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
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