The trip down to the Dyslexia Association of Singapore’s Learning Centre(Tampinese Branch) was really fruitful as the trip provided us with alot more information that the website did not provide us with. Basically, the learning centre is where dyslexic students and their dyslexia community learn to cope and improve with their condition.
We met Su’Ann, the Centre Manager and Educational Therapist there, and had a question and answer session there. Through that session, we’ve gotten information on how thing works in DAS and the various methods they’ve used to increase the awareness of DAS and Dyslexia.
We’ve found out that they do have open houses in all of their centres and a raising awareness week called Dyslexia Raising Awareness Week(DRAW). The week we went was the week where they had collaborated with the National Library board, where poster and information of DAS and dyslexia were moved from one library to another.
Apart from that, they held awareness talks in various schools such as Chung Cheng High, and live forums where people can voice out their enquiries and concerns regarding DAS and dyslexia. They do have a facebook group that allows only the dyslexia community to join, such as the parents of the dyslexic and the dyslexic themselves. They have a web2.0 enabled website that consist of the nearing events and many information about what DAS does and what Dyslexia is and how they can go about assessing and improving their condition.
In order to make sure that our solutions will be according to the restrictions of what information DAS are willing to share, we asked if there’s anything that we should not include in our solutions. The answer are the fees as they do not want to deter people who are unable to afford it and photos for privacy sake.
Apart from those, DAS do have their own psychologists that helps in the assessments of people who suspect they are dyslexic, or their children are dyslexic. They provide trainings for teachers and parents of to help them identify and better cope with dyslexic students.
Students of dyslexia are often misunderstood as being lazy and not very smart due to their difficulties in reading and writing. I hope that this situation will improve by educating people about dyslexia.
