The softball field was the only place that made sense to Margaret Malaika Weaver.
No offspeed pitch moved as much as letters on a page, which would float and dance around the paper as the Bay Area student struggled through classroom assignments.
Trapped within the confines of the school curriculum, she was a completely different person than the one who patrolled centerfield for the St. Mary’s softball team in Berkeley, California.
Supremely confident with a bat and glove, she withdrew from the rest of her world everywhere else.
The Weaver family was as confused as Margaret was dejected.
“I knew they were trying to figure out what was going on with me, but it felt like no one was believing in me at that point,” she said. “Maybe that’s who I am. I’m just the slow, stupid friend.”
A long-overdue screening proved Margaret was neither slow nor stupid.
She was diagnosed with dyslexia in August 2021, just weeks before her junior year, and the discovery changed her life.
Her bright personality is no longer limited to softball.
“She just needed to understand what was going on with her,” said her father, Kareem, a former elementary school principal who coincidentally was a co-founder of an East Bay organization that promotes reading.
Today, Margaret, 18, is a role model and an activist with a profile beyond the Bay Area. Helped by Kareem’s connections, she was included in “The Right to Read”, a documentary produced by actor and “Reading Rainbow” host LeVar Burton that underscores the importance of childhood literacy.
Margaret is driven to help others struggling with the condition that left her questioning whether she was smart enough to excel in a classroom. The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity defines the disability as “an unexpected difficulty in learning to read.” According to researchers at the university, 20 percent of Americans have a form of dyslexia.
As Margaret sees it, the demand to keep pace with peers adds to the challenges those struggling with the condition face.
“I wish we had more patience from people and more understanding – instead of immediately jumping to the conclusion that, ‘You’re not trying. Work harder. It’s because you’re on your phone and not studying,’” Margaret said.
Margaret comes from a family of educators. Her father worked for the Oakland Unified School District for 16 years, and her mother, Amy, was a teacher for 13 years.
They were determined to provide a reading foundation for their daughter before she even reached elementary school.
In Burton’s documentary, there is a family video of Margaret trying to pronounce words when she was about 5 years old.
“I turn around and scream ‘I love it! I love reading!’”
Soon, though, Margaret’s love turned to frustration as she fell behind in school.
Her struggles perplexed her parents.
“We were like, OK, I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s that bad, and I believed her that it was that bad, then we’ve got to figure this out,” said Kareem, now the vice president of the Oakland NAACP chapter.
It took a decade to find the answer.
“We had been having meetings with her teachers starting in third grade, and I kept sounding the alarm,” Kareem said. “Her mother would come with me, and we would tell them as clearly as we could that something was going on.
“Their expectations for her were not the same as our expectations for her.”
Kareem also pointed to implicit bias as a factor. Research from the Hammill Institute on Disabilities shows students of color are less likely to receive a dyslexia diagnosis than their White counterparts, even when controlled for literacy skills and socioeconomic status.
“She’s a little Black girl, and the alarm bells don’t go off at the same speed, for whatever reason,” Kareem said.
As Margaret labored with her studies, the only part of school she enjoyed was softball, a sport she’d loved since her parents bought her a neon pink bat and glove when she was a young child.
As a teenager, softball became her refuge.
“They encourage you to be loud,” she said. “They encourage you to get all of your energy out there. So all my frustration that I was containing in myself, I just let it out on the field.”
But with her dyslexia undetected and grades dropping, Margaret almost had to give up softball as her parents looked for ways to get her back on track academically. A school counselor, Kelly McConnell, convinced Kareem and Amy to keep their daughter on the field.
“Without it,” McConnell told the parents in February 2021, “we don’t know what’s going to happen to her.”
That summer, Margaret received the diagnosis that changed her life.
Screening for dyslexia took hours over multiple days. It involved several phases to weed out other possibilities.
The process was not covered by health insurance and cost the Weavers about $8,000 in out-of-pocket expenses.
“We had done everything we knew how to do,” Kareem said. “At that point, either give up on your kid, or you don’t.”
For the Weavers, the diagnosis was worth every penny.
“School is still not easy, and I still struggle, but it’s way more manageable,” said Margaret, who receives more time to complete assignments and is allowed to use tools such as a calculator in some instances. “And I’d rather have school be hard but manageable than hard and depressing.”
Since her diagnosis, Margaret learned that some teammates on her summer and high school teams are also dyslexic.
She also discovered that big names in sports have received the same diagnosis, including NBA legend Magic Johnson, former NFL star Frank Gore, Olympic skater Meryl Davis and the Warriors’ Gary Payton II.
Margaret’s presence in Burton’s documentary made her a bit of a celebrity herself, her story reaching a 10-year-old dyslexic boy in Virginia named Calvin, who asked his new hero to hit a home run for him.
“You know what, I’ve got you,” Margaret said to herself.
When Margaret slid across home plate for an inside-the-park home run this season, she waited until after the game to celebrate.
Once the team got the final out, she jogged up to her father’s camera, mounted high on the fence behind home plate.
“That home run was for you, Calvin,” Margaret said as she jumped up and down to get her face in the video.
It was her first home run of the season — and a promise fulfilled.
Margaret hasn’t just helped Calvin. As St. Mary’s coach Enrique Gonzalez noted, “The last couple years, she’s been a role model for our younger players.”
Margaret, now a senior, doesn’t plan to give up softball after high school.
She aims to play and study digital art at Bowie State, a historically Black university in Maryland.
Margaret’s diagnosis also has fueled a burgeoning activism.
She recently entered a dyslexic-themed exhibit into an art competition and has plans to help low-income students learn to read. She understands that many children are not as fortunate as she has been, given the high costs of dyslexia screening.
“When you don’t have enough money to get tested, now you’re stuck without accommodations or help from your school district, and you’re basically left at the bottom of the barrel,” Margaret said.
As she promotes reading and dyslexia awareness, Margaret wants to make one point clear about those affected by the disability.
“We’re not stupid,” she said. “We just learn slower in some areas.”
But the softball star and artist added, “We excel in some areas really, really well.”
Signs of dyslexia
Dyslexia, which affects up to 20 percent of the U.S. population and has no known cure, is a reading disorder that can present a number of common signs in children and teenagers. They include:
1. Difficulty remembering the names of numbers or colors as a young child.
2. Difficulty learning the alphabet.
3. Not remembering “the right word” when answering a question.
4. An inability to sound out unfamiliar words.
5. Reading at a level far below what is expected for the child’s age.
6. Reading and writing are considered difficult and time-consuming as an adolescent.
7. Consistently mispronounces words.
Sources: Mayo Clinic and Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity
