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Guest blogger Liana Heitin has taught students with special needs for the past five years as a public school teacher, reading specialist, and private tutor. She has a master’s degree in cross-categorical special education and is a freelance Web editor for LD OnLine, the leading website on learning disabilities and ADHD. LD OnLine offers research-based information and expert advice for parents, students, and educators. Liana’s writing has been featured in such publications as Education Week, teachermagazine.org, and the recent book, The Ultimate Teacher (HCI Books, May 2009).

While most kids (and many adults) are eagerly awaiting the 31^st of the month, we here at LD OnLine are enjoying every day of October or — as we know it — LD Awareness Month! In Canada and the U.S., this month is dedicated to educating the public about learning disabilities in order to build acceptance and understanding.

If you’re in the know about LD, spreading your knowledge may seem like a daunting task. But LD Awareness Month isn’t necessarily about setting out on a campaign to inform the world. It’s about starting in your world and watching the knowledge proliferate beyond.

As usual, the best place to start is in your own home. If you have a child with a disability, it’s important for him or her to understand what that disability is all about, in order to find comfort and learn to self-advocate. If your child does not have a disability, there is inevitably someone in his or her class who does and is in need of supportive peers.

There are lots of great children’s books out there that explain what it’s like to have LD and promote the idea that everyone has different strengths and needs. Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco and I Wish I Could Fly Like a Bird by Katherine Denison are great options for younger kids. Both have pictures and tell a story that allows you to connect and empathize with the main character. Older students may like Shirley Kirnoff’s The Human Side of Dyslexia or Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea’s Copy This! Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America’s Best Companies, both of which offer hopeful yet realistic first-person accounts about living with LD.

For young students, stories featuring characters with LD can also be effective classroom read-alouds. Consider passing a book about learning disabilities on to your child’s teacher or offering to come to school and read one to the entire class. Kids are surprisingly receptive to classroom guests, and the message behind a visitor’s reading is likely to stay with them.

To find more titles of books about LD, check out our LD Resources page.

Guest blogger Liana Heitin has taught students with special needs for the past five years as a public school teacher, reading specialist, and private tutor. She has a master’s degree in cross-categorical special education and is a freelance Web editor for LD OnLine, the leading website on learning disabilities and ADHD. LD OnLine offers research-based information and expert advice for parents, students, and educators. Liana’s writing has been featured in such publications as Education Week, teachermagazine.org, and the recent book, The Ultimate Teacher (HCI Books, May 2009).

Last week, on a whim, I began to re-read my favorite book from middle school: Lois Lowry’s The Giver.  As I turned the pages, I kept expecting to have a new adult reaction to the story—to see the allegory as simple or recognize the protagonist’s dilemma as trite.

Instead, I experienced just what I had as a 6th grader. I felt the excitement of entering the science fiction world and exploring its rules. The main character’s curiosity and loss of innocence became my own once again.  And upon reaching the abrupt ending, I had a familiar emotional rush—shock, a twinge of frustration, and ultimately satisfaction.

Lowry is an adept storyteller, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the only reason I reverted to my 6th grade self. When I first read The Giver, it changed me. It made me think and feel in a way words on pages never had—and guided me toward many other books, many more ideas and feelings.  It made me into a reader. I will never outgrow The Giver because it was part of such a formative moment in my life.

A few years ago, I was teaching a gifted 9th grader with a learning disability in reading. Demetri had never finished a chapter book on his own. The two of us had been working on fluency for months, starting well below grade level, when I brought in Of Mice and Men.  We began reading together, making slow but steady progress.

Over spring break, I asked Demetri to read at least five pages a night. I gave him a homework chart and a pep talk but worried he wouldn’t follow through—Demetri was a hard worker but some days it could take him 20 minutes to finish a page.  He returned the next week and sat down, a quiet grin spreading across his face.  “I finished it,” he said, and launched into an explanation of how the book had become a movie in his mind and he hadn’t been able to stop reading. “The end was such a surprise! I never would have guessed!” Of Mice and Men had changed Demetri, like The Giver had me. We began to make a list of other books he would enjoy.

Demitri was 15 years old when he found the book that inspired him—the one he’ll read with equal fervor and delight if he picks it up a decade or two down the road.  Some people find their book at a younger age—and some unlucky readers never find it at all.  If you know a child who hasn’t discovered her The Giver or Of Mice and Men, take the summer to explore topics and genres that interest her.  Read together. Talk about your own favorite childhood books.  Comb through library shelves. And guide your child toward the book that will turn him or her into a reader.

For more tips on summer reading and learning activities, particularly for students with learning disabilities, check out the LD Online Summer Beach Bag.

David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the article below Domke and Coe look ahead to the South Carolina primaries.

From the Motor City in Michigan to Sin City in Nevada, the 2008 presidential campaign is going national. But with all respect to voters in these states, the road to the White House—and for American politics generally—in the next few weeks goes through South Carolina. That’s because the Palmetto state is ground zero in today’s religious politics. (more…)

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