How a Teacher Spent 17 Years Teaching & Became Self-Made Millionaire Before Learning To Read
Children have a knack for picking things up quickly. Their brains are able to work through problems and pick up language much faster than adults, which makes the childhood stage a critically important one.
Many kids get exposure to books, reading, and writing before they ever enter a classroom. Every child learns a little bit differently, but unfortunately for some children, not all teachers know how to cater to all learning abilities.
It’s getting better now, as research has continued and people are becoming more aware of how different kids learn, but in the past, much of education was one-size-fits-all.
That was the case for John Corcoran, a 79-year-old who has become an avid literacy advocate because of his own unusual experiences with dyslexia and education.
His younger years started out like any other kid’s at the time, but as he started progressing through school, it became clear that he was having a difficult time learning to read, and his classmates were passing him up.
Not everyone learns to read and write at the same time or in the same way, so his parents were assured that he’d eventually learn how — and he did, but no one realized just how much time it would take.
Corcoran learned to work the system by causing distractions, dating accomplished students, and getting classmates to cheat for him in order to fly under the radar.
His family moved a lot, too, so he was able to keep his secret. He was a popular kid and did well in sports. No one suspected a thing, and by some miracle, he got into college.
Corcoran’s cheating continued through his degree. He was savvy, and he knew how to sneak around to change his grades and get others to do the work for him.
“I was so desperate to hide the truth and keep my eligibility that I crossed the line,” he said, as stated on his foundation’s website. “I was scared to death. I did some extraordinarily risky things.”
Somehow he graduated and became a teacher. A teacher, of all things, which is what his father before him had been.
As he taught social studies, PE, and driver’s ed, he relied on speeches and spoken assignments rather than written. He kept role by memorizing the students, but he wasn’t picky about grades. He had his students read aloud, so he wouldn’t be outed.
“I owe the world an apology for hiding this as a teacher,” he later admitted. “That was so very wrong.”
Shame kept him quiet. How could a grown man not know how to read? It was his wife who first realized he might be hiding something when she heard him making up a story for their daughter while holding a book in his hands.
Apparently, he’d tried to tell his wife early on in their relationship that he couldn’t read, but she didn’t take it seriously. Once she saw it for herself, though, she became a secretary for him.
After teaching for nearly two decades and not being found out, Corcoran got into real estate. Still, though, he didn’t say anything, and he was so successful flipping houses that he became a millionaire.
But then a series of events lined up for him: His business was going through a rough patch, and he knew it was only a matter of time before his secret was wrested from him.
He heard someone at a store telling someone else about literacy classes for adults at a nearby library. He heard Barbara Bush’s message about the adult literacy crisis, which was the first time he realized he wasn’t alone.
He was 48 when he finally learned how to read at higher than a second-grade level. Since then, he’s traveled and spoken, advocating for adult literacy and starting the John Corcoran Foundation to help address the problem.
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