Written by Vincent T. Davis, Staff writer of San Antonio Express News, July 14, 2024
The first time Jasmin Dean heard the word “dyslexia” was in 2017, at a birthday party across from her North Side home. She later looked up the word on Google and discovered her oldest son, Jonah, had more than 90 of the 100 symptoms listed on a website about the learning disorder.
Dean had seen her son struggle over his studies. She’d sit with Jonah at the family’s long, wooden dining room table, helping him with his homework. They read together, sitting shoulder to shoulder. They worked the same math problem over and over. Though exhausting for her son, Dean said Jonah was always up for one more try. Learning was hard for the third grader. From kindergarten through second grade, teachers said Jonah was intelligent, and he just needed to work harder.
School officials determined Jonah had dyslexia in 2017, three months after Dean’s written request to his school that her son be evaluated following difficulties with his first STAAR test. The school assigned Jonah a reading interventionist. Dean soon found it was hard to find a support network to help her son. From their family’s experience, Dean and her husband, Jeffery, learned there was a need to address the learning disorder not only in schools, but also in the community. Dean leaned on her nonprofit background to develop a community for others with the disorder.
In 2019, Dean founded Celebrate Dyslexia, a nonprofit “to celebrate, educate and empower” the 1 in 5 people who have dyslexia, which is characterized by difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. The goal of Celebrate Dyslexia is to provide a resource for parents and educators looking for information about the learning disability while also creating a community for dyslexic students.
“It’s a solvable problem,” Dean said. “Hopefully, with bringing systemic solutions to the community, when my kids raise their kids, along with the rest of the community, this struggle with dyslexia will be as foreign as the iron lung is to us today.”
Dean’s experience with Jonah helped her recognize similar learning struggles in her younger sons, Jordan and Joshua, who also were diagnosed with dyslexia. Dean sat at the same dining room table where she’d helped Jonah to guide her younger sons with their studies. Recently, Jonah sat at the table where he first studied years ago, as his mother talked about their experience. The 16-year-old said he was proud of his mother advocating for him. Jonah said having dyslexia is like having engines on a fighter jet burn fuel at supersonic speed. “Our brains are on afterburner all day, every single minute,” he said. “It hasn’t been an easy road. It’s still an ongoing battle.”
For Dean, offering help to the community through Celebrate Dyslexia gives her a sense of being rooted here. It’s a feeling she’s sought since she was a child. Dean was in the eighth grade when she moved from Detroit with her parents to San Antonio. She desperately wanted roots like her peers in school. As time passed, Dean felt more grounded in the Alamo City. It’s where she met her husband, who served in the military. And, it’s where the couple married in 2002. When the couple needed a place to call home, all roads led back to San Antonio. “It was a dream come true to raise our family here,” Dean said. “I wanted our kids to feel rooted.” Dean’s work in the community and making roots here continues.
In 2020, Celebrate Dyslexia opened an exhibit at the DoSeum called “Beautiful Minds: Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage” that included working with local children with the disorder. And, when Dean heard on Texas Public Radio that a “Flat Stanley” play was coming to the Magik Theatre, she knew she had to take Jonah — the children’s book was on their reading list. Words that once didn’t have meaning, Jonah was now able to understand, Dean said. Jonah was able to engage with literacy and literature in a different way, instead of spending hours struggling to read. Dean partnered with the Magik Theatre in 2022, collaborating on an original play called “Eddie and Vinnie,” which showed how dyslexia affected a boy’s life. The play won a National Endowment for the Arts award.
Last year, Dean created another nonprofit called Celebrate Dyslexia Schools. In June 2023, the Texas Education Agency and State Board of Education granted the nonprofit a charter to open a tuition-free school. The charter school serving kindergarten through second grade will open at the DoSeum on Aug. 12. School administrators said the DoSeum will offer hands-on, multisensory learning to students so they can thrive in an environment where their strengths are celebrated.
The school’s academic dean, Stacy Guerrero, said the mission is to support all students whether they have a learning disorder or not. Guerrero called literacy “a gift” that teachers need to make accessible to students. Twenty years ago, Guerrero began her education career as a first-grade teacher, and she knew right away she wasn’t prepared to teach children how to read. She was missing the knowledge that Celebrate Dyslexia Schools offers kids. “This is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to begin this mission with Ms. Dean,” Guerrero said. “Not just for our campus, but to be the model for students and school districts. We hope we can make that voice heard across our country that this is what needs to be done for all teachers, students and families who have struggled not to have access to these reading opportunities.”
Lindsey Larson, the school’s associate principal, was the fourth-grade teacher who taught Jonah and Jordan. Dean said Larson gave her sons an opportunity to thrive. “They were very smart,” Larson said. “They just needed that extra explicit instruction.” Though not formally trained, Larson read the book “Overcoming Dyslexia” and immersed herself with information on the disorder. “That’s when I realized there was a disservice by not training teachers to handle these kinds of learning disabilities effectively,” Larson said. “That’s where Celebrate Dyslexia will fill the gap and make sure all teachers who come through our doors have the ability to work with students of special needs.” Larson said the certified academic language therapists will teach all classes and get students the intervention they need to be successful. Dean also has partnered with the University of Texas at San Antonio to include dyslexia training in its teacher preparation program. She’s working with state medical foundations to help families affected by dyslexia get support through medical providers and school systems. “I’m always relieved when I talk to parents who have kindergarten through second grade students and beyond,” Dean said. “Now, I can offer them a solution.”
That solution started years ago at a dining room table, where Dean and her family still gather. When Dean looks at the polished wood, she sees more than a shiny surface. It’s a workspace where a concerned mother saw how hard her sons were trying to learn.
Those experiences led to a better understanding of their studies, Dean said, and inclusion in a community where her sons know they’re not alone.
