ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — John Gallegos was one of those boys who wanted to hide, but his classmates — and even his teacher — wouldn't let him be.
His memories of second grade, especially the reading circle, are sharp and painful. All eyes were upon him when it was his turn. The pages of jumbled letters — some backwards and upside down — were as upsetting as the ridicule that followed his efforts to decipher them.
"They'd pick on me because they knew I didn't want to read," he said, his teenage voice full of a newfound confidence inspired by success in a recent state science fair competition. "The teachers thought I wasn't trying, and most of the kids said I was dumb. They were making fun of me," he said.
Gallegos said he was convinced they were right until he was diagnosed with the reading impairment called dyslexia.
"I thought: 'I'm just dumb. I can't do this. I give up, and I'm not doing it,' " he said. "Then I got to third grade and found out I'm not dumb. I just have this disability."
Now 13 and a sixth-grader, Gallegos said when he looks back, he understands his own feelings and why he was so misunderstood. His struggle to read isn't over, but he has a firm grasp on his disability.
He studied dyslexia much of his second semester at school this year, and he has produced an award-winning science project about it.
He won first prize in the New Mexico junior division for behavioral sciences. His project will now be entered into competition with the 600 best projects from around the nation.
Gallegos said he was determined to complete the extensive forms necessary for submitting his project before he goes off to a Colorado summer camp for teenage dyslexics.
The national competition, called the Young Scientist Challenge sponsored by the Discovery Channel, has a $15,000 scholarship for first prize. To compete, young scientists had to be nominated by state science fair officials.
In his study of dyslexia, the reading impairment inherited from his father, Gallegos learned that he and his dad, also named John Gallegos, are in good company. Some of the most famous dyslexics were Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Gen. George S. Patton and Nelson Rockefeller.
"This learning disability does not mean that the person is not smart," Gallegos said. "There is no connection between intelligence and dyslexia."
He found out that dyslexics have trouble reading and spelling because they cannot decode words or translate print into verbal language.
His science project involved testing other dyslexics, which was a job in itself "because we hate to be tested," he said. "Some of us won't take tests. We hate it."
On reading skills tests, Gallegos still scores at the third-grade level, but in reading comprehension he is ranked at the ninth-grade, sixth-month level. His grades are B's and C's.
"Dyslexics have very high intelligence," said Shannon Morgan, Gallegos' social studies teacher. "They are just hindered by the traditional school method of having to read to get information."
Gallegos' mother, Lynne Andersen, said that after dyslexia was diagnosed in her son, he switched from public to private school so he would have the benefit of a strong phonics program, which was highly recommended for dyslexics.
Daily tutoring has helped him, too. He sees a private tutor at 7 a.m. and works with his teachers and a student tutor after school four days per week.
There's time in this busy schedule for violin lessons, but he has dropped sports for now.
For his science project, Gallegos had to resort to the dreaded testing to find out if dyslexics could read better after right-brain stimulation. He tested his subjects before and after the stimulation.
He decided the stimulation involved would be working with clay, because he had tried it, and it didn't work for him.
Working — or playing — with clay is often recommended to dyslexic students as a good method for stimulating the creative side of their brains.
Gallegos said when he tried it, he learned to shape letters in clay and how to say the alphabet backward. But he didn't think it helped him read better.
"My hypothesis is that the method will not work," he said in his project introduction. "This type of activity has been recommended to me in the past, and I did not see any improvement. However, I do not know if this was because I resisted the activity, or because it was simply not effective."
Gallegos' science project received first place in the regional science fair in Albuquerque and the $100 first-place prize in the statewide science fair in Socorro in March.