Imagine for a moment you cannot swim, or maybe you don’t have to imagine it because you really can’t swim. Or perhaps you can swim just well enough for a few minutes not to drown. Or maybe your swimming is adequate, but it requires every cell in your body, and when you are done, you can barely move. Now imagine that every single morning someone takes you to a pool and pushes you in.

Think about that pool as the classroom and you are a dyslexic student jumping in every day. Loving parents drop you off and dedicated teachers work hard and still you can barely stay above water. It must be exhausting. Or discouraging. Or both. As that student, reluctant or not, you go and you try and try and you hope that one day it will just click.

This is the stress and anxiety dyslexia can cause in a student. And although it is not possible to simulate exactly what it is like to have dyslexia, it is possible to simulate the anxiety and stress the classroom can create for a student. Here are two abbreviated simulations that can help you begin to understand the experience of a student with dyslexia.

Classroom reading

Envision yourself in a room with 300 of your very judgmental peers. The presenter unexpectedly approaches you with a microphone and a piece of the paper with the following passage on it. She then asks you to read it out loud:

The bottob line it thit it doet exitt, no bitter whit nibe teotle give it (i.e. ttecific leirning ditibility, etc). In fict, iccording to Tilly Thiywitz (2003) itt trevilence it ictuilly one in five children, which it twenty tercent.

As you look at the paper your heart rate will probably increase, your hands might start to tremble, and as you stutter and stammer through the short passage, you notice your peers start to get restless. Then the presenter asks you comprehension questions. Do you get any of the questions right? Did you remember anything you read?

Now realize you probably struggled through a passage for less than one minute. Did this get your heart pumping? Imagine this is what reading is like every single time you attempt it.

Spelling

Let’s not forget about spelling challenges, a major symptom of dyslexia.

You were just given a writing assignment, or perhaps a spelling test. You did your best and wrote the sentence below. When you look around, you notice your peers wrote four times as much as you did in the same amount of time. Then you notice their spellings look different from yours. It took every ounce of your cognitive energy to write this sentence. Now you have to pass that paper to your peer so he or she can grade it or for a peer-editing exercise. Would you be embarrassed? Anxious?

Today mi sun made a penut budder and jelle sanwitch.

Exhausting, right? And that was only about 5 to 10 minutes of your day. Are you ready for another one? Here is a full writing simulation. If you have enough energy left, go ahead and play along.

Kelli Sandman-Hurley is the co-owner of the Dyslexia Training Institute. She received her doctorate in literacy with a specialization in reading and dyslexia from San Diego State University and the University of San Diego. She is a trained special education advocate assisting parents and children through the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and 504 Plan process. Sandman-Hurley is an adjunct professor of reading, literacy coordinator, and a tutor trainer, trained by a fellow of the Orton-Gillingham Academy and in the Lindamood-Bell, RAVE-O and Wilson Reading Programs. She is the past-president of the San Diego Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, as well as a board member of the Southern California Library Literacy Network (SCLLN). She co-created and produced “Dyslexia for a Day: A Simulation of Dyslexia” kit, is a frequent speaker at conferences, and is currently writing Dyslexia: Decoding the System.

Sandman-Hurley will present “Dyslexia for a Day: A Simulation of Dyslexia” Saturday, July 18, at the ILA 2015 Conference in St. Louis, MO, July 18–20. Visit the ILA 2015 Conference website for more information or to register.