Jonny Johnson

At 6 months Jon was rushed into hospital not breathing and wasn`t expected to live. At 21 months he began speech and physical therapy, his family were taught sign language as they were told Jon would not speak properly, and that because he couldn`t understand phonetics and had limited short term memory he would not be able to read and write. The dyspraxia was manifesting as severe expressive language disorder, low spatial awareness and also an imbalance in muscle tone requiring the wearing of special boots and exercises to improve his ability to walk. His coping mechanism, for what must have been a very frustrating inability to question and communicate, was a beautiful smile, admired by every teacher that has taught him. He went to a language unit until he was seven and then entered main stream school where he was lucky to meet a teacher who believed in the spirit of human beings - from being given non-speaking animal parts in school plays she set him Henry V speech to learn by heart and give to an audience at speech day - perfect, the whole audience were in tears. She also set him running in Thursday afternoon cross-country. He went on to run and win for his secondary school, army cadets and now for his club Harrogate Harriers. He is now Assistant coach for his club and has taken many courses to improve the help he gives to the youngsters there. Recently he was sent by Leeds City College, where he is studying BTec National in Sport Science, to Vierumaki in Finland.