Reading with eyes and ears is an essential tool for students with dyslexia or anyone else who struggles with reading. Reading with eyes and ears is hearing the words of a document/ book with one's ears while following along with one's eyes. This allows people who read slowly or get easily fatigued while reading.  In the context of reading for english class in school one would could listen to an audio book as they follow along in the physical book and pause the audio book to annotate when necessary.

I learned how to read using eyes and ears. When I was young, it was very hard for me to learn how to read and it really hurt my eyes.  I absolutely hated reading, but I loved listening to my mom read to me before bed. After a while she insisted I at least follow along with the words as she read. I didn't know at the time but this was an incredible gift. Over time I began to learn the shape of words, and now I can read, but because I have dyslexia it is still difficult, slow, and labor intensive for me to read.  That's why I still use assistive technology or my wonderful mom to read with eyes and ears. It allows me to get the information in the most efficient and accessible way possible. 

One of this biggest challenges for me in high school english was reading/annotating plays for class because it was incredibly difficult to find audio option that also read the stage directions (which are part of the assigned reading and essential to one's understanding of the play). Out of all the plays I had to read in high school, I was only able to find an audio option of a play with stage directions included for one play.  In addition, reading Shakespeare can be very difficult in general but especially for students with dyslexia. My goal is to expand access to audio options for plays with stage directions. In partnership with the La Salle theater department, we have put together a few videos, and more are coming soon. In addition, I have included the video series I originally found that inspired this idea.