The Shelby County School District has unveiled a new web page designed to provide dyslexia resources to the community.  The webpage is located under “Resources” of the “Students and Parents” link on the website, or at the following link:  http://www.shelbyed.k12.al.us/dyslexia.html.

The development of the webpage was overseen by Dr. Angela Walker, Professional Development Supervisor, through collaboration with the district’s instructional team and with assistance from community stakeholders.

“I reached out to parents involved in local dyslexia advocacy groups who also have children with dyslexia,” Walker said. “They gave me a lot of good feedback and suggestions that were used to develop our webpage.  They also shared many of the resources and information included on the webpage that they felt would be helpful to other parents.”

The web page also addresses how the Shelby County School District has responded to the recent changes, which includes training for both teachers and administrators.  All schools have teachers trained to administer the dyslexia-specific screening assessment.

“We also have teachers from every school in the district who have attended professional development about multi-sensory strategies, interventions,  and assistive technology,” Walker said. “There is now a teacher available that can assist students who fail the dyslexia screener and also provide support to other teachers in the school.”

All school and district-level administrators are currently completing a year-long Professional Learning Unit about dyslexia.  The study included a dyslexia simulation, and professional development sessions on screening on characteristics of dyslexia, dyslexia awareness, and dyslexia intervention guidelines.

The district also revised its Problem Solving Team (PST) guidelines with dyslexia-specific information and also school principals, PST coordinators, and lead teachers were trained on the changes.

The web page also includes links to teacher-specific resources, along with links that are for both teachers and parents.  These links include videos and an online dyslexia simulation which give the user a taste of what it is like to have dyslexia and attention issues.