacy are part of students’ first year of study in the graduate program and at the Conley Center, which helps prepare them for the training at the Children’s Dyslexia Center.

By the time Laffey graduates, she’ll have completed 66 credit hours and 400 clinical hours, which doesn’t include the time she spends before and after sessions planning and completing paperwork. Six of those credits and 100 of those clinical hours will be from the center’s training program.

“What’s exciting for our students who participate in this is that we’ve not only found a way to offer them the training but also to embed it into their master’s program without it taking any extra time,” said Michelle Moore, associate professor and chair of the Communication Sciences and Disorders program.

Beyond the textbook

The reading intervention is structured yet flexible to meet individual needs of the children receiving services. Like other neurodivergence, dyslexia is on a spectrum. It varies in severity between two different language-based skillsets: reading and writing. 

“It’s valuable to have multiple approaches in our toolkit, because each child is going to come with a unique set of strengths and weaknesses,” said Moore, who’s been a speech-language pathologist for 23 years. 

Empowering children to read and write, she said, empowers them in all aspects of life, as communication increasingly relies on both and is important for school performance. In turn, getting good grades often aligns with getting accepted into colleges and securing jobs.  

Laurie Marcotte, the director of the Children’s Dyslexia Center in Bangor, said the training is diagnostic and prescriptive, meaning it’s based on what the child needs and how quickly they learn. “We’re teaching them to look at the mistakes the child is making, and ask, ‘How do I remediate those mistakes?’” she said. 

For instance, someone with dyslexia could hear the word “crossed” and write it as “c-r-o-s-t.” Marcotte explained that on the surface it may look like a spelling error, but it’s more than that.

“Maybe the child doesn’t understand that there’s a suffix there, ‘-ed,’ that means ‘in the past,’” she said. “That’s a language-based error. How do you teach the child the concept that they need to be able to not make that error again?”

91���� students who take the training learn alongside public and private school teachers, home schooling parents, special education teachers and ed techs, among any others who register.

“To have all of those different people in the same cohort, you’re not only learning about teaching kids how to read, you’re also learning about everybody else’s perspective and set of hurdles,” said Marcotte, who’s been at the center for nearly two decades.

It gives 91���� students an opportunity to gain a professional edge at the start of their career.

“We have teachers who’ve been teaching for 20 years,” she said. “It’s sometimes easier to learn something new right out of the gate rather than relearn something that you’ve done for ages.”

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu