For Dyslexia Awareness Week, the emphasis at Northampton High School was to celebrate and promote a greater understanding of dyslexia and literacy difficulties across the whole school community.
We were extremely fortunate and grateful to welcome Pam Tomalin, Volunteer Chair of Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire’s Dyslexia Association (NBDA), to talk so openly and passionately about her own dyslexic journey, highlighting her vast array of achievements and accomplishments along the way; whilst emphasising that ‘Dyslexics have many talents and gifts that others do not have’.
I couldn’t help but feel a sense of notable admiration of her self-achievements, primarily due to her unprecedented accomplishments in overcoming her own difficulties, to running her own international interior design & manufacturing company for over 40 years, being one of the founder members of the Federation of Small Businesses to that of helping and supporting local dyslexics and their families through her charity work.
Here Lillybella and Lydia wanted to share their thoughts about the assembly:
“Pam has dyslexia like Lydia and I so we enjoyed her sharing what she knew about dyslexics in her assembly. She told us that a lot of dyslexics did well in life because they used their ability to think in different ways to non–dyslexics, to think outside the box.
We really liked that Pam shared her story with us about how Pam left college with no qualifications, but discovered that she had a skill for upholstery and that led on to her career as a interior designer. Pam showed us two of the houses she got to renovate and they looked truly lovely!
When Pam was sharing her knowledge about dyslexics with us, I remember Lydia and I having our mouths open for the whole assembly. One thing that we were particularly astonished by is that dyslexics take in 2000x more information than non dyslexics! The reason why dyslexics can take in 2000x more information is because dyslexics use all of their senses to absorb all the information. This ability can lead to brain meltdowns; a brain melt down is when you have been doing well, but then your brain has a meltdown on simple questions that you have been doing and no matter how much the teacher explains it is still really confusing and frustrating.”
