Dyslexia Enable the Learning Difference

[Music]

albert einstein

pretty smart guy said everyone was a

genius

but if you judge a fish by its ability

to climb a tree

it will grow up its whole life believing

it is stupid

well news flash fish don’t climb trees

and i doubt any of you would say to that

fish

you need to climb that tree in order to

read

i believe unknowingly our education

system

says that to many many of our children

you’ll know some and you may be one

i’m proud to say i have the gift of

dyslexia

but when i went to school back in the

60s dyslexia really wasn’t

a thing and i didn’t know i had it

i may have been slow to read but i was

really good at daydreaming

my virtual world existed way before 2020

i could imagine any 3d object from any

angle

the elephant in my mind allowed me to

wander around it

and when i wrote it the view was amazing

i assumed everyone thought like that and

why wouldn’t i

nobody had ever asked me how do you

think

or how do you learn did anyone ask you

i didn’t know that this natural ability

to alter perception

caused a problem in the 2d world of

print

i might be seeing a lowercase d

and perceiving it from 180 degrees

as a p confusing

i had no idea i needed images for the

meaning of every word i read

i read book i saw one

i read bicycle i saw one

i read the if and

no images and i did not know

that those little words made up half

of what i read i think in images

no image equals no thinking i get to the

bottom of the page

and out of those very familiar words

what was that about

in the 90s i learned how to correct my

dyslexia

and for the past 22 years i’ve had the

privilege

of working with children and adults who

have

difficulty this with words

lexia i observed them entering school

with an

insatiable love of learning they enter

with a learning difference

they leave with a learning disability

label

which is so far from the truth they are

so smart

and totally able to learn they just

happen to learn differently

from the way they’re taught

so let’s liken this different learner to

the apple mac computer

and the typical learner to the pc

at one end of the continuum the mac is

image based

with an internal film hands-on

kinesthetic learners

at the other end the pc is sound based

internal dialogue linear and sequential

they do really well in school because

guess who designed the system

yay the pcs

would you run a mac on a pc system

if you learned like this and you’re

taught like that

there’s going to be a challenge

so let’s meet alex at four years old

he was an animal expert having been

glued to the discovery channel

he loved learning the questions were

non-stop

his mother was very grateful he made all

his toys

out of cardboard and sticky tape and she

thought

school would be a walk in the park

but the annual school photograph

told a different story

his eyes dimmed his skin paled

he withdrew and when he went home

he was silent

not being able to read and with colorful

aka phonetic spelling his only question

now was

mum do i really have to go to school

he hated being pulled out of class for

more of what he couldn’t do already

and no one told him what he’d missed

when his mother tried to help him read

the dinosaur book

often flew across the room and it wasn’t

always alex

that threw it

his dreams of becoming the next david

hatchenbra

were fading purely because he learned

differently

lexi 14 years old

she’d worked herself to the bone

she spent four hours on homework her

friend spent one

she was exhausted and frustrated and

they were outside playing it wasn’t fair

she needed to get to medical school she

so wanted to help people

but she couldn’t read in class or with

the helper

in the hallway or her parents

or the tutor twice a week for three

years

she looked at the pages and the words

just disappeared

over and over she hoped

for a different result

she lived the definition of insanity on

a daily basis

knowing she wasn’t lazy she concluded

she must be stupid worthless

and that’s when the drinking started

and then the recreational drugs

and then the harder drugs

another dream dashed purely because

she learned differently

and legs at 24

he decided it was time to learn to read

he’s a charmer empathetic to the core

kind willing amazing athlete brilliant

sense of humor

so good at thinking outside the box he

was completely oblivious of the box

having failed kindergarten

his wonderfully supportive parents tried

every form of education

public private special homeschooling

he confided um i didn’t repeat grade

five because i had so much fun the first

time

he knew he was being bumped through he

knew he wasn’t passing every

grade so he decided his dreams didn’t

really matter

but psychology sounded interesting so

maybe learning to read

would come in useful

i wish you could have seen their faces

when they discovered there was nothing

wrong with them

they blossomed they weren’t broken they

didn’t have a neurological malfunction

they had a neurodiversity

they could have learned like that but

they’d been taught like that

now alex has his phd

lexi 20 is sober and a nurse

practitioner

lex clinical counselor and ski

instructor

so let’s do some dreaming of our own

no one needs to fundamentally change

who they are in order to read

fulfill their potential and achieve

their dreams

no one what if

teachers could learn strategies

to reach both the max and the pcs from

day one

i meet teachers who want to know why

they’re not reaching all their students

and laura was one such teacher

she learned these strategies in two days

so instead of telling the children to

focus

she was able to show them how

did anyone show you how

if not it’s like giving you a pair of

knitting needles and saying knit

you’re gonna ask how

she had them create their alphabet in a

3d medium

hands-on she shared

inclusive reading skills for macs npcs

she showed them all how to create a 3d

model for the meaning of any word

even the if and

in her k1 class she achieved her june

outcomes

six months early her five-year-olds were

staying in at recess

to write her notes voluntarily

and when asked how many children she’d

be sending to special needs the

following year

she replied

zero every child

was learning able everyone was empowered

happy teachers happy students happy

parents

the worst thing that happened was the

little pcs had to be more creative

the late sir ken robinson said the only

things

that will enable our children to

navigate this rapidly changing world

our creativity and problem solving

i believe our education system

can make these small but far-reaching

changes everyone

is entitled to a cognitive equal

opportunity

to fulfill their potential to celebrate

their difference

and achieve their dreams

so let’s shift our approach

to everyone is learning able

if they’re enabled to learn

in the way they were born to learn

and if you see any little fish who are

struggling

please tell them fish really

don’t need to climb trees to read

thank you

you