College and Career Success for Students with LD

Filled with strategies, and resources, this book uses the author’s groundbreaking research about successful adults with learning disabilities, to promote self-advocacy. This work is brimming with useful and practical information. It is easily understood and embraced by students with learning disabilities, their parents, guidance counselors, and stakeholders in the fields of both higher education and special education.

A chance encounter with an unfortunate bird provides the springboard for Harry Sylvester’s marvelous reflections on confronting and conquering his learning disabilities. Legacy of the Blue Heron: Living with Learning Disabilities is a moving personal account of coping with learning disabilities by an individual with severe dyslexia who became an engineer, businessman, boat-builder, and president of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. This entertaining storyteller’s experiences lead to wise, common-sense advice for solving many problems faced by students, parents, and educators.

This anthology of poetry is organized to show the experience of a person who takes charge of her own life despite difficulties and challenges. Fifty-three poems and three short stories describe the experience of growing up. The author, a women who wrote these poems during her childhood and teenage years, experienced a difference currently called by many names; specific learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dylexia. She was in an ordinary class and received virtually no help for the challenges she experienced due to her handicaps.The poetry was published in journals of poetry, newspapers, and magazines when she was a teenager. Mountain Books asked the author to organize these poems into an anthology because the publisher believed they should be shared with today’s readers. They inspire and emmpower all people who have stuggled to overcome these difficulties. They sensitize parents and teachers who work to help children and adults who struggle. They show personal growth and encourage the reader to take responsibility for their own actions and experiences.

Instead of promoting quick fixes, this handbook shows students how to adapt their studies to their own strengths and weaknesses. Tutor in a Book guides students through realistic and personalized approaches, hands-on worksheets, and short vignettes describing the academic obstacles many students face and overcome. Tutor in a Book includes strategies for Organization: finding the system that works best and maintaining it; Time Management: how to finish school work with time to spare; and Study Skills: introducing subject-specific approaches and multi-sensory techniques for a personalized study regimen.

The now-retired founder of Kinko’s mixes autobiographical anecdote with large doses of business advice in this candid, conversational account of his entrepreneurial rise. His autobiographical sections explain how a man with dyslexia, an uncontrollable temper and a mistrust of authority managed to grow a tiny California copy shop into a $2-billion-a-year company.

Christopher Lee was the author’s student at The University of Georgia, and Faking It: A Look Into the Mind of a Creative Learner is the story of his struggle to come to terms with learning disabilities. Using modifications and accommodations and putting in lots of hard work, Christopher graduated in 1990, and this book was published in 1992. Christopher looked forward to graduating because he thought his major struggles with LD would end with school. However, he quickly realized that the world of work offered a whole new array of challenges. He has spent the last eight years reframing his disability into something positive and has learned how to use assistive technology to compensate for problems with reading, writing and spelling in the workplace.