Lexington, KY - Lois Combs Weinberg struggles to admit that she is a pioneer in dyslexia education, but the Lexington-born Appalachia transplant is responsible for more than 30 years of helping children overcome what could be a life-altering learning disability.
After founding the Hindman Settlement School Dyslexia Program in Hindman, Ky., and more recently developing the Institute for Dyslexia Education in Appalachia (IDEA), Weinberg was awarded the Martha Layne Collins Leadership Award, along with Pam Miller and Crit Luallen.
“I’m just really humbled to be in the company of Pam Miller and Crit Luallen,” she said. “They’ve done so much politically here in Lexington. Pam’s worked to make Lexington a better place for decades. We served together on the Prichard Committee, so we share that passion for better education all over Kentucky. And Crit Luallen I’ve known politically, just because she’s been such a champion of ethical government and really government efficiency and also looking out for the interests of women in government.”
These women will be recognized and participate in the Awards Luncheon Program of the 13th Annual Women’s Business & Leadership Conference on May 9 at the Marriott Griffin Gate.
Weinberg said she is “excited about it and really very honored and privileged,” but the dyslexia pioneer is focused on screening Lexington children this spring for the dyslexia program she is holding at the Carnegie Center this summer.
As a new mother in the 1970s in eastern Kentucky, Weinberg noticed that her oldest son was not learning well in school. Little did she know then that 15 percent of the population is dyslexic.
“We were busy with three sons, and as our oldest son started school ... here was a bright child who couldn’t read, even though he was given adequate instruction,” she recalled. “We came from families that thought everyone knows how to read.”
Plus, Weinberg said, in Appalachia in the late 1970s, the awareness of dyslexia was almost non-existent. With her husband in the state legislature, he was able to hear a doctor out of Cincinnati talk about diagnosing dyslexia. The family was referred to a program in Louisville, Ky., for their son, because there were no resources in Hindman.
The family was trained in Louisville on how to set up a community dyslexia program and quickly it grew in Hindman, where school teachers were not adequately trained to help struggling students.
“All of this was created from desperation,” Weinberg said. “The program in Louisville allowed us to contact other parents; it was a community organization.”
Parents learned to tutor other people’s children, because the emotional dynamics are too strong in working with their own children.
“I think children want to be perfect for their parents, and when they can’t be, they just react in a variety of ways,” she said. “For a stranger, the stranger can deal with frustration in a very matter-of-fact way.”
The dyslexia training she uses is “very intense, one-on-one, explicit, structured curriculum that uses multi-sensory techniques that are simultaneous.”
In schools, she said, the approach is not so rigorous and is not simultaneous.
Weinberg is excited that Kentucky recently passed a bi-partisan House Bill 69 that for the first time regulates a definition of dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and dyphasia. The statute brings conformity to the definition of the specific learning disabilities in compliance with federal code and therefore allows for better teacher training. Weinberg said the Kentucky Department of Education will adopt the definitions, and it hopefully will lead to better programs in schools for dyslexic students.
At Weinberg’s screenings through her nonprofit organization, she confirms parents’ worries and offers them a solution that is proven to work after more than 30 years in practice.
“People don’t realize that there are all of these brilliant, gifted people in the world who overcome the differences in their learning, and then they access their talents to be gifted engineers, architects, entrepreneurs,” Weinberg said.
She added that countless students of hers have gone on to higher education and the effect has even spread to their families, with more than 20 percent of other family members also continuing their education.
The key for students of all ages, like her son, is learning how to learn and learning their unique strengths.
“We couldn’t have guessed that he was so gifted at calculating in his head,” she said. “Now he is a very successful entrepreneur.”
Another key, Weinberg said, is catching dyslexia early, which is why she takes her screening programs so seriously. Lexington has a need for a dyslexia program, she said, but added that The Lexington School was doing a fantastic job with The Learning Center, a program for children with dyslixia. She aims to make her program accessible to anyone, regardless of income, at the Carnegie Center.
“We try to make sure that money is not a factor in whether a child can attend or not,” she said.
The summer program is an intense, three-and-a-half-hour day for three weeks. Fifteen children will be admitted, governed by space at the Carnegie Center.
“It’s no frills, no gummy bears, no stickers,” Weinberg said.
She also is working with the University of Pikeville to start developing educational programs. The next step, she said, is teacher training for all Kentucky teachers, and she is excited that the passage of House Bill 69 will begin to make that possible.