High Achievers with Learning Disabilities Honored

When Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz was growing up in Rochester, New York, he was held back twice in the fifth grade and isolated with three other children as "the unteachables."

At 58, the poet discovered he had a learning disability, which likely accounted for his struggles with language that continue to this day. He's currently working on a book about growing up with dyslexia.

Schultz was in Westport Friday night to accept an award from Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities, an organization founded 10 years ago by Westporter Jane Ross to support parents of children with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder.

Such children, although they may suffer in conventional classrooms, may benefit from their disability with appropriate support to realize unusual talents in the arts, science, athletics and engineering, according to the SKLD Web site.

"Our brains are wired differently," said Schultz, whose improbably-titled book of poems, "Disaster," won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. "We think in a compensatory way."

Schultz was one of a number of highly remarkable people honored at the Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities' 10th anniversary benefit event, "The Sky's The Limit," at the Westport Country Playhouse.

William King Barnett, 14, is an eighth-grader from Encino, Calif., who accepted the organization's Junior Achievement Award.

In an interview before the award ceremony, Barnett related the great sense of frustration he once experienced in school, having difficulty focusing, applying fine motor skills and just dozing off.

But from the age of 5, he has been a prolific writer and illustrator of stories with complex characters and plot development. They all involve children who solve problems. His work astonished his second-grade teacher.

Described as a prodigy by his mother, Paula, William King Barnett was encouraged by his family and teachers to study piano and musical composition as another creative outlet.

He's now a fluent composer of classical and jazz pieces. He has difficulty as a pianist because development of his finger coordination lags, but that has not stopped him from composing works for instruments he has neither seen nor heard before, according to his mother.

His main difficulty with writing is that new ideas occur to him so fast he can't get them all down.

Melissa Rey, 16, a sophomore at Kennedy High School in Manchester, Missouri, winner of the Youth Achievement Award, was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was in the first grade. Children with dyslexia frequently have difficulty organizing their thoughts and following sequences.

Through years of special help, she learned to read by breaking down the language into manageable segments.

Rey said her disability became a "secret weapon" that helped her excel in dancing, soccer, music and drama - and being chosen in 2008 as "America's Top Young Scientist"in the Discover 3M Young Scientist Challenge at the NASA Space Center.

Her winning project involved the Doppler effect, the phenomenon of shifting sound wave frequency and wavelengths from moving objects.

"I needed to be taught examples to succeed in learning concepts," she said. Her winning entry, fittingly, used the example of a car's horn sounding off as the car is in motion.

Rey is active in sharing the skills she has learned - "tools to succeed in life" - by conducting a "webinar" for middle school students across the country and running a weeklong summer science camp for underprivileged girls in St. Louis.

Also honored was Nanci Bell, co-founder and director of Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, which provides programs and services supporting skills development in reading, spelling and language comprehension.

Gregory R. Bayliss of Greenwich won a Certificate of Honorable Mention for his determination in overcoming a learning disability to attain high scholastic and athletic achievements.

Former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, an honorary board member who has overcome his own learning disabilities, served as emcee for the event.