Famous People with Learning Difficulties LD or ADHD? Maybe
He played the cool character The Fonz on Happy Days. While he played this confident character on screen, he had little confidence in the classroom due to his unidentified dyslexia. His disability was often mistaken as laziness and stupidity. Despite his long struggle with dyslexia, he is now co-author of the children’s book series, Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Underachiever. This series is inspired by his experiences growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia. He is also the Honorary Chairman of Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities organization.
This well known actor was a diagnosed dyslexic. He spent his youth struggling with his learning disability and turned to the stage for an outlet. He believes his disability helped create a strong work ethic, which helped launch his successful career. Speaking about his dyslexia, he said, "I had to work three times as hard to get two-thirds of the way.”
As a child he was labeled as slow. He clerked in a village grocery store. He suggested putting slow- moving merchandise on a counter and selling it for five cents. This venture was so successful that it was continued with new goods. He became the principal founder of a chain of five and ten cent stores.
This multi-talented Diva has won an Academy Award, Emmy, Grammy, and Golden Globe all without finishing high school. At age 16, she found school too difficult and dropped out. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she realized she had suffered from dyslexia her whole life. Learning with dyslexia was a challenge, “Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening.”
When he was 12 years- old, he could not read, and he remained deficient in reading all his life. However, he could memorize entire lectures which was how he got through school. He became a famous general during WW II.
He was slow in school work and did not have a successful school experience, but later became a well- known movie producer and cartoonist.
This noted Englishman had much difficulty in school. He later became a national leader and an English Prime Minister.
This young boy had difficulty reading but was able to write some of the world's best loved stories.
This boy could not talk until the age of four. He did not learn to read until he was nine. His teachers considered him to be mentally slow, unsociable and a dreamer. He failed the entrance examination for college. Ultimately, he developed the theory of relativity.
He is a famous movie star. He learns his lines by listening to an audio recording. He suffers from dyslexia.
This young man had much difficulty reading and throughout his life was unable to read well. However, he was the governor of the state of New York for four terms and later won congressional approval to be appointed vice president of the United States.
Long before she was diagnosed with dyslexia, kids in school called her “dumb.” But her mother told her not to listen to them and said she could be anything she wanted to be. This celebrity believed her and grew up to become a comedian and talk-show host—and one of only about a dozen people to have won a Grammy, an Academy Award, an Emmy and a Tony Award.
In 1971, he started his first brokerage office with the belief that the stock market should be open to everyone (which at the time, it wasn’t). The company grew to be one of the biggest in the industry and it revolutionized the financial industry. Despite knowing that he had extreme difficulty taking notes in class, flunking English two times, and struggling in foreign language classes, he did not have a name for his disability until his son was diagnosed with dyslexia in the 1980’s (his son was in grade school, Schwab was 58). He then saw both sides of the struggle with dyslexia—one, his own personal challenges with dyslexia; and, two, the challenge of getting his son the proper support he needed to achieve his dreams and have a healthy self-esteem. He founded Schwab Learning to help the parents of children diagnosed with dyslexia, and created sparktop.org for kids diagnosed with dyslexia. It's painful. People decide you aren't working hard enough or are slow. I didn't quit, because I was really good in other things, terrific in math and science and anything that didn't deal with words. I was good in sports. I had good skills in dealing with people.”He graduated from Stanford University, with the help of his strengths in math and economics and his friends who took notes for him in class. While he may be a slow reader and finds note-taking from lectures nearly impossible, he is a quick thinker in many other areas. He once explained, he explains, "I'm real good at concepts and visualization. I get into a meeting with business associates and I can process all kinds of stuff and get to the conclusion much faster than other people who have to go step by step, processing things sequentially.”
What characteristics did these individuals possess that helped them be successful? Brainstorm with others in your group to generate of list of qualities or factors that helped them be successful despite their learning difficulties.