“Even referring to it as a diagnosis, I feel, does a disservice to the brilliance of some of the most fantastic minds that we have… just shifting the narrative a little bit towards something that is positive, something that is impactful, can really help everyone.” – Princess Beatrice Princess Beatrice is expecting her first child and she spoke about how she sees dyslexia as a gift. From an interview with Giovanna Fletcher: “I was very lucky that when I was first told that I had dyslexia, not one person around me ever made me feel like it was a ‘lesser than’ scenario. It was always about moving forward, it was always about what you could do. Never about what you can’t. And that’s something […]
College Success: Strategies
“One half of all students who begin college fail to complete their degrees, resulting in wasted talents, time, and resources… Educating students on learning skills only solves part of the problem for students at risk for dropping out of college. According to this study, students need time to learn and effectively practice the strategies in their classes.” – Sara Renzulli, PhD It’s a striking statistic that half of all students who attend college fail to complete their degrees. Students with learning differences often comprise a significant percentage of those groups. Dr. Sara Renzulli has a practical and helpful research paper about how her intervention (a 2x per week class on learning strategies for a total of 6 sessions) had a positive effect on […]
Richard Branson’s Space Adventure
“Overcoming fear is the first step to success…” – Richard Branson Richard Branson has pulled it off – the 70 year old made his own spaceport in New Mexico and hovered between the earth’s atmosphere and outer space for a few minutes, achieving weightlessness before landing back down on the spaceport’s runway. The goal, Richard said, was to make space travel “accessible to all”, of course, for most people, the cost is out of reach and not without risk. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two Rocket plane crashed in 2014, killing a test pilot.
For those of you who grew up with Apollo missions, this spacecraft looked very different. Besides ushering in a new era of space tourism, Virgin Galactic will allow […]Math Strategies Without Anxiety with Stanford Prof Jo Boaler
If you anticipate working with a student on math this coming year, what approach will you take? Dr. Jo Boaler has tips that can help create a positive atmosphere for learning. To read the entire handout with the excerpt above (including links), click HERE.
In the video below, see how Jo taught students how to become comfortable with consider multiple strategies when solving math problems. Bookmark Please login to bookmark ClosePlease login to access.Inspiration: Congratulations Olympians!
Congratulations to all the dyslexic athletes in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. A’JA WILSON A’ja Wilson was the #1 draft pick in the WNBA in 2018, Rookie of the Year, and most valuable player in the WNBA in 2020. A’ja also wrote a courageous essay in Player Tribune called Brute Strength. Here’s a little excerpt: “It’s funny — how do you prove to somebody that you’re trying? In most things, the more work you put in the better your end results, but that just wasn’t happening with my reading. No matter how many hours I spent in front of a book, sometimes I’d just end up taking away nothing. When I knew we had a test the next day, I’d spend […]
Music And Dyslexia: Chat with Sally Daunt, Chair of the Music Committee of the BDA [Premium]
Recently, I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with Sally Daunt, Chairwoman of the Music Committee of the British Dyslexia Association. We had been corresponding about dyslexia and choral groups and Sally had asked about how dyslexic strengths can manifest themselves in choral groups where singers had to fit into tightly controlled schedules of music, extensive sight reading, and music performances which could have limited opportunities for musical interpretation. From my discussion with Sally: “Many dyslexic musicians have difficulty with sight reading – and perhaps cathedral choirs might consider whether an absolute requirement is necessary in the audition process. Some who have difficulty with sight reading might be able to pick music up quite quickly having heard a version once. In theater companies, […]
Mind Wandering, Reading, and Dyslexia
“My mind is very visual: I can see anything in pictures, and I always visualize things. I can’t help it. It’s how I’m wired. So whatever you talk about, I’ll see pictures in my head. Very vivid, colorful, lifelike pictures. They aren’t still pictures. I can make them move. Reality, fiction, whatever. I really have to pull it back in to get focused. It was also a problem in the classroom because I’d sit there and imagine where I’d want to be, and what I’d want to do, and what I wanted to become, and I’d think happy thoughts, and I’d just be tuned out the whole time in class.” – Dyslexic CEO Glenn Bailey Does this sound like you or does this not […]
Inspiration: Tech Executive John Edgar
As Chief Technology Evangelist and VP of Strategy at Digital Ocean, John Edgar helped grow the company from #1000 to #2 cloud provider in the world (second only to Amazon). How did he do it and how did he arrive at the top of his profession in technology, after leaving high school feeling as if he could never get accepted as a computer science major? Look at John’s references on LinkedIn today and you’ll see some impressive recommendations from tech industry leaders. For example: “In the year that John and I worked together at DigitalOcean, he transformed from growing the tech evangelism team from nascent to one of the company’s most critical and lucrative marketing channels, to a self driven one man fixer who successfully […]
How Not To Give Up On Learning A Second Language [Premium]
Learning second languages are difficult for many dyslexic students; foreign language waivers or substitutions are common, but in spite of this, many can learn other languages and even multiple languages if the goal is conversation. Writing and spelling second and third language can be more difficult, but also possible for many people. Students may be more successful if they able to study over a longer time and if they have learned more about the structure of language in their native tongue. In the video below, listen to 4 Hour Work Week guru Tim Ferriss (yes, he’s dyslexic) talk about how he learned to be able to converse in many foreign languages. The type of learning described, won’t necessarily make you a master of […]
