It is an absolute joy to see someone effortless write their first page in an hour. I remember only too well how hard it was for me!

I spent most of my time between 5 to 7 standing outside the classroom because as a profound dyslexic I could not write or read at all. One day having stood outside the class all day I was sent to the head teacher as I had pointed out that I then couldn't do the homework. As I had not been in class all day whatever hope had I anyway. I had chairs thrown at me ... I was Isolated at a desk on my own with 2 feet all round so I couldn't communicate with anyone to ask for help as my teacher realised I had one friend in the class who would spell for me on the quiet. No one else in the whole class ever spoke to me. 

Then there was the endless humiliation of the spelling tests ... 

At 7 I was told by a teacher in front of the whole class having struggled to read a story aloud that "I was too stupid to be in the school and should be in the school down the road for the mentally retarded".

I was moved to a new school. The whole time I so excelled at maths I could do the 6th class maths in 1st class. In the new school I was motivated to finally do well by an amazing teacher who saved my life. I had him for two wonderful years. Then it took a wobble with the next teacher as I was now on the road to doing everything brilliantly, when I asked what I had done wrong in a test I was mocked in front of the whole class for being an annoying perfectionist. Somehow I had the strength to ignore this blip and keep going. 

In that year of that school I was also accused of doing something I didn't and had my honesty questioned in front of the whole class till I had melt down again and the equally amazing head came in and sorted it all out and I was never picked on again. I left that school to read my first book. 

 On my first day of secondary school I had to defend my right to stay in mainstream English class. There was no way in this world I was going to "veggie" English! I had decided I was going to university and I was aware I needed honours English for my course. I was staying. But it was a humiliating battle that took place in front of the whole class and set the tone for my next six years. 

By my final year in school the same remedial teacher met the department of education official to tell them I didn't deserve support as I didn't have a "real problem", I had done too well in school in all honours subjects including English. She discussed my "case" openly with me in the school corridor for all to hear. 

At the same time when I was desperately looking for someone to read my exam papers to me, my other teachers were openly humiliating me in class for my writing, spelling, reading and most ridiculously not correcting my mock papers because I hadn't spelt their names right. I was stopped in the corridor in front of other students to complain about how hard it was to correct my exams. 

Then there are all the teachers who continually for 6 years made me read out loud in class - what's in paragraph  blah Naoisé? I didn't know what page we were on never mind where we were on the page! I had panic attacks in certain classes for years.  Teachers asked me to read off the board and then spoke to me in pigeon English when I got it wrong.

The gap, transition year was the worst as every day was new and I never knew what was waiting at school for me. I had to read Shakespeare aloud amongst other awfulness and everyone had so much more time on their hands to bully me. 

I'd love to say it's all different now but my students are always surprised I understand them so well - I see the humiliation in them like tattoos and many cry at our meetings as I'm the first person who has been able to understand then. It's overwhelming for them. 

When will adults realise the importance of their behaviour? You set up how everyone else will treat that person, that child. Whatever you say and do in public sets the ground rules for the environment and what can and cannot be done to that person. 

After my first day in English where I needed to defend my right to be in the same class as everyone else I spent years picking my books out of the bin in every class I went into, because I was rubbish. I spent years been used as target practice to have objects thrown at me repeatedly in the locker room. No one wanted to be my friend. Every table I went to sit at was "full" - and worse that I will not talk about. Teachers were often deaf, dumb and blind to what happened to me. 

It's called respect. It's a two way process. You earn it. It's not assumed  and it doesn't correlate with your title or how many letters there are before or after your name. 

The first thing I do with every new student I meet is to shake their hand.  They are my equal. 

What you do in public sets the private behaviour FOREVER, not just that one moment in class. 

Dr. Naoisé  Expression Developist™

January - I started the year with a full page in the Irish Examineron Homework... A topic I was to be later introduced in November as a "leading expert on." This was never an aspiration of mine... it wasn't in the PhD! But  you can't start a year much better than a whole page in a National newspaper The Homework Club was three which passed in a haze of activity!

February - This was the formation month of the Confidence Club and we were set to work in the background on the logo, web design and all the rest.

March - I wrote The The Purple View to start to bring all the methods and research of the last three years of the Homework Club together.

One review for the book Review for The Purple View

I didn't go to Oprah for the sake of the school and the students .. accepting the opportunity would have meant upending the terms and evaluations of the mocks - when the results can out in August and September I was really happy with my decision! We also started the use of "sound" research in the background to put into place for May and June when everyone would be really stressed! We had a sound guru come to explain to the whole team what the difference frequencies of music do to our brain. I have now taken the work to use on ADD and Aspergers students to create outlets for stress. We are also using meditation to help with Confidence!

April - I was back on the radio to support French parents who were boycotting homework in France - French Primary school students are not suppose to get any! I couldn't agree more. There really is more to everyone's life than homework.

May - This was the start of the methods and environment creation going outside The Homework Club. I was part of a business workshop in Cork where we set up the room and the experence to suit all the different learning styles in the room! Really exciting to see the environment created for adults!

June - it goes without saying that the whole time all of these other "highlights" were taking place I was still running a school and looking after a large amount of students. We had survived the character crushing season of the mocks and were now in the throws of the exams. I had high hopes for everyone and though to be honest for the first time ever there were a few people who were so borderline we had to put all our efforts into keeping everyone positive. I think it was the worst year to sit the leaving in decades but everyone got through! and even the people who we worried most about made it on to a course ... a path for the future! We packed up the school, The Homework Club which was a hugely emotional time for everyone involved but I feel it was time to move on to the next stage and keep developing. 

July - no work as I got married! Though I did wake up on the morning of my birthday with the term Expression Developist™ - I don't fit in anyone else's box so I made a new one ...

August - I came back to head straight off to the London Olympics ... it was the most fantastic experience to be in London for this special occasion... I learnt so much and filled note books on what I saw which will all go towards the new book. For me it did inspire!

August also saw the start of the Confidence Club and being able to support students across the planet not just in a small area of Dublin...I also started formally working in the business world using my own brand of profiling to reinvent business people, Purple Profiling. This has meant me working across the globe and has increased my understanding of how the patterns I saw in a school in Blanchardstown are universal for all ages, cultures and environments! I can't wait to write the book! Of course the Leaving cert results were amazing - and I always wish I could tell the stories of determination and success. 

September - My favourite time of the year as it is Fringe Season! I had a ball as usual and my favourite show was "I'm not ADHD I'm just Bold". This was the month of the amazing Junior Cert Results - I see every year that it makes such a difference when we start working with people younger. We can really set people up for life rather than trying to get them through and find all the alternative paths ... It felt like together we had proven everyone wrong about what dyslexics in particular can and can't do!

I was part of my first training session at Croke Park and mentored my first athletes "outside" of the school environment .. setup the workshop environment for a training session at the University of Limerick... all really exciting on top of the Confidence Club and Business Profiling that has been ongoing since August!

October- Wrote a book proposal for the new book and am actively seeking a publisher! It seemed to be photo competition season... my other passion in life - I also finished a painting! It seemed to help me think away from the computer or pen! It's been about putting everything together that I have learnt to date...

November - Saw a return to radio a year since I had first started the debate on homework. There has been a radical change in how we now approach it too - since I haven't got it abolished yet, I'm working directly with parents to make it doable and reduce the time and stress spent on it. If you can't beat it conquer it! I also had several meetings that it has felt like I have spent two years prepping and working myself up to. I was filmed by RTE television as part of program to be aired in January ... This month has felt like the setup for next year!

December - will be London 12 12 12  .....

My Year Dr. Naoisé now an Expression Developist™ 

Watch this space for more information over the next few days! 

We are always complaining about the weight - but has anyone looked at the contents? 

I wish I could change it every year... My favourite part of going back to school - the only part I enjoyed was the new pens, markers and coloured stationary my Gran Aunt gave me from her shop in Tipperary. I blame her partly for my love of colour stationary but I also know its vital to my learning as a highly visual learner. 

There is not enough colour in our school bags! All I would like to see is colour, colour, colour. Coloured pens, markers, and most importantly coloured paper. 

The worst colour to write with is black and the worst paper to read from is white. Why then are we in 2012 still using these tools? 

The paper is school copybooks is too small. For many a student the paper becomes an obstacle that constrains them not a wonderful blank canvas to create on. The lines are too constraining - it's all about being tidy and neat and ordered... Not about what wonderful concepts, connections or ideas or inspirations you are having in the classroom. 

I would love to see constructive doodling on a minimum of A4 paper and bigger a standard practise. 

We have shown over almost 4 years of work with students including many with severe learning difficulties that making the area larger, removing the lines and adding colour opens up a whole world of written expression for them. 

Similarly if we want there to be a great deal of structure and to make out a plan we use highly organised paper, squared paper! Still it's not a linear exercise - we don't want linear thinking, therefore we NEVER use Lined paper!

I have known many of our students to be given out to from drawing in class - these students need to create visual maps to remember by - its instinctive for them. They all grow up to be notebook lovers - they go everywhere with one and are always drawing ideas, maps, brainstorms and doodles in meetings and on the phone for the test of their lives - so why not at school? 

I have never understood the point of hand writing? It only works for a small percentage of students. The rest are left feeling they can't "write" no they can't form letters in a very limited obsessively structured copybook! Many of these students fail to make the connections on bigger and smaller letters, the order of the alphabet, how the letters are formed, what words start with these letters and of course they stop trying to write creatively because they can't "write" 

If we suddenly have them make the letters from play-dough, make connections to well know words, work on large coloured paper and use stencils to show the formation of the letters - they suddenly become masters! 

Why do we have to do joint writing? We don't type jointed? No one easily can read joint? We don't read books in joint writing? What is the obsession with joint writing? For some students who have finally grown confidence in themselves and finally feel they have a voice and are creative we now move the "goal posts" once more and make them feel this magic art of "writing" is beyond them. 

This reminds me of a very well used example of continuing behaviour through suggestion. It means we never ask why we do something we just follow the order. A woman cooks Sunday roast and cuts the two ends off the meat before she puts it into the pot. Her husband over dinner asks why she cut the ends off - her mother is also at the dinner and the wife says 'because that's what mum did' - so the husband asks her mother who responds because 'that's the way my mother cooked it' - rarely it turns out the great grandmother is alive and so they ring her and ask her why she cut the ends off to cook the roast? The answer - 'because my pot was too small' so three generations of people have cooked the roast the same way never asking why they cut the ends off! 

I feel much of modern education can be attributed to the same suggestive behaviour. I'll continue in the next article why I feel the books shouldn't be in the bag... 

Dr Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)

(Dublin, Ireland, Monday September 3rd 2012).

A leading academic has finally been able to prove over the weekend that Ireland’s leaving cert students have been set up to fail due to being left on borderline marks that can make the difference between passing or failing and getting a higher grade.

Dr. Naoisé O’Reilly Ph.D is concerned that she has witnessed categorical proof that there’s no consistency within the exam papers which leads to a domino effect and ‘it’s pot luck on how well you do overall in the exams.’

The Irish woman says, ‘sure this is going to rock the boat but I’m used to starting national debates and young people’s lives are being messed with here.  Afterall, parents and students don’t have a voice and the majority of teachers I speak with tell me they’re afraid to go out on a limb and stick their neck out.’

A simply algorithm could have changed all this and Dr. O’Reilly says, ‘in fact I wrote an algorithm that has been working successfully in an Irish 3rd level institution for a number of years now.’

Dr. O’Reilly started computer programming aged 8 despite being written off all the way through school due to a severe learning difficulty.

Naoisé looks forward to meeting the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn later this month and putting a case before him for a decentralised process where schools have more responsibility for the exam process and there can be exceptional quality assurance in place to prevent any inconsistencies.