I've included the information below to give you a better understanding of who I am, my background and my professional experience.
I feel it is important for you to understand that Visual Reading and the services we offer, are based on my own personal experiences, my own journey through education and years of research and practical experience in the field of learning and reading.
I want you to understand that I have been where you, or your child, may be, and I have been able to overcome the educational challenges that I faced, and I am passionate about helping others to do the same.
I am a neurodivergent academic and sociologist who has worked at all levels of education as a teacher, lecturer and teacher trainer. You can view my LinkedIn profile here.
My particular interests are in how people learn and how they fail. Since the mid 1990’s, my primary focus has been on inclusive learning, dyslexia, and neurodiversity, and I have published extensively.
On a personal level, I take great pleasure in spending time with my 4 children and my 3 grandchildren.
You can also listen to my songs and all the instruments I play on Spotify and other streaming platforms under the name of Ragtime Willie Cooper...
I failed to learn to read until I was 10. This was despite intensive phonics by both school teachers and my parents, and a younger sister who learned to read before she went to school. Phonics made almost no sense to me at all. I found it abusive.
My saving grace at school was art, sport, and a love of the beautiful patterns made by maths. It was when trying to make sense of a popular book that my father had bought me about the history of maths (Mathematics for the Millions, Hogben, L.), that I realised that I understood the diagrams and formulas, and could begin to pick out meaning from the text. By the time I had finished the book, I could read. But before this, the anxiety my parents felt for my educational career led to an assessment before I was sent away to boarding school.
The assessment essentially said that I was not stupid (which surprised my parents), but I was struggling with literacy. Which is as close to an assessment of dyslexia as could be achieved in South Africa in 1962. Although this led to my mother helping me handle dysgraphia through art (the letters became based on animals), other than this, I received no additional support at all throughout my education.
I went on to achieve English Language and Maths ‘O’-levels at 14. Education had started to become interesting until I attempted English, Maths and Physics A-levels, when it all began to unravel again. I always struggled with exams. I failed physics and got unexpected ‘D’s in both Maths and English. It meant I lost all my university choices.
However, I scraped onto a Social Science degree course (I was determined to become a university student) at Enfield College of Technology (which later became a part of Middlesex University), and found sociology sang to me. The big picture analysis of social interactions were ideal for my way of thinking. I passed with a 2:1, and on the basis of a dissertation about the politics of education, I was accepted onto an MPhil at London University’s Institute of Education (now part of UCL). I had three motivations:
This was duly converted into a PhD. On reflection, I was lucky that I wrote my PhD at a time when universities were far more interested in ideas and analysis than the vagaries of my spelling.
I then qualified as a teacher at Goldsmith’s College, and began working in special schools in north London. During all this, I started a family, and now have 4 neurodivergent adult children who have all been very successful in education. All have degrees, two firsts and two 2:1s. Two are qualified teachers. One is a writer, and another worked for Save the Children in Rwanda. It was recognising the difficulties one of my children had with phonics that changed my career projection towards understanding dyslexia and then becoming a teacher trainer. This led to being a keynote speaker at a wide range of conferences both in the UK and abroad (including Vienna, Madrid, Sicily, and Tokyo).
I gave the 10th Annual Disability Lecture at Cambridge University in 2008 when I introduced my Bagatelle Model of Specific Learning Difficulties, and at the first Disability Conference at the London School of Economics where I introduced my Holist Manifesto.
In 2014, I instigated the ‘Festival of Dyslexic Culture- a celebration of who we are through what we create’. This also ran in 2015, based at London Metropolitan University.
Now I am focused on developing the roll out of Visual Reading with Structured Saccade Overlays.
I began teaching in special schools in London in 1978. After 4 years I transitioned to Further Education and worked with students with learning difficulties across two inner City London Colleges before becoming the Inclusive Learning Manager in 1997.
In 2001, I became a Teaching and Learning Coordinator at New College, at the University of Southampton, helping to pilot new inclusive professional degrees.
In 2003, I became a Director of LLU+ (formerly the London Language and Literacy Unit) at Southbank University. I rewrote the professional courses in dyslexia to meet the emerging criteria being established by the SpLD Assessment Standards Committee (SASC). During this process, I was also invited to become a Director of SASC to help identify and establish national professional assessment standards for specific learning difficulties.
During this time, LLU+ was commissioned to write the National Curriculum in Basic Skills for Adults. I led the writing of basic skills for students with learning difficulties.
While working at LLU+, I came across SuperReading, which had been developed by Ron Cole. For several years I helped champion this course, and persuaded Student Finance England to pay for courses through the Disabled Students Allowance (DSA). When group courses were no longer fundable, I rewrote SuperReading as an online course and SFE accepted this too for DSA funding.
During this process, I began to realise that a critical reason for SuperReading’s success with neurodivergent students was that it enabled better control over saccades. I also recognised that, while the ‘Eyehopping’ process, which was designed to widen the visual field also enabled better control over saccades, it was not designed to do this efficiently. I consequently developed the Structured Saccade Overlays©. These have two distinct benefits over SuperReading.
The first is that they enable better control without the eye strain evident when using the eyehopping materials (which limited practice to short sessions). The second is that they can be used with any reading of choice. This eliminates the need to produce large quantities of reading materials, and allows students to read what they want to read while improving their reading skills. Visual Reading with Structured Saccade Overlays has proven to produce twice the impact of SuperReading in half the time, with improved engagement and completion rates.
I am is also an international speaker at conferences. I was invited to give the Annual Disability Lecture at Cambridge University where I introduced my Bagatelle Model of Specific Learning Difficulties, and as a keynote speaker at the London School of Economics conference on Inclusive Learning.
- Qualified Teacher Status
- Certificate in Adult Dyslexia Support
- PgDip in Adult Dyslexia Diagnosis and Support
- Assessment Practising Certificate
