Harry Sylvester is such a bad speller that if he writes himself a note on Tuesday he has no idea on Wednesday what it says.
He isn't very good at writing the letters of the alphabet either, he can't read worth beans, and grammar has always been kind of a mystery.For the first 50 years of his life, Sylvester couldn't figure out why he was so good at some things - math and engineering, for example - and so bad at anything related to words. Then, 14 years ago, he heard about something called learning disabilities, and suddenly his life began to make sense.
Since then, Sylvester, a Maine sailboat designer, has become heavily involved in the Learning Disabilities Association of America. He now sits on the group's executive committee and travels the country to spread the word.
He'll be in Utah on Saturday, Nov. 2, to speak about "Living With Learning Disabilities" at the state's annual learning disabilities conference. The conference, "Navigating a Lifetime of Challenges," runs Friday, Nov. 1, and Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Provo Park Hotel.
Although learning disabilities are generally associated with schoolchildren, it's a lifelong condition, notes Sylvester. If they don't learn compensatory learning strategies, today's children with learning disabilities could grow up to be tomorrow's substance abusers and prisoners. "Learning disabilities are four, five and six times the norm among these people," says Sylvester.
Failure in school leads to further failures, he adds, especially for those adults who don't even have the skills to fill out a job application.
Sylvester himself was lucky. Although he failed the fifth grade, by the time he was in high school he had discovered he had a gift for math and spatial problems. He could read well enough to understand technical information, so he was able to make it through college. And he married a woman who filled out his job applications for him.
Like many adults with learning disabilities, he says, he eventually decided to become his own boss. For the past 20 years he has owned a company that designs sailboats. "I can design the boats in my head," he says. "I can see the whole boat so plainly, it's like it's already built." His wife does his paperwork.
She's very verbal, he says, but she would never be able to understand a computer manual. That's what schools need to understand, Sylvester says: "We all have different ways of learning."
It is this difference that he stresses now as a member of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. For problem readers, for example, schools need to adopt "multisensory" reading programs, he says.
After realizing 14 years ago that he has learning disabilities, Sylvester started a support group in his hometown.
"It was wonderful to set with those folks," says Sylvester in his Maine twang. "We all told the same story. And I no longer was alone."
"Navigating a Lifetime of Challenges" will be presented by the Learning Disabilities Association of Utah, the Utah Division for Learning Disabilities and CEC. It is sponsored by the Utah State Office of Education and the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation.
For more information about the two-day conference, call 355-2881.