Episode 344-Unlocking Dyslexia With Science And Grit-A Conversation with Russell Van Brocklen

Imagine being told a first-grade reading level will define your future—then deciding to rewrite the script. That’s the spark behind our conversation with Russell, a New York State–funded dyslexia researcher who turned personal roadblocks into a practical method that helps students jump from frustration to fluency without elite price tags.

We dig into the brain science that actually moves the needle: stop hammering the back of the brain where dyslexic readers show low activity and start training the frontal systems where activity surges. Russell explains a deceptively simple routine that blends word analysis and articulation: build three-word sentences grounded in the learner’s real interests, read them aloud to ensure they sound right, then retype each misspelled word until it sticks. It’s a 10-minute fix that compounds into stronger grammar, better spelling, and—crucially—confidence. If they can write it, they can read it. And as sentences become body paragraphs and paragraphs become essays, organization emerges from a fast, creative mind.

You’ll hear vivid case studies. High schoolers in his pilot went from near-zero percentiles to college-ready performance in a single school year. A homeschooled fifth grader climbed from the 11th to the 64th percentile in reading and from the 4th to 65th in writing, with grammar hitting the 97th percentile. The common thread is motivation: specificity beats slog. Start with a student’s genuine specialty, then use targeted questions to move from the specific to the general, borrowing the “context, problem, solution” frame from The Craft of Research to teach structure early. We even map how a 10-year-old building a Mars literature review can learn the peer-review process years ahead of schedule.

We also talk access. Russell’s program pairs weekly expert guidance with a full curriculum—from corrected sentences to publishable work—at a price families can manage. The goal isn’t endless accommodation; it’s training that respects how neurodiverse brains learn and transfers to real classrooms. If you’re a parent, teacher, or curious learner ready for tools that work, tune in, try the sentence routine, and see what shifts for your student this week. If it helps, share the episode, subscribe for more practical strategies, and leave a review to tell us what changed for you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Why Dyslexia Resources Matter
• 1:19 Russell’s Origin Story And Setbacks
• 4:20 Building A Research-Backed Program That Works
• 6:07 Craft Of Research For Kids
• 7:23 The Brain Science: Move Effort Forward
• 9:45 A 10-Minute Sentence Fix Method
• 14:52 Motivation, Special Interests, And Big Gains
• 18:35 Organizing A Fast Brain Through Writing
• 21:19 Case Study: Reed’s Percentile Jump
• 24:35 Structure, Expectations, And Classroom Transfer
• 28:00 Accommodations Versus Targeted Training
• 30:20 Programs, Pricing, And Weekly Support
• 33:08 From Basics To Peer‑Reviewed Publication
• 35:10 Grayson’s Mars Project And Publication Path

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Hi, thanks for coming back to the SD Child show today. I'm so glad to have you back, listeners. And you know, I'm really glad to bring this new guest because we're always wanting resources, especially for our kiddos, adults, friends, family members who may suffer from dyslexia. And I'm gonna say suffer because I watched my husband, who is still an adult, obviously, um, you know, really have a hard time. Uh, he does construction. And sometimes he'll come home and say, oh my gosh, I messed up, you know, I had these numbers backwards. I had to check them three or four times. Like this is the part that really frustrates me. And so I just I always, you know, tell him, give him grace and say, hey, you just, you know, at least you know how to practice some tools. And so today we have a guest who will bring us some very much needed valuable knowledge and resources to help your individual that you might be thinking of get ahead of where they are today. Russell, it's so nice to have you here. Thank you for for coming and being available in the cold weather you're having. Um, and send it back to Utah where the snow belongs, please.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14

You can have it, but uh, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17

Yes, thank you so much for being here. And, you know, you're coming today from New York State Senate-funded dyslexia researcher is is what Russell is participating in. And we're really excited to hear he's already told me some fascinating stories of some people and programs that he's been working with, and I'm really grateful to share them with you today. So, Russell, as I'd love to begin. Give us an introduction and tell us a little bit about yourself, then we'll get into why you're here today.

SPEAKER_03: 1:45

Well, what got me into this is because this is the last thing in the world I was supposed to do. It was in the late 90s. I was finishing up my education and I wanted to know how laws were created, not some class I wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York State Assembly internship program. And when I got there, I said, here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing level. The director kind of freaked out, went to the uh to the speaker's office because he said, This just can't work. Traditionally, in the internship, you had the elected official, the chief of staff, who's probably an intern the year or two before, and then the intern. That's all you got. And I would have messed up everything. And the speaker's office said, you're not getting rid of this kid because he's dyslectic, you have to figure it out. So they got a committee together and they came up with some extraordinary accommodations. They literally moved me from the legislative office building to the Capitol in the legislative in the majority leaders program and council's office that ran the assembly day to day because they had three administrative assistants that could help with my horrendous writing, which they did, which worked great for the academic portion instead of a big paper. I did an hours-long QA, uh presentation QA, very standard accommodation. They take 15, they tell me they're recommending 15 credits of A minus, and they send it back to the flagship campus for the State University of New York system, the State University of New York Center of Buffalo, and the political science department who looked at all these massive accommodations and said, We don't like these. So we're going to lower your grade from a recommended A minus to 15 credits. Guess how much they lowered it?

SPEAKER_02: 3:21

I don't want to know.

SPEAKER_03: 3:24

They forked me.

SPEAKER_02: 3:26

Oh no. What?

SPEAKER_03: 3:27

15 credits of F. So I had enough of this book. I said, I'm done with the discrimination. I went to my professors and I said, where can I go in graduate school to force myself to learn to read and write? And they said, if you like political science, it's obvious. Law school. So I went to law school with a first grade reading and writing level. All right. So it's a second day of contracts. I get called on. The professors call on you, embarrass you if you don't know the answer, which nobody does, until you eventually adopt. I didn't answer as a student. I answered as the professor's equal. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. We're going back and forth. I can't beat him, he can't beat me. He throws up his arms. Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. I got to move on to the next case. I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within two, within a few years. Then I went back to the New York State Senate. I said, I want you to fund my dyslexia research project, which they don't do. So after years of working with the State Education Department, the professors in Western New York and the SUNY Research Foundation, I got a multi-year funding, and we went to the Averill Park Central School District, my old high school, right outside of Albany, New York, our state capital. And we took, everybody needs to understand this, their smartest, most motivated, dyslexic juniors and seniors. They were reading the writing at the middle school level, one class period a day for the school year. They increased from generally the zero percentile to the 30th to 70th percentile of entering graduate students. They all went on to college, they all graduated, GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6. Cost to New York State taxpayers of under$900. We were 3x as successful as the best to select a college at the time for less than 1% of the cost. And that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

I love that story. You know, it when we bring our uh determination into our passions, people better watch out because we can change some things and and make some things happen, especially when we are sounds like like-minded as far as we uh like and different-minded. I love that, right? Different minds think better. But I love when um like minds think uh are are great too, because I, you know, in when you don't have something, when something isn't created, when there isn't a program already accessible, there's that passion to go and build that within some of us that that have that and have the availability to do so. So thank you. Thank you for providing this for so many others.

SPEAKER_03: 6:01

Well, the problem was what I created originally was only for a super few students, okay? They had to be massively intelligent and massively motivated. So when I presented this in New York City, two things happened. I went to the senior professors kind of copy, like, look, I had a couple of students scoring the 70th percentile of undergrad students from high school. And they said, we don't care. We want the craft of research. And I said, the craft of what? The craft of research came out in 1995 from the University of Chicago, since sold over a million copies, and just to teach PhD students how to do their doctoral dissertation. Context, problem statement, solution. I said, You want me to show that to grade school kids? And they said, Yes. Like, okay. And then the teacher said, Is this program, is it, is this functional for everybody? I said, no. They said, we'll come back when it is. So the biggest issues parents tell me is they have a they have kids writing essentially a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words. So I'm gonna show you how to do that, how to fix that right now. But just so you know, this is where the science comes in. This is the top book, Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shewitz, second edition. She's an MD from Yale. That's dyslexia. Now, do you see how the back part of the gen ed brain has this massive neuroactivity?

SPEAKER_02: 7:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:25

And the back part of the dyslexic brain has next to nothing. But you see how the dyslexic brain has about two and a half times the brain activity in the front part of the brain?

SPEAKER_02: 7:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:35

Okay. That's what we need to do. We need to stop doing things back here where nothing's going on and bring it up here. Now, according to Yale, that's done by two ways. Word and this area of the brain deals with word analysis followed by articulation. Okay. So let me ask you about uh your your child. Can he write decent sentences or they kind of randomly place missbelled words?

SPEAKER_02: 8:00

DJ will write perfect sentences for sure. Okay. My daughter, on the other hand, is the dyslexic. So with her, I would find, in fact, I had to argue with the teachers, as I'm sure of you heard a million times, had to argue with the teachers to get her tested because she was the smart kid who came to school every day and said, Did you know? Did you know? And she was telling them all these facts. So when I came to tell them, I think you that she might be dyslexic. I see that she's writing some letters backwards at home, things like that, like really struggling. Um, and they they wouldn't help me for quite some time, two years actually, of schooling. They wouldn't get it done. Well, it was when she we COVID, you know, we had to homeschool. And my son had already been in an online school due to his um accommodation needs. And the teacher was a part of our family. It felt like she was so wonderful that when I told her Anna needs to be tested, she said, we're on it. She had a uh psychologist up from the southern Utah up to our state, you know, our city, and got her tested. And that day we came back with dyslexia, autism, ADHD. So those those other two were a little bit of a newer um find. So that was kind of an interesting day. But from that day forward, we were able to really get her on track and understand the needs and the accommodations. And I think we're still figuring it out. I think we're still figuring it out for her and for my husband as well.

SPEAKER_03: 9:32

But yeah, I would say Is your daughter writing, can she write grammatically, I mean decent grammar spell correct spelling sentences now, or not really?

SPEAKER_02: 9:42

I would say no.

SPEAKER_03: 9:43

Okay. Well, are you what if I told you you can learn how to fix this in less than 10 minutes?

SPEAKER_02: 9:48

I would appreciate and love that. I'm sure she would too.

unknown: 9:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 9:52

So would you like to you uh make up a name for your daughter or use her real name?

SPEAKER_02: 9:57

Um, yeah, yeah, everybody knows. So it's fine. Anna's fine.

SPEAKER_03: 10:01

Anna, okay. All right. So just want to know about Anna. How old is she and what grade is she in?

SPEAKER_02: 10:06

14, 8th grade.

SPEAKER_03: 10:07

Okay. So here's how we're gonna fix that. First thing you need to tell me is what is Anna's speciality? What is the thing she loves to do? What is she really good at?

SPEAKER_02: 10:16

Photography and crocheting.

SPEAKER_03: 10:18

Okay, okay, so let's take photography. So this here's you how you're gonna teach her. You're gonna pull out a standard laptop with a real keyboard, not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. You're gonna type out perfect hero plus sign, what are we talking about? And she's gonna copy it. And I hear parents now, I can't have my kid copy, it's against the rules. Professor James Collins, strategies for struggling writers, default writing strategy of copying is fine. So now we're gonna, we got hero plus sign, what are we talking about? You're going to swap out hero for Anna. Anna plus sign, what are we talking about? Now you're gonna go to a list of 10 things that Anna really, really likes, and then 10 things she really, really doesn't like. And the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna swap out the top of what she really, really likes, which is photography, and we're gonna swap that out for what are we talking about. So we've got Anna plus sign, what are we talking about? We're gonna swap that out for photography, Anna plus sign, photography. See how I got there?

SPEAKER_00: 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:24

Now I'm gonna try to fool you with two of the simplest questions you will ever get. All right. And if you follow what I'm asking exactly, this will work. If not, it won't work, and you will find out you have an epiphany on what dyslexia really is. Do you think I can fool you with two of the simplest questions ever?

SPEAKER_02: 11:44

Oh, I hope not.

SPEAKER_03: 11:47

Okay, well, here we go. We got Anna plus sign photography. We need to replace the plus sign with a word. Here's my question: Does Anna like or dislike photography?

SPEAKER_02: 12:02

Like.

SPEAKER_03: 12:03

Okay, great. You did better than 70% of the people. Now here's the hard part. You need to replace the plus sign with that word to give me a three-word sentence. What's the sentence?

SPEAKER_02: 12:16

Anna likes photography.

SPEAKER_03: 12:18

But that's not what I asked.

SPEAKER_02: 12:20

Anna plus likes photography.

SPEAKER_03: 12:26

Do I have you nice and confused?

SPEAKER_01: 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:29

Okay. When I asked you the first time, does Anna like or dislike photography? You answered it correctly. Like. But then, like almost every educated person, when I asked you to put it into the sentence, you automatically added the S to make it grammatically correct.

SPEAKER_02: 12:45

Likes.

SPEAKER_03: 12:46

Anna's dyslectic. She doesn't know how to add the S.

SPEAKER_02: 12:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 12:51

Are you dyslectic, ADD autism or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02: 12:55

Yes, all of the above.

SPEAKER_03: 12:57

Okay. All right. But you found ways of overcoming that. So when you add so what we have to do is we have to show Anna how to add the S. Now, if you're if you had$10 million, you can go to the Windward Academy in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and they would take your kids in four to five years. They're given the best education on the planet, and they would send them back 98% success rate. Takes four to five years and$75,000 a year. Now, for parents that aren't millionaires, here's how we fix that. What you're going to do is we're going to use modern science from this book. We're going to use this front part of the brain with two and a half times the neural activity. We're not doing the back part where we got nothing going on. Okay? So what we're going to do is we're going to ask Anna, we're doing word analysis first in articulation. We're going to ask Anna to read what she wrote out loud. And she would have put like Anna liked photography. And I'll say, Anna, does that sound generally correct? She's going to say no, and I'm going to say fix it. Anna likes photography. We do 10 likes and 10 dislikes like that. Do you see how that's a very simple form of word analysis?

SPEAKER_02: 14:09

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_03: 14:10

Then we're going to go because reason one. Give me a simple reason why Anna likes photography.

SPEAKER_02: 14:17

Hmm. She loves nature.

SPEAKER_03: 14:20

She loves nature. Anna loves photography because she loves nature. Okay. Now, do you see how we got a whole mess of misspelled words?

SPEAKER_02: 14:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:29

Okay. Now, before we get to that, do you see how the reasons are a simple form of articulation?

SPEAKER_02: 14:36

Definitely.

SPEAKER_03: 14:37

So now what we've done is we take in the back part of here where nothing's going on, and we moved it up here with two and a half times the neuroactivity. All right. Here's how we fix this. We tell Anna to first read what she wrote out loud. Doesn't sound generally correct. And she keeps fixing it. Forget about spelling until it does. This makes it a lot easier for the teachers to deal with because they have trouble with catastrophic grammatic uh messes. But if it sounds correct, now we got the little we just got little ones and some medium mistakes. The horrific stuff is taken care of. Okay? Number two, we tell Anna to put the period down. If there's any misspelled word, she's going to have to retype it until it's correct, which she will do between three and 13 times. She's going to keep telling herself I'm not going to make that mistake. And she keeps what she keeps doing it until she doesn't. Each time she concentrates more and more, and that's where the magic happens. You're going to do that for the 10 likes and the 10 dislikes. Everything, everything's not moved on until spelled correctly. Then reason one and reason two, all 20. Reason one, reason two, and then reason three, all 20. Okay, once you do that, now we've taken her from writing randomly placed misspelled words to decent grammars, full spell correct sentences. Now, here's the other thing. If she can write it, she can read it. If she can write it, she can read it. So that improves. Now, that is just the beginning. The next thing that we have to do is we can't get these kids to do anything, especially if they're ADHD. Because if you step outside the speciality, they won't do anything. So, like I found when I was in law school, I was really good at it, really interested, and I just dominated. That's what happens to people neurodiverse. We go to grad school, we dominate it because it's in our specialty.

SPEAKER_00: 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 16:25

So the first thing we have to do is find out what the kid's speciality is. And parents, this is the most important thing. So this is going to take some time, but I'm going to explain to you why. The most successful student I worked with of this age group, her name was Casey. I never saw this before Casey. I will never see this again. This was a one-off. Casey was interested in Theater Roosevelt, so I assigned her this little book, The Rise of Theod Roosevelt. Well, 900 pages. Problem was Casey was in uh fifth grade, near the end of fifth grade, reading and writing at the second grade level. She turned 11 over the summer. And I assigned her this monster. She went up to her room. That's because she wanted to do reading first, which I almost never do, three hours a night for six months, most of the days during the summertime. At the end, you could flip it to that random page, point it to that word, and she would tell you the exact dictionary definition. She jumped eight grade levels in six months, and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week.

SPEAKER_02: 17:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 17:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 17:27

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03: 17:28

This is important. After that, her mom wanted to know is this just her book she likes. So I signed her to this little thing: The Triumph of the American Imagination of Walt Disney. All thousand pages. There are two universal themes to make up Disney Magic. First one's easy to find. Second one takes my kids one to three years to find out. Then they're reading like 17-year-olds. Casey did it in three months. Why am I spending so much time on this? So they asked Casey, when we moved from a book that you love to when you hated, what happened to your motivation? She said it dropped about 50%. Most motivated kid I ever worked with. Most neurodiverse will drop 75 to 90%. So you go outside their speciality, which is everything for ADHD kids, you're down 75 to 90%, it's not gonna work. Find their specialty during the intervention period. Okay. Next, I'm gonna ask you something. In your specialty, what is it? What is your area of extreme interest and ability?

SPEAKER_02: 18:30

Oh boy. People connecting.

SPEAKER_03: 18:34

People connecting. Now, when you're thinking about people connecting, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed? Key question, but with little to no organization.

SPEAKER_01: 18:44

100%.

SPEAKER_03: 18:46

Okay. So exactly. So what we have to do to fix this is we have to force our brains to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me say that again. We need to force our brains to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So for example, if you ask us, uh, like imagine you were back in high school and you were asked this question what effect did Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream speech have on the American Six Americans' 1960s civil rights movement? It's like grabbing frog. We have no idea. We need a specific point to go out from. So we would ask what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous I have a dream speech. We would then find that answer, and that would give us a question, which would give us an answer, give us a question, give us an answer. That forces the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So it's that simple. We start off with what the kids are interested in, in the speciality. We go from the specific to the general, word analysis followed by articulation during the intervention period only, until they're at grade level. What does that mean? How does it work? I finally had a client who would say I could use her as an example. So what that means is um what would happen is we would go ahead and uh her name was Kimberly. We met her in December of 2024. All right. Um, December 27th of 2024. Her son Reed um was uh in fifth grade and dyslexic. She couldn't help it. She's a homeschooling religious mom with some college. She sucks she properly taught Reed's three brothers and sisters to read properly using traditional methods. She felt a lot of shame and frustration that she failed with her son. A couple weeks before we met, uh the state of Ohio tested Reed. He was reading at the 11th percentile, reading at the fourth percentile. Most parents work with their kids 10 to 15 minutes of sessions a couple times a week. Kimberly did uh three half-hour sessions a week. So you can figure out how long this would take to your child. All right. I worked with her for half an hour a week. So uh she did that for the rest of the school year, about five and a half, six months. I'm not gonna tell you the results at the end of that, because over the summertime, Reed's friend said, we want you in public school because for social reasons, to be with him in class, to be with us at lunch, and that sort of thing. If it was January, they would have placed him in special ed away from his friend's unhappy kid. But he was tested in August, about eight and a half months after we start. I worked with her. He had an increase. Why am I giving you this data? It was in a public school. Mom is miles away. His reading went from the 11th percentile to the 64th. His writing went from the fourth percentile to the 65th, his grammar jumped to the 97th percentile. What happened in the classroom? He's generally gotten A's and B's. Now, has there been a transition? Problem. Yes. He would go into uh math class, and his teachers would say they wanted his math teacher wanted him to do a lot more writing than typical, and he's slower at it, he didn't like it. So he started to rebel. Now I want you to think back to your kids. Remember when they were one, two, three years old and you kept telling them no?

SPEAKER_00: 22:23

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:24

Okay. So now when you have a well-raised child, okay, and they try to rebel, like your kids now, like your son's age, what happens when they want to do something, and you're just like, no way on earth is that going to happen. You know how you just stand there like a mountain, and he can just kind of throw a little bit of a of a hiffy fit, and then they realize nothing's gonna change, and they just go and do what they're supposed to. See what I mean? That's exactly what happened to Reed. I told his parent, his mom, and who told the teacher, which no, he's just just stand there like a rock, and he accepted it. Doing things that he doesn't like to do, which is most of the time. So he's fine. Yeah, that's how powerful this is.

SPEAKER_02: 23:13

Yeah. I think that when we kind of give some kids, especially neurodiverse kids, really crave that structured expectation. If you give me the expectation, that's what I want to do. And we find that a lot. We find that it's not as much about the rules, if you will, but the expectation of what they should be doing and what their next step should be. And it's it's oftentimes that works better than the uh strange other rules they come up with sometimes.

SPEAKER_03: 23:48

Oh, yeah, that don't make any sense. The primary if if you want to be incredibly cruel to teenagers, you use logic. Okay. Because I don't know, but I remember when I was 13 or 18, I knew everything. Adults knew nothing. And then my the people like because I eventually I joined scouts, I got my evil around in seven at 17. I knew everything. And then one of my scout masters not only went to West Point, he got his PhD and then taught at West Point. And speak about flattening egos when I was so wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 24:32

Yes, letting you know, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_03: 24:34

Well, yeah, but that's what I found when I'm working with these kids, and I explain, no, we're not doing this way because like this. Like, here's like here's the next step for you. Anytime you want to write something, okay? You say you're gonna type something, fingers, keyboard, fingers, keyboard, it's it's your speciality. You take your fingers, you know what you want to say, you put it on the keyboard. Does the idea in your head fly out, leaving you with an empty brain?

SPEAKER_02: 25:00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 25:01

You know, is that you or not you?

SPEAKER_02: 25:03

So maybe not. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 25:05

So that means what that means is you have probably ADD, ADHD, or mild bleed dyslexic or combination therein.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

That is true.

SPEAKER_03: 25:15

If you had severe dyslexia, you would have said yes.

SPEAKER_02: 25:18

Yes, I I I believe that.

SPEAKER_03: 25:20

Okay. So how do I know that? Because I kept talking to parents who kept saying, we have to go and spend$5,000 on a neuropsychological evaluation. I was like, why don't we just get a ballpark idea and use that to f just to solve to solve the problem? And so I didn't really need the data. It was nice, but it's too expensive. So over the years I came up with that. So when you're looking at that, I mean, as I said, it's not that hard to fix once you focus on dyslective students and where they need to improve. Um, and this does work, I find, very well for ADD and ADHD. Actually, they pick it up quicker. It's from a treatment perspective, it's the same thing. They're just uh mildly, they're just it's just an easier case. Autism, sometimes it works great if they're high functioning, uh, other times not. Uh it's I have to see because I I just don't know. But generally, that's what I find works to be effective. And uh like Kimberly, she did uh in you know, eight months what private schools take years to accomplish.

SPEAKER_02: 26:31

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I think that there's a big takeaway today from you know that everyone should really um think about and maybe use as your main curiosity for your kid moving forward. What are their interests? How can you use their special interests, their, you know, things that they love to motivate them in learning and helping them with their challenges in so many ways. We're talking about reading and writing today, but there are literally so many ways that you can use their interests and the things they love to help them through the challenging parts of their of their times here. So I hope that you do take that uh information and really use it to your advantages. Russell, where can people go to find you and to find out more about the program and how to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_03: 27:34

Well, we're just putting up our program on a learning platform called School. S-J-O-O-L.com. All right. And uh why are we doing that there? Because it's it's not only a learning platform, but also it's kind of like that and Facebook put together.

SPEAKER_00: 27:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:52

Um, we found that specific community is important. That's that'll be going up within a within the week. And uh one of the issues we had when we're trying to figure this out is I looked at my competition, what they're charging is insane. And they don't, unless if they're charging like 500 or thousand bucks a month, they're not getting the personal support that you need.

SPEAKER_00: 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 28:16

So what I found instead is one of the people I've met on PodMat, uh, you know, PodMatch where we met, her name is Angela. She was very skeptical. Her background is she's a certified elementary school teacher in Texas. And when her daughter was born, after she was a teacher for about a decade, she just quit to become a homeschooling mom. Her son, August, she started working with these sentences, I think back in September. And now they're moving on to the more advanced, uh, advanced sentences and body paragraphs. She's going to be teaching on school every week for like 60 to 90 minutes, answering your questions. Because without that direct connection with an expert to guide you when you're stuck, I don't know how this works. So the other thing is we looked at the pricing structure of 500 to 1,000 a month and figured, unless you got a couple of BMWs in the driveway, we're not affording this. So we drop the price to 147 a month, and we take students literally from the basic sentences that we discussed all the way through submitting articles for P for peer-reviewed publication, which is essentially PhD level work. We cover everything in between. And yes, parents do guide their kids through that process.

SPEAKER_02: 29:32

I love that. Thank you so much for that information. Is there a page or anything else where people can follow and get more?

SPEAKER_03: 29:41

Sure. Uh the easiest thing to do is just go to dyslexiaclasses.com. It's within us, dyslexiaclasses.com. There's a button there that says download free guide. Click on that, answer three questions. Uh, it's a guide of what we discussed today, but then set up a time to speak with me, it's a half an hour, there's no cost. And we go over everything.

SPEAKER_02: 30:01

Dyslexia Classes. Didn't I spell it correctly? That's right. Okay. Whoo, got it in there.

SPEAKER_03: 30:07

If you can spell dyslexia, you know that your dyslexia is corrected because it's really hard to spell.

SPEAKER_02: 30:13

Well, and you know, it wasn't until um a few summers ago that I had a brain scan, and that's what showed me, whoops, that um those these other things that I was a little surprised about myself to find out. But like you said, now that we can we have some uh tools and resources, sometimes some of us are able to overcome some things. And you know, uh oftentimes I find that my dyslexia now comes in words that I'm saying when I'm just speaking and it's and I'm like, well, what the backwards, sorry.

SPEAKER_03: 30:44

Yeah, but uh but one of my favorite things is when we're talking about, oh, we will accommodate you. Let me show you how bad that idea is instead of just fixing us the way that our brain is designed. What sport are you really bad at? For me, it's basketball. I mean, you're just horrible at it.

SPEAKER_02: 31:00

I've too, so definitely wouldn't be a good basketball game.

SPEAKER_03: 31:03

No, I mean you can't even get the I mean, basketball, I can't even get the ball into the thing if nobody's around. What's your worst sport?

SPEAKER_01: 31:10

I'm pretty sporty, Russell. Um I'm gonna say football.

SPEAKER_03: 31:17

Okay, football. All right. So if we were to give you the best equipment, the best football coach, the best money can buy, we're gonna make them use, we're gonna make sure they're using used Walmart equipment. But they're an athlete on a college team. Does it matter?

SPEAKER_02: 31:36

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 31:37

Well, if you're up against a guy who's six foot seven and three hundred pounds, is it gonna matter because you're five two?

SPEAKER_02: 31:44

Uh maybe. I I definitely need to be taught correctly, and I I would definitely need the right tools and it to Yeah, but if you had the best, all the tools, you're five two, they're six, seven, three hundred pounds.

SPEAKER_03: 31:57

So is it gonna matter?

SPEAKER_02: 31:59

No, he's gonna quish me.

SPEAKER_03: 32:01

Okay, that's be and that's the example with we all accommodate you. This part of the brain just nothing's going on there. This is overactive. Why work on this when we got this? I could never understand the logic.

SPEAKER_02: 32:20

Isn't that the truth? Well, I'm glad that you're bringing these things to to light for everyone to have a chance to get further ahead. And it sounds like the individuals that have been part of the program are just, I'm sure, so grateful and um are far off better, you know, in in so many opportunities they're going to be able to take part of in their life from here on out.

SPEAKER_03: 32:44

Well, like one real quick one. His name is Grayson. He's 10 years old, uh as a podcast guest. Um, he's not dyslexic, neurodiverse in the least. He's the 99th percentile in math and science. Grayson wants to be get his PhD and work on terraforming Mars working for NASA. So he needs to get published in a in a good peer-reviewed journal. So I found one. So, first thing I did is I create a custom thing for Grayson. It's the history of Mars from PhD level sources. I lowered the reading level to ninth grade, the context to senior in high school, which is fine for him now. We're doing we're going through the basic body paragraphs and the advanced body paragraphs. Then I'm gonna literally show him, using the craft of research problem statement, and solution, how to literally write a journal article. The one that's needed is a is the uh overall thing of what's going on in terraforming the past, because it hasn't been done in 14 years. We're gonna actually have him write the journal article and submit it. It won't get accepted. There'll be a laundry list of things that need to be corrected. Then when he's probably about 13, we will take send Grayson to go and work with a professor and say, here's an article I submitted. It got rejected for these reasons. Can you help me with this so we can get it published? And watch the professors draw job drop because he's here 10 years before he should be. So we go all the way there. So every and you know, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_02: 34:12

Oh, I love it. Absolutely. Well, this has been such a great conversation today. And um, I mean, what you're doing just is you're so passionate about it. You're you make it so exciting in the conversation. So thank you. Thank you for bringing that to the families that you're working with because I'm sure it makes a huge difference in the success of everyone involved.

SPEAKER_03: 34:35

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02: 34:37

Absolutely. I am excited to find out what's coming up next.

SPEAKER_03: 34:41

You I think they at the beginning you said something about a book that you might just got the draft back. It's about Kimberly's experiences and me working with her. And uh I I've teamed up with Evelyn White Bay, who is one of one of the few teachers of the New York State Dyslexia Task Force. Unlike me getting, you know, working with uh Kimberly and getting him to jump grade levels. Well, Evelyn, when she did this in a little less time, she got uh she she's one of the best teachers in New York State. Um she got a 6.6 grade level increase in a little less time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 35:18

Uh so we wrote the book out. Now we're going through the final edits, you know, as authors' famous last words, you know, and we're hoping to have it out within about a month or so. Um it's gonna be on Kindle and and and and Amazon the whole way. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02: 35:36

Check back in with us. Let us know when that's out so that we can go ahead and let our listeners know to go and and get that if that is something resource that they're looking for. Thank you again for your time today and for your wonderful services that you are offering to not only those there in New York, but sounds like nationwide and maybe even further.

SPEAKER_03: 35:57

We're international.

SPEAKER_02: 35:59

Love that. Thank you so much, Russell. I'm excited to keep in touch.

SPEAKER_03: 36:03

Thank you. Thanks for having me.