Profile: Annette Jenner, Brain Researcher

We love to share success stories from all kinds of people who have learning disabilities.  We came across this one recently on the Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities website (one of our favourites).  Annette Jenner proves that learning disabilities can be overcome - and that getting an education in an environment where you learn with your true peers is invaluable. 

Rhonda & the Bridgeway Team

Profile: Annette Jenner, Brain Researcher – Smart Kids with LD « Smart Kids With LD

By Juliette Weiland

Annette R. Jenner, Ph.D. is a teacher and brain researcher whose area of expertise is individuals with reading difficulties. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders at Syracuse University, researching how individuals with reading disabilities differ from others. It’s her hope that this work will lead to earlier diagnosis and better educational interventions—both of which Jenner knows something about in ways that make her unique among her peers: Jenner herself has dyslexia and spent many years struggling before finding her pathway to success.

Early Struggles

“In kindergarten, I wrote my whole name backwards,” she recalls. “The teachers said I would grow out of it. In first grade, my reading fell below grade level. They said I would catch up. In second grade, I started special services for reading, writing and language-oriented things. Then, in fifth grade, I was tested and given the label ‘dyslexic.’”

The next few years were marked by a downward spiral, until she hit rock bottom her freshman year in high school. That was when Jenner was put on a non-academic track where she was taught how to fill out job applications for McDonald’s and encouraged by her special education teacher to forego her dreams of college.

Finding Her Way

The summer between her freshman and sophomore years, Jenner took courses at the Forman School in Litchfield, CT, a college prep school for students with learning disabilities. “I arrived on campus a quiet girl without a lot of self-confidence and left eight weeks later a completely different person,” she says. “I had succeeded academically for the first time in my life, and my teachers told me that I could do whatever I set my mind to and that included going to college.”

For her junior year, Jenner left behind her parents and twin sister in Manchester, MA to attend Forman. There she had friends for the first time “who understood what it was like to have the same problems I had.”

Becoming Her Own Advocate

Forman’s curriculum taught Jenner the importance of accepting her disability and talking about it—a lesson she carried with her to Mount Holyoke College. Her first task as a college freshman was to talk to the dean about accommodations, including extra time on tests, the ability to tape lectures and the use of a reader for those textbooks not on tape. “I was always very open and honest about my learning disabilities,” notes Jenner, “always talking to my professors and telling them what I needed on an individual basis. In my four years of college, I only had one professor who gave me a hard time.”

During her post-graduate years at Harvard, which involved more independent work and research, Jenner came to rely on assistive technology, which she continues to do today. She also has someone else read and proofread written work, which she considers a sound writing practice for anyone in academics, especially when submitting a paper for publication—something Jenner does frequently: To date she is listed as a co-author on more than 30 publications and presentations.

Jenner now considers herself a “pretty good” reader, though probably slower than most in a comparable position. “Once you get into a field, you learn the vocabulary and the literature,” she says. “The words become more familiar and easier to read. At this point, I can pick up a neuroscience article and read it probably easier than a complicated novel.” Or say a job application for a minimum-wage job at the local burger joint.