A law passed by Ohio lawmakers in 2021 mandates that starting in the 2023-24 school year, Ohio students in kindergarten through third grade will be required to take a dyslexia screening test. This effort recognizes that early detection will help put children with this condition on a more direct path to success in learning to deal with it.
It has been over 136 years since dyslexia was first uncovered and almost 100 years since the United States started using the term regularly. Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language according to the Mayo Clinic. 80-90% of all Americans with learning disabilities are dyslexic.
Along with the mandate from the state, like many other mandates, there was no additional funding provided to help teachers meet the requirements. To this end, the Dresden Parent Teacher Organization headed by Michele Seward, set out to find funding for an iPad Cart to help support the kindergarten classrooms at Dresden Elementary with the upcoming Wonders reading curriculum set to be implemented in the 2023-24 school year.
The cart is equipped with 30 iPads and docking stations for the iPads to charge. Each classroom will have ten iPads at their disposal to use to help younger children with the online applications used for the curriculum. In the first through sixth-grade classrooms, the students are currently using Chromebooks that are more like a traditional laptop computer, but for the younger kids who are just learning letters and reading, these devices can be more difficult to navigate and the iPads offer a more user-friendly approach to getting the children into these applications.
The PTO originally reached out to the Muskingum County Foundation and tried to get a $10,000 grant for the $13,500 cart and planned to fundraise the remaining amount to make the purchase. Unfortunately due to the grant amount being more than the Foundation was offering they denied the request. However, Tami Longaberger who along with her son and daughter runs the Longaberger Family Foundation found out about the request and had to step in. The Longaberger Family Foundation reached out to the Dresden PTO and donated the cost of the cart to Dresden Elementary in December of 2022. After the school made the purchase and their IT department did all of the required setup, the cart went into service on January 31st.
“When I started looking at the project, it just touched my heart and reminded me of Dad and I knew it was something he would want to support. So it was a very easy thing for us to support at the Longaberger Family Foundation,” stated Tami Longaberger.
Tami’s father, Dave Longaberger, a dyslexia success story, founded the Longaberger Basket Company in 1973 right here in Dresden, Ohio.
