Blossom Your Awesome Podcast A Better Way To Learn With Lois Letchford

Blossom Your Awesome Podcast A Better Way To Learn With Lois Letchford

Lois Letchford is an educator, a literacy problem solver, speaker and author.

Her story instils hope in many facing daunting challenges with learning.
Her book Reversed: A Memoir chronicles a remarkable journey of embracing life and triumphing over adversities, serving as a beacon of light for those in need.

She helped her son learn to read when the schools had essentially failed him. Lois learned by teaching that there were other better methods for teaching literacy and that there is not just one way. She also learned that giving up is not and option and affirmed through her own journey with her son that where there is a will there is a way.

Her son has gone on to Oxford and beyond with his education all with Lois' intuitive guidance and discovery and innovation.

To learn more about Lois click here. 

To see more of my work check me out at my website

Where I write and cover mindfulness and other things to help you Blossom Your Awesome.

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To see more of who I'm talking to on the Podcast, to advertise your brand on the Blossom Your Awesome Podcast or just get in touch click here.  

Transcript

Sue (00:00.886)
Hi there today on the show we have got Lois Letchford here with us. I am so honored and delighted to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Lois Letchford (00:09.483)
Thank you Sue, I'm delighted to be here.

Sue (00:12.674)
I am delighted to have you here. Absolutely delighted to get into your story. Lois, you are an educator. You are an author. You are a mother, first and foremost. And your book, we wanna talk about the discoveries you had, reversed a memoir. And there's something you call a learning difference. So...

want to hear all about this. So give us the backstory and how this all came about.

Lois Letchford (00:44.151)
In 1994 I sent my second son to school. My eldest son learned with ease, learned at the speed of light. The second one was slower and I thought he might have a few problems. What I didn't expect was on day six I asked the teacher how my young Nicholas was going and she threw up her hands and said, well I don't know how I'm going to teach him. He's so far behind all he does is stare into space. So throughout that whole year he bit his fingernails.

He wet his pants and he stared into space. End of the year, you get the testing done and the testing reveals he can read 10 words, he has no strengths, and above all, he has a low IQ.

That's the starting.

Prognosis when children fail first grade of succeeding in school are very small.

Lois Letchford (01:43.603)
So what do you want to know from that?

Sue (01:46.986)
Well, I want to know what, and you know, so, so you had an idea obviously that, okay, maybe he's a slow learner, but you didn't really understand or realize the extent of it. And then, so what is the first, where do you start then with that information?

Lois Letchford (02:03.555)
That's a really good point. I didn't understand the depth of the problem or I didn't understand anything. All I knew at the time was that my son was not learning as expected. He was very good with spatial awareness. He was very good at doing puzzles and that was about it. And when you're in the school system, you trust the people in front of you. Okay.

My family is privileged. My husband's a professor and the following year he has study leave in Oxford England and that's where he had completed his PhD years earlier. So we go to Oxford and I decide to take Nicholas on myself. In fact I asked Nicholas do you want to go to school and I watched my little boy who's white. I watched the blood drain from his face and he'd look like a ghost and I knew I couldn't send him.

So, and I did come prepared to help him with a series of books called Success for All, Teaching MGD Code, and I failed and I was no better than the first grade teacher. And while I'm getting cranky with Nicholas for not remembering or learning this stuff, my mother-in-law is with me and she said, Lois, put away what is not working and make learning fun.

Lois Letchford (03:31.495)
Okay, I think. So what can I do?

and I thought I know Nicholas can rhyme words and see patterns, two things, I can write a poem. So I wrote a poem and that was transformative. He relaxed, we're laughing, we're sharing the poem and he illustrates the poem with my mother-in-law. I'm telling you this in what less than a minute. It took us two, two and a half hours to do that one little poem. So every day then I wrote a poem and another and another and another.

Then the double O's come up, as in the words cook, look and book. I thought of the last of the great explorers, Captain James Cook, and we're Australian. So Captain Cook completed the mapping of Australia in 1770. And this little poem was Captain Cook had a notion there's a gap in the map in the great big ocean. He took a look without the help of any book, hoping to find a quiet little look. Simple poem, big ideas.

and because we're in Oxford we're seeing these things and you see map shops and the discussions we start having were amazing and then Nicholas said to me who came before Captain Cook and I said that's easy Nicholas that's Christopher Columbus and he said to me and who came before Columbus I'm floored because I've never thought of this question

But what it said to me is this child who struggles so much with language and learning has a brain and is asking questions that do not come from a child with a low IQ. Huge for me to see that. In addition, we are in this place of Oxford. Oxford, if you don't know it, has got resources everywhere.

Sue (05:20.035)
Mm-hmm.

Lois Letchford (05:32.103)
and we went to the Bodleian Library and found the map that Columbus used to travel across the Atlantic Ocean. And the map was drawn by a man called Ptolemy and drawn in about 250 AD. So another discovery was that Columbus's map was over a thousand years old. And so everything I did with Nicholas, if I read anything I lost him, I had to turn everything into a poem. Because the poetry...

was engaging, it was short and then we could discuss it. Fine.

I did decoding, yes and he made gains.

We returned to Australia to our home and I meet the lady who'd done the testing 12 months prior and I said to her, you know, I'm so excited about what Nicholas has achieved over the six months and we've had so much fun and he's learnt so much. She stood in front of me and she said, well, I've spoken to the reading teacher and he's gone backwards and in fact, he's the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching.

Lois Letchford (06:51.767)
I cannot respond when someone says something that nasty. So I went home and I thought about it and I went back to the school and I said to that lady, you can call him whatever you like. You can call him the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. But if he is, don't expect him to learn like everybody else. And that was the day that I took on his learning and said, I don't care what you're going to do from now on. I'm going to teach him.

my son's going to learn to read and I continued supporting him in school, working with him at home and over the next six to twelve months this son went from non-reading to reading and then the big story happens. There was another change in our lives and we moved from Australia to Lubbock, Texas and the eight years we spent in Lubbock, Texas Nicholas goes from the bottom of the class to graduate in the top 20 percent of our classroom.

school.

doing things like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, lots of math.

That's in a nutshell, that's the short version.

Sue (08:03.883)
Wow. Okay. So tell us what, I mean, obviously you had everything to do with the growth spurt or the learning spurt, right? Because you realized, okay, I have to go about this in a different way and do it, take on it, take this other approach. But what happened in Texas that just catapulted it?

Lois Letchford (08:16.044)
Yes.

Lois Letchford (08:29.891)
Texas was amazing because in Australia, Nicholas was considered doing really well. Yes, he's reading slowly, but he's reading. He's behind in everything, but you know, we didn't expect him to do anything.

When we went to Texas, amazing things happened. The first was he repeated for a second time.

And so he's in fourth grade and the gap between his learning and the classroom learning has shrunk.

That was the first. We lived in a place called Lubbock, Texas. Do you know Lubbock, Texas?

Sue (09:12.306)
I do.

Lois Letchford (09:14.355)
It's in the middle of nowhere. You drive, a minimum drive to another city is eight hours. And I said to the librarian one day, you know, the boys fight in the car. And she said to me, Lois, here's some books on CD. Listen to them. And we listened to them, books on CD, and there was silence in the car. And the whole family are engaged in literacy and loving it.

and listening to it again and again and again. My son is no longer the slowest kid in the class, he's a child who is behind. The exposure to literature, if you're at the bottom, how do you get better? You listen. The language, the vocabulary, the story structure, everything. And we listened consistently to Hank the Cowdog stories.

Farm by John Erickson. They're not meant to be read by children, they're meant to be listened to and the language in those books is just astounding. So there were many factors that happened and in fact I identified nine factors in Lovett that took Nicholas from the bottom to the top. The big deal is that mind-seat. He's not a slow kid, he's just behind and we can catch him up. And then all that the family did, that listening.

is what was transformative.

Sue (10:46.93)
Wow, okay. So, so many things. Well, first of all, I know you said nine things and I wanna touch on those. But, and then the listening. Now, Lois, let me ask you, you know what's interesting? You said, so he was held back a grade. Is that what it was he had to repeat?

Okay.

Lois Letchford (11:05.312)
Twice, which is against all the literature. He repeated second grade in Australia because he came out with nothing at the end of first grade. So I repeated there and then when he went to Texas the principal said I think you should go into fourth grade not fifth grade because fifth grade is too hard and my husband said well won't he be old when he graduates from high school and she said yes that'll be a problem but I tell you what she said.

We've got a class in middle school where we can do grades 7, 8, and 9 in two years. So he had this extraordinary experience of being held back when he needed to and pushed forward when he needed to.

Sue (11:51.402)
Whoa, that's really.

Lois Letchford (11:52.876)
And because of my son, I became a reading specialist, teaching children who are just like him, children who are written off, who everyone said, well, you know, forget that kid, they won't be able to do anything.

Sue (12:09.81)
Wow. My goodness, that's amazing, Lois. I commend you for taking this on the way you have. I mean, initially it was just for your son, but now it's so much more than that. And you have committed to helping others. But really quick touching on this idea here, I think it's so, first of all, I haven't heard of this, but it's a great insight for everyone.

Lois Letchford (12:09.943)
That's my growth.

Sue (12:38.038)
that, okay, there's the potential where you're held back, but then you could maybe speed it up down the road, right, as you develop. But I think it's so powerful to hold them back because that gives you the opportunity to catch up. So really, even though you might be held back in your overall age group, but in the class, you're neck and neck and you're catching up, which has gotta be so encouraging and powerful.

Lois Letchford (13:08.515)
What happened to my son was extraordinary because what usually happens when children repeat is the material they are working with stays the same and that's where the failure lies. When I worked with Nichols I did something entirely different. That was the power. But that's why a lot of children, they'll say when you hold children back there's no growth overall.

everything stays the same. We're giving them the same material. We're just repeating what we have done in the past. There was failure in the past. Why do we think doing it a second time the same way is going to change the outcome?

Sue (13:55.414)
And so what were you doing? How did you figure this out? You know, I mean, what was it for you that made you realize, wait, okay, and that's a kind of, you know, a part of it, aspect of it is very obvious that, okay, now he's gonna repeat all the same stuff. But what gave you that awareness, deeper awareness to say, hey, I have to give him more, give him this other stuff as he's growing?

Lois Letchford (14:25.935)
Something happened after the day he was called the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. The reading teacher sent my son home with sight words and these are the words that are really quite challenging for kids to read and it was the word saw, S-A-W. And the teacher wrote a sentence, I saw a cat climb up a tree and then she said, the second sentence is even better, I saw a man rob a bank. My son sat in front of me and he read, I saw a cat and he stopped.

Then he went back and he said, I was a cat. No, no, no. And then he says, I had a cat and I asked her to cat. And when I work with teachers, I say to them, what is going on in this child's mind? Why is he doing this?

Lois Letchford (15:11.951)
I let me repeat our family had spent six months in another country. We're coming back and this is the sentence the teacher has provided the same sentence she gave for every other child in the classroom. I saw a cat climb up a tree. The meaning of the word saw for her is to look. The meaning of the word saw for my son Nicholas is to cut in half. Where's the gap? The gap lies in the teaching.

The teacher didn't move, the teacher didn't say Nicholas, let's look at some of the photos that you, some of the things you did last year. She used that standardized sentence and when the child fails, what does she do? She blames the child. I go back to become a reading specialist and I'm reading academic papers and there was one that was published in 1990 by Professor Brian Campbell, a fellow Australian, and in it he said,

why do children fail to learn to read? And he said, the first thing teachers do is they will say, well, look at their home background. Look at the number of books they've read. Look at this, look at that. They will give an excuse for why a child has failed to learn to read. That's what they did with my son. And what they fail to do is they fail to look at the teaching. That was the position I was in. I lived the academic literature.

and when I read that paper I actually stopped work for a week because I was depressed. I'm not reading an abstract story of what happened. I lived it. And I was the one who had to sort Nicholas out to say Nicholas the word saw is interesting. It's got three meanings. It means to cut, it means an object, it means to cut and it means to look. And when we as readers

come to that. We have to do the thinking.

Lois Letchford (17:10.795)
the way we teach impacts the way children learn. And we are the ones, children can't change, we are the ones who have to change. And that was really the driver of why I became so passionate because it's up to us to change and we don't.

Sue (17:32.962)
Wow. And you know what's so unfortunate, Lois, I think, and I wonder, you know, what you're doing in this regard or how you are assisting if you are, I would imagine you are, because they are limited in how they can teach because of how they were taught to teach.

Lois Letchford (17:56.491)
And big businesses come in and say, this is the program we're using. And these are the sentences you're going to use. And we ignore so much. And the other challenge is the people who are writing these programs are skilled readers. I doubt they've struggled in their lives and I don't know what they've read academically. And so they come in with these standardized reading programs and say, every child's going to learn like this.

We ignore cultural differences. We ignore a different understanding of some of the words, the way we say them. You know, I saw a cat. When you look at that, what are children saying in their oral language at six and seven? Do they say, I saw it? Or do they say, I seed it? I S-E-E-D. Because that's acceptable in their language, in their cultural language. And yet, when it comes to written language,

it's all spelled the same way. You're not going to see the word I seeded. So what do children understand? The other challenge is our children will read the words and they won't have the comprehension and we don't see that.

Lois Letchford (19:10.239)
It becomes really complex. And that's what I've understood and teach and work with these children who struggle because I've taught the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. And when I'm reading academic literature, I'm seeing my son.

But I'm also seeing me, because I grew up reading words and I didn't comprehend. And no one said anything. She's just not very smart. That's why she's not doing anything.

Sue (19:46.19)
And then, so at what point do you go beyond, so you see him, he starts thriving, he's doing well. At what point are you saying, hey, I wanna do this. I wanna help other people. I wanna really learn this and teach it in a way that's helpful.

Lois Letchford (20:06.299)
Not long after we came back from Oxford, partly because the reading teacher in Australia had failed and we were at the best school in the whole state. Everyone wanted to go there and that reading teacher failed. That was the thing. The other component was that Nicholas's learning was extraordinary, not usually available to

children to travel. That was the component that really changed my outlook on Nicholas and on learning. So when children don't have that extraordinary experience and are stuck in a classroom with average teachers, what are the chances of getting out of that system and out of that bucket? Very, very small. And that's what drove me. And it didn't take long.

And I really became a reading specialist when our family moved to Lubbock because I met a mother whose 13-year-old son was non-reading. And he'd spent four years in a phonics-only reading program and came out non-reading. Four years, every day, same thing and failing. And I said, I think I know what to do. Over three months, I taught him to read. He'd gone further in three months than he had in four years. Mother writes to the school district and said, you employ this woman or I sue you.

I got employed.

Sue (21:36.779)
Wow. And now, so Lois, break this down for us. I mean, how do you, where do you begin? What are you doing? I know this is a longer conversation, but give us some insights here on this.

Lois Letchford (21:48.575)
The first thing I do is I ask my students to give me a sentence with the word TO, and I don't tell them the word. I get someone to write it on the paper, you know, whether I'm doing it on Zoom or whether I'm sitting beside them. I write the word TO on a piece of paper, and I say, give me a sentence with this word, irrespective of age. And the sentences my children will come up with, I have two hands.

Lois Letchford (22:18.655)
I have two books. And then I follow that up with F.O.R.

Lois Letchford (22:26.775)
One of my students, 16 years old, the parents had spent $100,000 on his education. And for a sentence with the word F-O-R he said to me, I have four grey shark's teeth. What's happening? Both of those words are words with multiple meaning. And sentences the students have given me are dealing with the concrete T-W-O the number. They are unable to say that T-O-R.

I go to school, I go to the bathroom, I go to the kitchen. If a child fails to get that basic understanding, it's like doing a building. They haven't got the foundation to put the walls up or the windows or the roof on. They can't go any further because they have failed with the basic understanding of how the written language works.

Sue (23:26.07)
And now is there, do you and your own experience believe? I mean, I know there's, you know, people have things that would keep them from being able to read, right? Like some sort of disability is really the only thing. But other than that, even adults who have never learned to read, right? Which is unfortunate when you see that. But...

they're capable of reading unless there's some kind of disability that would...

Lois Letchford (24:01.983)
Yes, the teaching becomes so prescriptive and the teaching focuses on decoding and they expect the child to pick up everything else in between. I make no assumptions about what a child sees when they've seen the word TO. And that's the start of the challenges that they face. If they haven't got that one, there are other words like word.

I was, we were, W-E-R-E, W-H-E-R-E, W-E-A-R, they all sound very similar. What's the picture in a child's mind? If the child has muddled them up, then the decoding or the foundations for decoding are really, really poor. They're crumbly. They're going to crash the moment a child is asked to read something significant because they don't understand how the written language works, basically.

and once you teach them, hey this is what you have to do as a reader, what's the picture in your mind when you read this sentence? Hmm, I don't have one. Well let's give you one. I do a lot of acting out. I use a lot of humour because humour involves wordplay, words with multiple meanings.

I do a lot of the acting out comes to inference. Inference we make assumptions about the words on paper but the picture in our mind is quite different and then we make big jumps we expect children to get.

they don't. But once you start building then the kids can start.

Sue (25:48.238)
Wow, that's beautiful. And I see that you just thrive off of this, you know? And it's this revelation almost that you're putting into action that so many people unfortunately miss. So I just, I think that's so amazing, Lois. Now give us, what are some tips for parents at home? Are there resources? Can they work with you online? What capacity are you working now? How do people work with you?

Lois Letchford (26:17.383)
Well, I wrote my book, you know, so they can, the first is you can buy that and see the extent to which I work to get Nicholas to read and then other children to read. I tutor online, I take on some really tough kids and some of them are much harder than even Nicholas to deal with. Something has gone challenged in the brain. But the vast majority of children

can learn to read and write effectively. But that's the first thing is to believe in the child. And then secondly, get tutoring that works. And it's not maybe if standardized stuff works, if what you're doing is working and you're seeing growth, fantastic. If you're not seeing growth, then you have to go back and rethink what else do I have to do to teach this child to read? And that's my philosophy. What else do I have to do to teach this child to read?

Sue (27:18.642)
And are there any resources online or things that people can tap into or books that you recommend for parents if they want to try to start on their own? Is that an option?

Lois Letchford (27:33.683)
It is an option, but it's hard and it's challenging because you've got to work out what the child's got and what the child hasn't got. It's not a simple put it out there, go through this program. Well if that works, that's great, but it's when it doesn't work, that's when the challenge comes.

I was working with a child not so long ago and the mother said, but you have the language that makes the difference. You do things differently. Because of my experience now, I'm thinking in a different way and parents will comfort them from it. That's the thing that was always challenging. You have to have a different mindset shift. Know that the child is working as hard as they can and when they can't get it.

we've got to do something else. Resources. I think the problem with resources is actually there are so many on the internet now it's hard to distinguish. So you can try it and other problem are expensive.

Lois Letchford (28:39.175)
And for those reasons, that's why I didn't deal with it when Nicholas was small. I didn't trust a tutor because I knew Nicholas often wouldn't work with them, certainly wouldn't do it after school. He would have just shut down, so I'm not doing this. And then you as a mother said, I've paid the money and kid, why aren't you doing this? And I knew I could be more creative. So the resources question is interesting because there are a lot of resources.

There are a lot of programs and I think all you can do is try it and then come back and say has it worked? Give it what? Three months. When I work with children I expect to see growth within a week. Not three months. You will know. Can I do it?

what else do I have to do? And why did I write my book? Because I've told you the early story. And you can't see that on here. And I will just show you that because Nicholas went on to get two undergraduate degrees and in 2018 he graduated with a PhD in applied mathematics from Oxford University.

Sue (29:57.714)
That is just so amazing.

Lois Letchford (30:04.163)
You know, the way we see children at the beginning of their lives, at the beginning of their lives, and this is where I feel really passionate, how quickly and easily they wrote my son off and said he can't do anything. But when we see them through a different mindset and help them through those early years of school, they're capable of anything way beyond what you and I can do.

Sue (30:33.41)
Wow, that's remarkable. Lois, now talk to us about your book. Let's talk about the book and at what point you decided to write that and what that process was like for you and how therapeutic and just eye-opening it must have been for you to lay it all down like, wow, this is what I've done.

Lois Letchford (31:02.179)
You know, what I learned through working with Nicholas was that I too was dyslexic. Nicholas had more problems than I had.

but I was dyslexic. And so writing a story for me that other people would read was challenging. So I wrote my story. No, no, what happened was my husband, I said, is a professor and we moved. We moved from Texas to Australia and then back to the US. And so I'm up here and they said to me, well, you can't teach in upstate New York. Okay. I did my master's degree up here and loved it.

I didn't want to do any more study because it's expensive number one and writing for me is a challenge. But I said I just want to get Nicholas's story down and at this stage Nicholas has you know gone from the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching to completing an undergraduate degree with honors and had a scholarship to do a PhD and I want to try it so I wrote it and it was written in a way that no one would ever read it.

I'm going to writing classes and I met this young girl the same age as my son and she said

and she worked with me for a whole year. So I paid her to get a book that people want to read.

Lois Letchford (32:30.707)
and I learned that I could write. I need a lot of editing because there's a lot of errors that I make that I don't see, but her helping me write gave me a book that people want to read. And there's now reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads and many of them say it's an emotional journey, and it is. And it's an easy story to read.

That's one people want to read.

Sue (33:04.238)
That is remarkable, Lois. Now talk to us about reading, the importance of reading, why we should be reading what you get out of it, why it's so powerful. This is right up my alley. Talk to us about this.

Lois Letchford (33:17.783)
We can't live every life, and we live in relatively narrow lives. Reading widens that, and it allows us to see the world through other people's eyes. And it hopefully creates a little bit more empathy in a world where hate and promotion of hate is so easy.

Lois Letchford (33:43.527)
I want people to know that we're all alike, but we all have different journeys. And reading allows us to walk with others.

Sue (33:57.998)
That's beautiful. I just love how you put that.

Sue (34:04.226)
Sounds so inviting. Makes me want to go read right now. So now tell me, Lois, what is next for you? Any more books? Any more books on the cards or what else is going on? You're working, you're helping, you're tutoring people, teaching people how to read. What else?

Lois Letchford (34:27.04)
I came to upstate New York and I learned to ski.

Sue (34:30.627)
Wow.

Lois Letchford (34:31.595)
Yeah, and I was doing really well until 2021, and I had a skiing accident where I shattered my collarbone.

my arm worked before you know after I shattered my collarbone then I had the collarbone repaired and I ended up with a brachial plexus lesion. I ended up with nerve damage down my right arm so I now live with nerve damage and that was really taking the edge off thing. The pain over the first 12 months was excruciating so it's really helped me focus really on tutoring. I can write.

but tutoring at least brings in some money for me and allows me to promote my book. That was a life-changing accident and now I have a little grandbaby to work with on literacy and I do babysitting for my son who lives in Seattle and I'm in upstate New York so I'm flitting backwards and forwards and that's my life now and we do a lot of poetry so that the little boy is building the brain for Angus.

and we laugh over it, we have a lot of fun with it, because I can never remember all the lines in the right order.

Sue (35:50.674)
That's great.

Lois Letchford (35:50.879)
Yeah, so that's my life now. Yeah, and just, you know, I still talk. I do a lot of talking about literacy, and I'm at a conference next year on learning disabilities, and I might pick that up again. I write with Professor Tim Rosinski. He's an emeritus professor from Ohio, Kent State in Ohio, and he talks a lot about poetry and the power and use of poetry for all readers.

So we write together and he loves my story and I love that I have someone in the academic community who sits there and says, Lois, you know what I'm saying.

So yeah, so I talk a lot but my YouTube channel and all that I've dropped because of the shoulder issue that I've had.

Sue (36:42.139)
Well, that is just remarkable. I love this story, Lois. I think it's so incredible. So a couple of things first and foremost. I just want to thank you so much for your time today and all of your insights. And I know people are going to have so many great takeaways. I'm going to be sure to have links to all of your stuff for everyone.

and I'm so happy for Nicholas. He sounds like he's doing exceptionally well. And yes, it's just all wonderful and beautiful. And now in closing, if there were just one message, your hope for everybody, what is that closing message you'd like to leave us with?

Lois Letchford (37:27.307)
Believe in the child that is struggling. Believe they are capable of being confident, competent.

Lois Letchford (37:39.319)
just believe in them. Because our kids, you know, they get put down so quickly. Someone has to believe and believe that they're teachable.

Lois Letchford (37:51.359)
It's interesting what you said about Nicholas, because the learning disability never goes away. Yes, he reads, he writes, he is confident, but the learning disability and some of the struggles he had are continuous.

That's another story. I'll send you a link because I did a book trailer the day he graduated from Oxford and that's really worth seeing. That's on my YouTube channel.

Sue (38:17.938)
Yes, and I'll be sure to include a link to that. But again, Lois, I will just say I commend you because even though the learning disability never goes away with your guidance, he's been able to, he still tries and he still does it and he pulls it off.

Lois Letchford (38:36.811)
Yes, yes, and he's doing well, he's doing well. The alternative, I cannot contemplate the alternative if we'd stayed in the one school. And it goes to literacy justice. What do we do with children who struggle? What do we say to parents? He's the worst child I've seen. Don't start me.

Sue (38:59.182)
I'm going to go to bed.

Lois Letchford (39:00.891)
There's so much about my story that is so important that we cannot leave children behind. We cannot make excuses early on in their lives that they are just worth being left in a bucket. Or in this country, prison, pipeline to prison.

not right. So lots to talk about.

Sue (39:28.65)
Well, that is amazing. That's such a powerful closing message. And you've been so wonderful, Lois. Thank you so much.

Lois Letchford (39:35.671)
Thank you Sue. I am delighted that I have connected with you and been able to talk with you.

Sue (39:42.238)
You were amazing. Wow, that was awesome.