Teacher Dan Tibbetts draws upon the wounds he got and the wisdom he won growing up with dyslexia

Hell-bent on discovery, Danny Tibbetts couldn't wait to ditch his books and head out after school. Lying on his stomach in the reedy marsh near his suburban home, the little boy learned firsthand about the habitat and life cycle of frogs. Tinkering in the dusty half-light of the garage, he uncovered the inner workings of small engines. Scavenging scraps of wood and metal, he designed and built all sorts of wheeled rigs powered by batteries and imagination. Those were his happy hours.

His classroom hours, however, were agonizing. Danny got off to a bad start, failing to nail down his ABCs and having to repeat kindergarten. Things never got much better. After years of pullout remediation and private tutoring, he gained the ability to decode words up to a third-grade level. But when he left high school at age 18 without a diploma, he still couldn't read for comprehension.

Danny's story, however, doesn't end with a low-wage job at a car wash or pizza parlor. This most unlikely candidate for college, deeply determined not to be "a loser," eventually made his way to the university. And the boy who couldn't decipher even the most basic basal readers ended up in the most unlikely of places—back in the public school classroom. This time, though, he stands at the front of a class full of kids he understands as well as he understands himself. That's because, like him, his students in the Intensive Learning Center at Portland's Beaumont Middle School are all learning disabled.

"These kids often come in at the first-grade level, across the board, in their language arts skills," says Dan Tibbetts, catching a brief respite at his desk while his 12 students, mostly boys, labor over sentence construction. "They can't read a lick, they can't write a lick. Somehow, they got to sixth grade. They should have been in a program like this a long time ago."

The "program like this" blends direct instruction in the skills of reading and writing—beginning with the fundamental building blocks of letter recognition and phonemic awareness—with lots of behavior management and one-to-one attention. The curriculum draws on the very strategies that turned things around for Tibbetts when, at age 19, he enrolled in a program at Portland Community College for nonreading adults. "The curriculum was based on Corrective Reading from Science Research Associates," he says. "Boy, that's when things really kicked up for me."

Once the trick to reading clicked in, Tibbetts became a committed bibliophile. Now 40, he pores voraciously over print materials of all kinds, particularly biography, philosophy, and current events—with a special love for the history of rock 'n' roll. In another wry twist of destiny, Tibbetts this year wears the coordinator's hat for the school's talented and gifted program. At Beaumont Middle School, where he passes on his hard-won wisdom to his emotionally bruised LD students, his wife Rebekah also teaches kids with special needs. Here, Dan Tibbetts tells the story of his personal and professional struggles and successes.

NORTHWEST EDUCATION: Do you remember how you felt as a young child who couldn't master reading skills?

DANIEL TIBBETTS: Oh, man, it was so tough on me, and pretty rough on my parents. I was hurt by the whole thing. Kids teased me, so I acted out.

NW: How did you to act out?

TIBBETTS: I was very goofy. I liked getting attention for being funny. I got in trouble for everything—it didn't matter what class I was in. I couldn't memorize; I couldn't recite the flag salute. I got in trouble for not paying attention. I got spankings from the principal.

Psychologists call these negative behaviors that LD kids get caught up in "schemas." They're scripts—built-in programs that come back and play out under stress.

NW: What kinds of strategies did the school try out in an effort to get you on track?

TIBBETTS: In second grade, a specialist from the University of Oregon came in to teach a phonics-based program using flip charts for teaching phonemes, sounds, blending, mastery words. They would pull out a couple of kids and take us over to the corner of the classroom. It was embarrassing, because everyone could hear us. They probably would have gotten 80 percent more out of me and the other kids if we'd been off in a place where other students weren't watching us or listening to us. No one wants to flaunt their wounds in front of their peers. That's one of the problems with the inclusion model, where LD kids are served in the regular classroom.

NW: So you don't think it's possible effectively to serve LD kids in the regular classroom?

TIBBETTS: I believe that there are methods of instruction that can be used that will catch all of the kids pretty well in the regular setting, but they're not used. They are methods such as direct instruction that are not popular. But if you use them, and use them right, a couple of hours a day for the elementary years of a kid's schooling, they have been proven effective with validated data.

NW: Why is direct instruction so unpopular among many educators?

TIBBETTS: It's dry. But it works. It's a method of disciplined instruction based on mastery learning. You don't go on to Step 2 till you've mastered Step 1. You start at the student's skill level, correct errors right away, review as you go along, and fill in any gaps. It builds a real strong foundation.

NW: Were other strategies tried?

TIBBETTS: I had all the bells and whistles growing up as an LD kid. By my third-grade year, my parents got me a tutor. In fourth grade, I got into the Chapter 1 reading program.

NW: Why didn't the resource room approach work for you?

TIBBETTS: Kids who have darn-near grade-level skills and just need someone to help them close that little gap in their regular schoolwork need a resource teacher to help them achieve their mainstream goals. But when you have a kid who's several years behind, they can't keep up, no matter what, in that regular classroom. I know from personal experience; I know because I hung out with those kids growing up; I know because I've been a professional in the field for 15 years and I've read tons about it. Full inclusion is ineffective for remediating basic skill deficits. I can tell you that when a kid is way behind in their skills in reading and writing and general knowledge, they're not going to be able to keep up with their average peers. It's embarrassing and frustrating for everyone—the student, the teacher, the parents. Students with severe learning disabilities nearly always require intensive individual or small-group instruction for at least a portion of the day.

NW: Were there bright spots in your school experience?

TIBBETTS: When I was in middle school we moved from Beaverton to Hillsboro (Oregon). It was a smaller school, 400 kids, with a lot of really great teachers. Although I wasn't learning a lot of skills in reading and math, I was gaining a lot of knowledge. In high school, I got into a vocational program where I got credit for work experience in a music store selling band instruments. I learned to play the guitar and got into rock and roll; that gave me a ton of confidence. I said to myself, "If I can do this, I know I can do other things."

NW: You didn't receive a high school diploma, yet you went to college. How did that come about?

TIBBETTS: When high school was over, I had this sense that, "Man, I don't want to be a loser." I thought about it for a year, and I knew I had to do something. I knew the first thing I had to do was learn to read. So one day when I was 19, I got together with my aunt, who's a teacher, and my dad, and I said, "I can't read." My aunt had a friend at Lewis & Clark College, an instructor in the school psychology program, who evaluated me and diagnosed my learning disability. She steered me to Portland Community College, where they had a specialist who was teaching LD students to read, write, and spell. I relearned all of the phonemes from scratch. I worked hard at it—man, I worked really hard. They met with you every week, they phoned you, they helped you get the credits you needed. And wow, things just really started turning and really cruised for me. I became independent very quickly, within a year. I always made sure I got an A or a B. I got enough credits to go to a four-year university.

NW: Where did you go to college?

TIBBETTS: I went to Southern Oregon College (now Southern Oregon State University). It was in the early, early '80s. I was, believe it or not, one of the very first LD adults to get to college and have advocacy behind me. With my documented learning disability, I got accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—extra time for tests and assignments, more attention from instructors. Meanwhile, the university started up a student disability union—back then, they called it Handicapped Student Services. I was hired to assist the director. I didn't know anything about computers when I started, but I helped put together a computer lab with Commodore 64s and in the process learned to use the computer. That's what really helped me get through college.

NW: What are the most important skills that you strive to impart to your LD students at Beaumont?