When the Bermuda Centre for Creative Learning moved across town to its existing location on the corner of Cedar Avenue and Victoria Street, principal Cindy Corday struggled to reassemble a bookshelf.

“A 12-year-old girl appeared and asked if she could take a look at it,” Ms Corday said.

The principal left the room for a minute. When she came back the student had finished putting the large piece of furniture back together on her own with no schematic.

“During that period, she did not know how to read,” Ms Corday said.

Like many young people at BCCL, the girl had dyslexia, a condition of neurodevelopmental origin that mainly impacts a person’s reading, writing and spelling.

People with dyslexia generally have average to above average intelligence. Some experts, such as Ronald Davis, author of The Gift of Dyslexia, argue that people with dyslexia often have a talent for activities that require visual-spatial or mechanical skills.

Thirty per cent of engineers, for example, are thought to have dyslexia, compared with 7 per cent to 8 per cent of people in the general workforce.

However, Ms Corday said for a child struggling with reading, dyslexia may not feel like much of a benefit.

“The gift is not realised at the time of diagnosis,” Ms Corday said. “If the child has supports in place, it may be realised later.”

BCCL deputy head Lindsey Sirju said people with dyslexia learn differently.

Educators Ms Corday and Ms Sirju got to know each other years ago, while working on a teacher resource guide for the Bermuda National Trust.

The seasoned educators found they shared a concern for children with learning challenges.

“Too many children were not getting the learning interventions they needed,” Ms Corday said. “They were in danger of falling through the cracks.”

Early in her career she founded two early learning schools in the United States before returning to Bermuda to work in classrooms.

Later, she was the co-ordinator of the Child Development Programme, and then education director at the Bermuda National Trust.

Ms Sirju once taught children with severe and profound learning issues, and worked as an educational therapist at ABC Speech Language Pathology.

Initially, Ms Corday thought Bermuda students just needed proper learning assessments and then their individual schools would provide the extra support they needed. That did not always happen.

“Bermuda needed a place to meet the needs of these children,” Ms Corday said.

She founded BCCL with Ms Sirju and the parent of a child with learning differences, Lisa Smart.

“Lindsey and I were blown away when we started assessing children as they came to us,” Ms Corday said. “Many parents didn’t really know how far behind their children were in school. It is very difficult when you assess a 10-year-old and find they are reading at a third grade level, and their parents had no idea.”

There is a 6:1 student-to-teacher ratio at the school.

BCCL offers reading instruction in the Orton Gillingham method, also used by the Reading Clinic. It is a structured literacy approach that breaks down reading and spelling into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, and builds on these skills over time.

“We know Orton Gillingham works,” Ms Sirju said. “Realistically, you could use it for any student.”

Pupils practise reading in small groups with others at the same reading level. When students graduate to the next reading tier, the student and staff member makes a celebratory call to the child’s parents to tell them the good news.

In the school library, books are sorted into baskets, arranged by reading level so that children never have to hunt for a book that they can read.

There are also pedal bikes tucked into various corners of the school. During breaks, students take their bikes across the street to Victoria Park and ride around.

There are staff members, and an occupational therapist on hand to teach them how to ride, if they need some help.

Ms Corday estimated that one in five children in Bermuda has dyslexia, meaning there are about 1,700 locally.

“It is hereditary,” she said. “Many parents will say to us, yes, my brother, my mom or my uncle learnt this way.”

With the prevalence of dyslexia being what it is, they believe that every teacher in Bermuda should have an understanding of dyslexia and other learning challenges in the classroom.

Back when Ms Corday was a classroom teacher in the school system, she told her principal that one of the students needed to be tested for dyslexia.

The principal dismissed her concerns saying that the child was learning Portuguese and was therefore confused.

“I was talking about the child’s patterns in spelling and reading,” Ms Corday said.

The principal told her to just give the child a little more time.

Ms Corday calls this the “wait and fail” method. When students do not have their learning differences addressed their confidence suffers. They may shut down in the classroom, or become the class clown or troublemaker, while falling further and further behind their peers.”

The idea at BCCL is to get students back to their proper grade level. When that happens some students go back to the mainstream school system, while others prefer to stay at BCCL.

“Some parents ask how long will it take to get them back to grade level,” Ms Corday said. “Every child’s journey is different.”

One of their founding students graduated two years ago from university with a degree in journalism. Another former student is studying to become an airline pilot.

“We have another student who wants to work in government,” Ms Sirju said. “We also have some students who want to go into the sciences, and one who took a course in air conditioning and wants to be an electrician. Others want to work in a shop. Every student’s journey is different.”

There are parents who resist getting their child tested for learning challenges because they do not want the child stigmatised, or labelled.

Ms Corday said there is nothing to be ashamed of. “Everybody has something that they are dealing with,” she said. “Just get your child the help they need, as early as possible.”

Ms Sirju said there is power in labels. “It depends on what you do with them,” she said.

• For more information, seewww.bermudacreativelearning.com.