Meet the NCLD – National Center for Learning Disabilities

The National Center for Learning Disabilities is actively working to improve the lives of the millions of people in the US living with Learning Disabilities. Recently, I attended an information session to learn about the goals of the organization. Not only do they strive to provide important information and learning materials about the topic to parents of children with learning disabilities, but they are also working to empower parents to become community leaders in support of fair education. If you are interested in becoming an advocate, visit the NCLD website at http://www.ncld.org/.

One of my main goals as a parent is fostering a love of learning. My children are very young, so although the subjects of learning disabilities have not touched our home yet, it is an important topic to me for two reasons. First of all, I want my children to respect and accept all their peers. I firmly agree with the zero tolerance policies towards bullying and I plan to teach them the value of positive words by using them in our home. I also recognize that promoting opportunities for learning that benefit those with disabilities can really benefit everyone if implemented correctly. We can’t expect all students to sit in a box and learn the same way. Why not offer kids the opportunity to explore, share work, and demonstrate knowledge in new ways?

It seems like learning disabilities shouldn’t be a signal to hold anyone back. Instead, realizing that they are prevalent should help us expand our teaching world. Let’s make learning interesting and fun for every child, and then keep it interesting and fun all through our lives. Let’s make educators heros and children who want to learn superstars. Grades and trophies should no longer be our strongest marks of pride. We can count on our children to find enough satisfaction in the act of growing with an education in the right setting.

I want to thank my friends Whitney from http://www.mommieswithstyle.com/ and Colleen from http://classymommy.com/ for hosting the luncheon and introducing me to the NCLD. I learned a lot of valuable information about the subject and cleared up several misconceptions while I was there. Namely, understanding the definition of a learning disability made it clear to me that we need to work as a group to lift up these students. Many of these students are so smart and possess incredible leadership qualities. We cannot undervalue them with a negative report card.

Definition of Specific learning disability (SLD)

IDEA defines SLD as “A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations.” (Via: http://www.ncld.org/parents-child-disabilities/idea-guide/chapter-1-pre-referral-services)