Profile by gabrielle makower

Living Dyslexia With

Written By: Gabrielle Makower

“H

ow many times do you use the alphabet every day? What if you can’t? How many times do you read a sign? What if you can’t?” Scott Douthit, more commonly known as Mr.D, knew he was different at a very young age.

In 6th grade, his teacher would construct weekly spelling bees. Students were required to go up in front of the entire class, one at a time, and spell a word in front of the class.

Mr. D would always end up in the back of the classroom, because those who spelled words incorrectly would get sent to the back.

One day, the teacher gave Mr.D the word “does.”

Mr.D’s eyes brightened and he stood up proud and tall and spelled the word...

“D-O-S-E.” The teacher gave him a disgusted look and told him to write

it on the board. Thinking he finally got a word right, he proudly wrote out the word, “D-O-S-E.” “All the blood ran from her face and she looked as if I had just stabbed her i n the chest,” Mr.D explains. The students then began laughing and Mr.D never understood why. The teacher sent him to the principals office, claiming that Mr.D was being disrespectful and mocking the teacher.

All of Mr.D’s life he has had negative labels placed u p o n h i m .

H e graduat-

ed high school with the senior superlatives of “most likely to be unsuccessful” and “most unathletic.” He was called “dumb as a stump,” “retarded,” “dumbo,” and “scarecrow,” by his teachers, peers, and even his own father.

“My mother was the most supportive person” he explained, “but I didn’t want my

mom’s approval. I wanted my dad’s. My father never said he was proud of me.”

Throughout his life he grew up thinking he was just simply dumb, until the day he attended his first anatomy class in college.

The teachers taught him to learn in other ways, besides listening and reading, and it seemed everything finally clicked. “From that day on I was able to learn because I was able to do,” Mr.D ex-

plained to us. He went on to becoming a PE teacher, doing what he loved.

Because of Mr.D’s dark past, he is a very sensitive and personable individual now. He can relate to just about every student and knows how to make someone feel good about themselves by telling his stories and making “teachable moments.” His personality is what differentiates him from from everyone else.

Although he teaches PE and Drama, Mr.D mostly teaches his students valuable life lessons through his personal anecdotes, and has changed the lives of so many individuals because of his openness to share his flaws and willingness to expose himself to his students. Despite the fact that he flunked out of CAL, Mr. D wears CAL attire to remember his lowest points. Mr.D is, in a way, his CAL clothing.

After Mr.D graduated from San Francisco State, he was unable to pass the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test). “ I would get a job and I would move on after a year,” he explained to us.

He was stuck in this routine purely because he hadn’t passed his exam. One afternoon he noticed a PE job available for a school in Belmont for “LD” kids.

“I didn’t know what LD meant, and I didn’t know what Belmont was either, but I went.” After a day of playing PE games with the kids, as a test to see if he was compatible with the school, he was offered the job. In the middle of his first year at the school, he was assigned to test a student. He found himself not knowing the content

he was testing. The principal of the school “told me to get tested. To me, I thought she was saying that if I tested that I was dyslexic, I would be fired.” Mr.D returned to SF State and got tested for dyslexia. He got the results, and he was, in

fact, dyslexic. He and his mother left the building and sat on 19th Avenue in San Francisco and they cried, because they both knew that he had no chance for a bright future. “I went back to school the next day and I sat down at the desk,

handed her the results, and prepared to be let off. She read the results, smiled, and said “Welcome home.”

That school with “LD” kids was actually a school for kids with learning disabilities, the same learning disability that Mr.D had been

struggling with all of his life. From that first time he stepped foot on campus he explained to us that “there was something about these kids that I recognized” “I had no idea what she meant when she said ‘Welcome Home,’ until I realized that this was where I belonged. I understood the kids on that campus because I was just like them.”

Mr.D has had a history of injuries working his job. He has hurt his back multiple times when coordinating the drama productions, and has had multiple head injuries. Recently, he suffered an injury by football. When at the hospital,

“this nurse, who was taking me to be examined, asked what I did for a living.”

He explained to the nurse that he was a teacher at Charles Armstrong School in Belmont. She replied, “You must be so patient, you work with those kids.”

“I was not dressed, so I

couldn’t get up and leave, but I was shocked because I am from a school where we get that people are different.” This encounter at the doctors office left him disturbed about the stereotype surrounding dyslexia.

After Mr.D told the nurse that he was dyslexic too, and “she began talking slower and using smaller words.” Doing the simplest of tasks, like reading the alphabet, or reading a sign is an extreme challenge for Mr.D. Imagine if you can’t do that? “Put yourself in those shoes.”

When we brought up the New York Times article that claimed that dyslexia wasn’t a disability, he was taken aback. “I think that a lot of people believe that people who say they’re dyslexic simply use that as an excuse to not work hard... If some-

“This is part of this whole deal, being dyslexic, and there’s a real emotional component to it, and those wounds don’t go away.”

one actually knows a dyslexic, they would never say that. I, and every dyslexic that I know, works harder than anyone else.”

He explained to us that “All kids can learn. Period. It’s just about finding out how.” Learning for the average student may be as simple as reading a passage from a book.

Learning for a dyslexic student involves twice as much effort, since these students need to create a different way to present the material to themselves that is learnable for them.

Mr.D told us about twenty anecdotes from his life just in one sitting.

The stories that he speaks all are rich in

content and have extremely relevant meaning to all of his students. Through the anecdotes he tells, he expresses teachable moments. Whenever his students struggle, he express to them that he has “been there. I’ve had those fears also. I use stories to get across emotional points.”

Mr.D has won Disney’s Teacher of the year seven times, along with multiple regional and state recognitions for his excellence in teaching. Mr.D is his CAL attire, and he is constantly exposing his weaknesses to his students purely to express these teachable moments.“That is why I am working on my 29th year

at Charles Armstrong and I will die here because this is where my heart is. We don’t all learn the same, but we’ve all gone through the same battles, and that’s the important thing”