Krista Weltner has turned her experiences with dyslexia into a compelling stop-motion film, Partially Compensated. The film tells the story of a young girl’s struggle with dyslexia and offers insight into how others, especially educators, can learn to accept learning differences as well.
While growing up, Krista enjoyed many of the supports that advocates want for children with dyslexia: early diagnosis, academic accommodations, a supportive family, and opportunities to grow in areas outside of literacy. Even so, educational institutions often failed her in painful ways. Today, Weltner is an artist who has worked in multiple mediums and is employed as a finisher at a firm that makes animated characters, such as puppets and animatronics, for the themed entertainment industry.
Weltner hopes her stop-motion film can help children with dyslexia know they are not alone. The film uses scenes inspired by her own education, such as struggles with timed independent reading, or the humiliation of having a teacher point out her learning difference to her peers in the classroom.
“If my younger self had seen a film like this, it really would have made me happy,” she says. “That’s really what I wanted. My favorite response to it was a mother who wrote me an e-mail and she said she shared it with her child and then she sent me a series of videos that her child had made that were stop-motion videos of his action figures. It made me really happy.”
Read the full article about Krista on the International Dyslexia Association website.
Watch the 10-minute stop-motion video:
To schedule an evaluation or to get advice about your child’s challenges, call or email a CHC Care Coordinator at 650.688.3625 or careteam@stage.chconline.org
