Jennifer Hallowell is a mother in Bergen County. Her story is part of a series collated by Meghann Bierly, founder of Keel Services and mother of a struggling reader who uses her personal journey, experience, and expertise to improve literacy for all children. 

I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in that second-grade parent teacher conference and going numb. Numb to all the feelings I usually had—the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the guilt of not being able to get my child the help he so desperately needed and deserved. It was at that moment I realized that we had to change everything. I walked out of that meeting, called my husband immediately, and said, “I’m done, we are done, we have to get him out of this school and find a place that can help him.”

A lot had preceded this defiant statement. First, the information that our son was dyslexic: Turns out my son failed the kindergarten dyslexic screening test in a spectacular fashion, so much so that his teacher called me only three weeks into the school year to say I should consider asking the school to test him. To this day I have her to thank for putting me on this road of advocacy. Little did I know that the diagnosis would be the easy part and the rest a relentless uphill battle with a school district that dug its heels in and refused to help.  

My son is dyslexic. Okay, now what? I had no idea what that meant, to be honest. Sure, I had heard of it, but I didn’t truly understand.  I dove in headfirst, got every book I could get my hands on, joined every online parent group, connected with local parents who also had dyslexic kids, all while my son continued to fall behind his peers in the classroom. Now, armed with knowledge, I went to our first child study team meeting and listened as each evaluator went over the testing and results. The results were not good but they also would not say he was dyslexic and instead labeled him “Communication-Impaired.” The designation does not dictate the program, they explained, “it just opens the doors to the special education team and resources.” Naively I thought this was great: One hurdle down! My son qualified for special education services. 

I asked about the reading program they had for children like my son, but there wasn’t a real answer. They said they use a little of everything. I said, well, from all my research the best way to teach him would be to use a program based on the Orton-Gillingham methodology. The district didn’t have this program but they convinced me what they were going to do with him would work.  It didn’t and my son continued to fall farther behind his peers in the classroom. That’s when his behavior started to change as well.  

The next two and a half years consisted of me in constant contact with the teachers and child study team. I hired an after-school Orton-Gillingham tutor and spoke at board of education meetings about my concerns regarding the lack of an appropriate reading program for my son and all dyslexic students. I sent weekly articles to the principal about the science of reading research and asked that the school provide me with the research they had on the program they were using with my son, a program that included the debunked balanced literacy approach. I received silence in return. My son, on the other hand, went from being a happy, funny, smiley boy to being angry, sad, and refusing school. Not knowing what else to do, we found a highly regarded child therapist because we were losing the son we knew and the child who was appearing in his place was a shell of a person. It was breaking my heart. 

The therapy didn’t work, the in-school reading program didn’t work, the only thing that seemed to be working was the at-home Orton Gillingham tutoring, although it was a battle to get my son to sit down and basically do school after a full day of school. But we persisted.  I knew he was bright, with so much potential, and the school looked at him as a special ed kid that would never be ‘normal’ so why bother. I was told in one of my IEP [Individualized Education Program] meetings that I was expecting too much because “he has learning disabilities so he will never be grade level.”  It was at that moment I realized the school could not and would not help my son.

Which brings me back to that second-grade parent teacher conference where the regular education teacher didn’t even know him because he was pulled out of the class so much, and the reading specialist was flailing about trying to put together something that resembled a beginning of the year assessment and plan that still wasn’t going to help him. A calm washed over me. All of a sudden I was numb to all of their noise and catch phrases like “we are using all the tools in our toolbox.” And for the first time in two and a half years I didn’t have any comments or follow-up questions for anyone. I left, called my husband, and went home to research what our other options were. I was done fighting the losing battle, I needed my son back. 

While the road to where we are now was bumpy, we were lucky enough to find a great out-of-district placement for him. He is currently reading above grade-level and loves school. Most importantly, we have our son back.