Anna Toomey’s ‘Left Behind’ Sheds a Spotlight On the Battle Againt Dyslexia in NYC Schools

Never, ever underestimate the determination of a mother looking out for her kids.

I remember when I was in junior high that I had to take a course called reading even though it was dedicated more to essay writing. I remember how some students spoke up a lot more than others, and there were some who didn’t like reading aloud. Anna Toomey’s Image Award nominated film, Left Behind, pulled that memory from some part of my mind. Even that course name–reading–feels intimidating. Some of us don’t remember the ins and outs of how we learned to read, but Toomey’s film highlights how the systems to help kids are not universal and they are not equal.

There is a moment where a street artist, Hektad, is spray painting a new piece on the side of a brick wall. One of Toomey’s passionate subjects is Naomi, Hektad’s wife, as she talks about how their son, Lucas, has been struggling in school. As Hektad, an artist, spraypaints a colorful mural on a brick wall, he casually mentions that he doesn’t want his son to have the same problems that he did when he was in school when it comes to sounding the words out and reading.

What we realize we are seeing is an imaginary tether between a system that has failed one man and threatens to fail another.

For many of us, we don’t know how dyslexia is diagnosed let alone how it needs to be combated against. Enter parents and activists like Ruth Genn, Akeela Azcuy, Johanna Garcia, and Jeannine Kelly who confess that they simply cannot take a charter school model and apply it to the entire whole New York City public school system. There seems to be a basic misunderstanding of how to understand and then go about fixing a problem that is so little talked about that it seems almost taboo. One of the strength’s of Toomey’s film, though, is showing how these women are determined to break down the problem into small pieces in order to fight against it. There are many images of notepads and notes being written down as these women learn along the way. No piece of information can be too small.

Would you know or even think that 15 to 20 percent of the global population is dyslexic? Kareem Weaver, a former teacher and former principal, expresses that at every level he didn’t see the dedication given to literacy. When we learn that 47 to 50 percent of incarcerated people are dyslexic, Toomey’s film shifts into a quieter but higher gear. No parent wants to see their child fail at anything, but reading is something that we, as adults, don’t often remember learning since it’s such a daily part of our lives.

Weaver explains what it has to feel like for a child to have anxiety over speaking up in class. Toomey uses animation and music quite effectively as the educator shows how the notion of seeing the letters bouncing around on a page can lead to more troubling issues later in life. It’s a snowball that we literally see rolling in front of our eyes, but we may not know it. Later in the film, we see the routine of an explicit reading program and how physicality and movement can help reading and its comprehension.

No child is the same, so why do we not have the patience and resources to bend and expand our way of thinking. Toomey’s film is not just expertly drawn and well-paced, but absolutely necessary.

Left Behind is nominated at the NAACP Image Awards for Best Documentary Film.