Dr Lynch defeats dyslexia

Dr Esla Valerie Lynch said she hated primary school with a passion. “By age ten, I learned the art of how to skip school on Fridays. You see, on that day we had test and that meant that I would never do well in spelling. The humiliation of getting 2/20 in spelling I couldn’t handle,” Dr Lynch confided. Little did she know that the “licks” she tried to evade from her teacher for cutting school was awaiting her at home.  “When my mother found out it was more licks,” she said.  

That was some 50 years ago. Today, Dr Lynch is founder and principal of her own school — Eshe’s Learning Centre on Ariapita Avenue, Woodbrook. The school celebrates its 20th anniversary on November 5 and it is an event that Dr Lynch is absolutely enthused about. She feels that she has accomplished so much in her 59 years. Eshe’s, African for “life,” caters for children with learning disabilities. Dr Lynch’s trot down this path is no coincidence since, as she tells her students, she herself is learning disabled. Dr Lynch had never before heard the word, when she discovered she was dyslexic. Her university professor was the one who broke the news and her response was — “what is that?”

She tells her story: “I was always a bright kid, I could talk and read well, but spelling and writing was a very painful process. When the time came, I wasn’t able to sit Exhibition (predecessor to the Common Entrance examination). I just was not able to perform. “My mother couldn’t understand it. I had a sister who was disabled and a brother who won the island scholarship.” Dr Lynch advanced to post primary class and, after sitting School Leaving Exam, she passed for Tranquillity Intermediate (now Tranquillity Government Secon-dary). “It was the first time I ever passed anything,” she said. “At Tranquillity, I had a teacher — Joy Bartholomew — who sat me down and talked me into believing I was bright and capable and wanted to help me. I was 16 years old at the time; see me with a small-line copybook, red and blue lines doing basic penmanship.” The penmanship was a take-home assignment which Dr Lynch did, and when it was time to hand it in, she discreetly pushed the copybook under the files on the teacher’s desk.

“My classmates never knew. Up to today my penmanship is still lousy, lousy,” she said. Dr Lynch searched for the notes she scribbled on a sheet of paper earlier that morning to show me, which gave proof of what has been her obvious plight for many years. But her struggles were not yet over. At age 18, she sat the Cambridge School Certificate Exam and went on to pursue a clerk/typist course at John Donaldson Technical Ins-titute. “In those days you could only be a teacher, nurse or secretary. I hated blood. I don’t think my family thought that I could become a teacher, so the logical thing was to become a secretary. “Soon after, my sister sponsored me to Canada and I enrolled in high school. At the same time I applied to Howard University and did my SATs.”

Dr Lynch was accepted. She later learned that she had obtained a grade III at Cambridge exams. Since teaching was her first love, she decided to pursue a BA in Education. “I didn’t have a very good score but I think there was a track record where students from third world countries didn’t do well on SATs, but excelled at college.” At Howard, Dr Lynch was enrolled in a pilot remedial programme. In her freshman year she obtained A-grades in humanities, “and I was drowning in freshman English.” That was when she discovered she was dyslexic. “My problem wasn’t so much the ‘b’ and ‘d.’ I would write ‘M-ork’ instead of W-ork’ and to me it would look the same. I would confuse the ‘u’ and ‘n’ and I wouldn’t see it... Even now, I try not to write things, and if I do, I try not to let people see.”

She laughed about the time when her left hand would constantly glide over her notes as she wrote, in an attempt to conceal her errors, and in full view of her audience. Needless to say, Dr Lynch graduated from Howard University in Elementary and Early Childhood Education with Honours. She went on to pursue a Master’s degree in Special Education, and later obtained a scholarship to pursue her PhD in Education — Curriculum Development and Teacher Training at the University of Massachusetts. What an accomplishment indeed! “I was a bit anxious because I thought that I had limited my chances of having a partner in life,” the divorcee said. She explained that most men felt overshadowed by a woman who was more educated than they were, and that, in effect, would work against her. “But my mother always told me, ‘if they don’t appreciate you for what you are, then they don’t deserve you.’ So my anxiety didn’t last long.”

Dr Lynch developed the In Service Curriculum for teachers to meet the needs of the special child in the regular classroom. She participated in a comparative education programme during the summer after receiving a scholarship to study in the Soviet Union. “I went to Scandinavian countries on an exchange scholarship, returned to Canada where I taught, as well as worked in Grenada at the Teachers Training College. There is where I realised that in the Caribbean, I can make a difference. In the US, you are one in many. “After living in North America for 20 years, teaching three to 74-year-olds, I returned home and applied to the Valsayn Teachers College and they politely told me they didn’t want me.” Dr Lynch reasoned she was overqualified for the job. Undaunted, she used her savings to rent a room for what would be Eshe’s Learning Centre at O’Connor Street in Woodbrook. From four students, her school has grown to house over 100, some of whom she offered partial scholarships.

Dr Lynch knows each of her students by name and she considers each one, her staff inclusive, family. “I tell my kids that I am learning disabled and I say to them it is okay to ask for help. We correct each other and I don’t have a problem with that. It is not an issue for me if they have to correct me.” When not at school, Dr Lynch is at home caring for her sister who has Parkinson’s disease. She loves to travel and visited  Ghana two years ago. Dr Lynch is also chairperson of the Senior Citizens Home Project, president of the Methodist Teachers’ Association, and is involved in various Cotton Tree Foundation education projects.