As the Zoom tutoring continues, both my students and I have learned to adapt for the most part. I learned that what made Orton-Gillingham great for in-person learning is the same as what makes it great for distance learning. For me, at least, strong plans and clear goals are the heart of each lesson. For my students, a cheerful face on the screen with a plan to chase away another layer of language cobwebs from the brain is what really matters.

That is not to say that Zoom funnies don’t happen to us, because they do! Many dyslexic students have difficulties understanding spoken language. The International Dyslexia Association’s year 2000 definition of dyslexia indicates that dyslexia affects both written and oral language, so it would follow that many students misunderstand what is said. That is often where the funny moments of a lesson occur, even in person, but more often by my voice coming through the computer’s audio.

Recently, I was working with Callie, one of my more advanced students, on base words and suffixes. Dyslexic students are often surprised to learn that many long words can be broken down into base words and suffixes, and that the meaning can be extracted by understanding the suffixes’ meanings. Callie and I were going through a drill where I gave her a base word plus a suffix, and she repeated the parts, then gave me the complete word and told me the meaning based on the suffix. I called out the combination, “state plus ment,” expecting her to come up with the complete word “statement.” Imagine my smile of surprise as she gave me this response: “Steak plus mint would be steakmint.” She hurried on to ask about where to get mints designed to clear one’s breath of the effects of a big steak dinner, saying her dad could really use some of those steak mints!

Callie may one day invent and successfully market steak mints, because a whole lot of the cool things out there were dreamed up by dyslexic entrepreneurs. But for now, we talked about how ment, the suffix, sounds a whole lot like mint, the breath saver. Talking through a potential word misunderstanding will help Callie avoid it in the future. Her dad is on his own for taking care of that lingering Texas Road House effect.