Long before Richard Engel became NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent and won the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, he was a special education student at New York’s Riverdale Country School struggling with dyslexia.

He once attacked one of his teachers by hitting her in the head with a xylophone. "The more I was coddled and made to feel like a person with a defect, the more angry I'd feel," he said.