Elena Mendoza is the Founder of Integrative Learning and an artist who shares her artwork and creations, which celebrate dyslexia, on her website and Etsy. To raise awareness during Dyslexia Awareness Month, we invited her to share her story!

Elena Mendoza: From Dyslexic Teacher to Thriving Artist: A Journey of Resilience and Creativity

Life often takes unexpected turns, leading us down paths we never imagined. My journey from being a dyslexic teacher to embracing the world of art after a concussion has been a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the transformative power of creativity. In this blog post, I share my personal story of navigating my challenges.

Dyslexia, a learning difference that affects reading, writing, and spelling, became a lens through which I viewed both my students and myself. Instead of seeing it as a hindrance, I embraced my dyslexia as a source of creativity and empathy, finding innovative ways to connect with and support my students.

Life has a way of surprising us when we least expect it. A sudden concussion changed the trajectory of my career and, in many ways, my identity. The cognitive challenges that followed forced me to reconsider my path and find new ways to channel my passion for expression and connection.

During recovery, I discovered the therapeutic power of art. Creating became a sanctuary, a space where I could channel my thoughts and emotions without the constraints of language. Art provided a form of communication that transcended the limitations imposed by my concussion, offering a profound sense of healing and renewal.

My journey from dyslexic teacher to artist is a testament to the resilience that resides within us all. Embracing dyslexia taught me to find strength in adversity, and the concussion served as an unexpected doorway to a world of artistic exploration. It is a reminder that even in the face of unexpected challenges, there lies an opportunity for growth and reinvention. As I continue to navigate this artistic path, I carry with me the lessons learned from both my teaching days and the transformative period post-concussion.

In the end, my story is a celebration of the unexpected, a reminder that even in the face of challenges, there is always the potential for growth, self-discovery, and the emergence of new and vibrant chapters in the story of our lives.

– Elena Mendoza

Integrative Learning

Dyslexia Boutique on Etsy

The Kendore Kingdom curriculum is designed to benefit all students. Our activities enable teachers to continually assess student progress so that they can help struggling readers while also giving those who catch on more quickly the opportunity to delve deeper.

We received the following question from a Kendore-trained teacher and wanted to share Jennifer’s answer!

Hi Jennifer,

What do I do if I have students in my group that already know or quickly grasp the understanding of sounds and letters? I want to make sure I attend to all the kids in my classroom and not hold anyone back.

Sincerely, Dealing with Mixed Levels

Great question! All students can benefit from retrieval, memory, and phonological awareness activities while building reading capacity. Teachers often confuse rushing through phonics as true reading instruction, but that would be like memorizing the rule book for basketball and never over-learning the fundamentals. We want students of all levels to have a solid foundation before moving forward.

You can attend to high-performing students by layering challenges into your activities. It’s easier than you think! Help strengthen their oral vocabularies, phonological awareness skills, understanding of syntax, and more with our recommendations.

Here are some ways to provide challenges for students while focusing on phonological awareness. Our curriculum is full of activities, so all kids are sure to stay engaged regardless of level!

• Provide students with a word and ask them for words that rhyme with it (e.g., cat, bat, hat). Discuss why these words rhyme by breaking down the sounds in each word. Challenge students to identify the initial and final sounds.
• Use our Smiley Thumbs Up word lists and have students identify words containing the target sound(s) for the week. Add advanced vocabulary to test high-performing students, e.g., “Give me a thumbs up if you hear the /f/ sound in the word “photograph.” How many times do you hear the /f/ sound in this word?” (2 times).
• Lots of kids may know their sounds, but do they know how they’re produced? Talk to your students about how each of the sounds are made (where the air travels through the mouth, tongue placement, mouth placement, etc.) and ask them to watch their own mouths in a mirror for a full kinesthetic learning experience.
• Incorporate Oral Punctuation and oral sentence construction into your lessons! Watch this helpful demonstration to learn how.
• Try Magazine Madness! During this activity, kids cut up pictures from magazines into strips, one for each sound (phoneme) or syllable. For example, the word “fish” has 3 phonemes (sounds), so a picture of a fish would be cut into 3 vertical strips. This can prove to be quite challenging!
• Incorporate parts of speech into your lessons by using a MadLibs. Teach nouns, verbs, and adjectives containing the target sound(s) for the week (e.g., “Give me a noun that begins with /v/.”).
• Even high performers can build automaticity to increase their reading rate! Use fluency drills to build sound retrieval, and pair off students of similar levels to time each other.

With card games, memory building activities, Sound Track and more, the possibilities are endless!

– Jennifer

Please contact us if you need more ideas or have a question you’d like answered. We may feature it in a future blog post.