Aspiring policymaker Ruby Zimmerman forges her own pathway into national education legislation
When she was four years old, Ruby Zimmerman’s preschool teachers reported to her parents that her reading abilities weren’t on par with other children her age. She was struggling with nursery rhymes and ABC’s which didn’t add up for her parents, so they got her tested for dyslexia.
Fortunately, Ruby was diagnosed early and was placed in a speech school specifically designed to aid students with dyslexia, but for many other children, their condition goes unnoticed which hinders language growth and in turn, can negatively impact the trajectory of their lives.
Walt Disney had dyslexia. Whoopi Goldberg has dyslexia. They’re brilliant people and they still succeeded, but there's so many people not getting the help that they need. They are just falling through the cracks.
Ruby Zimmerman
Dyslexia, defined by Yale, “is an unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader,” and it is estimated nearly one in ten people have it. Georgia is one of the last states to pass dyslexia legislation recently passed its first law on April 6, 2019, which offers screening for kindergarten children effective in 2024-2025. For now, the law will “never address the needs of dyslexic students above third grade.” Click here to read more about dyslexia legislation.
“If there's no law on the books there are no resources going to students with dyslexia. So, even teachers who knew what dyslexia was, they weren't able to tell parents, ‘Oh, I think your child has dyslexia.’”
Ruby wants to offer resources like customized teaching techniques and specialized tutors for classrooms with dyslexic students. She is passionate about standing up for students in need through policy and she’s already taken her first steps into a life of legislative advocacy.
At Georgia College, she was known by peers as the ‘voter girl,’ because of her encouragement for fellow students to sign up to vote, which inspired her to form Bobcats Vote, an organization dedicated to advocating for engagement in the democratic process. Ruby served on the Student Government Association executive board and as president of Young Democrats and is a graduate of the Georgia Education Mentorship Program and the Leadership Certificate Program.
Experiences with these organizations helped Ruby cultivate her passions which helped her land an internship through GC in D.C., a program that places students in Washington D.C. for a semester to network with public and private sector contacts. She was placed with Congressman David Scott who serves as the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
“The chief of staff reached out to me back in January to offer me the position of staff assistant. We created a nice bond and relationship over my internship and she remembered me, the work I did, and my spirit in the office and thought that I would be a good fit,” Ruby said.
Ruby works as an assistant for Congressman Scott. Her day-to-day involves answering phone calls and navigating Congressman Scott around D.C., but her dream is to create policy in the education field that targets dyslexia.
Although Ruby’s future goals to shape education policy do not seem related to the office she currently works in, she knows she can make valuable connections who will be important for negotiating progress in the future. In the future, she plans to obtain a master's degree in public policy with a specialization in education policy. Along the way, she hopes to work for a think tank or lobbying group, but her main goal is to offer resources to children facing the same struggles she did as a child.
