Sept. 10, 2025

Solving Dyslexia: A Revolutionary Approach with Russell Van Brocklen

Solving Dyslexia: A Revolutionary Approach with Russell Van Brocklen
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Season 1

Welcome to episode 45 of the Designing with Love podcast! In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Russell Van Brocklen, The Dyslexic Professor. 

What if everything we thought we knew about dyslexia was backward? Russell, who is the self-described "Dyslexic Professor," turns conventional wisdom on its head with a revolutionary approach that's changing lives and saving families thousands of dollars in specialized education costs.

Russell's methodology produced remarkable results in a New York State Senate-funded program. His three-part approach starts with students' special interests (whether Disney, Theodore Roosevelt, or Ford trucks), teaches from specific to general rather than the reverse, and builds writing skills through simple, effective sentence structures that grow in complexity.

The approach is particularly relevant in today's AI-driven world, where dyslexic individuals can leverage technology to handle mechanical aspects of writing while their unique cognitive strengths – often superior to neurotypical peers in analysis and creativity – shine through. It's not about fixing what's broken, but harnessing what's extraordinary.

🔗Website and Social Links:

Please visit Russell’s website and social media links below.

Russell Van Brocklen’s Website

Russell’s Facebook Page

Russell’s Instagram Page

Russell’s LinkedIn Page

Russell’s YouTube Channel 

🆓Free Resource: The 3 Reasons Your Child’s Dyslexia Education Isn’t Working – And How to Fix It

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00:00 - Introduction to the Dyslexic Professor

08:03 - Discovering Remarkable Dyslexic Abilities

16:55 - A New Model for Teaching Dyslexia

32:52 - Simple Sentence Structure Teaching Method

44:12 - The Oxford Comma and Building Skills

52:43 - Full Brain Reading and Career Advantages

01:01:28 - Organization and Professional Success Strategies

WEBVTT

00:00:01.040 --> 00:00:04.107
Hello and welcome to the Designing with Love podcast.

00:00:04.107 --> 00:00:11.753
I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips and tricks as an instructional designer.

00:00:11.753 --> 00:00:21.021
Hello, GCU students, alumni and fellow educators, welcome to episode 45 of the Designing with Love podcast.

00:00:21.021 --> 00:00:26.083
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Russell Van Brocklin, who is the dyslexic professor.

00:00:26.083 --> 00:00:27.246
Welcome, russell.

00:00:28.208 --> 00:00:28.972
Thanks for having me.

00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:30.664
Yes, thank you for coming.

00:00:30.664 --> 00:00:31.327
I appreciate it.

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You have such insight, and so I'm really looking forward to our interview today.

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So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do as the dyslexic professor?

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Well, as I tell people I solve dyslexia, and a lot of them look at me and they roll their eyes like how can you do that?

00:00:48.127 --> 00:00:49.692
It's still so complicated.

00:00:49.692 --> 00:00:54.325
Well, I have the worst case of dyslexia people have ever seen.

00:00:54.325 --> 00:00:56.712
People say, well, prove it, Okay.

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When I wanted to apply to grad school, I needed new documentation and that required a senior psychologist to do the standard test.

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Problem was none were available there, just so happened to be one 400 feet from the south campus of SUNY Center at Buffalo.

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Her name was Dr Halichka.

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What I failed to grasp at the time was that she was one of the two SUNY State University of New York Distinguished Professors in Psychology in Western New York at the time.

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So that's SUNY's highest rank.

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So I went and she gave me the testing and half of it, and then she had a teacher, a special ed high school person who does that to the other half, and what they found is my base reading and writing skills was at first grade.

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So then I decided to go to law school.

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I wanted to audit two classes to see if I could do it.

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Going into law school in the first grade reading and writing skill, even to audit two classes yeah, that was kind of ambitious.

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So I walk into property.

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I'm sorry, I walk into a contract.

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It's my second day.

00:02:05.808 --> 00:02:07.462
It's Professor Warner.

00:02:07.462 --> 00:02:12.281
He's a dyslexic professor and I went specifically to that university to see him.

00:02:12.281 --> 00:02:19.806
Professor Warner called on me the second class in contracts and are you familiar with the Socratic method in law school?

00:02:20.549 --> 00:02:29.713
Yes, yes, I was actually going to go to law school myself at one time, so yeah, and then I decided to go a different direction and get an MBA and yeah, the rest is history.

00:02:31.681 --> 00:02:32.542
So what?

00:02:32.923 --> 00:02:34.824
Just so your audience knows what they do, is they?

00:02:34.824 --> 00:02:36.106
If you don't know the answer?

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They keep asking you questions to purposely embarrass you, to train you as fast as possible to argue any point anywhere, anytime.

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Train you as fast as possible to argue any point anywhere, anytime.

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So he calls on me and then everything changed.

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Everything slowed down.

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I knew exactly where he was going, four or five questions ahead of time.

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He knew where I was going.

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We battled together for 15 minutes.

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He said at the end Russell, you couldn't be any more correct, I have to move on to the next case for reason of time.

00:03:04.371 --> 00:03:12.403
Everybody looked at me in awe and fear because they're like they can't do that.

00:03:12.424 --> 00:03:17.373
After the first semester I didn't keep going because, well, I couldn't keep up with the legal research and writing.

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The ones who I kept in contact with, who graduated, said even when they graduated, they couldn't come anywhere close to that.

00:03:23.105 --> 00:03:28.050
Then, a few weeks later, I started taking tests I'm sorry, little quizzes in property.

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Now what they do in law school is they try to fool you.

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So you're supposed to read it carefully.

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Then you're supposed to think for three to five minutes and then answer the question.

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I would read it very slowly.

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Then I wouldn't take three to five minutes, I didn't even take three to five seconds Within a second or two.

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I just marked it down.

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And then every time I got perfect hundreds first one every time to turn in the quiz.

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I could now read.

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So I wanted to show that to everybody else, but I had a lot more research to do.

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It took years longer.

00:04:03.153 --> 00:04:05.576
That was the fall of 97.

00:04:05.576 --> 00:04:16.339
It wasn't until the fall of 2001 when I was finally sent to explain this to Connected to Current Research.

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And how that happened is I went to the New York State Senate and I said I want you to pay for my research, and at the time, the majority leader of the Senate his name was Senator Joe Bruno was the majority leader.

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He was my representative.

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So he said go over to the education department.

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So I went over there.

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I said, yeah, joe Bruno sent me.

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Well, they took me seriously, but they wanted to get rid of me.

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So what they did is they said we want a SUNY, distinguished professor in psychology to support this.

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And he said we want a SUNY, distinguished professor in psychology to support this.

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And he said, yeah, it's coming out of Buffalo.

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Okay, so I go out there there's two.

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One is Dr Hawichka, and she said, yeah, she would do it.

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So the state paid for the evaluation.

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20 hours over three days.

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The smartest woman I've ever met beat the living daylights out of me with questions to make sure this was real.

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At the end she said it was a five-page report.

00:05:14.682 --> 00:05:15.824
She said my brain, her thing, divided in five areas.

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Mine was severely abnormal in all five and she said what happened is that I could go from first grade to grad level or above or above average grad level, and back down again and back up again.

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And that happened because I was moving from a part of my brain that wasn't working to a part of my brain that was working.

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So at that point I needed to go over and to connect it with current research, and that was only one real choice.

00:05:42.189 --> 00:05:46.153
Professor James Collins, author of Strategies for Struggling Writers.

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He got over a million dollars from federal grants and I went in and I started going through his book.

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I said this is exactly right.

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So at that point people say it's going to take me years to get his approval.

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I did in less than two weeks.

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Then I entered a university-wide competition, got $15,000, and we tested the program out on our first student.

00:06:12.297 --> 00:06:14.221
Her name was Michaela, I can use her name.

00:06:14.221 --> 00:06:16.887
She went from eighth grade writing.

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On a pre-test.

00:06:18.069 --> 00:06:20.021
There was a zero on the GRE.

00:06:20.021 --> 00:06:23.408
We used the graduate records exam writing assessment for these kids.

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That's the test for going into grad school.

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Right.

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So she scored in the zero percentile.

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She was the smartest, most motivated student of her class who's dyslexic?

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And then after we worked with her for about five months she ended up scoring in about the 50th percentile.

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Spelling and grammar was clean at the graduate level, right.

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We worked with another student and then at that point the Senate said we will fund this for multiple years.

00:06:50.872 --> 00:06:55.286
But they sent the check to Averill Park Central School District.

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They ran.

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It Took me less than four hours to train their best teacher.

00:07:00.444 --> 00:07:04.783
Her name was Susan Ford and again I want everybody to know I kind of cheated.

00:07:04.783 --> 00:07:10.440
We picked only the most motivated, the most intelligent, excellent family support, college bound.

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We wanted to see what we could do with the best and brightest amongst that generation and we had their best teacher.

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So what happened?

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One class period a day for the school year.

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They all went through.

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It Cost the state less than $900.

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They went from the zero percentile to the 30th to 50th percentile, or six percentile to about the 70th.

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They all went on to college.

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They all graduated, no accommodations, 2.5 to 3.6 GPA under 900 a student Wow, yes.

00:07:44.329 --> 00:07:45.911
2.5 to 3.6 GPA Under 900 a student.

00:07:45.932 --> 00:07:46.252
Wow, yes, okay.

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No other program ever worked like that.

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I presented the results in New York City in 2006.

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I thought I was done.

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I thought I did something amazing.

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I was wrong.

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What I was asked was what happens if we apply this to typical students?

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And I would say it would be an abject failure, because typical students can't take GRE, throwing graduate level stuff at them.

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They just can't take it.

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So I said, okay, two things.

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Number one, I had to move this over so that everybody can use it.

00:08:24.966 --> 00:08:32.365
And number two, the professors came to me and said I don't care about your results in the GRE.

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You got the 70th percentile, so what, we can work with that.

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We're used to the 95th percentile, we don't care.

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And I was like what do you want?

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And they said they wanted the craft of research.

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What's a craft of research?

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It's a book that came out from the University of Chicago in 1995 because their PhD students didn't know how to write advanced research papers.

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It's like, okay, in its current version, it's down to the most elite high school students before they even attempt it.

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And, as you'll see as we progress, I dropped it to fourth grade.

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Wow.

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Amazing.

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So what is the craft of research?

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It's based on three areas context, problem and solution.

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Context get everybody on the same page, state the problem and then come up with a solution.

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And if your solution doesn't give the reader something substantially new, they don't learn something substantive.

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Then they say don't write the paper, which pretty much eliminates virtually every paper written in high school and college and probably even a lot of graduate programs across the country.

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That's how high the standard is.

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Okay.

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But first thing what I had to do was to come up with a new model to work with dyslexic kids.

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If you're going to go and say Dr Orton, who's the Einstein, the Copernicus?

00:10:04.514 --> 00:10:08.245
To go and say Dr Orton, who's the Einstein, the Copernicus?

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He is the top guy in the field of dyslexia.

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He passed away in 1948.

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And this is what all the wealthy schools use.

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If you're going to say he's wrong, you have to use the best science.

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I'm going to use this book, which is from Yale, dr Sally Shaywitz.

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What she did is she did brain scans.

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So now we know what's actually going on.

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So what I'm going to point to is I'm going to turn to this edition, which is page 78.

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And that's overcoming dyslexia.

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Yep, there's the brain, yep.

00:10:38.033 --> 00:10:48.860
Okay, now do you see, in the back part of the brain, I'm not going to use the word non-impaired, I'm going to use the word non-impaired, I'm going to use the word gen ed student.

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So do you see, in the back part, the gen ed brain has a lot of neuroactivity and the dyslexic brain is virtually zero.

00:10:52.868 --> 00:10:58.086
Yes, If you look at it from a different angle there's a little bit, but you see how the front part's about two and a half times over active.

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Yep.

00:10:59.892 --> 00:10:59.991
Okay.

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So I looked at that and said let's draw a simple analogy.

00:11:04.953 --> 00:11:09.188
I want you to imagine we have Arnold Schwarzenegger at 16.

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He never weightlifted.

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And then we have the proverbial 98-pound weakling and we put them on a weight training program.

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Who's going to develop faster?

00:11:17.740 --> 00:11:18.927
Probably Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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His body is predisposed genetically to accelerate much more than a 98-pound weakling.

00:11:25.571 --> 00:11:33.592
Okay, so I looked at that and, just using that as an analogy, the front part of the brain is about two and a half times overactive.

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Why don't we use that?

00:11:35.066 --> 00:11:44.634
So what I'm about to do is I'm really going to oversimplify really complex neuroscience so that we can draw some learning points from it.

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Complex neuroscience so that we can draw some learning points from it.

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So what we're going to do is the front part of the brain deals with articulation first, followed by word analysis.

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That's what I did with the GRE Okay, Articulated first and a little bit of word analysis.

00:11:56.759 --> 00:12:10.004
So, to make this available to everybody, I flipped it Word analysis first, flip it Word analysis first, followed by articulation.

00:12:10.004 --> 00:12:19.364
But I found that that was step three of the model, Because if you're going to work with typical dyslexic students and I'm also going to throw in ADD and ADHD and mild dyslexia so the model is ADD, ADHD, mild dyslexia.

00:12:20.365 --> 00:12:24.067
So the model is ADD, ADHD, mild dyslexia.

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Next level, severe dyslexia.

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Final level, severe dyslexia with a genius student who's highly motivated.

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So that's the three levels.

00:12:33.015 --> 00:12:41.581
Okay, All right, Because at the first level ADD, ADHD and mild dyslexia the treatment's pretty much the same, All right.

00:12:41.581 --> 00:12:46.393
So when we're looking at that, have you ever worked with ADHD students before Ever?

00:12:47.379 --> 00:12:55.855
No, I've just I've had friends that have been in high school and, yeah, high school grade school that were, that were dyslexic, yeah.

00:12:56.740 --> 00:12:57.282
What you're going to.

00:12:57.282 --> 00:13:01.832
Does it make sense that most teachers say I can't get this kid to concentrate on anything?

00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:05.068
Yes, yeah, I would hear that quite a bit from the teachers.

00:13:05.249 --> 00:13:16.309
Yeah, Okay, first step of the model we are going to permanently get rid of that and make these kids hyper-focused, and where they will work for hours on an academic task.

00:13:16.309 --> 00:13:17.801
Are you ready for the big secret?

00:13:18.442 --> 00:13:19.604
Yes, absolutely.

00:13:20.365 --> 00:13:25.475
Their speciality, their interest, their area of extreme interest and ability.

00:13:25.475 --> 00:13:29.986
So what I do is I'll say it's a Saturday morning, you have nothing that you have to do.

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What do you want to do all day?

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And that is their speciality.

00:13:35.207 --> 00:13:40.552
I have kids who have said they want to learn about famous people.

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One said she was interested in 1970s Ford F-150s, miss people.

00:13:48.380 --> 00:13:50.548
One said she was interested in 1970s Ford F-150s.

00:13:50.548 --> 00:13:58.769
I've had a lot of elementary school girls say they want to learn about Hermione from Harry Potter because she's smart, all right, whatever it is football, soccer, it doesn't matter.

00:13:58.769 --> 00:14:00.940
That's what you're going to teach them.

00:14:01.400 --> 00:14:02.123
You tap into that?

00:14:02.143 --> 00:14:02.604
Does that make sense?

00:14:02.903 --> 00:14:04.187
Mm-hmm, tap into that, you tap into that.

00:14:04.206 --> 00:14:05.629
You step outside of that.

00:14:05.629 --> 00:14:07.860
The most motivated kid in the world.

00:14:07.860 --> 00:14:09.024
You're down 50%.

00:14:09.024 --> 00:14:10.967
Yeah Right, typical student.

00:14:10.967 --> 00:14:17.210
You're down 75, 80% and you wonder why you're putting all these resources in and getting very little back.

00:14:17.770 --> 00:14:19.140
That makes sense Right.

00:14:19.441 --> 00:14:23.688
So next thing, we find their speciality.

00:14:23.688 --> 00:14:26.653
I tell them we're going to get a book on that and an audio book.

00:14:26.653 --> 00:14:32.592
By far the most famous, the most popular one that I do, is Walt Disney.

00:14:32.840 --> 00:14:33.904
Walt Disney yeah.

00:14:34.046 --> 00:14:37.068
Okay, 1,000 pages 11th, 12th grade.

00:14:37.068 --> 00:14:39.148
I give that to 10-year-olds, all right.

00:14:39.148 --> 00:14:42.264
So I want you to imagine this have you ever been to Disney World?

00:14:43.841 --> 00:14:46.469
No, but I've been to Disneyland plenty of times You've been to Disney.

00:14:46.850 --> 00:14:50.070
Okay, have you noticed that they say it's the most magical place on earth?

00:14:50.070 --> 00:14:50.832
Does that make sense?

00:14:51.293 --> 00:14:51.514
Yes.

00:14:52.197 --> 00:14:52.840
Yeah, it does.

00:14:52.840 --> 00:14:56.090
The magic is defined by two universal things.

00:14:56.090 --> 00:14:58.846
One is 90% of it.

00:14:58.846 --> 00:15:00.966
The first one's easy to find.

00:15:00.966 --> 00:15:03.205
The second one forget it.

00:15:03.205 --> 00:15:08.042
I've had parents with master's degrees, phds, lawyers, doctors.

00:15:08.042 --> 00:15:10.025
They couldn't figure it out.

00:15:10.025 --> 00:15:11.509
I always had to tell them.

00:15:11.509 --> 00:15:14.761
Actually, I had their kid tell them.

00:15:14.761 --> 00:15:18.429
You know that second universal thing you're trying to find.

00:15:18.429 --> 00:15:22.104
Well, your 13-year-old dyslexic daughter just told you what it is.

00:15:22.104 --> 00:15:23.706
Did I do my job?

00:15:24.629 --> 00:15:25.811
Right yeah you did.

00:15:26.172 --> 00:15:28.703
So, once you have those universal themes.

00:15:28.703 --> 00:15:37.341
I then had some people go on to Disney to intern and what they could do is they would say in this situation, classic Walt Disney, this is how he probably would have solved it.

00:15:37.341 --> 00:15:40.653
All right, it's that powerful.

00:15:40.653 --> 00:15:41.937
Yes, all right.

00:15:41.937 --> 00:15:46.129
To give you an example of my I never saw this before, I will never see it again.

00:15:46.129 --> 00:15:53.907
Her name was Casey, ten years old, fifth year, the end of fifth grade, second grade reading level, crazy about Theodore Roosevelt.

00:15:54.379 --> 00:15:59.549
So I assigned her this oh, theodore Roosevelt's book, yeah.

00:16:00.461 --> 00:16:01.384
That's the first of three.

00:16:01.384 --> 00:16:02.368
First of three.

00:16:02.388 --> 00:16:05.186
All right, that's the series on him.

00:16:05.186 --> 00:16:09.389
Tenth grade to first year college level, depending who you ask won the Pulitzer.

00:16:09.389 --> 00:16:17.950
All right, so I gave that to Casey and within six months I said I'll never see this again.

00:16:17.950 --> 00:16:21.428
She wanted to learn reading first instead of writing.

00:16:21.428 --> 00:16:22.865
So I said okay, casey.

00:16:22.865 --> 00:16:24.269
Here's a modified version.

00:16:24.269 --> 00:16:34.633
She was in her room two to three hours a night, six, seven nights a week, most of the day in the summertime, up there, going through this simple but powerful process.

00:16:34.633 --> 00:16:41.647
At the end of six months she knew every word in that book, the dictionary definition of every word.

00:16:42.167 --> 00:16:45.171
Wow, my goodness of every word.

00:16:45.191 --> 00:16:47.533
Wow, my goodness, okay, every word.

00:16:47.533 --> 00:16:55.022
So now she, six months later, she's in middle school.

00:16:55.022 --> 00:16:58.735
They're doing silent reading and her classmates are reading Harry Potter, twilight or whatever it was at the time and they came over and they took her book.

00:16:58.735 --> 00:17:00.081
They said what's this?

00:17:00.081 --> 00:17:02.649
Well, this is a book I'm reading for an outside reading program.

00:17:02.649 --> 00:17:07.191
None of the kids could get past the first paragraph.

00:17:07.191 --> 00:17:12.112
They called her mom and they said I thought that your daughter had a reading problem.

00:17:12.112 --> 00:17:14.747
She's supposed to be reading at the second grade level.

00:17:14.747 --> 00:17:17.346
She's the best reader in the class by grade levels.

00:17:17.346 --> 00:17:18.550
What's going on?

00:17:18.550 --> 00:17:20.705
And her mom asked me what's going on.

00:17:20.705 --> 00:17:26.461
I said what do you think she's been doing in her room hours a night for the past six months?

00:17:26.461 --> 00:17:31.933
Normally it takes me at least 12, generally 18 to 24 months to get those results.

00:17:31.933 --> 00:17:36.951
All right, casey dropped it to six months and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week.

00:17:38.359 --> 00:17:39.363
Wow, that's amazing.

00:17:39.442 --> 00:17:41.847
Okay, wow so when people say they can't read.

00:17:41.847 --> 00:17:44.580
Well, casey figured it out Right.

00:17:44.580 --> 00:17:47.067
So that brings us to our second point.

00:17:47.067 --> 00:17:54.813
All right, remember, we start off with the student's area of extreme interest, their speciality.

00:17:54.813 --> 00:17:58.489
So what I noticed, and where did I get that from?

00:17:58.489 --> 00:18:19.782
I went back and I started talking to successful dyslexic professors both professors dyslexia major research universities and they went to a typical school K-12, not the specialized dyslexic schools and I noticed that there was a pattern they did horrible K through college a little better the last two years.

00:18:19.782 --> 00:18:23.551
They walked into grad school top of their class day one.

00:18:23.551 --> 00:18:30.810
So, as you know, when you're in grad school, you went through it and they didn't care about anything but that specific area.

00:18:31.330 --> 00:18:31.531
Right.

00:18:32.472 --> 00:18:33.974
Okay, that was a key thing.

00:18:33.974 --> 00:18:43.588
Now, second thing that I found is when they're undergraduate this is the second point I said, this is weird A lot of them were STEM science, technology, engineering, math.

00:18:43.588 --> 00:18:50.589
They were taking art history classes, philosophy classes, music classes and they had no interest in those areas.

00:18:50.589 --> 00:18:53.944
Right, what is going on?

00:18:53.944 --> 00:18:57.113
Does that make any sense to you whatsoever?

00:18:57.740 --> 00:18:59.463
No, especially if they're studying STEM.

00:18:59.463 --> 00:19:02.992
Yeah, they shouldn't be taking philosophy and history.

00:19:03.299 --> 00:19:05.326
No, I mean they don't care about philosophy.

00:19:05.969 --> 00:19:06.190
Right.

00:19:07.060 --> 00:19:15.534
So what happened is those professors were teaching not the general to the specific, but from the specific to the general.

00:19:15.694 --> 00:19:15.994
Okay.

00:19:16.961 --> 00:19:37.130
So what I extracted from that for a very long time is, if you ask the dyslectic this question or ADD or ADHD, it's one of the three In your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed Key question with little to no organization?

00:19:37.130 --> 00:19:43.953
Again, so in your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with a little bit or no organization?

00:19:43.953 --> 00:19:46.480
And they say yes or they say no.

00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:47.724
Did that happen in the past?

00:19:47.724 --> 00:19:50.471
And then they say yes virtually 100% of the time.

00:19:50.471 --> 00:20:02.794
And I say what we're going to do because I have to get the kids by it is we're going to force your brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.

00:20:02.794 --> 00:20:06.201
So, again, we're going to force your brain to organize itself.

00:20:06.201 --> 00:20:14.709
And how we're going to judge that is we're going to see how well you're doing with writing as a measurable output and you go okay, yeah, that makes sense.

00:20:14.709 --> 00:20:16.673
Now, that's most kids.

00:20:16.673 --> 00:20:26.266
Now, if we're going to get down to severe dyslexia and this is again a minority fingers, keyboard, fingers, keyboard, keyboard.

00:20:26.266 --> 00:20:29.747
The idea is in your head, you want to write about it, you're going to type.

00:20:29.747 --> 00:20:31.595
Fingers, keyboard, you take.

00:20:31.595 --> 00:20:36.290
You take your fingers, you put them on the keyboard, the idea flies out your head, leaving you with an empty brain.

00:20:36.290 --> 00:20:40.606
And I ask them if that's them, most will say no.

00:20:40.606 --> 00:20:43.069
The ones that say yes, congratulations.

00:20:43.131 --> 00:20:44.613
Now you're dealing with severe dyslexia.

00:20:44.613 --> 00:20:48.882
What's the difference?

00:20:48.882 --> 00:20:56.173
The severe dyslexic is going to go deeper generally, much deeper than mild dyslexia, add or ADHD.

00:20:56.173 --> 00:21:00.902
They also take much longer to learn.

00:21:00.902 --> 00:21:04.246
All right, so all the same process, but they're going to have to practice a lot more.

00:21:04.246 --> 00:21:07.449
The repetition will surprise you how much you have to get.

00:21:07.449 --> 00:21:11.773
You make it very simple and then you give them the repetition until they mastered it.

00:21:11.773 --> 00:21:13.135
Then you go on to the next step.

00:21:13.135 --> 00:21:22.942
The final one gets very dangerous.

00:21:22.942 --> 00:21:23.905
I'm just letting people know about it.

00:21:23.905 --> 00:21:25.211
So if they run across this, they recognize it.

00:21:25.211 --> 00:21:34.025
But I don't want them to follow and do what I'm telling them, because if you don't know exactly what you're doing, it's something that can get quite mentally dangerous.

00:21:34.025 --> 00:21:36.549
All right, here's the background.

00:21:36.549 --> 00:21:47.192
You're dealing with a most likely severely dyslexic student, but somehow they're getting around 85, 86.

00:21:47.192 --> 00:21:49.061
They're barely making low end honor roll.

00:21:49.061 --> 00:21:50.585
Or they're getting like 82, 83.

00:21:50.585 --> 00:21:54.492
They're doing well enough, low to mid 80s.

00:21:54.492 --> 00:21:56.786
People say, oh, they're fine, there's not a problem.

00:21:56.987 --> 00:21:59.141
They think they're passing, so no big deal, right?

00:21:59.161 --> 00:22:01.345
Well, they're not just passing Low to mid 80s.

00:22:01.345 --> 00:22:13.867
Even they're like, hey, they're on the low honor roll they're doing fine right right typically their brothers and sisters will be fighting to become valedictorians or are valedictorians academics.

00:22:13.867 --> 00:22:17.261
In this, in this house, I mean their brothers and sisters, they get a b plus.

00:22:17.261 --> 00:22:18.243
It's like the end of the world.

00:22:18.263 --> 00:22:36.269
This is horrible right, okay the parents tend to be very educated, doing very academically oriented work, and what I've noticed with these kids is and I make sure that this is a completely private conversation that parents literally never know.

00:22:36.269 --> 00:22:42.607
I'll say I know your secret and they freak out what do you mean?

00:22:42.607 --> 00:22:43.130
How do you know?

00:22:43.130 --> 00:22:50.605
And I say it started in elementary school, maybe it was early second grade, probably third or fourth.

00:22:50.605 --> 00:22:55.750
What happened is you had to accomplish some academic task.

00:22:55.750 --> 00:23:01.395
Nobody could help you and if you failed it, they were going to hold you back.

00:23:01.395 --> 00:23:06.800
You were going to lose your friends especially devastating for girls at that age.

00:23:06.800 --> 00:23:11.410
So what happened is they became clinically depressed.

00:23:11.410 --> 00:23:18.730
They would say things to themselves like if I don't do this, my parents won't love me anymore.

00:23:19.912 --> 00:23:43.644
My friends will hate me, friends will hate me and they put so much pressure on themselves that in time the answer that they had to overcome presents itself and then, over time, by the time they reach high school it's happened so many times it's just like breathing, but they don't want their family to know.

00:23:43.644 --> 00:23:53.463
When I did that original study group at Averill Park, I talked to some of the really, really advanced kids and they're like yeah, that's us.

00:23:53.463 --> 00:23:54.166
How did you know?

00:23:54.166 --> 00:23:56.204
Wow, and they didn't want anybody else to know.

00:23:56.204 --> 00:23:57.806
I said well, you think you're the only one.

00:23:57.806 --> 00:24:03.224
If you're dealing with a hyper, maybe you don't have the kid tested.

00:24:03.224 --> 00:24:08.411
But as a teacher, as an instructor, you know, sometimes this student is just an Einstein.

00:24:08.411 --> 00:24:10.854
They're brilliant, but you can't explain it.

00:24:10.854 --> 00:24:11.513
Make sense.

00:24:12.095 --> 00:24:13.236
Right, yeah, makes sense.

00:24:13.977 --> 00:24:22.150
But if you're running into that, okay, especially if the kid's in elementary school, this is what they're going through.

00:24:22.150 --> 00:24:32.232
What you're going to want to do is to say talk to them in private, get parental permission first, talk to them in private.

00:24:32.232 --> 00:24:38.805
If that's the case, you're going to want them to speak to a qualified mental health professional and not send the kid through that hell.

00:24:39.527 --> 00:24:42.153
There's no reason for it, absolutely.

00:24:43.340 --> 00:24:49.166
But for those kids who have built it up, when I did the GRE course, how did I get such phenomenal results?

00:24:49.166 --> 00:24:54.484
Well, I kind of what these kids essentially did were doing PhD level work.

00:24:54.484 --> 00:24:55.327
In elementary school.

00:24:55.327 --> 00:24:57.374
I tapped into that.

00:24:57.374 --> 00:25:00.541
That's why they accelerated so fast.

00:25:00.541 --> 00:25:05.090
There's never been any other study with any type results like that.

00:25:06.354 --> 00:25:10.710
All right, so those are some things to look at.

00:25:10.710 --> 00:25:13.788
And now that's going back to step two.

00:25:13.788 --> 00:25:24.442
So what we do is we start teaching the kids from the specific to the general, because now they've got something to latch on to and it forces them to go step by step.

00:25:24.442 --> 00:25:29.585
If we start from the specific to the general, you start off with an anchor point.

00:25:29.585 --> 00:25:34.909
Then you can force your brain to think linearly for the next several steps.

00:25:36.731 --> 00:25:38.395
And that's the problem with dyslexia.

00:25:38.395 --> 00:25:43.490
It's kind of like I'm going to use an analogy of a cold Dyslexics.

00:25:43.490 --> 00:25:47.200
It's not a reading problem, it presents as a reading problem.

00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:50.253
It's kind of like a stuffy nose, the cold medicine you take.

00:25:50.253 --> 00:25:57.953
It masks the symptoms, but the problem is an issue, some things in your chest.

00:25:57.953 --> 00:26:01.340
I go right to the chest.

00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:03.483
I go right to what the underlying issue is.

00:26:03.483 --> 00:26:05.494
It's the lack of organization.

00:26:05.494 --> 00:26:16.403
So, for example, in the original program, susan Ford spent almost no time on spelling and grammar, and they went from horrendous to clean at the graduate level.

00:26:16.403 --> 00:26:18.054
Every last one of them All right.

00:26:18.054 --> 00:26:22.654
So would you like to learn how we can do that for elementary school kids?

00:26:23.217 --> 00:26:24.760
Yes, that would be great, come on.

00:26:25.230 --> 00:26:25.510
Okay.

00:26:25.510 --> 00:26:37.353
So typically when I present every year at Everyone Reading in New York City to train New York State special ed teachers, they come into me and I'm going to rip off one teacher what she said, her idea.

00:26:37.353 --> 00:26:39.196
I'm going to use it.

00:26:39.196 --> 00:26:49.832
She said she has in elementary school so many dyslexic kids who are writing, apparently randomly placed, misspelled words she doesn't know what to do.

00:26:49.832 --> 00:26:57.750
So now I'm going to show you how we're going to get them to write a basic three-word sentence to start off with Love it.

00:26:57.750 --> 00:27:04.333
Okay, let's just say some of the students you've worked with that you knew in high school.

00:27:04.333 --> 00:27:11.636
I would like you to pick one of them, change their name and tell me is it John Doe or Jane Doe?

00:27:11.636 --> 00:27:13.280
Who are we talking about here?

00:27:13.721 --> 00:27:14.083
Jane Doe.

00:27:15.250 --> 00:27:17.497
Okay, what did Jane really love to do?

00:27:17.497 --> 00:27:18.480
What was her speciality?

00:27:18.990 --> 00:27:21.479
She loved horses, riding horses, horses, yeah.

00:27:22.390 --> 00:27:22.651
Okay.

00:27:22.651 --> 00:27:25.096
So imagine Jane is in elementary school.

00:27:25.096 --> 00:27:29.092
She's writing randomly placed misspelled words, that's what they appear to be.

00:27:29.092 --> 00:27:41.279
So what we're going to do is we're going to start off with Dr James Collins' default writing strategy of copying strategies for struggling writers, and you're going to type out hero plus sign.

00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:44.193
What are we talking about Then?

00:27:44.193 --> 00:27:49.871
Jane's going to retype that, then she's going to shift from hero to Jane, jane plus sign.

00:27:49.871 --> 00:27:51.736
What are we talking about Then?

00:27:51.736 --> 00:27:53.420
Jane plus sign horses.

00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:56.352
See how we got there All right.

00:27:56.352 --> 00:27:59.003
Now I'm going to ask you some very specific questions.

00:27:59.003 --> 00:28:03.000
If you don't get it exactly right, if you don't answer them exactly correct, it's not going to work.

00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:09.038
90% of special ed teachers don't get, don't answer it, don't do exactly as I tell them.

00:28:09.038 --> 00:28:11.931
Are you ready to follow my instructions exactly?

00:28:12.451 --> 00:28:12.651
Yes.

00:28:13.672 --> 00:28:14.012
Okay, here we go.

00:28:14.012 --> 00:28:15.814
Here's my question we have Jane plus sign horses.

00:28:15.814 --> 00:28:20.298
Here's my question we have Jane plus sign horses.

00:28:20.298 --> 00:28:22.439
We need to replace the plus sign.

00:28:22.439 --> 00:28:26.583
So here's my question Remember it has to be exactly precise.

00:28:26.583 --> 00:28:30.346
Does Jane like or dislike horses?

00:28:30.346 --> 00:28:32.586
Go ahead and replace that with a plus sign.

00:28:35.163 --> 00:28:35.929
What's the sentence?

00:28:37.592 --> 00:28:38.051
Jane likes horses.

00:28:38.051 --> 00:28:40.015
You got it the first time, but not the second.

00:28:40.035 --> 00:28:41.457
Oh, All right.

00:28:41.537 --> 00:28:42.298
This is, but not the second.

00:28:42.298 --> 00:28:46.182
Oh, all right, this is now going to show you, oh, I see what I did wrong.

00:28:46.182 --> 00:28:46.824
What did you?

00:28:46.844 --> 00:28:47.884
do what?

00:28:47.884 --> 00:28:48.365
Did you do.

00:28:48.365 --> 00:28:52.794
I should have replaced the likes with the plus Jane, plus sources, right.

00:28:53.474 --> 00:28:53.816
No.

00:28:54.498 --> 00:28:54.878
No, nope.

00:28:56.321 --> 00:29:02.323
Okay, so we're now going to go over to the heart of writing problems for dyslexia in elementary school.

00:29:02.323 --> 00:29:05.638
All right, I still have you pretty confused now, don't I?

00:29:06.089 --> 00:29:10.221
Yeah, because I'm wondering I thought I did it right and then I was like no, I did it wrong.

00:29:10.549 --> 00:29:12.076
You did it right and then you did it wrong.

00:29:12.217 --> 00:29:12.657
How funny.

00:29:13.470 --> 00:29:14.756
Are you nice and confused?

00:29:14.756 --> 00:29:20.501
Yeah, yeah, a little bit Okay so I asked you does Jane like or dislike horses?

00:29:20.501 --> 00:29:23.112
You said a little bit okay.

00:29:23.112 --> 00:29:24.116
So I asked you does jane like or dislike horses?

00:29:24.116 --> 00:29:24.499
You said like, like.

00:29:24.499 --> 00:29:26.849
Then I asked you to put into a sentence and you add, you automatically added the s jane likes horses.

00:29:26.849 --> 00:29:35.628
Oh, jane doesn't know how to add the s oh, okay yeah, so now it may not seem like a big deal.

00:29:35.669 --> 00:29:39.294
Just tell the kid to add the s, j, james dyslexic.

00:29:39.294 --> 00:29:45.440
Okay, and this is what I'm going to try to drive this home.

00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:47.742
Look at the brain image again.

00:29:48.143 --> 00:29:48.542
Right.

00:29:48.703 --> 00:29:50.705
Look at the brain activity in the back part of your brain.

00:29:50.705 --> 00:29:51.527
It's going nuts.

00:29:51.527 --> 00:29:53.553
That's where this is supposed to be.

00:29:53.553 --> 00:29:55.298
We got very little going on there.

00:29:55.298 --> 00:29:57.856
So how do we fix this?

00:29:57.856 --> 00:30:05.295
Well, orton-gillingham, it'sillingham, the Orton Academy is two years to become certified, $11,000, not-for-profit.

00:30:05.295 --> 00:30:20.337
It's like a master's degree, like your MBA, see, touch, hear every sentence imaginable and it takes a while to learn how to get the kid to add the letter S and it's complicated, but it works All right.

00:30:20.337 --> 00:30:21.461
We need it a better way.

00:30:22.369 --> 00:30:27.538
Here's my presumption the child can speak proper English.

00:30:27.538 --> 00:30:31.632
That's the presumption I had to put in there to make this work.

00:30:31.632 --> 00:30:38.756
So what I would do is I'd ask Jane to read what she wrote out loud, because I asked her do you like or dislike?

00:30:38.756 --> 00:30:41.261
And the answer is like that's what I asked her.

00:30:41.261 --> 00:30:43.356
Jane like horses.

00:30:43.356 --> 00:30:45.476
How do we get her to add the S?

00:30:45.476 --> 00:30:47.016
I asked her to read it out loud.

00:30:47.016 --> 00:30:49.516
Does that sound generally correct?

00:30:49.516 --> 00:30:52.362
No, so what does Jane?

00:30:52.362 --> 00:30:53.795
Do I tell her to fix it?

00:30:53.795 --> 00:30:56.596
Jane likes horses.

00:30:56.596 --> 00:31:02.355
Right Now we practice that 20 times A list of 10 likes and 10.

00:31:02.355 --> 00:31:02.876
Dislikes.

00:31:02.876 --> 00:31:05.953
Now, if you don't like the negatives, you can do 20 likes.

00:31:05.953 --> 00:31:09.382
So here's one of the fun things that I like to do.

00:31:09.382 --> 00:31:13.037
Sometimes the kid just doesn't want to do the work.

00:31:13.037 --> 00:31:14.101
Sound familiar.

00:31:14.569 --> 00:31:17.740
Yes, Even in graduate school they don't want to do the work.

00:31:17.740 --> 00:31:18.121
Yeah.

00:31:19.029 --> 00:31:24.018
So one of my kids I'm just going to use John or Jane Doe to protect his identity.

00:31:24.018 --> 00:31:26.491
He was the elder brother.

00:31:26.491 --> 00:31:32.792
He had a younger sister, but he was the older brother, so he was in charge when he wouldn't do his work.

00:31:32.792 --> 00:31:39.836
The one thing he hated above all others was his younger sister considerably younger telling him what to do.

00:31:39.836 --> 00:31:44.492
So he, I said did you do your homework?

00:31:44.492 --> 00:31:46.979
No, did your mom or dad give you permission not to do it?

00:31:46.979 --> 00:31:48.810
No, why didn't you do it?

00:31:48.810 --> 00:31:49.632
I didn't feel like it.

00:31:49.632 --> 00:31:52.960
I said okay, remember what I said was going to happen.

00:31:53.662 --> 00:31:58.298
And he goes my younger sister's going to mess up my room and tell me how to clean it.

00:31:58.298 --> 00:31:59.382
So that's what happened.

00:31:59.382 --> 00:32:05.002
And then his parents said you know what, john, I don't think you learned your lesson.

00:32:05.002 --> 00:32:06.452
They had her do it again.

00:32:06.452 --> 00:32:09.602
So you messed it up and telling him exactly how to clean it up.

00:32:09.602 --> 00:32:13.519
And he came back and said I am never going to miss homework again.

00:32:13.519 --> 00:32:15.891
Or a kid oh, it works great.

00:32:15.891 --> 00:32:19.034
Or a kid says I hate cleaning the cat pan, it's disgusting.

00:32:19.034 --> 00:32:20.855
They missed their homework.

00:32:20.855 --> 00:32:23.438
Mom and dad didn't give them permission.

00:32:23.438 --> 00:32:27.141
What happens when I gotta clean the cat pan?

00:32:27.141 --> 00:32:28.982
Never had another problem.

00:32:29.403 --> 00:32:29.763
Yeah.

00:32:30.904 --> 00:32:32.546
So that's why I like dealing with the negatives.

00:32:33.047 --> 00:32:33.267
Right.

00:32:34.210 --> 00:32:35.953
I like that.

00:32:35.953 --> 00:32:39.863
So what we do is now we have them practice that.

00:32:39.863 --> 00:32:46.634
Now here's remember what I said about the spelling and grammar getting that to be autocorrected.

00:32:46.634 --> 00:32:48.056
I can explain the theory here.

00:32:48.056 --> 00:32:57.730
First thing that we do is we tell them not to put a period down no period.

00:32:57.730 --> 00:33:08.315
They can ask any question.

00:33:08.315 --> 00:33:08.823
Until as long as the period's not there.

00:33:08.823 --> 00:33:09.704
They can ask any question like did I spell horses right?

00:33:09.704 --> 00:33:10.362
And you can say no, you didn't.

00:33:10.362 --> 00:33:12.075
So what they'll then do is they'll just have to retype horses.

00:33:12.075 --> 00:33:12.307
Okay.

00:33:12.307 --> 00:33:22.251
But once they put the period down, if there's a spelling mistake or a major and I mean major grammatical mistake, don't do the medium or the little stuff, because you'll just crash the kid out of frustration.

00:33:22.251 --> 00:33:23.295
All right.

00:33:23.295 --> 00:33:26.021
But major grammar mistakes, they have that and they drop the period.

00:33:26.021 --> 00:33:29.636
Now they have to retype it until they get it correct.

00:33:30.719 --> 00:33:32.683
Okay, that makes sense, okay yeah.

00:33:32.769 --> 00:33:33.652
So what happens?

00:33:33.652 --> 00:33:35.096
Here's what I tell them.

00:33:35.096 --> 00:33:37.362
This is the least offensive word I've ever found.

00:33:37.362 --> 00:33:43.557
You made a silly mistake or a silly error, one of those two teacher's parent's choice, all right.

00:33:43.557 --> 00:33:45.501
So again, silly mistake or silly error.

00:33:45.501 --> 00:33:48.336
So they're like you got to retype it, okay.

00:33:48.336 --> 00:33:50.622
So then they keep making the same mistake.

00:33:50.622 --> 00:33:55.799
So then they hyper-focus I'm not going to make that mistake.

00:33:55.799 --> 00:33:59.474
And they make it again Seven times down.

00:33:59.474 --> 00:34:00.739
They're still making that mistake.

00:34:00.739 --> 00:34:09.923
And then they truly hyper-focus.

00:34:09.923 --> 00:34:15.114
You can see sweat coming down their face sometimes and eventually they get it right.

00:34:15.114 --> 00:34:17.344
And when they're hyper-focusing I'm not going to make that mistake that's where the magic happens.

00:34:17.344 --> 00:34:18.509
That's where a lot of this self-corrects.

00:34:19.130 --> 00:34:20.534
Right, that makes sense.

00:34:20.956 --> 00:34:21.717
Yeah, okay.

00:34:21.717 --> 00:34:25.655
So we do that for reason.

00:34:25.655 --> 00:34:28.521
I call it wheelchair crutches walking.

00:34:28.521 --> 00:34:31.594
If you broke your leg, you start off typing everything.

00:34:31.594 --> 00:34:32.275
They copy it.

00:34:32.275 --> 00:34:41.594
All right, maybe you do 20 of those, and then what you do is you say I'm not going to copy it anymore, you have to do it yourself, and we go through what we just discussed.

00:34:41.594 --> 00:34:47.862
All right, once they run out of things that they like or dislike, I have them go to their book.

00:34:47.862 --> 00:34:52.561
So, like, for example, with Casey, what does Theodore Roosevelt like or dislike?

00:34:52.561 --> 00:35:01.875
What I tell them to do is they're going to read the book, while listening to it and trying to answer a specific question what does the hero like?

00:35:01.875 --> 00:35:02.838
What is the hero dislike?

00:35:02.838 --> 00:35:09.380
The craziness, the disorganization in their head drops about 70 to 80% at that point.

00:35:10.001 --> 00:35:10.282
Wow.

00:35:11.043 --> 00:35:13.697
Okay, and yes, casey did this book.

00:35:13.697 --> 00:35:16.215
We were on this book with her for three years.

00:35:16.436 --> 00:35:17.659
Three years Until she could learn to write.

00:35:17.960 --> 00:35:21.846
Yes, Context problem solution for three years, All right.

00:35:21.846 --> 00:35:25.097
At the end of eighth grade, she was ready to go into college.

00:35:25.097 --> 00:35:27.103
Wow, my goodness.

00:35:27.103 --> 00:35:32.882
Last I spoke to her she said that she was in college and she was applying for her big girl job.

00:35:32.882 --> 00:35:35.731
I don't know what that is, but that's what I spoke to her.

00:35:35.771 --> 00:35:37.793
I like that Big girl job.

00:35:37.793 --> 00:35:38.934
That's great yeah.

00:35:39.074 --> 00:35:39.494
I love that.

00:35:39.494 --> 00:35:44.498
So then what we do is, once we get done with those 20, you got them right.

00:35:44.498 --> 00:35:46.239
If they don't get them right, keep going back.

00:35:46.239 --> 00:35:47.440
You have to.

00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:49.382
You do not go on to the next step until it's mastered.

00:35:49.382 --> 00:35:52.144
Then we'll say reason one and they'll type it out.

00:35:52.144 --> 00:35:54.666
I tend to have that done separately.

00:35:54.666 --> 00:36:04.898
We put them together Sarah likes swimming because it's fun Then we do another 20, reason one and reason two, and then it's the Oxford comma.

00:36:04.898 --> 00:36:07.375
Are you a one comma person or a two comma person?

00:36:08.177 --> 00:36:09.139
One comma For three reasons.

00:36:09.519 --> 00:36:12.976
Okay, whatever that is, usually it's the mom who teaches this.

00:36:12.976 --> 00:36:15.391
Okay, whatever it is.

00:36:15.391 --> 00:36:17.275
Is this a one comma kid or two comma kid?

00:36:17.275 --> 00:36:18.458
Put it in their IEP.

00:36:18.458 --> 00:36:19.239
It's in stone forever.

00:36:19.239 --> 00:36:28.474
All right, then we have reason one, reason two and reason three.

00:36:28.474 --> 00:36:31.344
Sarah likes swimming because it's fun, she likes the water and she likes being with her friends.

00:36:31.344 --> 00:36:40.313
That may not sound like a lot, but we took a kid who was doing randomly placed misspelled words and now they're writing at the end of second or beginning third grade level.

00:36:40.313 --> 00:36:47.735
Sometimes I get that done in 100 sentences, sometimes I go to four or 500 sentences, but that's it.

00:36:47.735 --> 00:36:49.594
Here's the other thing.

00:36:49.594 --> 00:37:00.393
When you're doing Orton-Gillingham, the older you are, the longer it takes, because you have to go back and rerun everything else plus what you're supposed to be learning now With what I'm teaching.

00:37:00.393 --> 00:37:03.681
The older you are, the faster you pick it up.

00:37:03.929 --> 00:37:07.579
So it's just the opposite of what you would think it would be Wow.

00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:24.443
Exactly and then, once we get done with the basic sentences, we eventually the next thing I do is I show students how to read using what I like to call a half-circle hero, universal-themed villain, and then, for context, I show them how to do a basic.

00:37:24.443 --> 00:37:32.981
I focus on three-body paragraphs because generally sometimes when I present, they want to know how do I do the thesis and the conclusion.

00:37:32.981 --> 00:37:37.418
Most teachers say you know what I can do a thesis statement and conclusion.

00:37:37.418 --> 00:37:39.679
You get the three-body paragraphs, I can do the rest.

00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:42.295
So I focus on the three body.

00:37:42.295 --> 00:37:49.775
So in context, we focus on that, then we focus on a more evolved way for doing the problem and then for the solution.

00:37:51.300 --> 00:38:04.244
I want you to imagine this an English teacher teaching AP in advanced placement high school kids for 20 years on Shakespeare, all right, and they get the same papers that have been written for the past 50, past 100 years.

00:38:04.244 --> 00:38:08.380
Smart kids write the same stuff over and over again, generation to generation.

00:38:08.380 --> 00:38:14.882
How often do you think a teacher teaching Shakespeare for AP English kids for 20 years?

00:38:14.882 --> 00:38:17.940
How often does a student write them a paper where they actually learned something?

00:38:18.650 --> 00:38:19.590
Probably not very often.

00:38:19.590 --> 00:38:21.974
No student write them a paper where they actually learned something?

00:38:21.994 --> 00:38:22.914
Probably not very often.

00:38:22.914 --> 00:38:29.882
No, I can show you, so, as they do, that they learn how every paper to teach you learn something substantive every time.

00:38:29.963 --> 00:38:32.226
That's a, that's breakthrough, right yeah.

00:38:32.789 --> 00:38:33.050
You want that.

00:38:33.050 --> 00:38:34.376
That's called the craft of research.

00:38:34.376 --> 00:38:37.639
I just found a way to simplify context.

00:38:37.639 --> 00:38:46.893
For example, from advanced middle school because that's we're in the fifth edition now started off at the PhD level.

00:38:46.893 --> 00:38:49.356
I dropped that to fourth grade, to nine-year-olds Okay, and here's why that is important.

00:38:50.378 --> 00:38:52.121
I'm starting to see it now.

00:38:52.121 --> 00:38:54.264
What's going on?

00:38:54.264 --> 00:38:57.978
And I'm not looking at the politics from one party or the other.

00:38:57.978 --> 00:39:03.771
This is just what's going on, at the politics from one party or the other.

00:39:03.771 --> 00:39:04.452
This is just what's going on.

00:39:04.452 --> 00:39:05.795
We're doing this in the summer of 2025.

00:39:05.795 --> 00:39:13.335
Tariffs are causing companies to say there's a lot of uncertainty, so we're not investing until we get the certainty back.

00:39:13.335 --> 00:39:29.860
Step two is they're also seeing how much can we get away with the current artificial intelligence and a lot of kids that I'm seeing that are out of college this year million students finding getting a job really difficult.

00:39:29.860 --> 00:39:41.496
The CEO of Anthropic, one of the top AI firms out there, has said he thinks in the next five years, up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs are going to disappear.

00:39:41.496 --> 00:39:44.103
Wow, okay.

00:39:44.103 --> 00:39:48.916
So what I'm saying is, if you know the craft of research, all right.

00:39:48.916 --> 00:39:52.282
You don't need to every time there's a new AI model.

00:39:52.282 --> 00:39:54.385
You don't need to relearn prompt engineering.

00:39:54.925 --> 00:39:55.186
Right.

00:39:55.550 --> 00:40:01.117
You're trained concept problem solution Okay, you're trained how to do that.

00:40:01.117 --> 00:40:03.297
I've had students that I've worked with.

00:40:03.297 --> 00:40:05.197
I call it prompt engineering your brain.

00:40:05.197 --> 00:40:10.862
They would finish up and graduate and they'd be given this job.

00:40:10.862 --> 00:40:15.842
They're like I have to now produce something where they learn something.

00:40:15.842 --> 00:40:20.197
I think I'll lose my job and I'm like you've been trained in this.

00:40:20.197 --> 00:40:23.038
Go back to the AI, put down the context.

00:40:23.038 --> 00:40:25.516
They come back oh, that was hard.

00:40:25.516 --> 00:40:27.215
Yeah, you got it done.

00:40:27.215 --> 00:40:30.695
Now go do the problem, now go do the solution.

00:40:30.695 --> 00:40:32.878
And they are complaining left, right and down the center.

00:40:32.878 --> 00:40:35.838
I said I trained you in this years ago.

00:40:35.838 --> 00:40:37.396
Then they turn in their paper.

00:40:37.396 --> 00:40:39.851
Then their boss goes I can use this.

00:40:39.851 --> 00:40:43.775
And the ones that aren't writing at the craft of research standard.

00:40:43.775 --> 00:40:47.338
They're like no, I don't need this, I don't need this, I don't need this.

00:40:47.338 --> 00:40:48.780
Guess who kept their job.

00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:50.762
The ones that did the research right.

00:40:51.742 --> 00:40:53.864
Who can write at the craft of research level.

00:40:53.864 --> 00:40:56.126
Just to show you how powerful this is.

00:40:56.126 --> 00:40:58.923
Right.

00:40:58.923 --> 00:41:02.496
She doesn't want me to use her name so I'm just going to call her Jane.

00:41:02.496 --> 00:41:06.778
Jane went on my advice to this specific university to take this specific professor.

00:41:06.778 --> 00:41:09.052
So I had her look at her undergrad just like a PhD.

00:41:09.052 --> 00:41:16.172
People would go from Harvard undergrad to CUNY because what they want to study that's where the professor was.

00:41:16.172 --> 00:41:25.115
So she goes into his class and after the first class she goes up to him and says I'm really not that good with the craft of research.

00:41:25.115 --> 00:41:30.940
Can we set up an office hour so I can discuss, you can tell me what I need to do so I can actually write a good paper?

00:41:30.940 --> 00:41:32.331
So they do that.

00:41:32.331 --> 00:41:33.333
He calls me.

00:41:33.333 --> 00:41:38.684
He said what is a college freshman doing with the craft of research?

00:41:38.684 --> 00:41:41.418
I can't get my PhD students to do this.

00:41:42.170 --> 00:41:45.539
I said well, she started doing it in seventh grade.

00:41:45.539 --> 00:41:46.842
We're a lot more efficient now.

00:41:46.842 --> 00:41:50.744
And he said what I said well, she's pretty good.

00:41:50.744 --> 00:41:55.157
Here's where she's good at, here's where the problems are, but this is where she needs your help.

00:41:55.157 --> 00:41:57.181
He's just completely confused.

00:41:57.181 --> 00:41:59.172
I said there are advantages to being dyslexic.

00:41:59.172 --> 00:42:05.264
So after she turned in her paper, he really enjoyed working with her.

00:42:05.264 --> 00:42:08.099
He learned something actually learned something from an undergrad.

00:42:08.099 --> 00:42:09.637
He said this is next to impossible.

00:42:09.637 --> 00:42:12.317
And then he started working with her.

00:42:12.317 --> 00:42:18.097
He wanted to work with her because of her ideas and her writing skills.

00:42:18.097 --> 00:42:25.005
Not wanting to not have anything to do with her because of her writing skills, we flipped it.

00:42:25.664 --> 00:42:26.706
Right Wow.

00:42:27.391 --> 00:42:29.181
Turn that negative into a positive.

00:42:29.242 --> 00:42:32.389
Yeah, turn that negative into a positive yeah Wow.

00:42:32.831 --> 00:42:36.061
So think about what you do with what you teach.

00:42:36.061 --> 00:42:41.018
Instructional design is incredibly important.

00:42:41.018 --> 00:42:51.175
I can recall I'm working with these elementary school kids and they're coming home and they're in fifth grade and they're crying I can't do this, I'm stupid.

00:42:51.175 --> 00:42:52.617
I said let me look at it.

00:42:52.617 --> 00:42:54.242
I said I can't do this.

00:42:54.242 --> 00:42:56.693
I've been to grad school.

00:42:56.693 --> 00:43:00.059
Don't call yourself stupid, I can't do this.

00:43:00.059 --> 00:43:01.563
Their parents have grad degrees.

00:43:01.563 --> 00:43:02.652
They can't understand it.

00:43:02.652 --> 00:43:06.500
Okay, and this got this crying 10-year-old.

00:43:06.500 --> 00:43:10.775
So what you're doing, the experimental design, is so important.

00:43:10.775 --> 00:43:19.503
What I'm just trying to help people understand is when you're dealing with dyslexia, the model that I just gave you their speciality, their own book.

00:43:19.503 --> 00:43:21.891
Find their audio book that they like and then you can get a real.

00:43:21.891 --> 00:43:24.378
Then you can follow with the real book in their intervention period.

00:43:24.378 --> 00:43:25.380
Just use that book.

00:43:25.380 --> 00:43:40.280
Or, if you need to move on, start off at harry potter and two or three books later doing this and do with that yeah okay and specific to the general word analysis followed by articulation, you follow that.

00:43:40.822 --> 00:43:41.983
it'll be so much easier.

00:43:43.005 --> 00:43:46.440
Yeah, and you don't have the students fighting it.

00:43:46.440 --> 00:43:49.349
You know they want to do it.

00:43:49.369 --> 00:43:55.014
They're literally in their room doing things, and if they ever don't want to do their homework, what is it that you dislike?

00:43:55.014 --> 00:43:59.175
Yeah, works so well.

00:43:59.456 --> 00:44:00.278
Yeah, I love it.

00:44:00.550 --> 00:44:09.663
Yep, because it motivates them and and yeah, then they want to do it well, what happens is in the first lesson I say what do I do if you're not going to do your work?

00:44:09.663 --> 00:44:11.594
And we come to an agreement.

00:44:11.594 --> 00:44:13.721
They're like, yeah, I agree to this.

00:44:13.721 --> 00:44:17.130
It's all permission based right.

00:44:17.530 --> 00:44:19.195
Yeah, you're not forcing them to do it.

00:44:19.195 --> 00:44:25.081
Yeah, Wow, and yeah, they want to do it more because they're.

00:44:25.081 --> 00:44:30.456
Yeah, they're not being forced to do it, they're, they have that interest and you said, like you said, you start with that.

00:44:30.456 --> 00:44:32.081
It's like their why?

00:44:32.081 --> 00:44:32.851
Why am I?

00:44:32.851 --> 00:44:34.458
What's the why am I doing this?

00:44:34.458 --> 00:44:38.094
Yeah, you get to that because they, they want to know.

00:44:38.153 --> 00:44:42.480
So, like with Disney, I have them go into the Magic Kingdom, Main Street, USA.

00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:43.422
You've been to Disneyland?

00:44:43.422 --> 00:44:45.023
That's Marceline, Missouri.

00:44:45.023 --> 00:44:47.231
That's like 3,500 words.

00:44:47.231 --> 00:44:48.815
I have them.

00:44:48.815 --> 00:44:58.221
I've had fifth graders on those 3,500 words for 11 months, but then they're reading those 3,500 words at like the 10th, 11th grade level.

00:44:58.221 --> 00:45:07.960
Then the next section might take six months and then we're down to three and then by the time they're done with four to five chapters they're reading at home.

00:45:08.581 --> 00:45:12.106
Right At home Not spending $70,000 on a private Orton school.

00:45:12.106 --> 00:45:23.036
Just to show you what the difference is, there's a school in Upper East Side called Windward where the New York State just had a dyslexia task force to redo its K-5 education.

00:45:23.036 --> 00:45:24.278
So we met there.

00:45:24.278 --> 00:45:27.545
They have a 98% success rate.

00:45:27.545 --> 00:45:29.876
Send your kid there in fourth grade.

00:45:29.876 --> 00:45:36.057
Four to five years later they will send your child back to their same school and they will be absolutely prepared.

00:45:36.057 --> 00:45:46.070
Costs about $7,500 a year for four to five years and their teachers get paid, nothing compared to public school teachers.

00:45:46.070 --> 00:45:47.603
It's because it's four to one.

00:45:47.603 --> 00:45:48.244
Five to one.

00:45:49.228 --> 00:45:50.170
Okay, yeah.

00:45:50.231 --> 00:45:55.768
Okay, or you could do this and I can have parents train their kids at home.

00:45:56.849 --> 00:46:02.007
Yeah, wow, yeah, you can't compare to that Absolutely.

00:46:02.007 --> 00:46:10.235
Especially when they're at home right and they're not distracted with other students around them, they can have that one-on-one time right.

00:46:10.255 --> 00:46:18.324
That makes a difference, moms will say and not to be sexist, but this was data that I got from Facebook, when they would just give us all the data we shouldn't have had.

00:46:18.324 --> 00:46:19.786
It was over 90%.

00:46:19.786 --> 00:46:24.664
Moms, okay, okay, and so it just happens to generally be that way.

00:46:24.664 --> 00:46:28.432
And moms will say well, I'm not the best one at this.

00:46:28.432 --> 00:46:31.869
I said I know it'd be great if you could afford to have a specialist come in.

00:46:31.869 --> 00:46:36.403
I could train your specialist and they can come in and do this, but that's going to cost.

00:46:36.403 --> 00:46:40.248
You know it's for most people.

00:46:40.248 --> 00:46:42.172
It's just it's too expensive.

00:46:42.791 --> 00:46:44.253
Right, it's out of reach.

00:46:44.253 --> 00:46:44.554
Yeah.

00:46:45.155 --> 00:46:45.735
It's out of reach.

00:46:45.735 --> 00:46:51.931
Or if they go and do it, then they're driving, you know, $500 cars and the rest of their kids get nothing Right.

00:46:51.931 --> 00:46:58.644
Yeah, no camps, christmas presents I mean, I've seen families do that to send their kids to special schools.

00:46:59.126 --> 00:47:00.168
Right yeah.

00:47:00.608 --> 00:47:01.530
But you know.

00:47:01.530 --> 00:47:04.733
So I try to make this as economically functional as possible.

00:47:05.414 --> 00:47:09.467
Right, because you want to reach all socioeconomic levels.

00:47:09.467 --> 00:47:18.246
You don't want to just have the the ones that are wealthy and can can afford it, but you want to have the the ones that can't either, and you don't want them to be in a disadvantage.

00:47:18.246 --> 00:47:19.190
You want it to be inclusive.

00:47:19.190 --> 00:47:46.204
So that's creative and I love that because I'm a creative person.

00:47:46.204 --> 00:47:52.085
So whenever I hear something that we do and we flip it on its head, then that's great.

00:47:52.085 --> 00:47:53.547
It's innovative.

00:47:53.648 --> 00:47:56.012
Well, let me show you something really scary.

00:47:56.012 --> 00:48:03.882
When you were in grad school, did you ever look around at some of your peers and say grad school?

00:48:03.922 --> 00:48:06.472
did you ever look around at some of your peers and say, how the heck did they get in here?

00:48:06.472 --> 00:48:09.342
Yes, oh, most often, because I went to University of Phoenix for my MBA and they required learning teams.

00:48:09.342 --> 00:48:16.746
So all of our projects we would work in groups and yeah, I would say, probably it had to be every class.

00:48:16.746 --> 00:48:21.063
I would say there were like one or two students that I was like, how did they get here?

00:48:21.063 --> 00:48:23.971
I don't understand how they even got a bachelor's degree.

00:48:24.532 --> 00:48:27.099
Yeah, so let me kind of explain that to you very briefly.

00:48:27.099 --> 00:48:29.228
This is a book called Post-War Japanese History.

00:48:29.228 --> 00:48:37.012
All right, this first article was written by Professor Dower.

00:48:37.012 --> 00:48:43.992
Can you go ahead and just go ahead and read the title in the first paragraph?

00:48:44.713 --> 00:48:48.025
Okay, peace and Democracy in Two Systems.

00:48:48.025 --> 00:48:49.108
I can't read the rest, though.

00:48:50.050 --> 00:48:50.610
Can you read that?

00:48:50.911 --> 00:48:58.105
A little bit Something about policy and internal conflict, but it's hard to read the rest of it.

00:48:58.266 --> 00:49:01.588
It's hard to read that, yeah, so here's the thing you could read that.

00:49:01.588 --> 00:49:02.039
And then I would ask you it's hard to read that, yeah.

00:49:02.039 --> 00:49:02.351
So here's the thing you could read that.

00:49:02.351 --> 00:49:07.005
And then I would ask you, remember, this guy won the Pulitzer, he won the National Book Award.

00:49:07.005 --> 00:49:13.228
I'm assuming you have little or no knowledge about post-war Japanese history, but the guy's the top writer in his field.

00:49:13.228 --> 00:49:17.101
So you read that first paragraph and I'm just going to tell you what happened.

00:49:17.101 --> 00:49:21.449
I would ask would you, you know, jackie, what's it about?

00:49:22.210 --> 00:49:38.318
And you would tell me Okay, right, you would be shocked at how many certified reading teachers can't tell me what happened in that paragraph?

00:49:38.318 --> 00:49:47.402
Wow, half the kids at undergrad at Harvard can't do that.

00:49:47.402 --> 00:49:51.625
According to Professor Dower, 10th grade to second year in college you should absolutely be able to do that, or he gets very upset.

00:49:51.625 --> 00:49:52.864
So this is so important to understand.

00:49:52.864 --> 00:49:56.668
I'm going to go back to science here, to this picture, right, all right.

00:49:56.668 --> 00:49:59.730
I want you to imagine you're what I call a full brain.

00:49:59.730 --> 00:50:03.672
Take that massive overactivity in the front part of the dyslexic brain.

00:50:03.672 --> 00:50:04.914
Move it over to the gen ed brain.

00:50:04.914 --> 00:50:06.414
That's you.

00:50:06.414 --> 00:50:08.735
Okay, the dyslectics.

00:50:08.735 --> 00:50:10.597
I can train to read that easily enough.

00:50:10.597 --> 00:50:15.710
The people in your graduate school who can't, you're like, what are they doing here?

00:50:15.710 --> 00:50:21.128
They would read that and because it's so dense with information, they go off the tracks.

00:50:21.710 --> 00:50:22.030
Right.

00:50:22.751 --> 00:50:30.813
Okay, I can tell which students are going to be the ones who are like that and which ones are like you by if they can read that or not.

00:50:30.813 --> 00:50:39.389
I've actually had people in high-end consulting companies try that and they said the people that could read that made excellent employees.

00:50:39.389 --> 00:50:41.327
The ones that couldn't, they had to let go Right.

00:50:41.327 --> 00:50:44.666
And I said, okay, that's what I call a full brain person.

00:50:44.666 --> 00:50:51.291
But the dyslectics, once we train them properly, can read that with ease.

00:50:51.291 --> 00:50:56.472
And now you have all that massive neuroactivity in the creative areas.

00:50:57.175 --> 00:51:02.639
Right, absolutely Now with artificial intelligence that could take care of the writing for them, right, absolutely.

00:51:02.639 --> 00:51:10.141
Now, with artificial intelligence that could take care of the writing for them, all right.

00:51:10.141 --> 00:51:12.496
Now you have all these huge advantages, especially for dyslectics who have been through a master's degree.

00:51:12.496 --> 00:51:13.059
It's a huge, huge, huge help.

00:51:13.059 --> 00:51:21.630
That program I was telling you about with Professor Collins Okay, remember, I did that in less than two weeks.

00:51:21.630 --> 00:51:22.925
I'm not the only one.

00:51:22.925 --> 00:51:28.826
The Selectics excel in grad school and that's why artificial intelligence was designed for us.

00:51:28.826 --> 00:51:30.911
Few things to think about.

00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:32.646
Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:32.646 --> 00:51:36.628
I don't think anybody would have thought that that's what it was designed for, but it makes sense.

00:51:36.628 --> 00:51:38.452
Absolutely yeah.

00:51:38.452 --> 00:51:41.429
And instructional design makes such a huge difference too.

00:51:41.429 --> 00:51:55.021
Absolutely yeah, and instructional design makes such a huge difference too.

00:51:55.041 --> 00:51:59.043
Like you said, if they don't understand what it is saying or what, yeah, what's there, it just yeah.

00:51:59.043 --> 00:52:00.003
It's not going to reach anybody.

00:52:00.003 --> 00:52:01.724
So instructional design is so important.

00:52:01.724 --> 00:52:05.865
Yes, and what I just showed you there, if you could go ahead and read that, you're a full brain, you can do instructional design.

00:52:05.865 --> 00:52:07.706
If you can't, you're going to find doing that, I would say, near impossible.

00:52:07.706 --> 00:52:15.929
And they're saying wait a second, are you telling me that dyslectics can be more productive than students?

00:52:15.929 --> 00:52:19.132
A lot of these kids, like some of them, were even valedictorians in high school.

00:52:19.132 --> 00:52:23.414
I'm sure you've seen this Valedictorian in high school, 4.0 in college.

00:52:23.414 --> 00:52:34.117
They get to grad school and do what you're teaching and they could pass any regurgitation test, but they can't apply it very well, Right, Absolutely Yep.

00:52:38.766 --> 00:52:40.634
There's the test to decide can they apply it or not.

00:52:40.634 --> 00:52:42.751
All right, and I said dyslexia is not a reading program.

00:52:42.751 --> 00:52:43.380
It's not a reading program.

00:52:43.380 --> 00:52:46.726
I can show dyslexics to read better than most gen ed people.

00:52:46.726 --> 00:52:48.789
Okay, they're like.

00:52:48.789 --> 00:52:51.601
It's just how it presents itself.

00:52:51.601 --> 00:52:52.485
It's a symptom.

00:52:52.485 --> 00:52:55.271
It's a lack of organization in the front part of the brain.

00:52:56.722 --> 00:53:04.269
Right, yeah, and I think the reason why I'm good at instructional design and all those different things is because I've been very organized from a very young age.

00:53:04.269 --> 00:53:06.708
So my room was always organized.

00:53:06.708 --> 00:53:08.527
I didn't have clothes on the floor.

00:53:08.527 --> 00:53:12.490
You know, my mom didn't have to come into my room and say clean your room.

00:53:12.490 --> 00:53:19.134
I actually have, I still have this door hanger and it says don't move anything, Don't touch anything.

00:53:19.134 --> 00:53:23.083
I like my room this way and I still have it, and that's from second grade.

00:53:23.083 --> 00:53:23.945
I still have it.

00:53:23.945 --> 00:53:25.789
So yeah it just I.

00:53:25.789 --> 00:53:31.989
I like things in order, I like things clean, and I'll say I probably have OCD in a sense.

00:53:31.989 --> 00:53:37.304
So that's probably true, but it just helps me when I things aren't disorganized.

00:53:37.344 --> 00:53:45.331
So when I'm so much for what you do Right, exactly, yeah, if it wasn't for keeping things organized, I wouldn't.

00:53:45.331 --> 00:53:47.634
I would just be all over the place.

00:53:47.634 --> 00:53:48.514
It'd be scatterbrained.

00:53:48.514 --> 00:53:50.817
So yeah, it really helps.

00:54:00.500 --> 00:54:01.699
Let me ask you the first question in your speciality?

00:54:01.619 --> 00:54:03.440
Do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization ever in your life, or is that just no?

00:54:03.440 --> 00:54:06.427
I would say no because I have good tools in place that help me to keep things organized.

00:54:06.427 --> 00:54:18.125
So I use Trello, which is a good project management tool, but I use that for my podcast, for my teaching and for work, and I have boards for each thing that I'm working on.

00:54:18.125 --> 00:54:38.201
And when I first started my podcast, I only had a Word document with all my ideas of episodes that I wanted to do, yeah, and all my people that I wanted to interview, and I would highlight it like yellow meant I needed to get it done, green meant I got it and I'm thinking and I did this for nine months, I think, and I thought, wait a minute, there's got to be a better way.

00:54:38.201 --> 00:54:41.746
And I was like I use Trello every day at work, why don't I use it for that?

00:54:41.746 --> 00:54:50.434
And it changed the game big time, and so I went from a Word document to now organized cards and checklists and everything.

00:54:50.494 --> 00:54:51.960
So yeah, it made such a difference.

00:54:51.960 --> 00:54:53.885
Oh, and I'm absolutely horrible at all of that.

00:54:53.885 --> 00:54:59.565
So what happens is I found this out is that CEOs that run major companies who are dyslectic.

00:54:59.565 --> 00:55:02.932
They have assistants that are the most detailed person ever.

00:55:02.932 --> 00:55:07.972
My assistant just finished her qualifying exams for her PhD in education.

00:55:07.972 --> 00:55:15.019
Now it's just a big project and write-up, but every day she emails me in the morning.

00:55:15.019 --> 00:55:16.626
You have podcasts for this.

00:55:16.626 --> 00:55:17.668
Here's your meetings for this.

00:55:17.668 --> 00:55:19.326
I was like, oh, thank you.

00:55:19.947 --> 00:55:21.246
Wow, she's your lifesaver.

00:55:21.246 --> 00:55:21.463
Oh yeah, and I pay her appropriately for this.

00:55:21.376 --> 00:55:21.494
I was like oh, thank you Wow.

00:55:21.407 --> 00:55:22.248
She's your life saver.

00:55:23.260 --> 00:55:26.306
Oh yeah, and I pay her appropriately for it.

00:55:26.306 --> 00:55:35.856
But it just gives you an example that I made myself economically valuable enough so that I can have an assistant.

00:55:35.856 --> 00:55:40.849
I run my own business, so I'm able to do that for myself.

00:55:40.849 --> 00:55:44.699
All right, and yeah, it's a huge, huge.

00:55:44.699 --> 00:55:45.722
I don't know what I'd do without her.

00:55:45.722 --> 00:55:48.068
And then I have a backup at her.

00:55:48.068 --> 00:55:50.722
Uh, she has a master's degree in teaching English.

00:55:50.722 --> 00:55:54.893
So I, I, oh, I have, I have backups for everything.

00:55:55.454 --> 00:56:11.068
Yeah, yeah, and especially if you're like me, doing multiple things, yeah, if you don't have the organization, because I work full-time as an instructional designer in higher education, then I teach classes part-time, run this podcast, and then I also do consulting on the side.

00:56:11.068 --> 00:56:15.007
So a lot of balls in the air, right, and it's like whoa, it's a lot.

00:56:15.007 --> 00:56:29.126
So I mean, even just with my full-time job at any one time in any week, I probably have 60 meetings that are on my calendar and then I have to do projects and work in between that and yeah, so it's, how many hours a day are you putting in?

00:56:29.126 --> 00:56:37.326
I'm doing the 40 hours a week with the full-time job, and then teaching is about 10 to 15 hours a week.

00:56:37.326 --> 00:56:38.166
It's not too bad.

00:56:38.949 --> 00:56:48.989
If I'm teaching multiple classes it's a little bit more, but I would say probably about 10 hours a week, because I've found a way to have a good system for grading and utilize a little bit of AI with that.

00:56:48.989 --> 00:56:57.853
But it's just that first draft and I've got all my different areas that I've automated, so it makes it a lot easier.

00:56:57.853 --> 00:57:00.547
So, yeah, so it really helps.

00:57:00.547 --> 00:57:02.150
And then same thing with the podcast.

00:57:02.150 --> 00:57:03.585
You just AI with that too.

00:57:04.141 --> 00:57:08.469
Wow, I, yeah, I, I, uh, I can't put in those hours I.

00:57:08.469 --> 00:57:11.882
I'm running through and I'm like, oh, here's a task Zoom.

00:57:11.882 --> 00:57:15.452
Like right now I'm working with um Evelyn White Bay.

00:57:15.452 --> 00:57:26.585
She's on the dyslexia task force, is one of the few teachers and they came up with a solution for the state after a year, but then they can't afford it, so we're trying to do an affordable version, kind of like what I was talking about.

00:57:26.585 --> 00:57:32.793
Right, and she was like four X more effective than your average special ed teacher.

00:57:32.793 --> 00:57:34.469
She's also dyslexic.

00:57:34.469 --> 00:57:38.407
So she's like well, we have the school we're going to to make our first pitch.

00:57:38.407 --> 00:57:41.105
And she said, oh, I need to get all this stuff done.

00:57:41.105 --> 00:57:47.130
I said, okay, my primary assistant, here you go, send it to my other employees.

00:57:47.130 --> 00:57:48.793
I'm going through PodMatch.

00:57:48.793 --> 00:57:50.422
Oh, I got to do this.

00:57:50.422 --> 00:57:52.306
Okay, email it off.

00:57:52.306 --> 00:57:53.027
Please do this.

00:57:53.027 --> 00:57:57.405
It's a lot of fun to give the work to somebody else.

00:57:57.445 --> 00:58:01.021
Finally, yeah, it's nice to be able to delegate that Absolutely.

00:58:01.021 --> 00:58:01.213
I love that.

00:58:01.213 --> 00:58:02.181
Yeah, and as a to be able to delegate that Absolutely, I love that.

00:58:02.242 --> 00:58:10.829
Yeah, and as a dyslexic as I try to tell them, make yourself economically valuable enough so you can have an assistant to take care of all this stuff for you.

00:58:11.219 --> 00:58:11.460
Right.

00:58:11.460 --> 00:58:13.385
Exactly that's what I'm working towards.

00:58:13.385 --> 00:58:14.708
I'm working towards that.

00:58:14.708 --> 00:58:23.710
It's hard, though Sometimes if you have, like me, I've been perfectionist for so have that perfectionist mindset, but I have to learn to.

00:58:23.710 --> 00:58:29.407
Yeah, I have to learn to let things go and delegate, and but I did, I've, I've learned to do that.

00:58:29.407 --> 00:58:41.489
You know, when I was younger, yeah, it was hard to do that, and sometimes with with my work, because it's so specialized and I work with counseling and social work, which are there's accreditation involved, so it's very complex.

00:58:41.489 --> 00:58:49.177
But, you know, I try to teach somebody else what's in my brain, right, and so that's important because if I Well, here's how you do it.

00:58:49.496 --> 00:58:53.112
Yeah, here's how you do it, briefly, the consulting you're doing.

00:58:53.474 --> 00:58:53.817
Mm-hmm.

00:58:54.378 --> 00:59:00.409
Okay, now I want you to imagine as you grow, do you do this?

00:59:00.409 --> 00:59:08.001
Uh, do you do that much consulting now, or is it just something very minor?

00:59:08.623 --> 00:59:10.347
it's very minor, kind of on the side.

00:59:10.347 --> 00:59:11.891
Yeah, okay all right.

00:59:11.951 --> 00:59:20.465
Well, if you start doing that and start charging with, you'd be amazed at how much you're actually worth like giving, uh, professional keynote speeches and that sort of thing.

00:59:20.947 --> 00:59:21.166
Right.

00:59:21.789 --> 00:59:26.309
All right, once you work your way up, then you can afford an assistant.

00:59:26.309 --> 00:59:38.161
Here's what you do you go and find out one of your students, or one of the undergrads that recommended by one of your peers, who is somebody who is OCD who is?

00:59:38.161 --> 00:59:40.650
A perfectionist and really good, and you hire them.

00:59:40.650 --> 00:59:41.452
Right, yeah, you'll, you hire them.

00:59:41.994 --> 00:59:43.340
Right yeah.

00:59:43.559 --> 00:59:45.226
You'll get along fantastic.

00:59:45.467 --> 00:59:48.106
Right, it'll be just like two peas in a pod.

00:59:49.230 --> 00:59:51.387
Yes, but that's how you do it.

00:59:51.387 --> 00:59:52.465
It's not somebody you know.

00:59:52.465 --> 00:59:54.447
Go to one of your peers, somebody that you really trust.

00:59:54.447 --> 00:59:58.880
What people don't understand is the last thing you want to do is hire somebody off a resume.

00:59:58.880 --> 01:00:06.469
If I don't know the person, then I go to somebody I know and trust and they give me a recommendation, or I don't hire.

01:00:06.911 --> 01:00:10.748
Yeah, that's important, absolutely yeah, I love it.

01:00:11.452 --> 01:00:12.795
I've had people approach me.

01:00:12.795 --> 01:00:13.858
Here's my resume.

01:00:13.858 --> 01:00:16.463
I said I don't hire off resumes, Huh.

01:00:16.485 --> 01:00:21.454
Because you never know if they wrote it or not, right, yeah?

01:00:22.139 --> 01:00:23.144
Well, you know what happens.

01:00:23.144 --> 01:00:29.407
I had one bad hire in my entire career and I went back to the person who recommended it and he said I am so sorry.

01:00:29.407 --> 01:00:31.047
I don't know what happened.

01:00:31.047 --> 01:00:33.588
The kid's life just went off the cliff.

01:00:33.588 --> 01:00:38.050
And I said I don't ever want to have that happen again.

01:00:38.050 --> 01:00:40.822
And it never has.

01:00:41.143 --> 01:00:44.407
Yeah, once you learn that lesson, you're like, yeah, I'm not going to do that anymore.

01:00:45.208 --> 01:00:46.871
It was just that the kid went through.

01:00:46.871 --> 01:00:49.414
I don't know what happened, but their life fell apart.

01:00:49.414 --> 01:00:55.702
They got the appropriate support, but I couldn't keep working with them.

01:00:55.702 --> 01:00:57.485
But every other time I get these fantastic ones and the problem is they would hang.

01:00:57.485 --> 01:01:01.110
You know, they'd worked for me for several years and it's like, well, I need a big rate.

01:01:01.110 --> 01:01:04.235
You know they're worth a lot more money than I can afford to pay them.

01:01:04.235 --> 01:01:06.463
And then they move on to, you know, the next day.

01:01:06.943 --> 01:01:09.047
Right, yeah, that's true.

01:01:09.047 --> 01:01:25.945
Wow, this was great, russell, thank you so much for coming on the show today and giving your insight, and, of course, I'll have you back on and we'll dive deeper into all of this, and so I want everyone to stay tuned, because you're going to be back on a few more times, so I'm looking forward to it.

01:01:26.708 --> 01:01:34.293
Yes, and if anybody wants to contact me in between times, I'm going to send you a customized link that'll bring over what we were discussed today.

01:01:34.293 --> 01:01:38.862
I call it the three reasons why your child's having trouble in school due to dyslexia and how to get past it.

01:01:38.862 --> 01:01:43.088
So you can go in and fill that out and we can set up a free 15 minute conversation.

01:01:43.088 --> 01:01:50.969
Or if that doesn't work, you can just visit me at dyslexiaclassescom plural against dyslexiaclassescom and just the contact one.

01:01:51.699 --> 01:01:58.250
Great, wonderful, and I'll make sure to put the links in the show notes too, so that everyone has that readily available as well.

01:01:59.280 --> 01:02:00.827
Okay, well, thanks for having me on, it was great.

01:02:05.416 --> 01:02:05.797
Thank you, Russell.

01:02:05.797 --> 01:02:06.119
I appreciate it.

01:02:06.119 --> 01:02:08.588
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today.

01:02:08.588 --> 01:02:10.887
Your support means the world to me.

01:02:10.887 --> 01:02:19.608
If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review or offer a monetary contribution.

01:02:19.608 --> 01:02:23.880
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