Overcoming dyslexia: TC West senior Alyssa Masiewicz finishes high school strong after early educational struggles
Jun. 2—TRAVERSE CITY — When she was learning how to read, Alyssa Masiewicz would try to memorize the shapes of words or the storylines of the books she and her parents would read together.
She confused i's with e's and b's with d's and, across the board, she had trouble sounding out words on the page.
As a first and second grader, Masiewicz hoped no one would recognize how much trouble she had with reading, writing and math. She worried about what it meant about her that she was falling behind her peers. The gap between her and her classmates felt insurmountable.
The fear that she was somehow less intelligent than the other kids in her class filled her head. Her frustrations with herself and her abilities grew and grew as she watched others move on and excel in class while she felt increasingly more lost.
Alyssa's mom, Pam Masiewicz, first noticed something was off when she was reading with her daughter one night and Alyssa mistook the word "shop" for the word "stop." When Pam tried to get Alyssa to go back and sound the word out again, Alyssa's fear and exasperation came rushing out.
"She just got really frustrated and said, 'I can't do this,'" Pam said. "I was like, 'Well, maybe I'm pushing too hard.'"
Alyssa's teachers said her test scores all looked good, but Pam felt something was definitely off, she was just unsure what. Alyssa's journey towards reading and writing proficiency was much different from her son's.
"I thought I was stupid and dumb and I would come home crying to my mom, just wondering what was wrong because I had such a hard time in school," Alyssa said. "Some teachers didn't really understand. They couldn't really help me because they didn't really know how to."
Pam was heartbroken to see Alyssa's insecurities about school unravel. She typed "learning disabilities" into Google and began reading about dyslexia online at the Bright Solutions for Dyslexia website, a resource for parents and teachers. The symptoms all sounded familiar.
According to Bright Solutions for Dyslexia, dyslexia is when someone has a neurological difference that complicates the acquisition and processing of language. It's a lifelong learning disability that can show a range of symptoms in kids, including difficulty with handwriting, inability to sound out an unknown word and the tendency to substitute similar-looking words, among many others.
Pam finally had Alyssa tested when she was in second grade, and the results showed that Alyssa had a moderate degree of dyslexia.
For Alyssa, it was a relief to know that there was an explanation for her struggle. For Pam, she was worried how things would pan out.
"You always want the very best for your kids and you don't want them to have to suffer or have any challenges," Pam said. "I was scared. I was really concerned about how her education would go and how that would hinder her."
Pam reached out to the Grand Traverse Dyslexia Association and set Alyssa up in early morning tutoring sessions with Martha Lepine. Alyssa loved reading, despite her struggles with it, and, even at a young age, she was determined and self-motivated, Lepine said.
"She was just all in, right from the get-go," Lepine said. "She was a child that was so self-motivated. This wasn't her mom saying 'You've got to do this'. It was her saying, 'I need to do this.'"
With tutoring, that gap between Alyssa and her peers began to shrink.
Around 5th grade, Alyssa caught up to her peers in school and even surpassed some of them, so she graduated from the tutoring program. She also began advocating for herself more at that time. Instead of shutting down when lessons didn't click for her, she would ask questions and request further assistance from her teachers without the shame she felt before.
Going into her junior year of high school, Alyssa returned to the Grand Traverse Dyslexia Association for tutoring in preparation for the SATs with Patricia Dolanski, the founder of the organization and a dyslexic herself. She calls Alyssa one of the organization's "success stories."
"She is such a hard worker. Every accolade that she gets at graduation she's deserved and then probably 10 more," Dolanski said. "I'm just really proud of her."
During her sophomore year of high school, Alyssa began editing for Traverse City West Senior High School's 25-student newspaper, The Occidentalist. She forged great friendships and learned leadership skills at the paper and, in her junior year, she became the paper's editor-in-chief, a position she would hold through her senior year as well.
"If you told me freshman year that I'd be the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, I don't think I would have believed you," Alyssa said. "And I definitely would not have believed you in elementary school."
This weekend, Alyssa will graduate summa cum laude from TC West as a member of the National Honors Society with a scholarship to Northwestern Michigan College.
She plans to study nursing, like her grandmother.
If nursing doesn't work out, Alyssa said she's also considering journalism and social work as areas for her to study as well.
Standing at the line between high school student and graduate, it has been years since Alyssa felt stuck behind everyone else, hopeless and unable to advocate for herself. Thinking back to that 7 year old who feared that the gap between her peers and herself was too wide to bridge, Alyssa is proud of herself and what she's been able to overcome.
"I've always strived to do my best, and if I'm struggling with something, I know I can figure it out, especially after all these years and with my struggle with dyslexia," Alyssa said. "If I can overcome that, I can overcome anything."
