WYTHEVILLE, Va. – Graduating from high school is a huge accomplishment in life, but one senior in Wytheville is defying all the odds, doing so with a learning disability.
Rob Woodie is a senior at Minnick Education Center in Wytheville. The school is a place to help kids with learning disabilities that were not successful in public schools.
“We provide the resources needed for these kids to be able to help them learn how to maneuver their behaviors while filling the learning gaps,” said Amanda Funkhouser, English teacher at Minnick Middle/High School.
Woodie has been at Minnick since elementary school. When he entered high school, Rob was still reading at a kindergarten level.
“He struggled to recognize the letters and put the sounds together,” Funkhouser said.
But one day, one of his teachers noticed how much of an artist Rob was, and it sparked an idea. What if she incorporated his love for art and monsters, and related them to reading?
“I went home that night thinking about his ability to do that and then I put it together the next morning, if I could take him through the alphabet, and the diagraphs and the diphthongs, and put all of that together...maybe I would have a chance of taking the letters and the sounds and taking them into his world,” Funkhouser said.
And that’s exactly what happened.
They started creating his monsters and everything started to click for Rob.
“How much did these kind of help you learn to read?” we asked.
“Pretty good, pretty good, I couldn’t even—the only word I could read before these were oso and my name,” Rob said.
And now that he’s set to graduate with the same diploma many other high school students graduate with — he has big plans for the future.
“I would like to go to college and get a — what is it called when you get a – graphic design, yes,” Rob said.
And for his teachers — they said come graduation day, there will be plenty of happy tears for Rob.