Shannon's story
“I struggled early on in life. Being born premature at 27 weeks just weighing 530grams and then dropping to 480grams. I had suffered a brain haemorrhage.
I was the 5th smallest baby born in Queensland, Australia at the time that did not have physical or substantial intellectual disabilities. I do however have a learning disability which made it hard for me at school. I struggled a lot with learning throughout my life and eventually put my learning on the back burner. It became too hard, I just couldn’t understand some of the basic maths and English. I only knew little maths and some English, I had a teacher call me dumb and said I wasn’t a pleasure to work with or help. Any confidence I had was gone. I became withdrawn from school and thought I must just be dumb.
Later on in life I came to the conclusion that I would just have to continue as I had been.
I started volunteering at the Clarence Plains Child and Family Centre which is where I heard about the 26Ten program. I have been asked to become a community champion leader for the program. I decided to give learning another go and signed up. Through the program I’ve gained more skills and more confidence with my maths and English. I’ve also learnt that with the right support it’s possible to learn again.”
More success stories:
Tom's path to literacy
“You know you want to do something about it and that now is the time to do it. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how young you are, but … once you’ve started you get the confidence that you, y’know, that you can, and it builds up from that, it just builds up and builds up.”
Writing in plain English at Houston's Farm
"It's also given us another opportunity to talk about plain English generally, and what that means to the business, and to emphasise that gone are the days that you need to use long words and complicated sentences in a business-related document. The theme is always keep it simple and transfer the message as clearly as possible."
