A memoir by Dr. Christopher Khoury
His teacher called it the Zero Row. He stopped his lesson mid-class, pointed to the far left row, and told Christopher Khoury to get his things and move — in front of everyone. The whole class watched.
Christopher gathered his belongings as quickly as he could, walked across the room, and sat in the second seat, in the row furthest from the door. He had been asking for help for years by then. He had taken a remedial reading class. He had told his
teachers and his parents that something was wrong. He had eventually sat across from two separate evaluation teams and told them directly: he struggled with reading, he didn't feel adequate in school, he didn't feel as smart as his brother, he felt like a disappointment. In 10th grade he had written it in his own
journal: "I hate reading. I think I have dyslexia or something." He wrote that he didn't read the reading passages on tests. He handed them the diagnosis in his own handwriting. They heard him. They evaluated him. And they sent him home with nothing — twice.
A decade later, Dr. Christopher Khoury walked back into that same classroom as a teacher. He stood at the front of it. And the smartest student he ever taught sat in the far left row, second seat back. Keep Pushing Forward is the memoir of the man they pointed at, the man they dismissed, and the man who earned a PhD without ever reading a book, while the people responsible for helping him chose, again and again, not to.
