POPDB is pleased to host Scott Mallinson, a deafblind writer, as a guest blogger on various topics related to literacy, once a month until June 2025. This is Scott’s first post for POPDB. If you would like to read more of Scott’s writing, check out his blog, Happiness is for Everyone.
I’m not an expert on literacy. I’m not a teacher, learning assistant or even a college graduate. I am a former student who was misjudged. I was a challenge for my school as I didn’t speak or use many signs and I didn’t always show what I knew. Some people gave up on me, but some people tried harder. I am writing this now because of those who tried harder, i.e. my family and the school staff that wanted me to succeed. They understood the importance of literacy and they believed in me. All children deserve this. I believe with patience, creativity, and a willingness to try different things and then try again, everyone can achieve some success in literacy. I am an example of how literacy can develop differently than what might be expected, and why it’s important to adjust to the way a student learns in order to assist in the best way; to remember that if a student learns differently than others do, that doesn’t mean that they should be denied the opportunity for success.
Learning to read was very difficult for me. I can’t see the letters or words clearly. Exposure to letters and words was what helped me realize that the blurry figures had meaning, and that Experience Books, iPad games, school activities, books, and objects in my house all had words attached to them. I started to see similar patterns with similar objects and pictures. I began to understand that letters and words had meanings. The same objects had the same shape word. With this discovery I began to understand the world a bit more.
This explanation may give a clearer picture of how I learned to read by recognizing blurry shapes. My mom read to me and showed me pictures, always with the written word underneath. She would speak and sign the word. We had lots of animal pictures with words; dog, cat, fox, cow, mouse, chick, owl, hippo, elephant, etc. “Elephant” was the first word I read to her; not the small words that one would expect, but a unique, longer word that had ups and downs. This made it easier to understand the blurry image it made. I understood the blurry image meant elephant, but it took longer to understand the difference between cat and owl (look at the shape it creates). I learned by shape and then later learned the word with the right letters.
This is how I learned to read, not by the sounds letters make, or how English has rules for letter combinations, or by any other formal literacy teaching. I just memorized the meanings of fuzzy shapes just like I memorized the meanings of blurry picture cues. It wasn’t until much later that I started to learn literacy at a more formal level. But, I needed to start somewhere.