Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.
Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.
Aubyn Baker never planned to home-school her daughter, but when tests showed the fifth-grader was gifted and learning-disabled, many of her problems made sense.
Since Grade 3, Taegyn Baker-Riley had struggled with school. She often suffered from headaches, exhaustion and discouragement.
After trying to fix the problem by switching Taegyn from French immersion to English, and then to a different school, Baker was at her wit’s end. It was an offhand comment from Taegyn’s father, Terry Riley, that pushed them to try home-schooling.