Cora Walsh, of Rockville Centre, wins NPR Student Podcast Challenge

Cora Walsh isn’t scared to put herself out there.

The 11-year-old manages props for her middle school’s drama club, plays basketball in a local league and recently joined a hip-hop dance club.

An avid skateboarder, Cora wants to learn how to dance on her board, "so I thought maybe that would help me a little bit," she said, sitting in the living room of her Rockville Centre home. "I also think hip-hop is a cool dance, and I thought it would be really fun for me."

For the Southside Middle School seventh grader, embracing all the parts of her personality — even those that she struggles with — isn't about showing vulnerability, but rather strength.

Cora’s mother, Emily Johnson, found an opportunity back in January that would allow her daughter to do just that. They began working on an entry to submit to NPR's Student Podcast Challenge, a yearly audio contest for young storytellers across the country.

When brainstorming ideas, Cora asked her mother if they could frame the podcast around her journey with dyslexia — a neurological condition that causes individuals to struggle with word recognition, decoding and spelling. It affects about 20% of the population, according to The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

"I said, 'Of course,' " Johnson recalled. "Then she kind of thought, 'Who do I want to talk to? What issues do I want to explore? What am I curious about?' "

Using a recording app on her phone, Cora, with the help of her mother as producer, interviewed one of her former tutors as well as one of Johnson’s friends who also struggled with dyslexia. After gathering more than three hours’ worth of material, the hard part of trimming it down to an eight-minute segment began.

"So we printed out all of the interviews, and she went through and kind of circled parts that she thought were interesting and worthwhile," Johnson said. "We tried to figure them out like a jigsaw puzzle."

Eventually, the final product came together and was submitted in May.

Cora’s podcast, "Dyslexia and MEE," was picked from nearly 1,500 submissions from middle school students in 42 states and the District of Columbia, NPR announced last month. The winner received airtime on feature NPR programs and podcasts, as well as a certificate.

Janet Woojeong Lee, an NPR producer who oversees the Student Podcast Challenge, said in a statement that Cora's podcast stood out from the start.

"Our judges were moved by her vulnerability, opening up about her diagnosis and how it's impacted her life and learning," she said. "We were also impressed by Cora's reporting: her research on dyslexia, interviews with tutors and an adult with her condition to better understand what's ahead of her. It's an important story, and I can't thank Cora and her family enough for sharing it with us."

'The reading got harder'

In the first minute of her podcast, Cora asked when her parents knew "there was a problem."

"In first grade, the reading got harder," Johnson explained. "And you just hated to read. It made you really tired. You would literally fall asleep while reading, I think because you were putting so much work and effort into it."

Cora, who prefers math and science, said reading is "much harder" for her than for other students in her class.

"Any word looks the same for me as it does like anyone else, but it doesn’t process in my brain as fast, I guess. I can’t read it really as fast or don’t know it as well," Cora told Newsday. "I have to work on a word. I have to see it a bunch of times before to remember it."

Her parents enlisted the help of tutors to help develop Cora’s reading and writing skills.

Donna Rocco tutored Cora last school year using the Orton-Gillingham Approach, described as a "direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive way" to teach literacy.

"It is purposefully repetitive so that students build automaticity, and most importantly, every lesson is prescriptive," Rocco said. "Throughout each lesson, the practitioner corrects student errors through the use of guided error correction."

Rocco said Cora made a "significant amount of progress" during their time working together.

Cora’s father, Chris Walsh, said he also struggled with reading and recognized the hardship his daughter was facing. But he said he wasn’t as confident discussing his condition.

"Cora, she’s so brave," he said. "She’s not embarrassed. She’s willing to get up there and speak in front of people, interview and ask questions."

Cora, who wore a shirt for the Australian electronic music duo Empire of the Sun during a recent interview, shared her view on dyslexia.

"I feel like it’s not something anyone should be ashamed about," she said. "It’s just like a part of you, and I feel like people should just really respect that."