1471 words | 6-minute read

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month! It’s a time to expand our understanding of the learning disability and explore ways to support all learners in the classroom and beyond. This month, we highlight the experiences of Caleb Ferring, an industrial technology teacher from Waukon High School who discovered he had characteristics of dyslexia after taking the Iowa Reading Research Center’s Dyslexia Overview eLearning module.  

If you’re interested in learning more about dyslexia, take our free Dyslexia Overview eLearning module or our Understanding and Observing the Literacy Skills Associated With Dyslexia eLearning module. 

Iowa Reading Research Center (IRRC): Tell Me a Bit About Who You Are and What You Do. 

Caleb Ferring: My name is Caleb Ferring. This is my eleventh year of teaching. I’ve taught industrial tech all those years—so shop classes. I taught my first two years in Cedar Rapids, and this will be my ninth year here in Waukon. I've taught welding, metals, mechanics, electricity, woods, a couple of different engineering classes. We do a student-built house where we build a house with the kids, and I’m a part of that. I teach a college welding program where the kids get their welding career pathway certificates. I’m also a head wresting coach. 

IRRC: Do You Remember Learning How to Read, and What Was the Process Like for You?

Caleb Ferring: I went to a private school when I was younger, and I struggled with the reading, writing, and spelling. It was hard for me to figure out—any of the phonics or the sounds the letters make was very challenging. I had a lot of tutoring when I was younger—interventions, that sort of thing, summer school. I did get some extra help, which was probably beneficial for me here in the long run. It was challenging. I would say that’s the best way to describe it. 

IRRC: What Things Were Most Helpful For You Growing Up With Dyslexia?

Caleb Ferring: I think one of the reasons I was successful going through school was I was involved in a lot of stuff. I was an athlete and did sports, and I think that made a big difference. That kind of motivated me to have good grades. I knew I wanted to play college football, and that motivated me to do well in school. Also, my senior year of high school, they did the first student-built house here in Waukon. So I helped with that, and I was involved with all the shop classes and the hands-on classes in high school. I think that was always the highlight of my day—going to shop class and then going to sports practice. I had great experiences doing those things. And I came back and did it for a living.

IRRC: Tell Me About a Teacher Who Had a Positive Impact on You. 

Caleb Ferring: It’s hard to pick out one because there are so many. A lot of teachers have positive impacts. Specifically when it comes to dyslexia, I can remember a story I always like sharing from my sophomore year. I had to sit down and write my first one-page paper. For me, I was terrible at spelling and writing and all these things. And then to sit down and have to type it out on a computer seemed impossible. We were two days into it, and I had nothing. I had maybe a sentence. The teacher, on the third day, sat down by me and was just like “Hey, you need help?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I need help. I’m struggling.” And she sat down next to me and typed my whole paper out. That was really cool, because after that, I did write a couple of other papers in that class as a tenth grader. And it just kind of got me going. And I think it made a big difference. 

And, for me, I’ve typed out hundreds of pages of papers now through high school, my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and other things I’m working on. My second year at Waukon, I wrote a twenty-page grant to get our welding program up and going. I think that was a $25,000 grant. So you think back to the first paper I ever wrote—if she didn’t help me, what difference would that make?

IRRC: Tell Me About Your Experience Taking the IRRC's Dyslexia Overview Module.

Caleb Ferring: This is the module that all teachers had to take because the state required it. So I'm sitting here clicking through it. And I was probably not paying attention like I should have, to be honest. And I’m a few minutes into it, and I’m like, “Oh, this is something that probably describes me personally.” I’d heard of dyslexia before that. I was seven years into my teaching career and had a master’s degree in effective teaching, and I had no clue what dyslexia was. I'm going through this module and there's red flags going off everywhere that I'm probably dyslexic myself. And then I started making the connection. All these kids sitting in my shop class—they're my hands-on kids that probably struggle a lot with their other classes with reading and writing and things. They’re a lot like me. And then I also go and coach wrestling, which tends to have strong hands-on learner type kids as well. And I think a lot of those kids struggle with reading and writing. And I was thought this is kind of a big deal. It was kind of an eye opener for me to know what dyslexia is. That was a great thing for all teachers to watch, and I hope that most teachers were paying more attention than I was at the beginning of the video. Eventually, I paid for a full dyslexia evaluation for myself as a result of completing the IRRC dyslexia module, just to get answers for my learning challenges over the years. I learned a lot about myself through the process and was diagnosed with moderate dyslexia within six months of taking the IRRC module. 

IRRC: After Learning About Dyslexia, How Did That Change How You Think About Your Students?

Caleb Ferring: I think, honestly, the biggest thing that changed for me is that I now share with the kids that I'm dyslexic. As far as the content I teach, it really doesn't affect it much because I don't have a lot of reading and writing and things in my classes where dyslexia is a disadvantage necessarily. But I do a lot of life lesson things with the kids for overcoming challenges and building some life skills, and I tie the dyslexia more into that. 

IRRC: What's One Misconception That People Have About Dyslexia, or What's One Thing That You'd Like People to Know About It?

Caleb Ferring: The thought that a student is being lazy or doesn't want to do a certain project or assignment is often a misconception, where they just might be totally unaware of how they can even put the information together. And one way I always explain it is that I just feel like I'm always trying to solve puzzles when I'm trying to read and write things. It's like I'm trying to figure out patterns and puzzles versus a flow of text and sounds of letters. So I just think there's a lot of kids that haven't solved their puzzle yet to figure out how to do things successfully. And as a teacher, there are some connections that I think we can help make for kids that they might not figure out on their own.

IRRC: In Your E-Mail Signature You Have the Words, “Behind Every Challenge Is a Learning Opportunity.” Do You Want to Talk About Your E-Mail Signature?

Caleb Ferring: In wrestling, we do mindset training. I bring the kids into the classroom from the wrestling room for a 15-minute lesson three times a week, let's say. And that's one of my core things: how you approach challenges in your lifetime and the way you react to challenges. If you can address a challenge as a learning opportunity, you're going to be way more likely to improve, get better, solve the issues at hand. It can relate to things in my class, it can relate to things when I coach wrestling, but it's a life skill. It's all about having that growth mindset and how you approach challenges. And I think it's so important for a young person to understand that challenges can be good, and there's good things that come out of them. It's so important. Probably my favorite thing as a teacher and a coach is to teach a kid how to do that. I think with me being dyslexic and the challenges I had to overcome from being dyslexic, I think that's why I appreciate that so much.