Dyslexia as a Superpower: A New Model for Teaching Kids

WEBVTT

00:00:00.880 --> 00:00:36.369
For too long now, dyslexia has been misunderstood, underestimated, and mislabeled. The popular belief is that it's just a reading issue, but what if the truth is that it's a superpower in disguise? This week we're welcoming Russell Van Broecklin, the dyslexia professor who is on a mission to re educate the world on what dyslexia truly is. As a young man with severe dyslexia, Russell learned firsthand that it's not a reading issue, but a thinking speed issue. And when that speed is channeled correctly, it becomes a launchpad for brilliance.

00:00:37.009 --> 00:01:02.850
Join us as Russell shares his personal story of struggle and breakthrough, revealing how he built a low cost, evidence backed approach that helps rapid thinking, disorganized brains become confident writers and readers. We'll learn about the simple questions that can screen for dyslexia in minutes, the power of passion driven learning, and how to start your child on the right path to a successful future.

00:01:07.409 --> 00:01:55.709
Welcome to Grandparents Raising Nurturing through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

00:01:58.269 --> 00:02:15.870
We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

00:02:17.479 --> 00:02:26.439
Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

00:02:34.120 --> 00:03:10.509
You know, as a grandparent raising kids with unique needs, I'm always looking for ways to understand them better. And in those moments when my grandkids strength struggle with reading or writing, or when their mind seemed to race two steps ahead of their ability to focus, I felt that all too familiar feeling of helplessness. You see the stress build in their eyes and you realize that the system just doesn't seem to get it. It's so easy to feel like you're alone in trying to solve this problem and that's why I was so inspired when I came across Russell's work.

00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:14.909
He's here to tell us that we don't have to feel helpless.

00:03:15.550 --> 00:03:27.069
We have the tools to transform their learning and their life right here today. I'm honored to have Russell Van Broecklin, known as the Dyslexia Professor.

00:03:27.629 --> 00:03:53.020
As a certified financial planner, he spent over 15 years helping parents find a better path for their kids. His personal experience with severe dyslexia and the breakthroughs he discovered led him to found dyslexia classes and the Full Circle program, helping families reclaim their time, save thousands of dollars, and unleash their child's true potential.

00:03:54.060 --> 00:03:57.819
Russell, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me.

00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:12.870
Your story is incredibly powerful, and as a young man with a first grade reading level, you must have felt immense frustration. Take us back to that New York State assembly internship and the moment your accommodations were rejected.

00:04:13.509 --> 00:04:20.069
What did that feel like? And how did it light a fire under you to solve this problem of dyslexia once and for all?

00:04:21.589 --> 00:05:20.850
Well, I wanted to know how government worked, not some academic class. I wanted to know. So in the late 90s, I did the New York State assembly internship program and I gave them my neuropsych evaluation, which said essential at a first grade reading and writing level. And they said, this isn't going to work. So they got a committee together and they placed me in the majority leaders program in council's office, which had three administrative assistants and dealt with graduate students, which is a much higher level of an internship. So I had, I think, the best experience. And when it came time to when I had to discuss my research, it was a very standard accommodation for me back then. I would give such a hard and long public presentation with tough questions asked that none of the other students wanted to go near it. They said, no, we'll just write it. So I did that, and at the end of everything, they recommended 15 credits of A or 3.67.

00:05:21.959 --> 00:05:25.000
And I said, oh, great, this is going to help out my GPA a lot.

00:05:25.319 --> 00:05:58.089
It's going to really help out everything. So then that got submitted back to the political science department at the State University of New York center at Buffalo, and they looked at the accommodations and said, we don't like this. So here's your 15 credits of F. Well, at that point, I said, I am done with this. I. I am solving dyslexia, where. What is the hardest place I can go to force myself to learn to read and write? Law school. So I went and I. I audited.

00:05:58.089 --> 00:06:08.649
I found Professor Warner, who was a dyslexic professor for decades, and I signed up for his contracts class and a property class, just auditing. So you do all the work, you get no credit.

00:06:09.610 --> 00:06:12.569
And I asked and received no accommodations.

00:06:13.509 --> 00:06:46.850
It was forcing me to do that so my secondary contracts, what they do is they use the Socratic method. And if anybody wants to know more about it, there's a famous movie called the Paper Chase where you can see how horrible this is, what they do. If you don't know the answer, they keep asking you questions even if you don't know the answer, to embarrass you, to compel you to learn as fast as possible, to argue any point anywhere, anytime. This is the second day he called on me. That didn't happen, as I found later with dyslexics that have long come before me.

00:06:47.329 --> 00:07:12.379
Once we reach graduate school, we own the place. Day one, everything slowed down, everything organized. For the first time in my life, Professor Warner is fiercely asking me questions as fast and as hard as he can. We're politely battling back and forth. He, he can't beat me, I can't beat him. It went on for 15 minutes and he said, russell, in the interest of time, I have to move on to the next case.

00:07:12.860 --> 00:07:45.740
You couldn't be any more correct. My classmates who graduated from law school said they couldn't even come up anything even after school, even after a couple of years of experience. When I did that first, second, contracts that helped me organize things. And then when I went into property, pretty soon they started giving us quizzes. We're supposed to think for three to five minutes after we get the question because they're really trying to fool you in a very sophisticated way. I answered instantaneously. Reading was solved within a month.

00:07:45.819 --> 00:09:06.080
Writing took a couple of years. And at that point then I went back to Buffalo to talk to some of my professors. And I said, I want the New York State government to pay for my research. They said, impossible, can't be done. It happened. It took another couple of years to arrange this, but the New York State Senate funded a study in a public school. The public school is Avery Park Central School District. They got all the money. I just taught their best teacher, Susan Ford, how to teach the process. She rewrote it to meet her teaching style, who she was working with. And just so everybody knows, I really cherry picked here. Well, I told the school to cherry pick. They're the one that actually did this. These were highly motivated, highly intelligent, college bound dyslexic students with excellent family support. Very rare. Why I wanted to show what we could do with the ideal. So one question, I would like you to tell us what you learned from that experience in law school about how the dyslexic brain worked differently. What did that teach you what did you realize about the traditional systems that we use that aren't working? What I found, and this is I found out years later, is that with dyslexic professors, we're not good K through to college because we are academic specialists, not generalists.

00:09:07.038 --> 00:09:10.559
Specialist is grad school. And they also have to ask you to think.

00:09:11.039 --> 00:09:35.539
So once we enter grad school, we own the place. Day one, that's what I was told later on, and I look back, I said, well, that's exactly what happened to me in law school. Yeah. Because in graduate school, especially doctoral programs, the idea that you have that moves the field forward is the currency of the realm. All the other stuff, the reading, writing, report writing, if you weren't an exceptional student, you wouldn't be there.

00:09:36.580 --> 00:09:43.700
Okay, so they just expect you to learn all that stuff. But it's the idea that matters, and that's where we excel.

00:09:44.740 --> 00:09:47.860
So you say that dyslexia is a thinking speed issue.

00:09:49.509 --> 00:09:59.029
Well, what I'm going to show you is let's just go to the science. This is the science, okay? Brain scans from Yale. Here's dyslexia.

00:10:02.070 --> 00:10:15.350
Okay? So just keep in mind that the listeners can't see this picture. Okay, so describe is the back part of the dyslexic brain. This is Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd Edition, by Sally Shaywitz from Yale University.

00:10:18.139 --> 00:11:24.659
Which is a very technical, a very good book, by the way. I have begun reading it. Yes. And this is the second edition. So the exact page numbers, page 78, figure number 23, it's essentially a neuro signature for dyslexia, Inefficiency, functioning of neural systems in the back part of the brain. Written by authority, Sally Shaywitz. Okay. Yeah. This is the number one book and she completely missed it. So essentially what's going on is the back part of the dyslexic brain has next to no neural activity. And the other kids, the gender kids are going crazy. The front part's about two and a half times over active. This deals with two areas. Articulation followed by word analysis. Okay, Articulation followed by word analysis. And just to show you how powerful this is, in the initial program, we use the graduate records exam. Analytical writing. Assessment, Analytical articulation. Same thing. That was the big idea that I had.

00:11:25.860 --> 00:11:40.820
So Susan Ford, after just a few hours of training, takes these students and they are writing at the middle school level. 180 days later, they're writing. Average range of entering graduate school students.

00:11:42.230 --> 00:12:06.710
They all went out of College, no accommodations, GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6. Okay. All graduated. Key thing is the spelling and grammar went from disgusting. According to Dr. Hilichka did the evaluation to clean at the graduate level. The teachers spent almost no time on it. They jumped 7, 8 grade levels of spelling and grammar almost automatically.

00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:14.559
Okay. Is this why you refer to dyslexia as a superpower, not a disability?

00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:22.720
People are under the impression that dyslexia is a reading and writing issue. It's not.

00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:44.870
It's an issue with the overactive front part of the brain being disorganized. So in order to fix that, when I presented this in New York City in 06 at a major dyslexia conference, I was asked, what about typical students? Because these were academic superstars. And I said, it will not work.

00:12:45.429 --> 00:12:59.830
Now this is how we make it work for them. I'm going back to that brain image again. Page seven, Overcoming Dyslexia, second edition. Page 78, figure number 23. That front part of the brain is two and a half times overactive.

00:12:59.990 --> 00:13:38.889
This is where Sally Shaywitz was wrong. We have to switch it from articulation followed by word analysis to word analysis followed by articulation. And let me show you in practice just how easy this is. I want you to imagine your grandchildren, some of you probably have grandchildren who are in elementary school who are essentially writing, as one teacher said, a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words. You don't even know where to start. I'm going to show you how to fix that in the next few minutes. In your case, do you have a kid in elementary school writing randomly placed misspelled words?

00:13:39.610 --> 00:13:43.450
I have one. Okay. I have a daughter. How old is the child?

00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:51.690
She's nine. How old? Okay, nine. Can we use the first name? Yes. Okay. What's her first name?

00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:55.210
Athena. Okay, so I'm going to show you how to fix that.

00:13:56.429 --> 00:14:22.590
All right, so what is Athena's speciality? What is she really interested in? She loves animals. Animals. Okay, so what we need to do is just teach Athena to write a basic three word sentence to start, and we're going to use word analysis to do it. So what we're going to do is I'm going to have you type on a laptop computer. Not an iPad, not an iPhone, not handwriting. It has to be a real computer.

00:14:22.980 --> 00:15:01.460
Mostly it's a laptop. You're going to type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about then? We're going to replace hero with Athena. Athena plus sign. What are we talking about? We're going to replace. What are we talking about with what she's really interested in, which you said was animals. Thena plus sign animals. See how we got there? Okay, now we have to replace that plus sign with a word to make a real sentence. When I do this at major dyslexia conferences, over half the special ed teachers get it wrong. Do you think I'm going to be able to fool you? I'm understanding what you're telling me.

00:15:03.460 --> 00:15:20.990
I'm going to replace the word animals with horses because those are specific animals she's interested in. Okay, with horses. So we got Athena plus sign horses. Here's my question about Athena and horses. Does Athena like or does she dislike horses? She loves horses.

00:15:21.870 --> 00:15:25.549
Okay, she likes. But that. But that's not what I asked.

00:15:26.750 --> 00:15:37.389
I asked does she like or dislike? As an educated person, you automatically added the S and you would have just put it in the sentence. But Athena doesn't know how to add the S.

00:15:37.950 --> 00:15:49.139
Correct. So we have to figure out how do we get her to add the S. Now. Now, Athena would have answered like, because that's exactly what I asked her. It would have been Athena.

00:15:49.139 --> 00:16:07.700
Then I would have her replace the plus and Athena like horses. You're right, she would. How do we get her to add the S? If you're Bill Gates and you can spend $75,000 a year, they would use an Orton Gillingham multi century structured language approach. And it takes a while to do this.

00:16:07.940 --> 00:16:22.700
We're going to now warp speed this out. My assumption is that Athena speaks proper English. That's the one assumption I had to make. So assuming that I would have Athena read what she wrote out loud, Athena like horses.

00:16:22.779 --> 00:16:26.220
Then I would ask Athena, does that sound generally correct?

00:16:26.460 --> 00:16:29.419
And she's going to say no. And I'm going to say, fix it.

00:16:30.139 --> 00:16:32.299
Athena likes horses.

00:16:34.139 --> 00:16:51.750
Now we have her practice that with 10 likes and 10 dislikes. And you keep practicing that until she types it out perfectly. And that could take a couple of weeks. Okay, I hear this from parents, grandparents and teachers all the time. This takes a while. I said.

00:16:52.549 --> 00:17:13.818
Exactly. But when I show you the next few steps, you're going to see what an increase this is going to be. That is the like and dislike is a simple form of word analysis. And after because is articulation. So remember, the front part of the brain is two and a half times overactive. Word analysis followed by articulation.

00:17:14.298 --> 00:17:17.739
Like and dislike is a form of word analysis.

00:17:18.298 --> 00:17:21.818
Okay, after, because the reasons are articulation.

00:17:22.138 --> 00:17:25.578
Why does Athena like horses? Give me one simple reason.

00:17:28.939 --> 00:17:35.910
She connects with them because she connects with them. Athena likes horses. Because she connects with them.

00:17:36.470 --> 00:18:20.720
All right? Now when she types that out, you probably got a lot of misspelled words. Mm. Here's how we fix that. We tell Athena, before she puts the period down, you can ask any question. She might say, how did I spell connects correctly? And if not, you say, no, Athena, you didn't. And type out connects and she copies it. But tell you what mostly happens. The kids drop the period. And then I tell them, oh, you put the period. There's a spelling mistake or a major, and I mean major grammatical mistake. Now you got to retype the entire sentence and they start going, okay. And then they keep making that mistake. Here's the key point. Because they get bored somewhere.

00:18:21.200 --> 00:18:24.960
Yeah, somewhere between three and 12, 13 times.

00:18:25.690 --> 00:18:54.420
You'll get it right. But as she goes through that and she keeps making these mistakes, she starts to get annoyed with herself. Here's how you help push down the self loathing, the self hatred. You can say, athena, you made a silly mistake or you made a silly error. Just keep trying it, you'll get it. And once she gets around 8 to 10, she might be concentrating so hard that you see sweat coming down her face.

00:18:55.220 --> 00:19:31.869
You will find the level of intensity. This is where I. This is where my work differs from everybody else's. That massive self focus is where the magic happens. This is how we get the spelling and grammar to self correct, like we did with the original program. Okay, so eventually she gets it right. Then you keep her doing that for the 2010 likes and 10 dislikes, repeating the same thing over and over again until she gets that correct. Then we do reason 1 and reason 2. We connect the two reasons with a glue word, and then reason 1, reason 2, and reason 3.

00:19:32.670 --> 00:19:57.869
This could take a couple of weeks. This could take a couple of months. And explain to us why that works, Russell. Because what you're doing is you're forcing the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So I'll get to that part in a minute. But what you need to understand is by going through this, the older the child is, the quicker they will pick it up.

00:19:57.869 --> 00:20:18.690
Athena and nine will pick this up a lot faster than somebody at seven. Okay. Okay. Which is the exact opposite of Orton Gillingham. Why is this important? Because you're essentially taking Athena from writing somewhere in kindergarten to the end of second beginning, third grade level of writing. Here's another key point.

00:20:19.170 --> 00:20:22.130
If she can write it, she can read it.

00:20:22.769 --> 00:20:33.569
I don't teach reading, I teach writing. And if you can write it, you can read it. It's a much faster, more permanent process. Now why does this work?

00:20:34.450 --> 00:20:38.210
Well, before we get to that, that's part three of the model.

00:20:38.289 --> 00:21:14.039
Part one is, I hear this from parents, grandparents and teachers all the time. My kid won't do the work. And I said, exactly, because you're outside their speciality. What is their speciality? It's their area of extreme interest and ability. So let me show you how this works. So you're saying passion is the accelerator. Oh, it is the absolute difference of doing things or not doing things. So let me give you an example. Just I'm holding this up. This is a book called Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination.

00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:32.839
It's a thousand pages, 11th grade level. I will take this monster and I routinely give it to 10 year olds who are reading and writing at the second grade level. Or it doesn't matter what it is because they want to know. In this example, what is the Disney magic?

00:21:33.480 --> 00:22:33.329
The Disney magic is based on two universal themes. The first one is easy to find, 10% of the value. The second one, I've never had a parent find it. And to give you an example of a 12 year old who started doing this at 10. So remember, this is two years of this. I asked her mom to show me what the second universal theme is. Mom has a master's degree, mom can't find it. And as 12 year old girls who talk to their parents in this situation are like, mom, it's right there. And the mom just kind of hits her head. I went through this so many times, it's right in front of me. And I said, your 12 year old daughter is now comprehending in this situation better than you can. And you have a master's degree. All right, that I just. And that is an extreme example. Very motivated kid. But the kid was doing all these really hard things that are not fun because we're in the speciality.

00:22:34.369 --> 00:23:06.559
Now, why does this work? To answer your question, this is what I found talking to a lot of dyslexic professors. They said back in college they would take like art history, philosophy. I was like, well, good for you. And a lot of them would say, well, we didn't like the classes. I said, well, why did you take them? They weren't in your major. They said, because the teacher taught not from the general to the specific, but from the specific to the general. So this is, this, this is a long answer to your question, which was excellent.

00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:36.769
Because if you ask your dyslexic child or their ADD or adhd in your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization? They're going to say yes. So then what we tell them is we're, we're going to force your brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So again, we're going to force your brain to organize yourself by using writing as a measurable output.

00:23:37.250 --> 00:23:40.210
So let me just give you an example of why this is so important.

00:23:41.490 --> 00:23:44.930
I want you to imagine you were back in high school.

00:23:45.890 --> 00:24:12.799
I know that's a horrible day to think about, but. And your teacher gave you this question. What effect did Martin Luther King's famous what effect did Martin Luther King's famous I have a dream speech have on the 1960 civil rights movement? You just go, well, it had a huge impact on the civil rights movement. When, yeah, you would just know how to go and take. Do that project. Right.

00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:16.809
When you're back in high school, you give that to the high school kids.

00:24:17.289 --> 00:24:34.890
They pretty much, okay, I have to go look at the I have a dream speech. I have to look up what effect it had in the civil rights movement in 1960s. And with some help, they don't do it. You ask it dyslectic. It's like trying to grab fog. No idea.

00:24:35.289 --> 00:24:38.970
Yeah. Their ideas are completely scattered all over the place.

00:24:39.289 --> 00:25:07.609
There is no organization. They don't know what to do. This is the absolute worst thing you can do to a dyslexic in school. Give them a general to a specific question. And schools do it all the time because our brains are literally the exact opposite of the typical student. How do we fix that? We ask a specific question and go general from there. You ask what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech.

00:25:08.670 --> 00:25:50.160
You find that in his biography. And then once you answer that question, another question presents itself and it forces you and you keep going is it forces you to think in a very step by step linear manner. So basically, when you work with a dyslexic child, you're going to find something that interests them, that grabs their attention. If you want to get them to study something particular, you start there. That's an excellent question because you're essentially asking, how do we get a dyslexic kid to do something which is probably outside their specialty? And my answer here becomes very unpopular until you finish the intervention period.

00:25:50.160 --> 00:26:15.210
They're getting the reading and writing level at grade level. Okay. Once you do that, you can force them to do that they don't want to do it. They will go kicking and screaming. But. But you can get them to do that before you're finished with the intervention period. The simple answer is, you don't. And this is the biggest conflict I have with the school districts, where I essentially tell the grandparents, if you want to solve this problem, you need to do it yourself.

00:26:16.410 --> 00:26:31.529
Because the school is literally set up in a way that is the exact opposite of how we learn. Once your child, your grandchild, is reading and writing at grade level or above, you can put them back in there and they will function okay.

00:26:31.529 --> 00:26:34.930
But until that point, you have to focus on their speciality.

00:26:35.569 --> 00:26:49.890
And sometimes that's really hard to get. So, for example, I was just talking with a student. I'm going to call him John to protect his identity. And I just. His mom said, no motivation. So I said, okay, how do I get it out?

00:26:49.970 --> 00:27:07.569
I would say, john, where do you do things you like in your bedroom? And I said, okay, I know what you do. You look out the window and you watch the grass grow. That's what you love to do. He just starts shaking his head and smiles. I come up with a few other literally absurd things like that. And then he told me his speciality.

00:27:08.049 --> 00:27:22.690
Batman. He's nine. So I told his mom, you're not using comics because Batman's pretty complicated. You're going to use a graphic novel, but make sure. Have him pick it out.

00:27:22.769 --> 00:27:36.269
You make sure it doesn't offend your family sensibilities because they can get pretty dark. Okay. That's how we found his speciality. Then we teach it from the specific to the general and the word analysis followed by articulation.

00:27:37.069 --> 00:28:02.339
So you start with the concept of the sentence and the writing first, and then you say, that leads to the reading. Yeah. So how do we build out the vocabulary at that point? Okay, so what I want you to understand is the process that I use now when I presented major conferences is the professors came to me and they said, you had some of your students scoring in the 70th percentile of entering graduate students in high school. We don't care.

00:28:03.140 --> 00:28:13.059
We want the Craft of Research by the University of Chicago Press in 95. And it was designed for PhD students who didn't know how to write their dissertations.

00:28:14.019 --> 00:29:29.029
And I was like, seriously? And they're like, yes. Now when it's 5th edition, it's down for the most evolved high school kids. I dropped it to fourth grade. So it's context problem solution. Most parents are interested in context. So what we do there is. Once you can do those basic sentences, the next level is you gotta get the kid to be able to start to read words. How do we do that? It's the half circle process. It's the hero, universal theme villain. Okay, so the hero. I'm just going to give you an example of a young lady about your granddaughter's age. They almost always pick Harry Potter, the Sorcerer's Stone, the first book. And they pick Hermione for a very painful reason. They say, hermione's not stupid. I don't want to be stupid anymore. I just hear that so many times, breaks my heart every time. So what we do is, I would say, okay, go and start reading through the first chapter. Tell me things that Hermione likes, what she doesn't like, and what she wants to do. And they're going to do this three ways. They're going to listen to their audiobook. You get the audiobook first, then the printed book. You listen to their audiobook.

00:29:29.349 --> 00:29:52.960
They go, and then they try to follow along with their finger. And they try to answer a specific question. What does the hero want to do? So what do they like, what they don't like, what they want to do. I do the sentences again with the student to warm them up. Then we get to what they want to do. Now I need them to write that out in one sentence. Notice that they can do a sentence now. It builds on each other. So Hermione wants to do something.

00:29:53.279 --> 00:30:07.599
Okay, So a lot of girls will say, well, Hermione wants to love Ron and to show him. Okay. It's like, okay, we're going to now go back to word analysis. The front part of the brain, two and a half times overactive.

00:30:08.779 --> 00:30:15.740
I asked for two types of words. The first one is an action word that'll bring Hermione closer to the goal that she's looking for.

00:30:16.460 --> 00:30:19.180
Okay, that's typically, in this case, it's want.

00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:33.339
Okay. That brings her in the general direction she wants to go. What's the most important word? Love. All right, so then we compare. Which way do you want to go? Have the student type out the word and then go to Marion Webster's online dictionary.

00:30:33.339 --> 00:30:59.309
You, you cannot copy and paste. You cannot copy and paste. They have to type it out. And at this point, yes, they have to physically type out the word in the definition. And parents, grandparents, teachers all tell me this, at this point, my kid will do the work. I would say exactly. If you're outside of their speciality, if you're doing Mice and Men, this Isn't working.

00:30:59.990 --> 00:31:03.509
But this is what the kid's really interested in. They do do the work.

00:31:04.150 --> 00:31:25.589
All right, so we get them to type that out, the word and the definition. That's what I like to call our base universal thing. Now remember, we're going to keep going with word analysis. We take that word, put it into thesaurus. You can pick 5, 10, the whole level, multiple levels up to the instructor.

00:31:26.430 --> 00:31:40.589
For each word, the kid doesn't know exactly, and I mean exactly, they type out the word. They go to Marian Webster's online dictionary, type out the definition. How many times do you have to type out a word and definition until you know it permanently.

00:31:42.589 --> 00:31:48.509
For you? Oh, for me? Probably, I don't know, three, four times.

00:31:49.950 --> 00:32:01.250
Okay. A dyslexic might be 10, 20, maybe 30. I don't know what the number is. It's different per kid. That's why you're on this for six months and people come back. Six months.

00:32:01.250 --> 00:32:34.750
I was like, yes, six months. Because what you want to do is to initially develop a vocabulary of dozens of evolved words and then eventually hundreds of evolved words. This is so powerful. When I do this with a 9 or 10 year old and then they're 16 and they're taking their SAT or the ACT. The verbal section is a vocabulary test. They don't need to study these evolved words because they remember them. 70, 80% of the definition drives their gen ed peers crazy because they already know them.

00:32:35.230 --> 00:32:42.670
Okay, what? That is what we call. Once you find the better word, you know, let's say you're doing fine. You find it.

00:32:42.670 --> 00:32:49.869
The first one is so broad, you want something that matches as close as you can what's in the student's head. You do five or 10.

00:32:49.869 --> 00:33:12.309
So you find out that word. That's now your post universal theme. So now we have the hero post universal thing. Then we ask who best prevents the hero from accomplishing their goal. It's a person or a concept. You find out what that is. You got the hero, the universal theme, the villain separated by plus signs. Does that sound generally correct? No.

00:33:12.549 --> 00:33:23.809
Fix it. So then they go and fix it. Notice how intense that was on word analysis. Now we're going to go back to articulation. I keep going back to this because that' the science.

00:33:23.809 --> 00:33:31.809
That's the overactive front part of the brain. I say, give me three really good reasons. Three really good reasons.

00:33:32.210 --> 00:33:39.809
And the kid does for each reason. And this is where I start saying, you might want to use artificial intelligence. It's up to the instructor.

00:33:39.890 --> 00:33:47.170
I was Going to. What's a universal yes that you do sometimes? Yes.

00:33:47.410 --> 00:34:00.599
This is an option where you can use it or not use it, depending on the instructor. If you want to know if it's ethical, explain it to the kid's teacher. To me, if a teacher says it's ethical, it's ethical. If they say no, then it's not.

00:34:01.559 --> 00:34:08.039
This is where some of them say yes. So we take that first reason and give me a simple universal theme.

00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:45.000
And once you have that simple universal theme, you then go and you find a quote based on that universal thing. Find me a quote, a one sentence quote that deals with this universal thing. You do that for all three reasons, one at a time. No quote, no body paragraph. AI is not writing this for you. So then we find the quote and we answer the basic questions. Who, what, when, where, how, why? And then we take those answers and we put them together.

00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:53.150
And I asked the dyslexic kid, does that sound. Read it without the plus signs. Does that sound generally correct? And they laugh in my face.

00:34:53.869 --> 00:35:04.510
Okay, you had your good laugh. You know, your teacher asked a dumb question and it was a dumb question. I did it on purpose to make them laugh. I say, reorganize this so it makes the most sense.

00:35:04.829 --> 00:35:19.309
And then they go do that. Then I say, go ahead and fix it like you did with your sentence. And they this takes a while. And they're going through until it sounds generally correct. We do that with the three body paragraphs.

00:35:20.949 --> 00:36:13.829
Now you take that and you go back to the teacher and you say, I took my grandchild who couldn't write anything, and now I have three body paragraphs with correct spelling, decent grammar. I got rid of the nasty stuff, the minimum to the intermediate stuff. Yeah, you still got some of that. You need to teach a thesis statement. And the conclusion, there's your basic five paragraph essay at a C to B minus level. Now, their general education teacher can now start working with them. That's what practically every teacher tells me. So you can start doing this with a young child? Yes, I have really tried to avoid doing it in kindergarten. Okay, first grade I started doing the sentences. I'm just going to let you know, the sentences that I just described for a first grader could take six months.

00:36:14.789 --> 00:36:21.190
When they're in fifth grade, they might be done in three weeks. As I said, the older the child, the quicker they pick it up.

00:36:23.110 --> 00:38:17.570
Well, that makes sense. So how do listeners that are coping with children with dyslexia get a hold of you, Russell? Or if they think that their Child might be dyslexic. What advice do you have for them? Well, the easiest thing is we ask that initial question and you find out what their speciality is. Normally the easiest way is to say it's Saturday morning, they got nothing to do, they can do whatever they want. What is it in that speciality? Do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization? A lot of kids, they'll just tell you when we're talking about John, who I gave you an example before his mom homeschooled him and she was a certified elementary school teacher to your master's degree. Couldn't figure it out. So what you do is you. You go on to dyslexia classes, and that's with an S dyslexiaclasses.com and it says, download free report. Okay. Okay. And you just click on that and you answer a very simple couple of questions. And you download a document, the three reasons your child's having trouble in school due to dyslexia. And it gives you kind of an overview of what we discussed today. And we set up a half an hour time over zoom where I can see you and your child. And then I ask the questions and I can virtually every chance I can get what their speciality is. And then I ask them, is this how you want to overcome? I ask that question, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed or little to no organization, and depending on the student, one or two more, and they look at me go, how did you know? I said, you don't think anybody hasn't had this problem before we talk. And generally I can say this is how we overcome it. And if I don't get your child's approval, then I'm not the person for you. If you do want to work with us, we give you access to us for a year.

00:38:18.130 --> 00:38:29.010
We speak to you on a weekly basis on a webinar to answer your questions. That's the level of support I find you need, which is a heck of a lot more than practically anybody else does.

00:38:29.730 --> 00:38:44.449
And within that year, you should see a drastic improvement. I just got back one of my clients. Her name is Kimberly. Her son Reed. We started working with him in late December. He was reading and writing at the second grade level. Now his report came back.

00:38:44.690 --> 00:38:48.369
The average reading for fifth graders was 211.

00:38:48.690 --> 00:38:59.949
He was reading at 210. He's now going into sixth grade. He was 11 point out of 211 points, 1 point below average. So he's at grade level.

00:39:00.510 --> 00:39:07.949
That's great. And now he's going into sixth grade and we moved him up to the problem part, which is eighth, ninth grade.

00:39:08.429 --> 00:39:26.989
So now at 10, he's working on things for 13, 14 year olds. How do you feel the public schools right now are coping with dyslexia? Oh, they're doing everything wrong. Because remember, schools were designed for the majority. The back part of their brain is going crazy.

00:39:27.150 --> 00:39:48.110
So what do they do? They teach them to become well rounded people before they specialize because that's what works for typical students. The exact opposite for dyslexics. They teach from the general to the specific, which is the exact opposite for dyslexics. We're the other way. We need word analysis followed by articulation. They're not doing it. And then they call us learning disabled.

00:39:49.630 --> 00:39:52.030
Yeah, okay, well, that's very interesting.

00:39:53.150 --> 00:40:03.510
They're trying to accommodate us to meet their system. And the best way I like to explain it, what sport for you are you the worst at in the world? For me it's basketball.

00:40:03.510 --> 00:40:09.789
What sport are you really bad at? Oh, gosh, I don't know. Let's just say ping pong.

00:40:10.750 --> 00:40:17.920
Okay. Imagine that your career, your financial health depended on your ability to play ping pong. Yeah.

00:40:18.960 --> 00:40:26.159
That's essentially what you're doing with a dyslexic student. So what we need to do is we're not going to make this perfect. I'm not advocating that.

00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:54.010
I'm advocating that for a short period of time, we take the kid out, we give them, for example, I'm holding up the Disney book again, and we get these kids through something that brings them at or above grade level, all right? And then we put them back in and then they're not going to want to do the work. But then as a grandparent, you now know that because the school district has told you they're at or above grade level. What do you do with a child who doesn't want to do their work?

00:40:55.530 --> 00:41:40.380
You've handled this before. You know what to do. But now they can do the work. It's not like you're telling them. In your case, if you can't be a star ping pong player, then you get severely punished. Well, I have to say I'm in agreement with you on the issue of beginning with teaching them subject matter that they're interested in. Because my granddaughter's brain works this way and she is dyslexic. If it's a game or if it's a mystery or if it's something that she's interested in. It's like her brain is turned on, but if it isn't, she's not. So I have to take her math homework and turn it into a mystery problem and she'll have no problems with it whatsoever.

00:41:41.500 --> 00:41:51.739
So this makes sense to me. The way you're approaching it from going to that interest level and then getting more specific from the specific to the general. That makes sense.

00:41:52.460 --> 00:42:10.480
Right? And remember, I'm just advocating until she gets at or above grade level, then you can have them go back in. But otherwise it's literally like imagine you were a child again and you were told, well, if you're not the captain of the ping pong team, you're going to be grounded.

00:42:11.360 --> 00:42:14.639
You're not going to go on family vacation. We're going to disown you.

00:42:15.280 --> 00:43:40.360
Kids feeling like at the most extreme end I have taught at the most extreme end, you can have these exceptionally bright and motivated kids where they're literally in second, third or fourth grade is where it happens. And they're told that if you can't pass this academic task, we're going to hold you back, you're going to lose your friends and what happens is the kid gets so incredibly frustrated to the point where it's clinically dangerous and then the solution presents itself. What I'm trying to do is to take that controlled frustration. What I'm trying to do is not have the kid go through that hell. Here's a much more efficient model based on the science, based on how the brain works. I know that this is a lot of information to take in and I do encourage that our listeners go to dyslexia classes.com Answer the questionnaire and set up a half hour interview with Russell Klin. Because this is a more efficient model and I know having dyslexic child myself that this approach works. My daughter will be working with Russell. I'm very excited about his methods and I highly recommend that you consider this program if you're struggling with a child that suffers with dyslexia. Thanks, Russell. Thank you.

00:43:40.920 --> 00:43:59.170
Thanks for having me on. Pleasure. I hope this conversation with Russell Van Broecklin has changed your perspective on dyslexia, dyslexia and empowered you with new practical tools that might help your grandchild. We are not helpless to these challenges. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

00:43:59.170 --> 00:44:39.630
What was your biggest takeaway from Russell's insights? Do you have any experience with passion based learning or multi sensory routines? Please share your stories with us on our social media channels. As I mentioned, you can read more about Russell's work and his affordable, proven program by visiting his website@dyslexiaclasses.com and again, that link will be in the show Notes. And please, if you know a family struggling with similar learning challenges, please share this episode with them next week. I'm honored to welcome Dr. Gerry Woodbridge, a compassionate grief advocate and educator, to the show.

00:44:40.269 --> 00:45:25.070
Drawing from her personal journey through widowhood and her expertise expertise in children's grief, Jerry will illuminate the unique emotional landscape the children navigate after loss or family disruption. For grandparents stepping up to raise their grandchildren, this episode offers vital insights into understanding multi layered grief, recognizing subtle signs in children, and implementing practical faith based tools to foster healing and hope. I hope you'll tune in. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through Adversity Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

00:45:26.349 --> 00:45:36.190
Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.