Episode 57
Have you ever considered the hidden strengths within a dyslexic mind? This week we sit down with Russell Van Brocklen, a pioneer in dyslexia education. Russell, once challenged by his own dyslexia, now champions a technique that capitalizes on the dyslexic students' unique abilities, turning hurdles into triumphs and helping dyslexic people thrive in academia.
This is a fascinating episode in which we are afforded an inside scoop on the inner workings of this pioneering course. We discuss all sorts in this episode: both Russell and Olivia's traumatising school experiences with dyslexia, the future of AI in education with dyslexic students, and the powerful tool writing can be in helping organise our thoughts. This is a fascinating, technical episode perfect for those looking to tackle dyslexia in a new way!
Russell has also been kind enough to offer a discount on his course to listeners of the SEND Parenting podcast!
Find them on this link: https://dyslexiaclasses.com/podcast-offer/
Or by using the offer code Parenting2024 at checkout: dyslexiaclasses.com
www.sendparenting.com
Episode 57
Have you ever considered the hidden strengths within a dyslexic mind? This week we sit down with Russell Van Brocklen, a pioneer in dyslexia education. Russell, once challenged by his own dyslexia, now champions a technique that capitalizes on the dyslexic students' unique abilities, turning hurdles into triumphs and helping dyslexic people thrive in academia.
This is a fascinating episode in which we are afforded an inside scoop on the inner workings of this pioneering course. We discuss all sorts in this episode: both Russell and Olivia's traumatising school experiences with dyslexia, the future of AI in education with dyslexic students, and the powerful tool writing can be in helping organise our thoughts. This is a fascinating, technical episode perfect for those looking to tackle dyslexia in a new way!
Russell has also been kind enough to offer a discount on his course to listeners of the SEND Parenting podcast!
Find them on this link: https://dyslexiaclasses.com/podcast-offer/
Or by using the offer code Parenting2024 at checkout: dyslexiaclasses.com
www.sendparenting.com
Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade.
Dr Olivia Kessel:In this episode we will be speaking with a guest from the US, russell Van Broklin, who has a unique learning model for dyslexia based on his own personal experience as a dyslexic and also Yale-based brain research on dyslexia. Russell's innovative half-a-circle approach harnesses the overactive front brain of his dyslexic students, turning their perceived weaknesses into strengths. In this podcast he'll take us through some of his methodology and discuss the impact in terms of rapid improvement in reading and writing skills of some of the students that have gone through his program. It's really worth a listen and will challenge how one looks at strategies and solutions for dyslexia. So welcome, russell, to the Send Parenting podcast. It is a pleasure to have you with us today.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Me too. It's going to be really interesting, dyslexic to dyslexic, having a discussion about how you really built your career and your expertise around supporting dyslexics, with the strategies and techniques that you used on yourself to help individuals and your own self overcome dyslexia and be able to work with confidence and strength in terms of your intellectual abilities. And I really appreciate you sharing with me your report from when you were 22 years of age and that assessment that you had done. It was fascinating to read, especially because you had the test with and without your strategies, and when you were tested without your strategies, your results were exceedingly poor. But then, when you implemented your strategies which I'm looking forward to hearing about you were at graduate level, so I am very excited to hear about your journey and how you navigated and figured it out for yourself and then have gone on to help so many other people as well, so can you start us off with sharing that story?
Russell VanBrocklen:Sure, my base reading and writing skills. Just. You know the evaluation you're referring to is done by Dr Holitschke. He was a SUNY distinguished professor in psychology You're basically the best state university in New York had and that was 16 hours with her and the supplement was additional four hours of just fewer testing. So what you found is my base reading and writing skills were at the first grade level and then when she tested me, when I turned my system on, I was writing above average at the graduate school level as measured by the Graduate Records Exam and Literature Writing Assessment. And, as she mentioned, I went from a part of my brain that was dysfunctional to a part of my brain that was still intact.
Russell VanBrocklen:So what caused me to spend years developing this? It started when I applied in 1997 to the New York State Assembly internship program. Dr Holitschke did a previous evaluation for me. They sent it up. The assembly people went. They're very concerned so they got together with their senior instruct, their senior college professors that taught the academic portion, all the senior people in the program that came up with a very comprehensive list of accommodations. So I had a successful program. They placed me in the majority leaders program and council's office where they had three administrative assistants, and at the end they recommended 3.67 on a oral scale, or an A minus.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, the New York State SUNY Center at Buffalo Political Science Department looked at the accommodation and said completely unacceptable F. First time in the history of the program. It's still there. So I decided enough is enough with this nonsense. So I went and I interviewed a lot of top dyslexic professors that did not go to a specialized school like your daughter, but went to general public schools. And what I found? That it was fascinating. They were horrendous high school students, not very good college students, but the day they went into graduate school they were top of their classroom day one. So just from what I was like, what I later found out about that is that we, as dyslectics and those with ADD or ADHD, we are academic specialists, not generalists. We like to focus on a very narrow area where we excel and the educational system wants us to become well rounded before we can specialize.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's so true. You know it's the same in the in the UK system and people I've talked to here, where until they get to their A levels, that's when they start to shine, whereas they have a lot of difficulty when they're doing their primary and secondary and GCSEs. In the UK it's only when it becomes specialized and in their interest that then they fly.
Russell VanBrocklen:So it's interesting that alignment Well, when I mean talking top of their class day one, I mean day one. They're asked to come up with something original that matters and they can, and once you have the idea, the rest is just work Okay. And a lot of their valedictorians, you know, top their class from, let's say, harvard, who go, a lot of them can't come up with something that really matters or that really can push the field forward, so they're either all but dissertation or do something that doesn't really catch the imagination of the field. So I said okay, so we're going to take that. And I looked at, I said we're measured by writing. So I decided to go and I went ahead. And I went ahead and focused on the writing portion.
Russell VanBrocklen:I decided to use the Graduate Records Exam, analytical Writing Assessment, and this whole process took, you know, nine years to finally once that happened to when I finally presented at a major conference, at the International Disselected Association Conference in New York City so New York State, I wanted them to fund it. They eventually did, but it took. I had to go through the State Education Department, the SUNY Research Foundation, senior professors, and what we finally found is when we taught the program I finally had to present it to Dr Collins, who was a major professor in writing research at SUNY Center at Buffalo, and people told me this is going to take years for him to approve it. Well, I had a university wide competition I had to enter. I was finished in less than two weeks with his approval.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, russell, can I just talk you for one second? You keep saying this the SUNY Research Center for our listeners. They might not know what that is. Can you explain what?
Russell VanBrocklen:the SUNY.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Center is.
Russell VanBrocklen:Sure, the SUNY Research Foundation is in charge of it's the Research Foundation of the State University of New York. They administer about a billion dollars of research a year for the whole system statewide. So sorry to clarify that, thank you. So after we approved it I got 15,000 from the university and we tested the program and our first student her name was Michaela and she was an 11th grade very motivated, intelligent student Writing at the eighth grade level. Within a couple of months she was writing average of students going into graduate school. Her spelling and grammar went from disgusting to clean at the graduate level.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So if I can just can I sorry to interrupt you again here, but if I can just highlight for the UK system here, so an eighth grader is probably about a year nine in the UK and then an 11th grader is just kind of would probably be just leaving secondary school in the UK, I would say Okay, Yep.
Russell VanBrocklen:So when we worked with her, she was 17 and she was writing as if she was like 13 or 14 year old.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, that's better than it'll be. Then my listeners can understand, as they're not familiar with the grade system. Okay, so.
Russell VanBrocklen:But the main point is her spelling and grammar was clean at the graduate level Wow. And when we put the program into practice in a public school, it took the teacher less than three hours to learn and then she rewrote it to meet her teaching style and the students she was working with. All these kids were very selective. They're highly intelligent, highly motivated, came from good family support and they went from writing from a 12 to 13 year old to maybe 14 to writing average of students going into graduate school, which is you know, 21, 20 years.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's phenomenal.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yeah, it cost the state less than $900. And the same thing with her spelling and grammar went from disgusting, as the teacher noted, to clean at the graduate level. All the kids went on to college, one of the top 100 colleges in the United States, and they all graduated with grades between 2.5 to 3.6 on a 4-0 scale, no accommodations. I thought I solved it, but then complaints about the system started coming in. It was only for the most motivated, the most intelligent, and I needed to break it apart into two areas.
Russell VanBrocklen:How do we transfer the auto correctness from spelling and grammar to the youngest students is what teachers keep telling me. They have students writing a bunch of apparently randomly placement spelled words. How do we fix that? And then, how do we fix so when we have advanced students write something original? So, for example, shakespeare Top students, a level students, have been writing the same thing about Shakespeare for the past 100, 200 years.
Russell VanBrocklen:It's a tragic story of teenage love in some variation. So how do we come up with a process so that every time the instructor reads a essay, they learn something new, something original? And how do we incorporate artificial intelligence into that process? So those are two general things I'm gonna give you some information on today. So let's start off with the student. You just find your child is dyslexic and if they're writing some variation of randomly placed mispelled words, how do we fix that? So there's a process in the United States that has been used by the wealthy for the past almost 100 years and it's called an Orton based approach. Dr Orton passed away in 1948 and it works. If you go to, let's say, for the Gowell School, that's been around, that's G-O-W. It's been around for 96 years. If they belong in Oxford, then they will go ahead and they will be. If they belong in Oxford or Cambridge, they will have the ability to go there and succeed if they go there for six or seven years. So, but the problem is it cost 80,000 a year.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So is Gowell like an independent school.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, it's a private school that's been helping dyslexics for 96 years. It's the oldest one in the country, I think the world. Okay, so it works, but how do we do this so people can afford it?
Dr Olivia Kessel:That's one of the main issues that I was talking about and accessible to a larger group of people that can be accepted at that school, that we have a similar problem here. There's just not enough specialist schools Enough things.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically did you get the email where I sent you with a picture of the brains?
Dr Olivia Kessel:I don't think I did actually. I apologize.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, but I do know the brains, so. So I'm going to refer to overcoming dyslexia by Sally Shea, which second edition, page 78, figure 23. If you Google Yale dyslexia brain image, you will see black and white image and what you're gonna notice is the back part of the dyslexic brain. We have almost no neuro activity. Gen ed students is going crazy. The front part of our brain is about three times overactive and it deals with two things articulation and word analysis.
Russell VanBrocklen:So I made the mistake of trusting Dr Shea Wetz when she started off with articulation. What I found is we need to do word analysis first, followed by articulation, and the second thing we need to do is work in a student's specialty that's their area of extreme interest and ability. Okay, so focusing on those two areas, it's going to help out tremendously. And finally, what I asked for dyslexic students, and because you're dyslexic, I'll ask you have you ever noticed what you really care about in your specialty? Have you ever had ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with a key question, but with little to no organization?
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay. So here's the secret we need to force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So what I found is our biggest problem is we just think so quickly and radically and once we force it it's funny because I've had people who I work for.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I've had GM say Livy, your mind is working so fast, nobody can keep up. You need to slow it down because others can't keep up with you. So it is, which is a positive, but it's a negative too.
Russell VanBrocklen:Exactly. So. What we do is when we're communicating, we're communicating and writing. So, by having the brain organize itself, we're using writing just as a way to measure the output.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, so to start off with the most basic one. This is the request I get. It surprised me how much time I get when I present the conferences. How do I get my student to stop writing once you're randomly placed misspelled words? So I'm gonna walk you through what I do, that I'm gonna ask you a very specific question and when I ask you that question, almost no teachers, when I present this, answer it precisely. So try to answer it as precisely as possible. So we're gonna start off with a formula hero plus sign. What are we talking about? So we're going to have the student. I don't care if they're five years old or 50, they're gonna be typing, not on an iPad, not on an iPhone, not handwriting. They're gonna be typing on a keyboard. Okay, If they don't know how to type, they're gonna take two fingers and they'll just do it slowly. Eventually they'll get faster. So they're gonna type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about? Then we're gonna replace hero with their name. So pick a dyslexic student that you know very well, or a-.
Dr Olivia Kessel:My daughter.
Russell VanBrocklen:Alexandra. Okay, Alexandra, what does Alexandra love to do? She had could do anything, what would it be?
Dr Olivia Kessel:Play with her dolls probably.
Russell VanBrocklen:Play with her dolls. Okay, so I'm just gonna put I'm just gonna make that doll. So we're gonna do a simple three word sentence. So we're gonna have hero plus sign. What we're talking about. We're gonna exchange hero for Alexandra plus sign. What are we talking about? Alexandra plus sign dolls. Now here's my very specific question Does Alexandra like or dislike dolls? Okay, Now replace that word with a plus sign. What's the sentence?
Dr Olivia Kessel:Alexandra plus sign dolls.
Russell VanBrocklen:Nope, we're replacing the plus sign with that word you just said.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Alexandra likes dolls.
Russell VanBrocklen:You answered my question correctly and then you made the mistake. When I asked, is Alexandra like or dislike dolls, you said like, which is what she would say. But then, when I asked you for the sentence, you automatically added the yes.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah.
Russell VanBrocklen:Dyslexic students don't know how to add the yes. So that's the technical problem we need to overcome Now. Warren Gillingham will show you how to do that in a matter of days or weeks. And it's complicated to teach the student with multi-senses. We need a much more efficient way. So when I ask dyslexic students that, they're gonna say like and they're gonna put up Alexandra like dolls. So how do we get her to add the yes? I'll ask Alexandra to read what she wrote out loud and then I'll ask her does it sound generally correct? And her answer is going to be no.
Russell VanBrocklen:No.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Then you tell her to fix it.
Russell VanBrocklen:Alexandra likes dolls. We do that a hundred times with a hundred sentences.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's interesting they do that at her school with Microsoft Readback so they can highlight and the computer reads back the sentence to them and then they can see the errors. Similar kind of Right.
Russell VanBrocklen:Similar, but we're having them do the reading, okay. And then when they're done with 80 sentences, she's gonna have Alexandra like dolls, because reason one, two and three Okay. Now what is the one chore Alexandra absolutely detests? Brushing her teeth. Brushing her teeth Okay. Alexandra doesn't dislike brushing her teeth, she loaves brushing her teeth.
Russell VanBrocklen:So what we do at this point is we'll start having the students we pre-selected words for likes and dislikes. They'll go to Marion Webster, oxford English, and they'll type out the word and select a definition Okay. The other thing we do is we're going through this process. We tell them, once they finish with their sentence, not to put a period. They can ask us any questions and we'll answer it, but once they put the period down, if there's a spelling mistake or a major grammatical mistake, they have to retype the entire sentence. And what you're gonna notice is a lot of these kids are very proud. They'll just be dropping periods and they'll say there's a mistake. I said you made a boo-boo or you made a silly error, depending on the age of the student, you made a silly mistake. I find those to be the least offensive terms and they're like oh, now I gotta retype it. And eventually they're gonna get so sick of retyping that they're going to hyper-focus, and that's where the magic happens. That's where a lot of things self-correct.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So through their irritation you get motivation.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, through their irritations with themselves about making a silly mistake, like I can't believe I made that again. And then they really try and as they're going through that 100 sentences, they're fixing those mistakes and then, as we move on, with similar steps for the body paragraphs. It just makes things so much easier. How do we improve? I use a process called writing to read One of my students her name was Casey, she was 10 years old reading as if she was a six-year-old, and she said I absolutely want to do reading, I don't want to do writing.
Russell VanBrocklen:I said, okay, what's your specialty? And she said President Theodore Roosevelt. So I signed her a 900-page book called the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt At 10. This was a very motivated kid and she was a lower middle class. Her family could afford to hire me for 15 minutes a week and she said she was going to do it, Just to give you an example of how this is done. So I gave her this 900-page book and I said okay, here's a simple process. And she sat down for two to three hours a night, five to seven nights out of the week, and six months later she's now 11.
Russell VanBrocklen:And she's in that silent reading and her schoolmates come over and take her book, as they're reading Harry Potter and she's reading this 900-page book and they couldn't get past the first paragraph. I get a call from the school and then a mom talks to me and the teacher says I thought this girl had a severe reading problem. She's the best reader in the class. What's going on? And I said I gave her a simple process and she just sat there all night for six months, but not the best way of doing it. So here's a much more. I mean you wouldn't?
Dr Olivia Kessel:get most children, you certainly wouldn't get my daughter to do two hours of that. I mean she sounds an exceptional little young lady.
Russell VanBrocklen:I'm just saying is you know it's, and when we were speaking for 15 minutes a week, half the time was spent on other things you wanted to talk about. So I'm just saying it's not that hard to do. If you want to put in a tremendous amount of effort, I just think it's inefficient. So here's a much better way. Once, if you look in the grammar books in the States, once you do those basic sentences, you have four sentence types Simple, compound, complex, compound complex. I'm going to give you a simple sentence solution that will really help develop the vocabulary. So what we do is we'll take a story and we'll identify a hero and then, depending on your level if you're a beginning, intermediate, advanced student you're going to write either a sentence or five plus paragraphs to me on what the hero wants to do. We divide the words into action words, the hero in the general direction, where they want to go, and the most important words, and then we look at each one and their definition. We decide which way we want to go. That's what we call our base universal theme. Then I'll have students go into thesauruscom and the base universal theme is generally very broad. We want a word and the definition that best matches what's in your head and that's different for everybody. So I'll have them go to either the dark orange words for beginning students or the whole thing, or more advanced students and have them type out the word. Then they go to Oxford English or Marion Webster, pick their definition and they'll type out the word and the definition and they would keep going until they find the best possible word In this process. This is where I tell them that you're going to take a couple of months and then, after they've done it so many times, how many times do you need to see the word disdain before you know exactly what the definition is? Or you're joyous Once students know the word and after they typed it out several times, I'll ask an 11 or 12 year old I call it thesaurusizing.
Russell VanBrocklen:They'll go and look up 200 words and say this is the best one within 5-10 minutes because they know the words. Now you're developing an extremely rich and broad vocabulary with literally hundreds, or even I've had students go 800, over 1000 words doing this process to pick their universal theme. That now, when they go to start to try to read, they know the advanced words. Now they're just looking at the connecting words and they practice and they listen and they practice and now they're able to read as they're learning to write on their topic, because I try to have them pick ideally a biography at the 16, 18 year old level even when they're 10 or 12, so they can grow into it. Or you can start off lighter and start off with something age appropriate and then do it again. I just find a lot of my clients just simply want to go where they need to be.
Dr Olivia Kessel:If I'm understanding this correctly, Russell, so you get them through looking at definitions of words and word recognition, then apply that to their reading so they can pick up those words that they can recognize, and then the more high frequency words they're able to fill in the gaps between them.
Russell VanBrocklen:Right, because, as they're going through, most of my students can't read the material that I assign them. So they're listening to an audio book numerous times and they're following along with the reading and then they're trying to answer a very specific question. So let me ask you this have you ever found that when I asked you before, you have ideas flying or you're head to legs people with little to no organization, by listening to the book, while trying to read it and follow through with a printed book and trying to answer a very specific question, that crazy, random, massive, just complete chaos in your head is reduced by about 70-80%. So what I'm trying to do is I say what does the hero want to do? And we're trying to reduce that to a universal theme so people can understand universal themes. It's just hard to get the best word that's in your head. Then we pick the optimum villain, a person or a concept who is best designed to prevent the hero from accomplishing what the hero wants. Now you can go and have a discussion about this. You've read the book, you understand the material, you can discuss it through a universal theme and it's just much more efficient.
Russell VanBrocklen:So that's just part of our first course and then we take that through, where we're showing you how to write a five-paragraph essay a basic one, just to get students so they can start to work. And then I had essentially the state of New Jersey ask me to teach them this process. They're 80 plus percent of their senior people in very school districts and I taught the teachers how to do this in less than two hours. Parents take a little longer, but it's a very easy process to pick up Once they're able to do that. The next one that I got is we have artificial intelligence coming out and it's causing just a massive conflict with the teachers, the professors and students about how to use this.
Russell VanBrocklen:So for more advanced students I'd say the more towards the A-level students how do we create a process where students can pick a well-known piece of literature and come up with something original to say so that's one of our more advanced courses. I'll go through part of it with you here. So I want you to think back to your days when you were in A-levels. What was one of your favorite novels or pieces of writing that is well-known, that you thoroughly enjoyed?
Dr Olivia Kessel:That's been back decades now. My goodness, I love the Great Gatsby. That was a great one.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, so we'll start off with.
Dr Olivia Kessel:If I'm honest with you, russell, in university and actually I went to Boston University in my English class in Boston University, the teacher in the front of the entire class said to me in that class I can't believe you got into university with this essay that you've written here. And he humiliated me in that class and I stood up and I said I can't believe that you got professor in front of your name. And he never saw me again and I went into the world of science. That is my experience with English at a higher level.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay. So let's take the Great Gatsby. What we have you do is you'd either pick the entire novel or a section of the novel, and we have you read it three times. The first time is to gain an overall familiarization or just re-familiarize yourself. The second time you're going through either a part of it or the whole thing, where you're noting every minor character that you find interesting. Notice, we're staying away from major characters. It's kind of associated with a sandbox. If you want to say something interesting, you want to be playing in a sandbox and much less people play that. Yeah. So, as you're going through, yeah, those you're going through. The second read through. What you're going to find is you're going to mark your minor characters. Your third read through you're going to go through and you're going to start noticing critical subplots. Now, by the subplot I mean one of the requirements is you could take the subplot out and it's not going to materially affect the major parts, the major line of the story. It's specific to that minor character. So now we have you go through and you select your favorite minor character with this critical subplot. Okay, that's where we're going to focus.
Russell VanBrocklen:The next thing is now you're going to start using the artificial intelligence to read a five paragraph essay At your grade level and your, let's say, a-levels. Or you could be a typical student at 16 or 17 or whatever your age is, whatever level, your schooling is Alright and you're going to get that essay. But the problem with the artificial intelligence is going to give you a lot of nonsense. So you have to know what the problems are and tell it how to correct it, and that's, and then, further on in the course, we then show you how to come up with something absolutely original so that when you turn the paper into your teacher or professor, they're going to learn something reasonable. I call it a whiff of originality. So if you have 20 students following this process, they're going to have 20 unique papers.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And is that considered kosher in the US system to use artificial intelligence that way? I mean, I know very little about this topic, but it's.
Russell VanBrocklen:we have our recommendations for where and when to use it, but when we go to the teachers, we show them this process the teacher decides or the professor decides use a little AI, a lot, an intermediate or none.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Okay.
Russell VanBrocklen:But they can. Then the students can go and say this is where I used it and I for advanced students. I can't see them going through doing a lot of academic grunt work To me. That's what the artificial intelligence is for. So what I would recommend is what I would recommend is I show them the entire process and, as I said, the teacher decides, and it allows a conversation. Some teachers are going to use it more or less than other ones, but it allows them to use a system to come up with something original, and they can, and it gives everybody a civilized discussion to have Instead of if you use AI, I'm going to fail you and all this other sort of nasty stuff.
Russell VanBrocklen:You know. So it's because there have been students in the US. When these AI came out, they were told to write like a 20-page paper on George Washington, who was the first president of the United States. Well, they just went to AI and had it done in 10 minutes. Okay, kind of not the point of doing the paper. So that's so. That's our primary course for showing students how to close the knowledge gap. In our final course we show we use a book called the Craft of Research from the University of Chicago. It was designed decades ago for their graduate, for the PhD students, because they didn't know how to write. And now we show high school students you know, 15, 16, 17, 18 year olds that process. So when they go to college they're familiar with what the professors are looking for. So one of my more interesting students she doesn't want her name used, but her story is interesting Her professor called me and said I have this college freshman showing up and she's saying she's not the best using the craft of research and wants my help in showing her how to improve using this process.
Russell VanBrocklen:He's like what is a college freshman doing writing this this way? I can't get my PhD students to do this. And I said well, she started working on this process when she was in seventh grade, which was 12 or 13. He's like huh. I said well, there are advantages to being dysselectic. She still has a lot of work to go.
Russell VanBrocklen:And she ended up applying and working with him on her doctoral degree and presenting that in her first paper as a freshman. Now he wants to work with her because of her writing skills, not one to work because she's dysselectic. He was just completely confused. Like you may have 12 year olds writing this, I said, well, she started early with me and I worked with her through high school. She just kept wanting to get as advanced as she could because she wanted to go on for a PhD. So by taking out this, when we just came up with this course, for coming up with something original, breaking that out, closing the knowledge gap and showing you how to responsible use AI you can go and talk to your teacher or professor and say can I use the AI in this context? Yes, no, come to an agreement. But then every time you turn in a paper for English, it's original.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Okay, and do the professors mark accordingly, or they mark everyone the same, no matter what kind of process they use.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, to tell you the truth, I want you to think back when you were in your A levels and you're writing on the great gas speed. Do you think the teacher ever learned anything from any of the students in that class?
Dr Olivia Kessel:No.
Russell VanBrocklen:No, okay. Now imagine they're reading an essay and they actually learned something where they're finding something original that they didn't think of before. It tends to leave a mark on on the teacher saying I'm glad I finally read something where I learned. It's very important to them, especially when you get to college and graduate school. So that's. But you. When you go and you say I want to use the artificial intelligence so I can do this more efficiently, it's to be honest with you.
Russell VanBrocklen:Some professors are gonna say, no, do it all on your own. Others will say, okay, this part makes sense, that part makes sense, but not this. Or you can use it here as well. It's their decision, but you're showing them the respect by asking them at the beginning of the process and then, if they have any question, you can say I used it here. No, I didn't use it here, and they can tell if you used it. They just put it into an AI detecting program and they'll know.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, and especially for dyslexic students, I can tell you all my papers are written by AI. Now I just tell it what to do and it makes things drastically more efficient. So when you're out in the workforce, they just want you to be as efficient as possible, and when you get to know AI and I find working with AI very especially Chad GP, t4 I find it's very similar to working with dyslectics in a lot of ways. One of the key things that I'll say is I'll give it instructions and I'll ask if you agree with I said. Please say yes, and then rewrite what I wrote above in your own words, and then it'll rewrite in something much clearer than anything I could have come up with and I can see is this what I was asking for? If not, then we go back and forth until it's clearly what I needed to do and then we'll go and do it so it's kind of a Tool or a bridge for dyslexic to use.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And it's interesting because I was actually talking to another mom the other day who's got ADHD and Her thoughts are sometimes all over the place. So what she does is she puts all of her thoughts into AI to create a Message that she can. Then it solidifies her mind for her is how she put it, you know so that she can. It Organizes it for her. The AI Exactly so.
Russell VanBrocklen:I came up with this course in this process because now, when I teach the teachers, there's a huge debate amongst themselves at this point Should we be using it, if not, or how much. But it's a, it's a now a civilized discussion, and if you get pre-approval for what it is, then you're fine, and I've had students use this. They've turned in papers and now they're doing much better in school. But the main thing that the teachers want to know is this is your idea, this is what this is your connection that you made independent of AI. All AI was doing was the essentially the academic grunt work. Okay, and that's and that's how we get it to be acceptable.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Because I can't think of the ideas by themselves.
Russell VanBrocklen:They can just Reiterate you give it the right instructions, it can be helpful in that. But I generally say its purpose is to do the academic grunt work and by this time the students get to the advanced level. Really, they they shouldn't be going through, like I was describing before, with a thesaurus. We have advanced versions of that. Instead of the student going through and spending forever on that task, I'll just have AI do it no matter of minutes and then they go through a much more evolved thinking process.
Russell VanBrocklen:It was kind of like when I was an engineering student and we started using the graphical calculators and calculus-based physics. I used to do all that by hand and it would take forever, but the teacher would say you know when you're, when you're having a test. Yeah, bring in your graphical calculator. Fine, bring in your textbook. If you don't know how to apply what you learned, you're going to flunk in physics. If you bring in your textbook in a history class and you don't get a hundred, what's going on? Okay, so you have to know how to apply and the major thing is how to Communicate with the AI and correct it when it makes mistakes, and but it's sure that you're going to get it, but it's just there to make you far more efficient, and especially for Dyslectics. When we finish your education and we're going in the world of professional employment, we're going to be using AI a tremendous amount. You might as well start learning how to do it in middle school.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yeah no, absolutely whenever you're, but you have to do it in a respectful way, with permission from your teacher or instructor.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, and make it your own as well. It sounds like.
Russell VanBrocklen:I mean I use it as well.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I use it for my podcast. So, like, all of the audio here will be transcribed by AI, and then all of the Summaries of the episodes are also from AI, and then I, I sense, check it and change it to make sure that it's it's what I want to say, but it's, it's saved many, many hours of time.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yes, it's, it's saved you a lot of grunt work, yeah, and it gives you a decent draft, but that's all it's good for. But. Yeah, so that's but. But I had to find a solution so that the teachers and the Students and the administration aren't on at each other's strokes, because you know it's going crazy.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's interesting in the UK, like so GCSEs, which kids take care around? You know 15, 16 years of age, between 14, 15. I think it is, and they 50% of the English exam is based on spelling.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, here's the thing that I told you about. Remember, when I told you that the original process if there's a spelling mistake you have to retype it and you hyper focus as we go through that process. We extend that into the basic five paragraph essay. But these students no longer have. I mean, their spelling is fine I I have to go through that process.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I should probably do that. I still can't spell.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, it's much easier.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I don't think I'd have the motivation. If I'm quite honest, it sounds quite. It sounds a bit tough actually. You have to be quite motivated.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, I would have to say the alternative in the states is the Orton Gillingham approach. All right, it's just what works. If Bill Gates had a dyslexic child, that's what he would have used. When you compare what I have compared to what the other processes are, it's much more efficient. So that's what I said when we were going through the original program. The spelling and grammar went from horrendous. I've heard that we're disgusting. I don't want to work with this kid. Get him away from me To clean at the graduate level. When I mean clean, I mean if there's any even reasonable misspelling or grammar mistake. We're kicked down to a maximum of a four and most of these kids are hitting a four and a half or five. Okay, Five is above average.
Dr Olivia Kessel:If I'm you know. It sounds brilliant, but it also sounds like you have to put the time in a lot. You know and I don't know, but you know for myself. With my neurodiverse daughter, I couldn't get her to sit down and do that. You know what I mean.
Russell VanBrocklen:And that's why she's also got ADHD.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So you know, sitting and doing that she would have an absolute meltdown.
Russell VanBrocklen:Well, that's why, again, I said we'd have to work in her speciality.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Okay, so something she's super interested in.
Russell VanBrocklen:Not only super interested in but extremely good at. So you were saying what, what was it? She really liked a lot. What was that? Playing with dolls, okay. So let's say Barbie, maybe there's a book on the new Barbie movie, okay, or something. We would pick a book where they're very interested and then we would pick an audio book where they can listen to it. It was extremely well, they liked the narrator. And then they're going. I get that all the time from parents and I'll say, well, my kid has an attention problem. I said not in their speciality. So if you told your daughter that she had to go and meet with a doll expert on something she's really interested in and they were going to talk for like the next eight hours, do you think she'd be interested?
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, probably.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yes. So if you're in your speciality, while you're going through, I tell parents we have to step back and take. We have to have a period away where we're focusing on what everybody else is in school and in that process we focus on the speciality. We go through this process and they learn it very quickly in comparison to other processes. And I prefer to work with books that are good for, let's say, 16 year olds and older, because then we're just done. But if you want, we can start off younger kids. I had younger kids who wanted to start off with Harry Potter. Okay, start off with Harry Potter, then we can do an intermediate book and then we can do an advanced book. Okay, it's going to take longer, but that's fine. But once they're very interested, they sit down and they see this working.
Russell VanBrocklen:And I find that for the majority of students who come from families where school's taken seriously, you know you do your homework, you put in the effort that they sit down and they just I get them to buy in at the beginning. So when I ask them, I'll start off with two questions One, where I talk to you about the idea of flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization. And then, for kids who are in middle school or above, if they're dysselectic, I'll say have you ever noticed in your speciality when you wanted to write something fingers, keyboard, fingers, keyboard. It's in your head. You take your fingers, you put it on the keyboard. Does the idea then fly out of your brain, weeding you with an empty brain? Does that sound familiar to you? Okay, then, like how do you know this? I said I went through this. This was designed by somebody like you. And then I get to buy in.
Russell VanBrocklen:Okay, all right, they're sick and tired of trying all these programs that don't work out. These are very skeptical, very bright kids. So that's why, if people are interested in talking and learning more about our webinars, when we teach the parents that you can work with your kids directly, what I do is I set up a 90 minute discussion session and we go over. You know what your problems with dyslexia are. I discuss this with your child and say you know, do we have a buy in or not? And generally, when they go over, there's like yeah, that's me. They buy in and they're willing to do the work. If they're not interested, we know. During that 90 minute discussion I say well, this isn't for you. You know here's some other options, but generally I get the buy in and they'll sit down and do the work.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, that makes sense. You find something that is intrinsically they're motivated to and interested in. You make sure they have the buy in so that they've committed from themselves as well, not just the parents forcing them to, and then that's where the magic happens. So that makes more sense to me.
Russell VanBrocklen:Yeah, Well, with Casey, for example, she was. She may have been 10 years old, but she asked me a lot of hard questions and we went through and I would show her that conversation was a 90 minutes, it was like three hours. At the end she said, okay, I'll do the work. And her mom looked at the level work and said I can't believe my 10 year old is going to do this. And then she couldn't.
Russell VanBrocklen:She sat down and then we had that conversation right near the end and I said, yeah, your daughter's the best reader in her grade. What what's? She disappears in a room every night. I don't know what's going on. And I said, yeah, well, she kind of wanted to keep it secret until we finished. And remember I asked you and you said that was okay, Everything I do is parent permission based. And she's like my daughter's reading at the 10th grade level. I said, well, at least I've had people tell me up to college, love, first year college level. And she's like, wow. I said, yeah, well, she's a very bright kid. Now Casey's now a senior in high school and she's going, she's been accepted to, or put into be accepted Uh, indications that she's going to get into a top university where she's going to go and study business management and she's just, she's like there's no way I could have done this without doing this program when I was younger.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Wow, she sounds like an amazing little girl. I mean first of all, you know, and as her, her, her, you know, topic of interest being Theodore Roosevelt, I mean that that in itself shows her uniqueness, not Barbie.
Russell VanBrocklen:No, but no, but that. I've had students come. I had one student that she was interested in 1970s or F-150s. We found a book, we found an audio book. She went through. Uh, her name is Courtney. She's now in college. She has a 3.5 GPA Okay, excellent, out of a portal scale. So what? Don't tell me that your kid's not going to be motivated to do this until we go through. We ask the questions and they're like because they will ask me very hard questions. I've had 13 year olds ask me harder questions than doctoral people, doctoral degrees, and they're like okay, I'll go do the work because they have again. They've been, they've tried everything under the sun, Nothing's worked. They're frustrated and now mom's saying oh, here's a new thing to check out. Oh, great, another thing that's not going to work and that's the. That's what I have to overcome and we've done that all the time. That's why we speak to parents and the kids from 90 men's people. We invite them into the webinar to make sure it's a good fit.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So for people and I'll include links to this afterwards for people to get in contact with you. That's kind of the process in terms of you have that 90 minute conversation with the parent and the child and then make a decision whether to go forward or not with the webinars that. You've done a very good job of discussing today the different kind of levels that you have.
Russell VanBrocklen:Right, and the major thing is, with the webinars we stay with you until you reach the goal we set. So the first one generally start off with is can your kids write a basic five paragraph essay? Then we move on to an essay that's much more advanced, based on the fundamentals of the craft of research, which is good for, let's say, about 14, 15. Then we go into how to come up with something original to say. And then finally, if you're interested, it's the craft of research standard. And if students go through all four courses, they're, they know much more about how to succeed in college than you do at the A levels, or in America we call them advanced placement students using tests created by Princeton University, college level courses for preschool students.
Russell VanBrocklen:And I've never had a student who's gone through all four courses who didn't go to college and say I'm happy, we do more evolved stuff beyond that. But that's really for students who are saying you know all the way up to. I want to do my PhD dissertation. I need help. How do I come up with my original idea? So we we walk them through the whole process, but most people will go through the first two courses or the first three and that's. That's generally about as far as they most most go.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Excellent. Well, I think you've given us a lot of food for thought, and it's amazing to hear all of the success stories that you've had and how you've developed your program. So thank you very much for your insight today and you know I will have all of the details on the podcast and also on my website in terms of how people can get in contact with you to learn more and to see what you have to offer. Okay, thanks?
Russell VanBrocklen:for having me on today. It was a great discussion.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Thank you, Take care. Thank you for listening. Send parenting tribe. If you'd like to learn more about Russell van Brockland's courses, please look at the information provided in the notes for the podcast, or you can visit our website at wwwsendparentingcom for more information. Wishing you and your family a good week ahead.