Part 2 of The Dyslexic Brain with Dr. Guinevere Eden. DEN founder Robert Langston had a chance to ask Dr. Eden some questions DEN members have been asking. In this segment Dr. Eden gives her professional insights into the following questions: What causes dyslexia?, Is there a cure for dyslexia?, Are there different degrees of dyslexia?, Is dyslexia contagious?, Is there medication for dyslexia?, Is dyslexia more common in boys than girls? What is the history of dyslexia?
dyslexia resources for parents, dyslexia resources for teachers, dyslexia resources for students, dyslexia resources for educators
Dyslexia organizations, Orton gillingham, international dyslexia association, ldonline, national center for learning disabilities, ncld, council for exceptional children, cec, learning disability association, lda, yale center for dyslexia
Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) caught up with Dr. Guinevere Eden at Georgetown Universities Center For the Study of Learning. DEN's Founder, Robert Langston interviewed Dr. Eden about dyslexia and the brain imaging technology that has made a formally invisible diagnoses of dyslexia very visible and very real. Dr. Eden answers questions from DEN members and gives her advice for parents, teachers and individual struggling with dyslexia. "DEN members are lucky to have one of the foremost experts in the world on brian imaging and dyslexia answer their question" -Robert Langston, Founder, The Dyslexia Educational Network.
Topics:
dyslexia resources for parents, dyslexia resources for teachers, dyslexia resources for students, dyslexia resources for educators
Dyslexia organizations, Orton gillingham, international dyslexia association, ldonline, national center for learning disabilities, ncld, council for exceptional children, cec, learning disability association, lda, yale center for dyslexia
Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
Why its important you’re here. I know you’re probably seating there saying Rob you don’t have to tell me, I’m a parent I’m a teacher, I’m a grandparent… you know. I know why it’s important I’m here. I take care of kids. I make a difference in kids’ lives. And you do, but I got to tell ya, I didn’t know how important it was what you do until about – I guess it was almost 15 years ago now. About 15 years ago I got a phone call and the guy I was sharing the office with at the time, yelled into my office and he said ‘Rob you have Fulton County prison on the phone.’ I said ‘well tell them I’m not here.’ And he said, ‘no I think they want you to come down to the prison, right there in the middle of downtown Atlanta and do your program for kids. I was… I picked up the phone. I was like ‘this is Rob Langston.’ Sure enough they said ‘this is the Fulton County prison. We would like for you to come down here and speak.’ I said no. I work very hard to stay out of your prison. I am not coming down there. And they said, well Kroger food stores said you would.’ And at that time the Krogering for Kids program at the Kroger food stores was sponsoring me to the tune of a hundred programs a year in the school system. So now I’m thinking I can’t turn this down, right. So in order not to bite the hand that feeds me, I agree. I said okay I’ll do it. Let’s set a date. We set it, I write it on my calendar and I promptly forget it right. The day of the talk comes. I get in my car and I’m driving down to Fulton County prison. Now I hope none of y’all have an instance to even visit one of these institutions, but I’m telling you, I was about a mile from it and I was starting to be able to see it, cause it is ten stories tall. And I’ looking at this thing and I’m thinking ‘Rob what have you got yourself into?’ And as I get closer to it I realize the windows are not shrinking. All they have are little gun slats for windows to look out of. And I’m thinking ‘oh my gosh.’ And I pull into the parking lot, and I park my car. And the program I do for kids, I do a board breaking demonstration at the end. So it’s kind of a visual demonstration of breaking through their obstacles, right. And I want to give them that but I also thought this would be a good group to do this for as well right. So I pull up, I park my car, I pop my trunk – and back then I was just literally carrying around cinder blocks to rest the wood on – and I grabbed two cinder blocks out of the trunk of my car and grabbed two pieces of wood; and I walk in the front door of Fulton County prison and I said ‘I’m Rob Langston and I’m here to do my program.’ They said ‘fine.’ They scanned my entire body, right. They throw a badge around my neck so I can get back out. They take my drivers license from me to prove I am who I say I am. At this point every motivational bone in my body is shaking, cause I’m thinking Rob you’ve really done it now. And they start taking me through the prison. And I’m going through the prison and I’m here to tell you today that those doors and those prisons sound exactly like they do on television. They’re slamming shut. I’m jumping every single time. We walk through several of these doors. We walk into the set for this talk –now the backdrop for this talk is two tiers of cells. I can see everything these prisoners are going to have for the next five years of their life. Cause I’ve asked, who am I speaking to. They said you’ll be speaking to drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and thieves – worst of the worst; minimum sentence, five years. So now I’m thinking this is not a group I want to disappoint, right. So I go over in the corner and I start trying to get re-motivated and everything, and this booming voice goes, ‘bring in the prisoners.’ Right, and they bring them in, and they them at day tables in front of the… where I’m going to be speaking. The woman who invited me gets up there, does this wonderfully flowery introduction, right. I walk out, I spin around… nothing comes out of my mouth. Not because I’m a terrible speaker, but because I was looking at their faces. I literally stopped the program, turned to the lady who’d invited me and said, what are they doing here?’ She said ‘nobody told you?’ I said ‘told me what?’ She said ‘you’ve been brought to speak to juveniles that were tried as adults. The oldest person in the room is 17 years old.’ But now I’m going ‘why me?’ I speak on dyslexia and learning disabilities, you know. Why am I here? And she said, that’s exactly why you’re here. Cause you see at that time she was projecting that up to 80% of the penal system was learning disabled or illiterate. And we research today to show anywhere from 50-60% of the penal system is learning disabled or illiterate. So now I’m looking at this audience, it hits me, I realize it… they’re me – I’m them. I’m functionally illiterate today. I tested out with an 84 IQ in the second grade. They told my mom to teach me a trade. They said ‘he’s not going to make it in education, you might as well go ahead teach him a trade now because he won’t go on to high school or college or any higher education. And you know, so then that’s what my mom was looking at. You know, here I have a child that’s not going to make it in education. But you know what? My mom didn’t buy into that. My mom said that was one opinion from one person and she said my child is going to make it. And so sure enough, I graduated from high school functionally illiterate – meaning I couldn’t even read on a sixth grade reading level. And then I went to the University of West Georgia and I graduated from the University of West Georgia with written language skills – how well I could write – as low as a third grade level. So what am I telling you? I’m actually telling you it’s possible. It’s possible if you have the right partnership. And I’m also looking at these kids now in this penal system and I’m thinking ‘alright, what’s the difference?’ What’s the difference between them and me? Why am I out in society being a productive member of society, and giving back and helping, and why have stolen someone’s value – stolen someone’s life? And it comes down to one thing that I’ve already eluded to and that’s your partners – that’s your support system. And we know it only takes one charismatic adult to save a child’s life.
Video Transcript
So what I’m going to do now is I’m going to tell you some stories about the charismatic adults in my life. The #1 one being my mother cause my mother had an impact on me that was amazing, because of the way she thought about me, and the way she thought about school and education. Because when we were going through school we didn’t realize we’d done anything all that special. Until I actually graduated from the university and then people started saying ‘Rob how’d you do that? You know with no reading, writing or arithmetic skills, how do you have a diploma? How are you out there? So what we’re going to talk about today is what the education system can do for you. Cause people also say ‘Rob the education system really failed you didn’t it?’ No. It didn’t fail me at all. It turned out a lifetime learner that loves learning, by meeting my learning style and meeting my learning needs. That’s powerful stuff. And that’s what education can do today. We have a system in place to save these kids before they go to prison. It’s called education. And we can do it. So how important is it that you’re here today? What I’m telling you is it’s life or death for these kids. It is literally life or death for these kids. Cause if they’re not making it in education today, they’re not making it. It’s absolutely that simple. So in understanding this I got to thinking about it and I thought ‘well I need to reflect back on how this all happened.’ Now I could get up here… and I have a little sheet of paper here… and I could just go down and tell you, okay if you make these accommodations for students they’ll have a chance to survive. And I could tell you the oral testing, untimed test, separate classroom… I could tell you all these accommodations but what I want to do today for you is tell you the story behind the accommodation, cause that’s where we are. That’s where the charismatic adults are. That’s where the people who can make a difference for these children are. So in order to do that I’d like to start with my entering college. So I started… I entered college in 1986, the University of West Georgia. Back then it was West Georgia College and when I entered the university they said ‘Rob you’re the first student we’ve had to make accommodations for based on a learning disability.’ Now was I the first L-D ever to go to college? No. Absolutely not, but what we’re going to talk about today really, really is that new of a concept -- L-D kids in college. I did my first talk back in 1991 to a group of high school students that were learning disabled that did not believe they could go to college. Not one single student in that room believed they could go to college. That’s why they brought me in to talk to them, because I was already in college making it happen. So that’s… it’s really amazing how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. And we’ll cover that as well too. But… so I entered in 1986 and Dr. Anne Phillips there said, ‘Rob how are we going to introduce you to your professors so they understand the gravity of the situation?’ see cause I use to call my disability an invisible physical disability. Right. You couldn’t see it. It’s not like I have a wheelchair to back me up; I don’t have casts. I don’t have anything to outwardly show that I have a disability. And Anne said the professors just aren’t going to make accommodations for you, because they’re going to look at you – you speak well, you talk well, you know, you sound intelligent... they’re not going to be willing to do it. So what are we going to do?’ And we actually came up with the wheelchair form. That’s what I call it. I don’t know what it’s really called but all I know is there’s a wheelchair picture in the top right-hand corner of my page. And what we did was the same thing you do for somebody with a physical disability, you know – we said here’s Rob’s strengths and here’s Robs weaknesses. And so we put that on that form and Dr. Anne Phillips said 'you take this to a professor, they’ll understand what you’re talking about.'
The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
The oral testing, untimed test, the separate classroom… and I’m going to start with oral testing cause that’s the first thing we ran into. But I’m also going to say this was in the early 70s, you know. This was before IDEA, the re-authorization of IDEA. This was back when basically my mom had an amazing way of thinking about things. And in retrospect it was an amazingly simple way of thinking about things. But if you keep it simple you’re able to plow through and get the results that you want, right. So where did oral testing come from? Oral testing came from the second grade. That’s when I got my first accommodation. And I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia til eighth grade, but in second grade I got my first accommodation. Where did that come from? Well I graduated first grade and they handed my mom a list of two hundred words and said ‘these are the words he will learn this year. What you need to do is go over them with him this summer and make sure when he comes back for second grade, that’s it fresh in his mind.’ Right. So mom says ‘okay what we’ll do is Rob you read me the questions… I mean read me the words, we’ll start with the ones you don’t know so read all the ones you do know.’ I could recognize and use in a sentence two words on that list – I and A. Then my mom looks at me and says ‘Rob what happened? You’re in the advance reading group at school. You can’t read at all.’ I said ‘no mom, I can’t read.’ How did that happen? What I’m telling you is the L-D child, although in the polls they’ve done in the past, society still equates that with mental retardation – which we know is a totally different diagnosis. But that’s the way we think of it when we’re looking at an L-D child. What I’m telling you today is these are some of your best and brightest. These are smart kids. And when I talk to parents and teachers, I tell you they are smart enough to trick you. They will trick you because see they’re in fight or flight. What we’ve figured out later on too when I was working for the Charles and Helen Schwab Family Foundation in San Francisco, we realized kids aren’t sharing. As a society we really don’t share naturally right. So what we got to do is ‘why aren’t these kids sharing and what are they doing to trick us?’ Well I was lying, hiding, cheating, memorizing, and you talk about an interesting point for future life. Let’s think about this: in first grade I knew I had what we now know in business called instant rapport. I had to create instant rapport with other children on the PE field. Why was that? Because I had to get them to like me so much that they liked me more than they feared the authority figure in their life – at that time, the teacher. Now why’d they have to do that? They had to do that because they had to let me cheat. I had to get them to like me enough to let me cheat off them despite what the teacher wants them to do and says is appropriate and not appropriate. Now in business and life that instant rapport is a powerful tool – it’s called sales. If you can sell yourself then you can sell other things. So that was a by-product of it, but if you look at what I was in, literally fight or flight mode, I have to win people to my cause in order to accomplish what I want to accomplish which was to survive in school. So not only that but then I’m also adding hiding, literally trying not to turn in my paperwork. I’m cheating; I’m memorizing cause that’s where the reading group came in. My mom was baffled, she said ‘Rob you’re in the advanced reading group. How did you do that?’ Well it was really pretty simple: 1. I sat like the third or fourth kid in the reading group, right. And this is the little round half moon table in the back that the teacher scooted right up in the middle, right. And she’s going let’s read around the room, right. And she’s reading around the table… well the kids are reading and what I’m doing is listening and then at least by the second round if not by the first – if this was See Spot Run stuff back in my first grade year – so you know, they read the whole book; the next person reads the whole book, teacher makes corrections of them, right. I add the teacher’s corrections to what I’m going to say, right, and then I read it perfectly. I literally tilt my book back so they can’t see what page I’m on. You can stop my, start me and I know exactly where I am – I’m doing it verbatim from what I just heard. Why? Because my auditory processing skills because of my written language deficiency is powerful… powerful… and I am smart. I can say that today and I can tell you how I got to that point but back then I didn’t believe I was. But you think about what I was doing to get through school and get through life, right. So all of a sudden I’m telling mom ‘I can’t write what I know.’ I can’t write what I know. That’s what the basic statement that came out of me when I was finally confronted with what mom was asking me why I couldn’t do what I could do. Alright, I said well I can’t write what I know. My mom made a decision that day that changed my entire educational career. She said I want my son tested for what he knows not just what he can write. This is in second grade. But now I told you I graduated from the University of West Georgia with written language skills as low as a third grade level. What if we’d held me to that level? I would be one of the people that I told you about at the beginning of this program, in the penal system, cause my self esteem would have taken a hit. I’d have been held back again and again. And I would have been understanding that I can’t do it. I would have bought into that. But see my mom didn’t buy into that. She said I got a smart, intelligent child at home that’s failing at school so there’s something wrong with school. You know that was her whole thought process and like I said this was the early 70s, you don’t challenge the school, back then especially. But my mom said ‘no I’m going to get you what you need. I’m going to do it, if I have to do it one teacher at a time.’ So then I go into the… I’ll tell you another thing that happened here cause my perception is different from my mom’s, and one day hopefully we’ll get mom’s perception captured for everybody, but I still kind of… even though I’d shared as a child I didn’t register that everybody was now trying to help me, right. I didn’t realize the behind-the-scenes that was happening, so I was still feeling like I was out there having to accomplish whatever I could accomplish, right. So I’m telling you I’m still lying, cheating, hiding, and memorizing just because I started announcing it, that’s the first step for getting help, but it takes a long time to even erase one year. One year… think about that. One full year of trying to be this person who had to do those things to get through school. I’m here today to tell you one day’s too much. Our children learn fast and these are bright, intelligent kids. So my mom says ‘okay Rob I’m going to get you help.’ But still I’m using my techniques. And one of my techniques at home was to talk my parents into educating me the way I wanted to be educated, right. I’m a charismatic child. I go in there and I tell mom ‘okay I’m going to do this now… second grade’s going to be different,’ right. And so what we did was I said you read me the chapters, you know, and then you read me the questions at the end of the chapters and if I know the stuff I’m going to be able to answer the questions. If I answer them right, I get to go play, right. That’s all I really cared about… I get to go back to the sandbox if I get everything right, right. So sure enough mom does that for me. She’s helping me, right; parents want to help. She’s reading me this information; she’s reading me the questions at the end; I’m telling her the answers then I go to take the test. The only problem is I still don’t have any skills. I still don’t have any written language skills to communicate what I know, because I’m still hiding, lying and cheating. So now, I can take my test right. I go into the class; I take my test… at the end of an hour I’ve got two incomplete answers on the page, right. And they’re not even spelled right. So sure enough I turn that paper in and the next day I get my F back, right. So I take my F home and I hand it to my mom. My mom looks at it and says, ‘Rob what happened? You knew all this stuff last night. Did you forget? I mean that’s a nature progression right. You forgot – that’s okay, we all forget. Did you forget?’ I said ‘no mom I still know the information I just can’t write what I know. I can’t get it out of my head.’ So my mom said ‘okay I got to do something,’ cause my writing… even though cause I said that the first time, and they’re working on my writing… but it’s no good, right. So now my mom… and my mom’s what you call an advocate, and for me advocate’s a very simple definition – advocate means action. You take action on a child’s behalf. And I’ll also tell you like I tell all parents and teachers, go with your gut. Your gut instinct is right. My mom did it 99.9% right, just listening to her gut. But then she had the confidence to act on what her gut was telling her, right. So sure enough my mom says ‘okay I got to get you tested the way I test you.’ So here we go… we head into school with me in tow, right. We go to the teacher that I had just taken the test for and mom says ‘I was wondering if you would test Rob the way I test Rob.’ And the teacher said ‘well how’s that?’ and my mom said orally. Teacher said ‘what’s that?’ early 70s right. So my mom said ‘if you will read him the questions, if he answers the questions to your satisfaction, will you give him credit for knowing the answers to the test…to the questions?’ She talked one teacher into doing that and let me tell you this, the education system is set up the same way the legal system is – if you start setting those precedents early and you document them, they will follow you and you can build on them, right. So she talks this one… as a matter of fact that teacher says ‘I don’t want any hanky business, I want you to go home and study or anything… we’ll do it right now.’ So she flips the test out of the desk starts reading me the questions, I start telling her the answers, at the end of the test she looks up and she says ‘well you do know this stuff.’ Now the number one thing my mom protected my entire educational career was my self esteem. How important is it for me to know that the teacher knows that I’m smart? That’s powerful stuff. That’s powerful stuff. Why? Because all of a sudden my teacher… cause understand this and I played into this big time… teacher use to think of the L-D child as the one that you hoped didn’t explode in your classroom. You know, I mean that’s kind of how they were looking at me, ‘just don’t set him off whatever you do.’ Now I was a very docile child because I was scared to death everyday in class but at the same time I knew they thought this. So what did I do? I put my head down everyday, right. You know, am I sleeping? No, I’m not sleeping; I’m listening because I’m a bright, intelligent kid. I’m taking information; I just don’t want to be called on to read out loud. I don’t want to be called on to do these things. So I knew that teacher would let me do that because they were worried about the L-D child erupting in their classroom, right. So all of a sudden I’m sitting there and I’m playing into this. Well this teacher now looks at me and has expectations of me, right. You’re looking at a totally different child now… you just got a hundred on the test. You didn’t even think he was listening. Two minutes ago he was fidgeting with his head down, trying to take naps in your classroom. This child’s a behavior problem right. This child… this child’s going to… this child’s going to disrupt in my class by not listening to me, not paying attention to me. No, not at all. This child doesn’t understand what’s going on in this child’s life. It’s up to us as adults to understand and meet that child’s needs, right. So all of a sudden this teacher starts having expectations… and she starts sharing what’s she doing with Rob in her class with other teachers. So then other teachers start thinking well if he can do that in your class then maybe he can do that in my class, right. So oral testing starts spreading. And that’s nice right, because that’s a major accommodation for me early on was… now they’re still working. I still worked on my reading, writing… I’m not telling you that’s not important cause it is. I went to a special class during school every day. I went to a special school after school every day. I went to… I was tutored both sessions every summer up to about eighth grade to try to teach me to read and write. So I wasn’t giving up on it but what do we want to test a child for in front of us at the moment in class? Their intelligence – what they know, not just what they can write. And my mom instinctively knew ‘he’ll write when he wants to. I don’t know when we’re going to get there but that’s something we’re going to worry about at a later date.’ So now I’ve got oral testing and that’s a good thing.
The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
I hit middle school – and every teacher’s different, right – so I hit a teacher who said, “I’m not going to oral test Rob. I just don’t believe in it. Not gonna do it.” So before my mom moved me to my new teacher – whoever that was going to be – she would ask a question… you know what’s so funny, and again going from your gut… After serving on the state advisory panel for special education for the Georgia Department of Education for 7 years, taking the reauthorization and making it fit the rules and regs for Georgia, I realize that mom actually asked the question that is the letter of the law today. She would always say, ‘what do you believe a reasonable accommodation for my child is based on his learning disability?’ So when she asked that, this one teacher said, “well I’ll give him all the time he wants to take this test. I think that’s a reasonable accommodation.” Right. So then my mom turns to me and says, ‘can you do that.’ Now that’s a powerful part of this. My mom turns to me and says can you do that. What am I talking about? I’m talking about a triangle for success. I’m talking about the parent, the teacher and the child being active in that process. Right. And today I’m talking about it even more. These pictures up here are wonderful but why do I have grandparents in the pictures? Because they’re an important part today. You know we’ve got more people today under the same multi-generational families under the same roof today than we had in years and years and years. These grandparents are making a huge difference, you know. So I’m saying the significant other, whoever is going to make a difference in that child’s life, that triangle has to be there. They have to be communicating with the teacher, the child and the person – the guardian – whoever it is over that child, right. So mom says ‘Rob can you do this?’ And I said ‘yeah mom I think I can;’ because I’ve got these powerful memorization skills. Obviously from the story I shared starting this, I don’t have many more, you know. But the fact of the matter is back then in flight or fight mode, I had powerful memorization skills, ‘cause my mind didn’t know I couldn’t. And so I said ‘mom I think I can do it,’ Because what I did was I literally went home that night and I memorized the spelling. ‘Cause see, based on my brain, which I’m going to tell you a little bit later, I don’t have any words in my long term memory for fluency. Right? So I had to go home…I memorized the spelling of literally every single work I was going to use on that test the next day. And sure enough, I go to take the test the next day; I walk in, teacher says go; whole class starts. We’re writing, I’m writing everything and I’m spelling it all correctly and I’m writing and I’m writing… bell rings. What happened? Did it really take me an hour to get 5 questions done on this 25-question test? I guess so when you’re trying to remember the spelling of every single word that you’re trying to use on the test, right. So now I don’t know what to do, so I look to my teacher, you know, ‘what should I do?’ Teacher says, ‘Rob you got a 10 minute break. Just work through the break and let’s see how far along you are when the break’s over.’ I said okay. So sure enough, maybe I don’t write everything I know, right. So I cut it back a little bit. I’m writing, I’m writing, I’m writing… bell rings again. Now I’ve got five more questions done on this 25-question test. Ten questions on the 25-question test done, right. Next class comes in. Now Johnny who’s suppose to be sitting in my seat is sitting on the floor next to me. All my peers in there know I’m not suppose to be in there. ‘Rob, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?’ Right. How much more of that test did I finish? Zero. I stood up, I turned my test in, the next day I brought my F home to my momma. I walked up, I handed her the F, she looked at it and she said, “Rob what happened? You got them all right til you quit. Why’d you quit?” Did I quit because I’m dumb, lazy, slow? No, absolutely not. And because I knew it was a valid answer in my house, I said, “mom I was embarrassed.” I was embarrassed. Because remember my mom’s going to protect my self esteem no matter what. So all of a sudden, what happens now? This is middle school, right? What’s mom do? Here we come with me in tow into the school, right. Everybody says Rob, when’s your mom let go, you know. When does she quit helping you? My mom will call me after this program today, ‘how’d it go Rob? Did it do good?’ You know, last night mom was ready to drive – my mom had chemo tomorrow… I mean today, but she was saying ‘I can skip it and we’ll go help Rob in Mississippi.’ You know my dad’s like, ‘you can’t skip chemo. This is something you can’t skip.’ Right. You know, so when did you let go? She didn’t. And I think that’s important for parents to know. You know and I think that’s important for teachers to know. You know, when do you let go of a child, at what age? Well, I’m 44 years old and my whole family was coming to my rescue last night.