Faking It

by Carol Beimborn

Freddie Adams is an outgoing, charismatic and capable woman. She has a strong work ethic and varied skills that have enabled her to obtain jobs and secure promotions to responsible positions.

In school, she was told that she had dyslexia, a condition that makes it difficult to integrate visual information, like letters and words. Consequently, school was difficult for Freddie, and struggles with reading often caused her embarrassment. Ultimately, she dropped out of school. Her lack of a high school diploma limited her job opportunities, but she always had a job because of her strong work ethic and superior problem solving skills. According to Freddie she “always acted confident but wasn’t really confident because I couldn’t read. People would ask me about topics and I didn’t know what to say.” People didn’t know that she didn’t know how to read because she is such a good communicator and she knew how to “fake it.”

Freddie was afraid that her sons would have difficulty with reading, so she, as a single mother, provided private education for her two sons. After they became educated adults, relatives convinced her to return to school. After trying a few programs that just weren’t a good fit, an educator suggested that Freddie check out the Neighborhood Learning Center (NLC) of Eastbrook Church. After having “faked it” or guessing a word based on its beginning letters, she is learning to read, sounding out syllables (“I never knew you could break words into syllables”), and combining syllables to read words.