The P-I-G: Stories of Life, Love, Loss & Legacy
Welcome to The P-I-G, a podcast where we explore life, love, loss, and legacy through real conversations and meaningful stories—with Purpose, Intention, and Gratitude.
Hosted by sisters, Kellie Straub and Erin Thomas, The P-I-G was born from the bond they shared with their late mother, Marsha—a woman whose life and love continue to inspire every story told. What began as a deeply personal project has since evolved into a growing legacy movement, including The Boxes, a developing film and television series inspired by the physical gifts their mother left behind—each one unwrapped at a defining life moment after her passing.
At its heart, The P-I-G is about what matters most: connection. It’s a warm, welcoming space for open and honest conversations about the things we all carry—and the stories that shape who we are.
While “loss” is often defined by death, our episodes explore a much broader truth: We grieve relationships, mobility, identity, careers, finances, health, pets, confidence, memory, belongings, faith—even entire versions of ourselves.
Through personal reflections, powerful guest interviews, and expert insights, each episode invites you to consider what it means to live fully, love deeply, grieve honestly, and leave a legacy that matters.
Whether you’re navigating a loss, rediscovering your voice, or simply craving deeper connection—you belong here.
💬 Favorite topics include:
- Grief and healing (in all its forms)
- Sibling stories and family dynamics
- Love, marriage, caregiving, and motherhood
- Spirituality, resilience, and personal growth
- Legacy storytelling and honoring those we’ve lost
🎧 New episodes post every other week. Follow and share to help us spread the message that hearing the stories of others helps us create a more meaningful connection to our own and legacy isn’t just what we leave behind—it’s how we live right now.
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The P-I-G: Stories of Life, Love, Loss & Legacy
If You Can Write It, You Can Read It: Russell Van Brocklen on Dyslexia, Confidence & Human Potential
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A single sentence in childhood can become a life sentence.
Russell Van Brocklen was once told he would never read at grade level. Years of labels, accommodations, exclusion, and frustration quietly shaped the way he saw himself—and the way others saw him too.
Today, Russell is a New York State Senate-funded dyslexia researcher, founder of DyslexiaClasses.com, and the creator of a practical learning framework built around one transformational idea: “If You Can Write It, You Can Read It.”
But this conversation goes far beyond dyslexia.
Together, we explore:
- How school systems can quietly erode identity and confidence
- Why struggling learners often carry shame—not lack of intelligence
- The neuroscience behind typing, articulation, repetition, and structured writing
- Why motivation and “specialty interests” matter so deeply during intervention
- The emotional impact of constantly feeling behind
- How small, repeatable wins rebuild trust over time
- Why strong writing and critical thinking skills matter even more in the AI era
Russell also challenges the belief that neurodiverse learners are somehow less capable—arguing instead that many simply need a different pathway to succeed.
This episode is for parents, educators, students, neurodiverse adults, and honestly… anyone who has ever questioned their own intelligence after years of struggle.
Because sometimes the problem was never potential. It was method.
- Learn more about Russell’s work, programs, and forthcoming book, If You Can Write It, You Can Read It, at DyslexiaClasses.com
- Explore resources & support materials at The P-I-G Podcast Library.
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From Our Heart to Yours...
Hearing the stories of others helps us connect more deeply to our own—because legacy is built in how we live, every single day.
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Childhood Beliefs That Last
ErinThere are experiences in childhood that leave marks long after the classroom is over. Not always because of what was said out loud, but because of what someone quietly begins to believe about themselves over time. Today's conversation is about more than dyslexia. It's about identity, self-worth, and what happens when someone spends years feeling unseen in systems that were never built for the way their brain works.
KellieIn this episode, Russell Van Brocklen shares what becomes possible when students stop measuring themselves by failure and finally begin rebuilding trust in themselves through small, repeatable wins. And ultimately, this conversation is about possibility, about what can happen when someone is finally taught in a way that allows them to succeed and realize they were never broken to begin with.
ErinWelcome to The P-I-G, where we explore life, love, loss, and legacy through real conversations and meaningful stories with purpose, intention, and gratitude. We're Kellie and Erin, sisters, best friends, sometimes polar opposites, but always deeply connected by the life and love of the woman who taught us that struggling never defines someone's worth. Our mother, Marsha.
KellieSome conversations begin with loss in the way we traditionally think about it. Others begin much earlier in the quiet erosion of confidence, in the experience of feeling different, misunderstood, or broken long before you have language for why. Today's conversation lives somewhere in that space. Russell Van Brocklen is a New York State Senate-funded dyslexia researcher and the founder of dyslexiaclasses.com. But what drew us to him wasn't just the work, it was the humanity underneath it. Russell was told he would never read at grade level. Today, he reads at a graduate level and has built his life around helping students rebuild confidence, identity, and trust in themselves through small, repeatable wins. And honestly, part of what made us immediately feel connected to Russell was the message he sent us when he reached out. He talked about listening to one of our episodes and appreciating that we let the truth sit there long enough for it to actually mean something. We thought that was such a beautiful way to describe not just grief, but healing in general. Because so much of life now pushes us toward quick fixes, quick lessons, quick transformations. But rebuilding trust in yourself usually happened much slower than that through structure, through traction, through finally feeling capable again. Russell, we are so grateful you're here with us today. Before we jump in, one of the things that resonated so deeply with us in your story is the idea that people can carry beliefs about themselves for years that were never actually true. And so much of what we explore here is this process of looking honestly at what shaped us, what we've carried, and how we begin rebuilding trust in ourselves over time. So today we'd like to start
Early School Labels and Isolation
Kelliethere. Where does the unboxing of your story begin?
Russell Van BrocklenWell, it happened to me when I was held back in pre-first. And then in second grade, I was literally put into special education, which drove me nuts because I was in with kids that I knew was never going to go anywhere. And I remember back in fifth grade, we were doing a pilgrims project. Well, the normal kids were doing a pilgrim's project that I really wanted to be involved with. I had two relatives on the Mayflower. One was the religious leader, the other one was the biggest male content. So I couldn't do it because I was in special ed.
KellieWow.
Russell Van BrocklenFinally, I had enough of it. I had a neighbor who was on the school board right across the street. And his son and I got our Eagle Scouts at the same time. I was 17, he was 16. And I said, You gotta get me out. This was through my parents, you gotta get me out of this. And he said, I can do one class one time. So for eighth grade, I was mainstreamed in history. And I was told I was gonna do horrible in it. And just so you know, when I finished college, I was reading and writing like a six-year-old. So I remembered everything. For tests, I could force myself to read a little bit. It was very uncomfortable, but I kept getting hundreds on every test, on every quiz. And I didn't study. I just remembered what the what the teacher said. And I ended up with a history award for the best history student in my grade. So then I went on to full college prep, got through high school, got through a bunch of college. The most interesting part was it was later 90s. I wanted to figure out how laws were made, not some class. I wanted to know. So I had this literally this absurd idea of applying for the New York State Assembly internship program. And I got accepted. And I showed up and I said, Here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing ability. And the program director freaked. He ended up going up to the speaker's office, which was Sheldon Silver at the time. The Democrats just completely own the assembly. And his office said, You're not getting rid of this kid. You are going to accommodate the living daylights out of him, and I don't care what it costs. So they got a committee together. And their solution was pretty strong. They literally took me out of the legislative office building, which was supposed to be a big no-no because a big part of the of the internship was being with your peers. I hardly saw them. They brought me over to the Capitol into the Majority Leaders Program and Council's office that ran the assembly day to day, and they brought me in. And I immediately see why they did it. There were three administrative assistants that could help turn my crunny writing into something I could turn in each week. But they had no clue what to do with an undergrad, which is get the coffee, answer the phones, and that sort of thing. So they treated me like a graduate student, which was a real policy position. So I had the best intern of any undergrad. When it came time for the academic portion, instead of the big paper I did an hours-long presentation QA, standard accommodation. They put all that together and sent it back to the political science department at the State University of New York Center of Buffalo. But you have to understand where I'm coming from. I'm coming from the majority leader's office. I stayed nights, I stayed weekends, they didn't ask, I volunteered. They liked me a lot. I had a lot of opportunities. I could literally pick up the phone and talk to the people who ran the place. All right. That was extremely valuable.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenBut then when the political science department looked over the recommendations of 15 credits of A minus, they didn't like the massive accommodations that the New York State government itself created. So they decided to lower my grade.
KellieWhat?
Russell Van BrocklenGuess what? Yes. They didn't like the accommodation. Remember, this is the late 90s. This is this was 29 years ago. What do you think they lowered it to?
ErinOh, so it wasn't A minus. A B.
Russell Van BrocklenNope.
ErinSo I was gonna say a C.
KellieOh, they flunked... They did not.
Russell Van BrocklenThey flunked me for 15 credits of F.
KellieHow was that legal?
Russell Van BrocklenThe grades from the assembly are just recommendations. They're accepted every time. I'm the only this is the only time in the history of the program, and it's still there, 15 credits of F. Now, how do you think the political science department at SUNY Center of Buffalo feels that this is now my 265th podcast I've been telling the story on?
KellieOkay. Oh yeah. So I wonder if that's gonna get changed someday.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah. So at that point, like every other student, I said, Well, I'm gonna solve dyslexia so this never happens to anybody.
From Failure To A New System
Russell Van BrocklenWell, I actually did. So what I did is I went to my professors and I said, Where can I go to force myself to learn to read and write in graduate school? And they said, Well, if you like politics, it's easy. Law school, where you read and write more than anybody. So I went and audited two classes, property and contracts. When I walked into contracts, it's my second day, the professor calls on me. They use something called the Socratic method. And in the Socratic method, if you don't know the answer, which nobody does the first week, they keep asking you questions you can't answer to embarrass you publicly until you eventually adapt. That didn't happen to me. I didn't respond as the professor's student. I responded as the professor's equal.
ErinAnd they were not anticipating that.
Russell Van BrocklenHe was not. He was a law professor longer than I was alive at that point.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenSo he started asking me questions, and I got a little snarky, and I just I answered them and I went on the attack. I went right for the jugular. I went to try to put him down verbally. So he's shocked. Now he's coming after me. I'm going after him. I'm leaning forward, almost yelling at him. He's leaning forward, almost yelling at me. We both know where each other is going in the next few moves instantly. And we're going back and forth. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. They've never heard of anything like this. He throws up his arms, he said, Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. In the interest of time, I need to move on to the next case. Now I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. Then I went back to the New York State Senate and I said, I solved dyslexia. I want you to fund my dyslexia research program. And that my senator at the time was Senator Joe Bruno, who was the majority leader of the state senate. So it was three guys in a room: the governor, the majority leader, and the speaker. And they decided everything, and then their minis did whatever they took, they agreed to. So they said, Well, we don't really do this, but this sounds interesting. So they sent me over to the education department. Remember, I'm telling them that the majority leader of the state senate sending me over. They don't like that. Right. So they're like, how do we get rid of this kid? They're like, Where is this out of? I said, Buffalo. And they said, okay, we want a State University of New York distinguished professor in psychology to give you an evaluation, see if there's something here, and without their support, you're done. So I said, okay, this is not a problem. I go out to Buffalo and I find out there's two distinguished professors in psychology. One just happened to be the one that gave me the evaluation years ago that started this craziness. Her name was Dr. Irene M. Hulicka, she agreed to take a payment from the state. Twenty hours of testing over three days for the smartest woman I ever met, beating me up like crazy mentally to make sure that this is real.
KellieWow.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd then at the end of that, she said, as I found with this kid a couple of years ago, his reading and writing are at the first grade level, six-year-old. When he turns his system on, he's writing at about the 70th percentile of entering grad students. He can turn it on and off like a light switch. We're going from a part of the brain that doesn't work to the part that does work. Here's five pages explaining everything. So I bring that back to the education department, which they were not expecting. And so like, okay, you now need to. Well, well, it's their top reviewer in the state, pretty much. So now what they have to do is they said you have to connect this to current research. Well, in western New York, there's only one professor that makes any sense. His name was Professor James Collins. He wrote a book called Strategies for Struggling Writers. So I had to take his work from mild dyslexia and move it to severe dyslexia. People said it was going to take one to two years at minimum. I didn't have time for that because there's university-wide competition coming up. How long do you think it took me to get his approval? Take a wild guess.
ErinThree weeks.
Russell Van BrocklenA little under two. Are you noticing that I'm doing really well in grad school?
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenWe're going to come back to that in a bit. So then I got his approval. I entered the university-wide competition and got second place for 15,000. So then we went and we tested our first student. Her name was Michaela, and I want everybody to know I cheated. I wanted to work with students like myself to start off with the show what was possible. These were all super motivated, incredibly intelligent students. Okay, juniors and seniors. We all had writing skills at the middle school level. Michaela had an eighth-grade writing skill. We give her a test for entering graduate students, the GRE analytical writing assessment. How do you think she did with an eighth grade writing level?
KellieNot well.
Russell Van BrocklenZero percentile. Dr. Hulicka was the evaluator.
KellieYeah, zero.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah. Zero percentile. This didn't even show up on the scoreboard. Writing was horrific. I you know, worked with her for a couple times a week for five months, and we gave her the post test. Dr. Hulicka scored it at about the 50th percentile of entering grad students.
ErinWow.
Russell Van BrocklenThe key point is the spelling and grammar went from disgusting to clean at the grad level.
KellieAt the grad level . Wow.
Russell Van BrocklenThe next kid, we jumped up to the 70th percentile. So now I got the funding from the state, which went directly to the Aver Park Central School District. We got it for a couple of years. We had their best teacher, her name was Susan Ford. So my competition would take you two years and 11,000 to learn the process. Susan learned my process in under five hours.
KellieFive hours?
Russell Van BrocklenYes, that was a big part of what we had to do economically. So then she adapted to her teaching style, who she was working with. And then we started off with the kids, one class period a day for the school year. They went from the middle school writing to the average range of entering graduate students, the 30th to 70th percentile. They all went on to college. They all graduated, GPAs at 2.5 to 3.6. We were under 900 bucks a kid for New York State taxpayers. Remember, this was 20 years ago. My best competition was landmark college at the time. We were 3X as successful as they normally were for less than 1% of the cost. They're normally over $100,000. And that's how I got started on this journey.
ErinWow.,
Proving Results With Real Students
ErinThank you for all of that on how you got started. But I just want to unpack every single piece of this story. It's extraordinary. And I can't wait to actually deepen my own understanding of exactly what you do and what that process is.
Russell Van BrocklenSo I don't know exactly where we start to unbox all of that, but well, let me actually explain to you because one of the more interesting aspects is when I went down to present this in New York City at the International Dyslexia Association, this 2006, I was arrogant because I saw dyslexia. And I go down there and we got two reactions. Number one was from the professors. They said, two of your students in last year's went from the middle school to the 70th percentile veteran grad students. We don't care. We want The Craft of Research. I was like, the craft of what? It's a book that was published in 1995 at the University of Chicago that has since sold over a million copies on how to teach PhD students to write their doctoral dissertations. It's based on context, getting everybody on the same page, coming up with a problem statement that's worth solving, and then solving it so the reader learned something substantial. Okay. And they wanted me to teach this high school dyslexic kids, and no private school in the country would touch it.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenAll right. And they were serious. They wanted these skills mastered before the kids stepped into college as a freshman. That was for the professors. Then the teachers asked, excellent, does this work for normal kids? I said, absolutely not. They said, come back when it does. So I came back eight years later.
What Dyslexia Actually Is
Russell Van BrocklenWhat I would like to do now is to explain to you in about 10 minutes so your audience has something they can leave with, so you can really understand what dyslexia really is. Solve the biggest problem that parents face, which is their kids are in elementary to middle school, and they're writing essentially a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words, and nobody knows how to fix it. And it's not that hard to fix.
KellieAnd it's so hard for not just the child, but the parents as well. I mean, there's so much unknown and uncertainty. And we're gonna unpack a lot of what's behind the scenes because that's so relevant to what we talk about here. But let's go there. Let's start there.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So what I want you to understand is first of all, do any of you, either of you, know at any point in your life a dyslectic elementary or middle school kid who is writing what appears to be randomly laced, misspelled words?
ErinYes.
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. We need to protect their identity. So you have to make up a name for them. What's the kid's made-up name?
KellieHenry.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. And how old is Henry and what is Henry's speciality, his area of extreme interest and ability?
KellieHenry is seven years old.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay.
KellieAnd he loves soccer.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, so there we go. Now, what's going to happen is I'm going to ask you in this process two questions that are the simplest questions you'll ever be asked. I use these for on seven-year-olds. They are not trick questions. If you answer them exactly, this will work. If not, you're going to get incredibly confused. And then you'll have an epiphany, and your audience will have an epiphany on exactly what dyslexia is. Okay. So I just want to give you that warning ahead of time.
Why Typing Changes Everything
Russell Van BrocklenSo what we would do if you were going to teach Henry is the first thing you're going to do is pull out a laptop computer with a real keyboard, not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. You're actually going to take all your writing instruments, break them in half, and throw them in the trash.
KellieOkay.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay? It's just typing. And I don't care how slow the kid is and if they're doing two-finger typing. I don't care. That's what we're doing. Reason why is the connection between the front part of the dyslectic brain and the back is so weak. Normal people have what I call like 5G. The dyslexic is like dial up, if you remember what that's like.
KellieOh, yeah. (Dial-up sound)
Russell Van BrocklenYeah. So trying to write W compared to just hitting a W makes us go from working to not working. Just so you know what it is. This is the top book in the field of dyslexia, Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz from Yale. That is dyslexia. Do you see how the back part of the normal brain has this massive neuroactivity?
KellieYep.
Russell Van BrocklenNow the back part of the dyslexic has next to nothing.
ErinYeah.
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Now the front part of the dyslexic brain is about two and a half times overactive.
KellieI see that. Yes. And we're going to take a picture of this so that we can share this.
Russell Van BrocklenNow, what we have to do is to move from the back part of the brain where nothing's going on to the front part where we have two and a half times the neuroactivity. According to Yale, that is word analysis followed by articulation. Word analysis first, then articulation. And then it'll move us from the back part of the brain where nothing's going on to the front part where we have two and a half times the neural activity. So how we do that is you are going to type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about? And Henry's going to copy until it's correct. And I can hear your parents screaming, but the kids aren't allowed to copy. Professor James Collins, strategies for struggling writers, the default writing strategy of copying. It's okay. Okay? So he's going to copy that until it's correct. Then we're going to we're going to swap out hero for Henry's name. So we got Henry plus sign, what are we talking about? Then we're going to go to a list of 10 things Henry really, really likes, and then 10 things he really, really dislikes. And the first thing he really likes really likes is soccer. So we got Henry plus sign, what are we talking about? We're going to swap out what are we talking about for soccer. We got Henry soccer plus sign soccer. See how we got there? Now this is where I warned you about. I'm going to ask you two of the simplest questions you were ever asked. I do do this all the time with seven year olds. They're not trick questions. If you answer them exactly, this will work. If not, you're going to get incredibly Confused, and then you'll have an epiphany in what dyslexia really is. Do you think I can fool you with two of the simplest questions ever?
KellieProbably.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Just remember and try to answer it exactly. We got Henry, the plus sign, soccer. We have to swap out a word for the plus sign. Here's my question: Does Henry like or dislike soccer?
KellieHe likes soccer.
Russell Van BrocklenYes, but that's not what I asked.
KellieDoes Henry like or dislike soccer?
Russell Van BrocklenExactly. What's the answer?
KellieHenry likes? Henry plus soccer?
Russell Van BrocklenNope.
KellieHenry likes soccer.
Russell Van BrocklenThat's not what I asked. Do I have you thoroughly confused?
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenAre you ready for your epiphany on what dyslexia really is?
ErinYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, let's go to the science to explain what's going on. This is your brain. You have this massive neuroactivity in the back part of the brain. Henry has essentially next to nothing. None.
KellieHe has nothing.
Russell Van BrocklenSo what's happening here is I asked, "Does Henry like or dislike soccer?" And you did what almost every educated adult does. You automatically added the S and made it a proper sentence. Henry doesn't know how to add S. He's dyslexic. There's nothing going on back here.
KellieSo it's Henry like soccer.
Russell Van BrocklenNo, I asked, does Henry like or dislike? And it's like.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd then Henry would then replace the plus sign. We would have "Henry like soccer." No S.
KellieYou're right.
Russell Van BrocklenHe doesn't have a clue on how to do this. Now, I want you to imagine you just won the lottery. You'd have a hundred million dollars in the bank. And let's say Henry's your nephew. And then the Winward School comes knocking, and they said, if you give us Henry, we are in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We have been doing this for decade after decade. We have a proven 98% success rate. You send Henry to us for four to five years. We will send him back to his current school as educated as the best private schools in the world. We will make this work, and they would. Would you consider that?
ErinYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. It's $75,000 a year for four to five years adjusted tuition, not including living expenses. Because the student-to-teacher ratio is four to one or five to one. And it takes a teacher two years after a bachelor's degree and $11,000 and a not-for-profit to become certified. And their pay stinks because compared to public school teachers, because the student-to-teacher ratio is so low. Now, do you guys have an extra half million dollars sitting around?
ErinNo.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So how do we fix this without going broke? What we do is we ask Henry to read what he wrote out loud. And we're going to apply word analysis, followed by articulation, because Yale said the front part of the brain is two and a half times overactive. And I have this weird idea. Let's use it. So Henry would say, "Henry like soccer." I would ask Henry, read that out loud again. And does that sound generally correct? And he would read it, Henry likes soccer. No, it doesn't sound generally correct. I'll say, Henry, fix it. Henry likes soccer. And then we practice that with the other nine likes and ten dislikes, each time until it's done correctly. There's mass repetition. Do you see how that's a simple form of word analysis?
KellieYeah, I do.
Russell Van BrocklenNow we're going to go, we have to do articulation. So we're going to go because reason one. Give me a simple reason of why Henry likes soccer.
ErinIt's with his friends.
Russell Van BrocklenHenry likes soccer because he's with his friends. Now, do you see how we got a grammatical mess here?
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenSo we tell Henry to forget about spelling, read it out loud, does it sound generally correct? Keep going until the whole thing sounds generally correct. Now we got rid of those horrific grammar mistakes. And we got little mistakes, maybe some media ones, which Gen Ed teachers are very well equipped to take care of. But we still got a spelling problem. People think that spelling is so hard to do. It's not. What we have to do is to tell Henry we're going to draw up a period and that anytime when he rewrites each sentence, if he makes any spelling mistakes, he's got to rewrite the entire sentence, which he will do about three to 13 times. As he's doing that, he will start getting annoyed with himself because he's going to say, I'm not going to make that mistake. And he keeps making it until he gets it correct. Then we do the same thing for the other nine likes and ten dislikes for reason one. Then we keep exactly what he did, and we add a second reason with a glue word and. So we're writing all that same thing out again with a new reason for the 10 likes and 10 dislikes until everything's spelled correctly. Then we keep all those two reasons sentences and we add a third reason for the 10 likes and 10 dislikes until everything's spelled correctly. At the end, he is writing decent grammar, correct spelling, three reasons sentences, and he's also improved his reading. Because if you can write it, you can read it. If you can write it, you can read it. Well, you'll find with my process, it's the exact opposite of the program that the millionaires use at the Winward School. The older the child is with their system, the longer it takes. The older the child is with my system, the quicker they pick it up. A nine-year-old could take five months because most parents do 10 to 15 minute sessions a couple of times a week, sometimes never during the week. When you get to like a 13-year-old, they could get that through usually in a matter of weeks. For like an 18-year-old, a day or two, or sometimes just one day. Okay? It's radically faster. Now that is part three of the model. The
Motivation and “Specialty” Learning
Russell Van Brocklenfirst part is I'm going to tell you about a student. I will never see anything before like this before Casey. I will never see this again. Any of the hundreds of teachers I ever taught will never see this. This was a one-off edge case. Casey was the end of fifth grade. She was 10. She turned 11 over the summertime. She was from a lower middle class family in the Midwest, and she was reading and writing at the second grade level. Casey desperately wanted to learn about Theater Roosevelt. So I assigned her this little book, The Rise of Theater Roosevelt. Oh, 900 pages.
KellieYeah, 900 pages of it!
Russell Van BrocklenThis book, according to teachers, is at the 10th grade to first-year college level. Casey was reading at the second grade level. Nobody told Casey to do this. Nobody hinted at it. This is just Casey. She went up to a room and shut the door for three hours a night for the next six months, most of the days during the summertime. I worked with her for 15 minutes a week. At the end of that time, you could flip to this random page and point to that random word, and she would tell you the dictionary definition of verbatim. She jumped eight grade levels in six months, and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week.
KellieHold on, real quick. She jumped... let's repeat that, because that is mind-boggling, truly.
Russell Van BrocklenEight grade levels in six months, and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week.
KellieThat's incredible.
Russell Van BrocklenYes, but here's the point of all this. Her mother wanted to know what would happen if we went from a book she loved to one she hated. It wasn't just for something she loved. So I assigned her to a book she hated. She did it all in three months. And I said, Casey, this is the point. What happened to your motivation when we went from something you loved to something you hated? She said it dropped about 50%.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThe most motivated kid I've ever worked with. For most ADD, ADHD, or dyslectic kids, you get outside their motivation, their speciality, which in school is about everything. Their motivation drops 75 to 90% or more. Your intervention is not going to work because of that. So during the innovation period, until we get them to grade level, we have to focus on their speciality. Their area of extreme interest and ability, I tend to get them an audio book and a book that they're interested in. That's a couple of grade levels from where they want to be so they can grow into it. With Casey, I went a little extreme because my most motivated kids, I just go right for the big books. Now that's the first part of the model. And it's just for the intervention period. The next step is if you ask a dyslectic, an ADD person or an ADHD person, in their specialty, do they have ideas flying around their head at light speed but with little to no organization, they're going to say yes. So what we have to do is force their dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me give you an example so this will this will be understood. I want you to think if Bill Gates came to you and said, I'm going to pay you a million dollars for the next two weeks. We'll have somebody cover all your responsibilities. And I want a high school level paper on this. You cannot talk to anybody. You have access to a university level library. You have to go in and just do it on your own. Here's the question: What effect did Martin Luther King's famous I have a dream speech have on the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s? Could you both just go and write the paper?
KellieAt a high school level? Absolutely.
Russell Van BrocklenIt's high school, not college.
KellieYeah.
ErinI'm a little less confident in my ability to write the paper than you are. (laughter)
Russell Van BrocklenLet me explain what's generally going on.
KellieDefinitely give it a shot.
Russell Van BrocklenHere's what's going on. What's going on is you're comfortable with this because it's big picture, and you eventually get to the details, which is how you like to learn. But if you're dyslectic, it's like grabbing fog. You have no idea what to do. So what we have to do is we have to flip that around. We have to start at a very specific point and then slowly go out. So we would ask, what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech? We just go to his biography, we find look at the time period, we figure it out. That answer would give us a question, which gives us an answer, which gives us a question that forces the dyslexic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. The system is really simple. We start in the kids' speciality, their area of extreme interest and ability, get them an audio book and a normal book that fits that, that's a couple of grade levels of head where you want to be. You teach them from the specific to the general with word analysis followed by articulation. And parents always ask me, okay, that's nice, but does it work? Well, in my upcoming book, if you write, you can read. My case study in there, his name is uh Reid, and his mother's name is Kimberly. I met Kimberly on December 27th of 2024. She's a homeschooling religious mom with some college. She taught her four gen ed kids how to read brilliantly with traditional methods. So a few weeks before we talked, she spent 700 bucks in her the state of Ohio test her kids. Reid was the exception. He was 10 years old, very dyslectic, reading at the 11th percentile, writing at the fourth percentile. So I decided to work with her for half an hour a week for the next eight months. She worked with Reid for an hour and a half a week to three half-hour sessions on average. Most parents do 10 to 15 minute sessions. Then over the summer, Reid's friends came to him and said, Reid, we want you in public school to be with us socially. So beginning of August, let's call it eight and a half months later, he's in a public school being tested. Much better data. If his mother doubled or even tripled what he did, he would still be placed as special led away from his friend's unhappy kid. That didn't happen. His reading jumped from the 11th percentile to the 64th. His writing jumped from the fourth percentile to the 65th, his grammar jumped to the 97th percentile. As of April of 2026, I talked to his mom, and he said he's in all mainstream classes, getting mainly A's and B's. Kimberly did what every parent green dog in less than nine months. At home, a fraction of the time of product that helped powerful.
Scaling The Method Beyond Elementary
Russell Van BrocklenOh, over the years, hundreds and hundreds. Now what we're doing is we're moving to an online learning platform called school, s k O O L dot com. And the reason for that is the cost. I mean, private tutoring to pay a tutor enough so they can live, families just can't afford it.
KellieNo.
Russell Van BrocklenWe started off there, but I want to tell you about the I just told you how we can solve things for the little ones. But what about the middle school kids, the high school kids, and the college kids? So I want to show you quickly how to solve advanced body paragraphs using an advanced form of word analysis followed by articulation. This is gonna sound like it's coming out of left field, like most dyslectic solutions do, but it'll make sense very quickly. I need one of you to volunteer. I need you to pick a movie. I need a movie that meets these three criteria. You know it intimately, you think it's one of the best of all time, and everybody's seen it. Uh, who's gonna volunteer and what's the name of the movie?
ErinI'm voting Kellie.
KellieOh, I was gonna vote for you.
ErinOh no, I'm not a movie buff.
KellieOkay, everybody's seen it. I know it intimately.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd you think it's one of the best ever.
KellieAvatar.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, which one?
KellieOne.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Now I'm gonna ask you something very hard, and I want you to give me the best answer you can. I need you to reduce the movie Avatar to a one-word universal theme that, in your opinion, best represents the movie that is unique to you.
KellieReduce the movie to a one-word universal theme that is unique to me.
Russell Van BrocklenYes, your opinion.
KellieOne word.
Russell Van BrocklenYes.
KellieIt's a big movie.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah, this is not easy.
KellieGive me just a second. Gosh, I am struggling with this. Like I have certain words that are jumping out in my head, but it's...
Russell Van BrocklenPick one.
KellieHumanity.
Russell Van BrocklenHumanity. See how long that took you? Now, how far did you go in your education? Did you finish college or do some college?
KellieI finished college, did some graduate work.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. And you see how long that took you?
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Now I'm just going to show you what's going on. Back to the science. We're using the front part of the brain. Do you see how you don't have as much neuroactivity?
KellieMm-hmm.
Russell Van BrocklenSee how drastic the dyslectics one is, about two and a half times overactive?
KellieMm-hmm.
Russell Van BrocklenIf I were to take a random, motivated, intelligent, 16-year-old dyslectic who's a sophomore junior in high school, and ask them the same question, how long do you think it would take them to get back with a word? Almost instantly. You're now playing in my sandbox.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThere is an advantage to being dyslectic. Typically shows up when we go to grad school, where it is profoundly unfair, as I demonstrated with my success.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenSo what I just showed you there is for dyslectics, most of the parents I deal with are educated. And then when the kid can turn around and beat their parents, okay, you want to talk about a self-confident boost. All right. So what you said for Humanity, now let's go and now I'm going to show you the next how we're going to use that in the movie review. So how we would do a proper movie review is we would take all the main actors and characters that you were interested in and say, how do they deal with the universal theme of humanity? How did the director do? How did the screenwriter do? Then we would write your review. People would decide if they want to see the movie or not. If they did want to see it, now they know exactly you've enhanced their experience because now they know what to look for and from whom. But you haven't ruined it by saying this happened, this happened, and this happened, which a lot of movie reviewers do. Okay. Ruins it. So does that make sense? Here's the point. Way back when I was a kid, in the time before time, before the internet really came out, we had a couple of networks and a couple of papers. You could use the universal theme of humanity as a marketing tool, as a lens, and it worked just fine. You just blasted it to everybody. But now in the 2020s, we have to go something very specific. This isn't going to work. So we need to fix that. And the other thing that I want you to understand, do you see how much trouble you had because you probably didn't know the exact definitions of what the words are? Does that make sense?
KellieMm-hmm.
ErinYeah.
KellieMm-hmm.
Russell Van BrocklenSo I'm going to now ask you this very this, and I'm deadly serious on this one. The overactive front part of the brain deals with word analysis first. Here's my question. It's very serious. How can you apply word analysis if you don't know exactly what the word means?
KellieYou can't.
Russell Van BrocklenYou can't! So that is the key thing which we're going to get to shortly. So the next thing we're going to do is I'm going to traumatize some of your audience briefly, because I'm going to go back to high school English and Shakespeare plays just for a moment. Okay. Some will like it, some will be, oh no, it's not going to be long.
KellieErin, you ditched this class, right?
Erin100%.
Russell Van BrocklenWhy am I doing this? Because the art of communication and writing, Shakespeare's considered by many to be the absolute apex, the top one ever.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenSo I want you to think back to any Shakespeare play in high school. You had a hero. Hero wanted to do something based on one or more universal themes. Then from there, we would find the ultimate villain, a character, a concept, universal themes, or some combination there too, who would try to stop the hero from accomplishing their goal. They would have a conflict in act one. It would escalate like crazy in act two and resolve in act three. Sound familiar?
KellieYep.
Russell Van BrocklenSo we're going to simplify a version of that and show you how to apply word analysis and articulation to write an advanced body paragraph. Okay? So let's assume we're dealing with a dyslectic student named Steve. And Steve loved Avatar. We're going to use Avatar script. This is something you can use for middle school, high school, college, or grad school. All right. So the first thing we're going to have to do is write out as many paragraphs as he can. So in dyslexia classes, our next class after our sentences is how to write a basic body paragraph. We assume they have those skills. So he's going to write out as many paragraphs as he can. Then for each of those sentences he wrote, he's going to find the most important word. Then he's going to type out the word, all the most important words until we have a list of them. Now we're going to have what I hope not to offend anybody. I just don't know a better word to communicate this. It's what I like to call a come to Jesus moment, where we decide if I can help these kids or not. Most of the kids, when I say, We're in your specialty, we're teaching you from the specific to the general. This is what I need you to do so I can teach you to read and to use word analysis. If you don't do this, I can't help you. Most kids will do it. The ones that don't, they tell me that I'm truly evil because when we're doing the sentences, I want you to think about what they really dislike. The first thing I always have the parents pick out a chore. Who's a kid that you know really well? That dyslectic student you're talking about, what was his name again?
KellieHenry.
Russell Van BrocklenHenry. What is the cure that Henry detested beyond everything else?
KelliePicking up dog poop.
ErinThat's what I was gonna say!
Russell Van BrocklenPicking up dog poop. Okay. Now does Henry have any siblings?
ErinYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, any younger ones?
ErinNo, Henry's the youngest.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, so then what we would do, if Henry won't do what I'm about to ask, the parents would purposefully let the dog just poo everywhere, and then Henry would have to pick it up. And then what they would do is dump it back out and have him do it again. And again. And he's gonna go, I'm doing this, and they're gonna videotape it. And they send it to me, and we laugh like crazy. And then 10 years later, Henry's in college, you're finished cows. Horrible. And everybody thinks it's the funniest thing ever besides Henry. Okay. How long do you think Henry's gonna do that until he gets the message that I have to do this? Or we send them to the neighbor's yards and let them clean up all the dog poo. How long do you think it'll take?
ErinNot long.
Russell Van BrocklenExactly. So here's what...
ErinLike one aytime, maybe!
Russell Van BrocklenSo here's the crazy, because all these kids eventually, even Casey decided to act like a kid. So then I went and had her mom do this. And Casey's like, oh, I'm doing this. I was like, Well, are you going to act like Casey or like this 10 year old? Oh, act like Casey and everyone do this again. Okay. We never had that problem again until we did and we did it again, and it worked. So here's what I have to do. Remember what we said? If we can't use word analysis, we can't use this at all. If you don't know exactly what the definition is. So what you're going to do as a parent or the instructor and you are looking over the kid's shoulder. There is zero trust here. Because this is critical. You are going for each of those most important words. You're going to go to Marion Webster's online dictionary and you're going to have the kid pick their definition. And then then they're going to type out the word and type out the definition. Now they're going to try to copy and paste, which you cannot allow. You're going back to picking up more dog poo if you even think about it. Okay? And they're going to type that out. And you have to literally watch them. There is zero trust on this. So they type that out for all of them. Then they're going to pick the most important word that best represents what the hero wants to do. Like what you said for yours that we originally discussed, it's very broad. How do we fix that? We put it into the thesaurus and we look up synonyms. You can do five synonyms at a time, 10 synonyms at a time, the entire level, multiple levels. Later when we we moved on to the next process, I asked Casey to thesaurus. Said this is the best one in her view. She knew every word, every definition cold, and she could defend what she came up with in a college class to a professor. What this does is we do this over four to six, I'm sorry, six to twelve months, where you're going to develop a vocabulary of hundreds of evolved words, usually 500 or more. And that's going to take the kid's reading level and skyrocket it. So what we do is they're, let's say we're taking five. You're going to type out the word and the definition for each one until the kid says, I know it. Then you're like, okay, really? What's the definition? Until they can't tell you exactly what it is word for word, they retype it. That's why I said the parents have to be watching. Then we're going to pick the word that best represents what's in their head. Okay? It's never going to be perfect, but the best one in their head. We're then going to use that because it's much more specific to come up with the ultimate villain. I start off with characters, I eventually go to concepts. We're going to take those three words: the hero, the universal fame, and the ultimate villain, and put it into a basic sentence. Do you see how that's an evolved form of word analysis?
KellieI do. It took a while to get there, but it makes so much sense.
ErinYeah.
KellieThere are so many aspects to this for this human brain to wrap its head around and understand. It's very impressive.
Russell Van BrocklenWell, now we're going to move on to articulation. This is going to go much faster.
KellieOkay.
Russell Van BrocklenSo then we're going to go because and we're going to give you the three best reasons that you can. For each reason, we're just going to make a simple universal theme. And then with that, we're going to go to the script of Avatar One. I'm looking for a sentence, one sentence that deals exactly with that universal theme at the beginning of the script and one at the end. Then we're going to take those two sentences and put them together. Now imagine every paragraph when we do the advanced body paragraph is going to have at least two quotes. Two individual sentences. By this very nature, this prevents it from being a BS paper. Okay? From those two quotes, we're then going to form our topic sentence. Now, this is important. I want you to think back to your time in grad school, to your time in college. Have you ever noticed that when you had a topic sentence and then your data, it didn't flow very well from one to the next? Do you remember that? Have you ever thought of applying a warrant to a body paragraph?
KellieA warrant?
Russell Van BrocklenYes. Do you have any idea what a warrant means in this situation?
ErinNo.
Russell Van BrocklenThis comes from the book, The Craft of Research. Anyone outside of a PhD candidate generally has no idea what this means. And I found two people with master's degree that understood the term. That's it. A warrant connects your topic sentence and your data by answering a how and a why question.
KellieOkay.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd because both quotes come from the same universal thing, you can get by with one warrant. So you have your topic sentence, your warrant, which is answering a how and why question, and your two quotes. Now in our paid courses, we add a few more things, but that's generally it. If a university professor sees this paragraph and they say, Oh, the student's using a warrant, they're automatically extremely impressed.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenNow, if you don't use the warrant going forward, you will be arrested... That's a joke!
ErinI got it.
Russell Van BrocklenNow, do you see how that's an advanced form of word analysis followed by articulation? But we combine overcoming dyslexia with the context in the craft of research.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. And that's something you can apply tonight. Now, parents ask, how far do we go? So I'm going to tell you about one of our more advanced students. His name is Grayson. Grayson is not dyslectic in the least. He's just your typical 99th percentile kid in math and science. Grayson wants to go and get his PhD, work at NASA to terraform Mars.
KellieGo Grayson.
Russell Van BrocklenSo, in order to do that, we have to get Grayson to get published in an academic peer journal. So I found one exactly that works for terraforming Mars. They actually have one. Now, to do that, I just described to you the advanced form of context. The biggest bottleneck we find, because this also works, the problems we deal with with AI is how to get past the problem
Teaching Critical Thinking Early
Russell Van Brocklenstatement. How do we come up with a question that is worth answering, that is worth the economic input that is, you know, that is really going to move things forward if we answer it? People have the hardest problem with that. You need to know how to do that if you're going to play with the artificial intelligence at an advanced level. So how we handled this with Grayson is his parents are currently teaching him how to do the advanced body paragraphs. So I went and I created material for him specifically on Mars at an advanced grade level when I'm having him read the entire content one time, then he reads it a second time and he tries, he circles anything that's confusing. Then he reads a third time trying to answer those questions. What he's left with that he still can't answer, we use that to create the next document. And then we look, we use AI to find a hole in the journal where something needs to get done, and we kind of manage those two until they eventually come together. That's how we do the problem statement. Does that make sense? We have to get Grayson past a desk rejection for the journal. That means you didn't do it well enough. You missed one little thing and they reject you that way. Once we get past that, he will be rejected by a senior reviewer. And we're going to have Grayson take all the corrections he needs to make. I've met another podcaster who's on the board of directors from one of the America's top 10 technical universities. He'll hook us up with a professor, and Grayson will go in and say, I want to work with you to publish my article. This is what I need to finish up according to the reviewer. And watch the guy's draw drop. Grayson's on the young side. How old do you think he is?
Kellie14.
Russell Van BrocklenGrayson's 10.
ErinOh, I was going to say 11.
Russell Van BrocklenAll right. So that's how far we go.
KellieWow.
ErinWow.
Russell Van BrocklenLiterally, we show them how to do the full craft of research. And I'm not teaching Grayson. His parents are.
KellieUsing these methods.
Russell Van BrocklenYes.
KellieSo you're working with the parents and they're working directly with Grayson.
Russell Van BrocklenYes, because they want you to think about just how freaking expensive tutoring is.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So parents tell me, well, I don't want to do this directly. They're like, Do you do this? I said, sure. I'm $497 an hour and I charge for my prep time. So I price myself out, except if I'm dealing with a kid I want to work with, like Grayson, because I think just generally parents can do this themselves and you can save a lot of money doing it. Sometimes parents will say, is there any middle ground? I'd say, well, you could hire probably a high school AP English super kid who's a brilliant in English and really good with their peers, or a college student, and we can show them what to do. You'd be surprised how many parents do that.
ErinYeah. Is there ever a situation or scenario, or maybe this is kind of a universal truth, where they will learn these concepts better from somebody who's not a parent versus a parent teaching them?
Russell Van BrocklenYes. Generally, as I said, what works really well is if you have a peer or a college student who is just really good at English. I mean, I'm talking they have the requirement is that they were a former or current AP English student. And the teacher thinks they're brilliant and really gets along well with their peers. Of course they do better that way. The problem we run into is it's financial. In this space, any person that's going to guide you through is $500 to $1,000 a month. And unless you got a couple of newish BMWs in the driveway, that doesn't work for you. So we had to lower it to $147 a month, and I had to find a qualified expert to guide the parents. Her name is Angela. She is a certified elementary school teacher in the state of Texas with a two-year master's degree and 11 years of experience. She's very religious. And once her daughter was born, she became a homeschooling mom. And she's taught her son August to go through all this. She's there each week for an hour a week to answer questions. We ask parents to submit their questions three days ahead of time. And we find that most of the questions are about the same. And we take what the answers are and just keep expanding the QA, the frequently asked questions. But it just simply comes down to economics.
KellieThis is so incredibly fascinating. I could just keep asking so many questions about the process and the work that you're doing because it's very profound and it's very impactful. And I have learned so much today that I did not know, which I really appreciate.
The Damage Of “You’ll Never Read”
KellieIf you're open to it, Russell, I would like to take you back to the moment that you heard, "You will never read." What did that do inside of you as a child? And can you share with us some of what it was like for you as a kid growing up dyslexic in the time that you did?
Russell Van BrocklenWell, what happens to people like me is it's like a dumbbell. There's a lot on either side with very little in the middle. You either become so incredibly motivated that nothing's going to stop you, or you become shattered as a person. But if you want to feel what it's like to be dyslectic, would you like me to turn you dyslectic for a moment so you can experience it yourself?
KellieSure.
ErinYeah. Yeah.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Well, there's this misconception that dyslexia is a reading problem.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenWhich is nonsense. Once properly trained, dyslectics are generally superior readers. We're just slower. So here's the book that I use for this. And this is going to sound completely off the wall, but I'll explain how this happened. It's called You Will Be So Interested in This. I'm being sarcastic. Post-war Japan is history.
KellieOoh.
Russell Van BrocklenPeace and Democracy in Two Systems, External Policy and Internal Conflict by John W. Dower of MIT. I can just see that you're you're just so interested in this, right?
KellieWell, Erin knows that my intellectual driving force is kind of going, "Ooh, that might be interesting..." And Erin is like, no effing way.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So let me explain why why I'm saying I can turn you dyslexic. So I actually went over to Japan, where I was an exchange student, and our teacher had some medical whatever, so they had to get an emergency backup. And this was edited by Professor Gordon from Harvard. Well, his grad student that taught all his classes was in Tokyo, and she's native Japanese. And they literally went down and just said, you have to do this. So she shows up with nothing prepared. So this is a book that's used by juniors and seniors and first-year grad students at Harvard in this area. It assumes you know a lot. So Professor Dauer, the other thing about him is he won the Pulitzer, he won the National Book Award, and he's simply the finest writer in his field. So when they gave us this book, and I read through it, I said, This is a freaking joke. This is so easy to read. Well, nobody else thought that. These were top students, mainly in the United States, top schools with like super high GPAs, and not one of them could get past the first paragraph. Then when I took the book and I'm using it as an example for reading teachers in New York City. These are people with master's degrees, two-year degrees, a lot of experience, and their job is to teach reading. Most of them couldn't get past the first paragraph. All right. So are you ready for me to turn to you dyslexic?
ErinYes.
Kellie
A Live Demo Of Dyslexic Overload
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Who's my guinea pig?
ErinI'll be the guinea pig.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. All right, Erin. So I'm gonna read you a sentence, and your job is to just tell me what it means at the most basic level. Are you ready?
ErinYes.
Russell Van BrocklenEver since Japan's seclusion was ruptured by Western nations in 1853, domestic and international politics have been interwoven for the Japanese. What does that mean, simply?
ErinI don't know.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, let's try the second sentence. Slogans used to convey to mobilize succeeding generations convey this interconnection.
ErinSlogans?
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, well, tell me more...
ErinSo slogans are used to connect? I'm so confused.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. The next one will tell you. Thus, the forces that eventually overthrew the feudal regime in 1868 rallied around the cry, revere the emperor, expel the barbarians. Totally off the rails?
ErinMy head is spinning. Yeah, my head is spinning. I mean, I literally am like, I don't even remember a single word from the first sentence. It's like so jumbled in my brain.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Now, I want you to imagine if I had the power to say, "Tell me what that means or we'll take your house. Tell me what it means, or we'll take your car. Tell me what it means you're gonna be eating out of dumpsters." Can you imagine the pressure that would be put on you?
ErinYeah, that would be really intense.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd I would say, "I don't care if you don't know the answer. Tell me the answer, or something really bad happens to you. Tell me the answer, or something bad or happens to a loved one." Now, people, if I really be mean about it and some want me to get really vicious, they literally start, I mean, almost having an attack that would put them in literally the mental emergency room.
ErinYeah.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. And I'm just telling you, your full grown adults that are over 21, imagine being freaking seven years old, and that's your life every day.
ErinRight.
Russell Van BrocklenNow, I'm just going to tell you, I don't mean to be mean, but I'm just going to tell you what Professor Dower said when I talked to him. He said for the very smartest students, they can read this at 10th grade. Okay? Why do people go off the rails? Because there's 17 facts in one paragraph. He writes more in a paragraph than some people do in books.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenHe said, if you are past a June, past a sophomore year in college, past your second year, and you can't read this, you should go back to your college, get a refund because clearly you weren't educated. He got very vicious about. Wow. He was shocked. A few people can, and I call them full-brained people, they can do both the front part and the back part. Over half the kids at Harvard in a completely non-scientific study could not do that. Over 70% of the teachers that I ran that through can't do that. Okay? And I teach dyslectics how to do this. So for example, for Grayson, he just happened to be interested in World War II, the Japanese side. So I gave him a book from the Japanese side that's 38 and a half hours long. And just you know, by the way, he's the material I get him is currently at the 12th grade level for uh word level. The context is third-year college level. Okay. So he's listening through that audio book once. Then I'm having his next book is Embracing Defeat. One of them Pulitzer or something by Professor Dower. And then I'm gonna have him go through this article line by line, which is 30 pages, for the first pass. And then we're gonna go, any word he doesn't know, he looks up, types it out, sort of thing. We'll go through it three times at least. Because I got to get Grayson to read this so I can get him to read journal articles. Now, if it's not Grayson, it's somebody else with AI, I can go in and I can take like another one of my super kids. His name is Alfred. He's one of Angela's kids. He's not dyslexic in the least. He's 12, he's a super STEM kid. He's currently reading and writing at the 11th grade level, and he likes Hawks' hunting birds. I'm going to take this article, which I already have saved, bring it to the AI, and I edit things like you can't believe. That's why my stuff isn't AI slob. And I'm going to have it turned into something like Professor Dower writing it at that level. So it's all specialized. And these kids are not dyslexic in the least. This works for everybody.
ErinIt's so interesting to me just doing that little exercise. I am such a visual learner. And so hearing you say that, and then, you know, reading a sentence and then asking me what does this mean. For me, my brain has a hard time transcribing that. If I were to read that same sentence, I would probably process it very differently. And if I were reading it and being asked to tell you what does this mean, for me to have a really great grasp on it, I would probably have to read it several times in order to give you that response.
Russell Van BrocklenYep. But the point was I wanted to turn you dyslexic.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThat's why I do it that way. Yeah. I'll give you a little hint. Almost everybody doesn't care anything about this book at all. Nothing. But to show you how I turned you dyslectic. Okay.
ErinThat's fascinating. Yeah.
Russell Van BrocklenSo the key thing is people think that dyslexia is a reading problem. It's a symptom, like when you have a cold, it's in your chest. The nose problem, the cough, those are just symptoms. They're trying to fix the symptom.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenI'm going after what is actually causing the problem.
KellieI was going to ask you earlier what, in your opinion, you think most people do not understand about dyslexia? Because I think most people think that yes, it's a reading and writing problem, but it's a backwards approach.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah, they miss it entirely.
KellieExactly. And so that's why I wanted to talk about true dyslexia. And you really brought some incredible scientific information to the forefront, which my brain really loves. But what is what is that? What do most people completely misunderstand? Because what we don't understand is having a profound effect on the lives of human beings, children and adults alike.
What Schools Often Miss or Get Wrong
Russell Van BrocklenSo let me just really bring it home to you in a very simple way. What's the name of your local school district?
KellieMesa County Valley School District 51.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. They are not going out of their way to be pain in the asses to the neurodiverse. They're not. What they're doing is so understandable.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenWe're just going to again go to the science. Virtually all of their kids, 80 plus percent are not neurodiverse. They're teaching to this, this massive brain activity.
KellieThe non-impaired brain versus the neurodiverse brain.
Russell Van BrocklenYes. So what I'm going to ask you, two questions. I want you to think back to when you were in college or grad school. If you did two things, you planned your studying properly. You gave yourself enough time, you did it in the right way. And then number two, you worked really freaking hard. You either did well or you did really amazing, or somewhere in between. If you stopped doing that, one of those two things, things fell apart until you got back on track. Make sense? Okay. Now that is what schools are designed for. When I go and say, Well, here's the brains again. They're used to this. The dyslexic has nothing going there. And I say we have to move things to the front part of the brain where we have two and a half times the neuroactivity. And they're like So that means they have to change everything and how they teach, and they don't want to do it. Let me give you a much more concrete example. The sport that I suck at, that I'm really bad at, is basketball. I am known as the foreman because I shoot, I shoot so many bricks, which means I miss the basket entirely. That I'm not in the union, I'm the foreman of the union. I suck. Okay.
ErinThat's hilarious.
Russell Van BrocklenWhat sport do you suck at?
ErinSwimming.
Russell Van BrocklenSwimming. Okay. Why you two imagine? We're going to get you the best swimming coach on the planet. Let's assume Bill Gates is going to pay you $10 million over six months to do this. That's an imaginary thing. So we get you the best swimming coach in the world. And you practice eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. And then we have you compete against a Division I swimmer who's your age when they were in Division I in college. We're going to give you the best swimming suit imaginable. Yeah, full, you know, the super fast stuff the Olympic ones use. And we're going to give the other woman used things from Walmart. Actually, we will probably tie a 10-pound brick underneath her, okay? And then we had you go to a race. Is it going to make any difference?
ErinNo.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Because your body...
ErinI mean, I might not sink.
Russell Van BrocklenWell, your body was not designed to swim. So like the selective sprains were not designed to learn in the normal way.
ErinRight.
Russell Van BrocklenSo unless if the school's willing to make that change, at least during the intervention period, which they are not. Okay. So it doesn't get fixed. They social promote these kids. That's why we have the parents do it themselves, because they can do that for the intervention period. And when the kid is back on at grade level or above, they can go in and they're like, Read. It'll be fine. All right. Now, the other major point when it comes to this is what are the schools supposed to do? So I'm just going to give you some numbers. I want you to think whatever you're spending, the school is spent on a normal kid, double it for dyslexia. And they're probably going to be about as quarter or one-tenth as passing the state test. What a parent can do is number one, if they haven't done it past fourth grade or above, if there's a problem, they fail the third grade reading and writing test, because K through three, we learn to read, fourth and above, we we read to learn. If the kid has flunked that test, the parents could sue the school district. And if they haven't done what I call the Yale thing, they can force the school district to send the kid up to schools like the Winward School. And the school has to pay. Not only that, they got to pay the flights going back and forth, the living expenses, and the attorney's fees, which could easily run a couple hundred grand to half a million dollars.
ErinWow.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd if you don't want to pay it, they send the U.S. Marshals into your bank for the school district and they pull it out. And some schools lose things like, you know, sports. The federal judge doesn't care. Because here's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to contact Yale, just Google Yale and Dyslexia and go, the kids in kindergarten. How do we test for dyslexia in kindergarten? It's 40, 50 bucks a kid, something like that, and the teacher can do it. Now you find out the kid's dyslectic. What do we do? Well, all these federal programs that Yale tell you just pick what you want, use this kindergarten through the end of third grade. Then the kid will most likely pass their third grade reading and writing test. If they fail, but they're close, a federal judge will allow the school to take care of it internally. If they haven't done the Yale thing, then what they're going to do is say you are grossly negligent. It's like a surgeon leaving a scalpel in your stomach, okay? Grossly negligent. And now you got to go and pay for the alternative, which is that $75,000 your school. And you're paying that as taxpayers.
KellieAnd so there's this massive gap that we need to address and we need to fix. And you're standing in that gap, which is really exciting.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah. If you do the Yale thing, you don't need me. If you don't do the Yale thing, it's me or that $75,000 your school.
Identity, Shame, and Hidden Strengths
KellieYeah. In your original message that you sent to us, Russell, you talked about grieving the "old self." What does that mean to you?
Russell Van BrocklenIt's just back before I did the law school thing and solved everything. It was just the hell of going through school and sucking at everything until I eventually solved. And then having to keep coming up with new interventions again and again to solve things. And then just have to make it harder next year and the year after and the year after. It was hell.
ErinYeah.
KellieAnd I hear that, and it makes me think about how many children and adults, human beings, I mean, that's just what we are, are walking on the face of the planet today, no matter where they live, their culture, their geography, their language. Suffering, grieving, feeling like they suck at everything. When there are solutions available, we just don't know what they are, how to go about finding them. And I think, you know, as you talked about very early in the podcast conversation, was you either go down one of two roads, you're able to find a solution and figure it out, or you are stuck in this crushing place. I love that your story is really a story of resilience because of what you taught yourself to do, and now you're guiding and mentoring others to do. And that part of this conversation is really beautiful. There are many, many people who are being crushed or feel crushed. Yeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThere is an advantage. So do you either of you ever watch this little show called Shark Tank?
KellieYeah, I've seen it before.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. There are six sharks. Dyslectics make up maybe five to 10% of the population. If you throw an ADD, ADHD, you might go up to 15 to 20%. But we're talking specifically for dyslexics, five to ten percent of the population. There are six sharks. How many of them do you think are dyslectic?
ErinHalf.
KellieI would say
Russell Van BrocklenExactly. Exactly half. Barbara, Damian, and Mr. Wonderful. It's an extremely unfair advantage once you get out. And I mean unfair. So we met on PodMatch. This already knows. This is like my 260th-ish podcast in last year. I'm normally the number one person on the leaderboard, month in, month out. If I wasn't dyslectic, there's no way in heck I could do that.
KellieAnd I think that that is something that is worth talking about, which is that advantage. I have a question for you. Just last night, I was kind of finishing up my day and I'd had kind of a tough week. And kids started to roll in. And I didn't realize that kids were rolling in because the kids had all planned a surprise Mother's Day dinner. And so that was really fun, you know? And as we're all sitting around the table as the evening was going on and having a lot of fun together. My son, who has never been diagnosed as dyslexia or any of that, but it's who's really brilliant, Erin, you know. I mean, Reis is just brilliant. But he has always written or his letters starting at the bottom to the top. And so there was this big family conversation about whether that is dyslexia or not.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah, he's doing he's doing it backwards. That's very typical. Like when I had to take a typing class in in high school, I started at the back of the book, drove the teacher crazy. I always start at the opposite side.
KellieWell, Erin, there you go. We learned to say the alphabet backwards before forwards!
ErinOh yeah, we sure did!
Russell Van BrocklenWould you like me to see if one of you is neurodiverse at all?
ErinYeah.
KellieSure.
ErinOkay. Absolutely.
Russell Van BrocklenWhich one? One or both of you?
ErinBoth if we have the time.
Russell Van BrocklenOh, sure. So what I need you to do is both tell me what your speciality is. What is your area of extreme interest and ability? Just any one of them will do.
KellieGenetics.
Russell Van BrocklenGenetics. And what's yours?
KellieStorytelling.
Russell Van BrocklenStorytelling. So when you're thinking about your speciality, now or at any time in the past, did you ever have ideas flying around your head at light speed? Key question, but with little to no organization. Does that sound familiar at all?
ErinYes.
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. Congratulations. You're probably ADD, ADHD, or mildly dyslectic. Let's go to the next one. When I want you to think about you want to write about your speciality. Fingers, keyboard. Fingers, keyboard. The ideas in your head, you take your fingers, put them on the keyboard. Does the idea ever fly out of your brain, leaving you with an empty brain? Does that sound familiar or not really?
ErinYes.
Russell Van BrocklenSo for you, it's yes. And uh what about you? Is that you or not really?
KellieNo.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So you're probably ADD, ADHD, or mildly dyslexic. Erin, you're dyslectic. Now for the third question. This is for you, Erin, because if you didn't answer yes to the second question, that you I don't go to the third. I want you to go back to when you were in elementary school. Were you ever held back or threatened to be held back because you couldn't perform some academic task?
ErinNo.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay, so what that tells me is that you're ADD, ADH, you're mildly dyslexic, Erin, you're dyslectic. Do you find it's kind of weird I knew that about you?
ErinGiven your level of expertise, I am not surprised.
Russell Van BrocklenWell, nobody else knows how to answer those questions. All right. So what is the top state university in your state?
ErinI'm in Austin, so University of Texas.
Russell Van BrocklenUniversity of Texas at Austin, which is the finest academic school south of Chicago, east of California, or west from North Carolina, is the best one in that entire part of the country. Do you think the professors there have any idea of any of the stuff that I told you tonight? Give you a little hint. Not a clue.
KellieYeah, we're all shaking our heads.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThey know none of this because they haven't lived it.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenOkay. So what that tells me, and where did I come up especially with that second question? Take your fingers, you put it on the keyboard, and the ideas flies out of your head, nope, empty head. How do you type with an empty brain? All right. That's what I found out. Just it took over 10 years to figure out that question. And then with that understanding, what we have to do is how do we keep the information in our head? And that's why we go through, and Yale told us what to do. Word analysis followed by articulation. So just follow that or speciality and then specific to the general. That's because every time I talked to senior dyslectic professors who made it, like full professors at Texas at Austin, they would all tell me the same thing. And after I heard it a couple of dozen times, I started asking that questions to hundreds of dyslectics, an ADD or ADHD. And I could narrow it down from that. And they're just like, wow, yeah, that's me. Is it official? Not at all. But if you want to go and drop 5,000 bucks on a neural psych, it would, it confirms it by over 90%. I just saved you 5,000 bucks.
ErinThank you.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd I have parents that come to me and they say, Do we need to drop the 5,000 bucks? I said, Would you rather just spend that on solving the problem?
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenI have literally had parents from New York City who they had the proverbial rich uncle who said, Yeah, I'll pay the eight grand for the best neural psych. That's how high it is in Manhattan. That's the most expensive anywhere around. And I said, Well, for 8,000 bucks, you can pretty much just solve the darn problem. And the rich uncle said, Okay, let's do it that way. It's nice to have. I don't need it, but it's not worth 8,000 bucks.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd it's not an enjoyable experience. Mine lasted three days because Dr. Hulicka wanted to be sure.
What Parents Can Do Right Now
KellieIf you were talking to a group of parents who have children with dyslexia or family members, what would you want them to hear?
Russell Van BrocklenWell, the main thing is I'm just going to tell them the financial reality. It's just easier if you do it yourself, because the schools aren't going to do it for reasons what we already discussed. I try to tell them the best thing to do is just go to our SKOOL.com class site where you just type in dyslexia classes and you'll find us. We got a teacher one, which you should not sign up for because it's highly accelerated because it's for professional teachers, and we have one for parents. And right now we just have the basic sentences one up. We always have everybody. I don't care if you're a doctoral student, I start everybody off with the same course because I need to make sure we have a strong foundation and just work through it and stay with us until we get you to where you want to be. If that's submitting an article for a PhD dissertation, we can show you how to do that. But I just understand, I'm competing against 75 grand a year for four to five years, just in tuition.
ErinYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenAll right. And parents do this in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. And that's the best way we can help you. I'll give you a little hint. This is 90% a mom's thing. Most people think dyslexia is boys. Boys are found out because when they're kids, you ask a dyslexic to do something they can't, boys will just go crazy and they have temper tantrums. Girls tend to just suck it up and take it. Okay. So they'll ask me, like, they will say, I got my 15, 16-year-old son. I don't know how to get this through. How do we get his attention? I'd be like, well, is there a and it's however they like these sort of things. I'm just giving you the most prevalent example. Is there a young lady in the AP English class that he may have a crush on? Hire her to be his instructor. She has to be brilliant and work well with this. And you have to let the other parent know what's going on, and you have to supervise this and they have to behave themselves. But generally, yeah, I tried that a few times, and man, they kept when the kid, the boy decided not to do the work, his peer would say, she'd just go nuts and say, Well, I'm not going to waste my time. So you're not going to okay, okay, I'll do it. And kept his attention. And she knew exactly what she was doing. So give you a little hint. According to a neuroscientist in Boston, the girls that age are about three to four years more mature than most boys. It's a brain thing. Your brains are different than boys. I've used that in a few times when nothing else worked.
Shame, Self-Talk, And Confidence
ErinYou know, it's so clear that this work, the work that you are doing, is about so much more than just reading and writing. Can you talk a little bit about what you see in terms of confidence and hope and just emotionally, what happens within these children and within these families when they start to trust themselves, believe in themselves? What do you see happen beyond the reading and writing? Because I imagine that there's a real emotional weight that is lifted when learning in a different way and they start building trust and confidence within themselves.
Russell Van BrocklenIf you want to get how brutal this can be, the kids call themselves retard, because that's what everybody calls them.
KellieWow.
Russell Van BrocklenSo what happens at the most brutal end? Remember, I asked you that third question? If you said yes to that, you're about to be held back. What happens to these kids in elementary school? Now they have this academic task that they have to pass, and if they can't pass it, they know they're going to be held back, they're going to lose all their friends, which is especially hard for young girls. And so what they will start telling themselves, and this only happens with the most smartest, the most motivated of dyslexic students, it's very rare. What'll happen is they will start telling themselves I am worthless. If I don't pass this test, my parents will disown me, my friends will leave me, and they put so much pressure on themselves that when I talk to adults that went through that, they would look back and say, Yeah, it was so bad that if a mental health professional knew what I was doing, putting so much pressure on myself, they would have immediately threw me into the emergency mental health unit. I'm not joking about that. The kids, when they're in high school, and I they answer yes to that, I say, I know what your secret is. And they freak. They want their parents out of the room. They never want them to know what happened. And they're shocked that I knew. Those super kids I told you about with my original study, after we were done, I went and confirmed every one of them went through that. And I knew that because when the teacher spent almost no time on spelling and grammar and they jumped up from horrendous to clean at the grad level, I knew that they've been solving their problems so many times like this, again and again, that it became like breathing.
KellieOkay.
Russell Van BrocklenSo then they finally pass that. And then they think they're over, and then it happens again. And then again, then it just becomes life. Okay. So that's one of the more severe things. When I'm talking about kids in general, to me, it's to get a kid a good job when they graduate.
AI, Writing, and the Future of Learning
Russell Van BrocklenIn this past year, about 40% of the kids are underemployed, which basically means they got a job that didn't require anything going to college. 60% got it. So what I'm telling them with AI is until you can do those advanced body paragraphs, don't even look at AI. We have to walk you through the entire process. Here's what happened. I had some kids that freaking hated ChatGPT. They wanted nothing to do with it. But I taught them the craft of research properly in high school, and then they practiced four years of college. So then they get a job. This happened so many times. The company required them to use it. So they call me up and they're freaking out. I said, I trained you in the craft of research. Go and do context. Like I just showed you. I gave you a basic version, I gave you an advanced version. They would come back and said, okay, I did that the next day. And I said, go do the problem statement. And they came back, but I hate this. And I said, Welcome to the grown-up world. Right? Then I said, go do the solution. Then they go back and their boss looks at us and goes, That's a problem that we've been dealing with for years. It was never bad enough for us to do anything. This is a solution. This will help the company. This is great. And you did this with AI, and within a couple of weeks, I'm not joking, they're training their peers on how to do AI. And they're saying, okay, here's how we do the prop, the context, the problem statement, the solution. And people are like, huh? They're like, don't you know the craft of research? They're like, what's the craft of research? So then they have to teach them the craft of research, how to do things. And I can tell you, they come back and they're so angry. And I said, listen to what you did. You hated this thing for years, and now you're a freaking expert. And they're like, Yeah, but I just figured it out. I said, That's dyslexia. And then they have such a confidence boost. Because if you're dealing with AI, I don't care if it's five years from now or 10 years from now. People are still needed. The number one thing you need to know is what does good look like? And then know in your bones how to fix it. Then you're going to be excellent at AI. Then you're just guiding it and reviewing it and sending it back. Give you a little example. We're now recording this in May of 2026. In December, there's a company that was interviewed on CNBC. The CEO said our job is to create and sell information. Exactly what AI was supposed to put out of business, but they're doing great. They had a budget for 2026 of $700,000. As of April 2026, they were on pace for $7 million.
KellieMillion...
Russell Van BrocklenThey expect by the end of the year to be spending more on AI than on salaries.
KellieWow.
Russell Van BrocklenSo the people that can do this, and remember, you got to know the craft of research. This is just one example. This is about a six weeks out of date, but it took 146 days to fill a position. There was one person for every 3.1 jobs, and these jobs were paying multiple six figures. If you're a kid coming out of college wondering, well, how do I become senior? How do I know what looks good? It's really simple. For any task you're doing that you don't know exactly what to do, do a deep research report. I have Claude Anthropic using Opus 4.6 to do that. Not 4.7 because it sucks. I use 4.6 extended thinking. And then I'll have it create a 3,500 to 5,000 word report, and then you actually read it. I'm advanced enough where I just have it summarized. For a new kid, I'm 52, you're in college, you're a kid. Okay. Read through it and then use that as a model. I will actually use the deep research report sometimes per paragraph and sometimes per sentence to get it just right. Keep doing that, and six to twelve months later, you will be good enough where you can generally be considered somewhat senior, knowing what good looks like and how to fix it. And then you're just guiding AI. So what I'll do is like earlier today, I had this big mess to deal with. I gave it to AI. I have I had Opus, I'm sorry, I had Claude 5.5 extended thinking create the prompt. And then I gave it to co op. Powered by Opus 4.6. And then I left and I went down to my beach, which is half a mile away, and I watched the water for a while. And then when it needed things, I would just tell it to do the next step. When I came back, I had all this work done. So I can do this on my iPhone.
KellieI have a question about brain science. When you show those pictures of the non-neurodivergent and the divergent brain and those centers in the brain, this firing in the front of the brain, very high intellect, correct?
Russell Van BrocklenRight. That's two and a half times the neuroactivity.
KellieYes.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd what's going on is you have ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization. So the solution is to force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.
KellieOkay. My question is: do we find that the majority of these individuals are more socially isolated and have a harder time connecting with other humans?
Russell Van BrocklenIt depends. I kind of give you like the idea of do you ever know anybody whose family was in the military that moved every three years? You either are typically one of two people. You can walk into a room and know everybody in five minutes, or you're very inclusive, very just by yourself. And I find with dyslexics it runs the gamut, but it tends to go to one of those two areas.
KellieOkay. That makes sense. Wow. This has been quite a conversation. This has been really, really fun.
ErinYeah. This is, I have learned so much.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah, you're probably going to need to watch this a couple of times. That's typically what happens.
ErinYeah. But I'm so happy that we got to talk about not only the science and the research and dive into your work, but then also tying that in with grief and identity and the struggles that both you experienced and that so many experience. It's not that your brain is broken. You're just being taught in a way that didn't work for you and really finding a solution and finding resolution for that.
Russell Van BrocklenYeah, it was it was funny. Like when I went to law school and people said, you know, they said, I just crushed everything. Then I got to legal research and writing, and that crushed me. I just simply could not keep up with the pace of what lawyers are expected. That's why I never finished. And people like, well, do you find this hard at all for most classes? I said, No, it's a freaking joke. But K through high school, we were in your sandbox.
ErinYeah.
KellieRight.
Russell Van BrocklenNow we're in mine.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenAnd a lot of them would say, "Well, I wish I was in yours." I said, "Really? You want to try writing?"
KellieYeah, you know, just that statement alone hits really close to home for me. That's really something to hear.
ErinYeah.
Purpose, Programs, And How To Reach Russell
KellieRussell, you shared with us when we were prepping for this episode, because we talked to all of our guests about their P-I-G and what purpose, intention, and gratitude evokes for them, or what P I and G words really resonate with them. And you said: Purpose, giving every struggling reader a real shot, not a workaround, but a way through. Intention, starting where people are strongest, not where they've been told they're broken. And gratitude, every student who proved the experts wrong. Is there anything you'd like to share about that?
Russell Van BrocklenWell, let me give you an example. After I got the history reward for eighth grade, I was I was told, well, I can't go into high school. Well, I went into high school in normal classes, and my first semester I had an 86.5. My last semester of my freshman year or quarter, I had a 95.5. I was fourth of my class. Then a professor, one of my teachers came to me and said, Oh, you're gonna be a janitor. There's nothing more you can do. These grades don't mean anything. And at that point, I just didn't give a darn about grades anymore. I just wanted to learn. And then I remember the really what got me is for AP European history. The professor said, he looked at my essays, because it's all you could see. He said, You failed. There's no way you're getting a three. A three is passing. And then I came back and I showed him how he got a three. He ran the numbers and he said the average correctness for an AP European exam at the time was 60% nationwide. I had to score 95 or higher. He had he had his PhD, a real legitimate PhD. He said, I've never heard of anything like this. I never thought of anything like this. I never even thought this was possible. And that was just what I did again and again and again until I eventually went to law school and crushed it.
ErinIt's such a remarkable story of resilience.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenThat is us. That is what we do.
KellieYeah. That's why it was really a delight to have you join us and to have this conversation today and to bring your wisdom and your insight and your life experience to this place and share it with the two of us and with this audience. And we really appreciate you. Thank you for being here.
Russell Van BrocklenWell, thanks for having me.
KellieYeah, this was extraordinary. So will you tell us again, Russell, how people can connect with you, reach you, find you, get involved with your work, or sign up for the school platform?
Russell Van BrocklenWell, the best thing to do is just go to SKOOL.com, type in Dyslexia Classes, check the parent one, don't look at the teacher one. It's too quick. But I start everybody off with the basic sentences, and then we can go as far as you need to go. If you have anything directly, you can go to dyslexiaclasses.com. That's within S, DyslexiaClasses.com, click on download free guide, answer three questions, and then actually set up a time to speak with me. It's a half an hour, doesn't cost anything. I ask your kids those three questions, usually two, and they're like, How did you know? One, I just thought you'd get a kick out of this. The kid was really suspicious. He's like, How did you know? And his parents said, Well, we have hidden cameras everywhere, and he's been watching you for the past six months. He's like, And then everybody started laughing, and he's like, Oh, how did you know? I said, Well, I was you. Like when I'm teaching Angela's kid, uh, August, trying to get out of his work, he's nine. I said, I know what's in your brain, I know exactly what you're thinking, exactly how you're gonna try to get out of this. And I told him how to overcome it. He's like, huh? And his eyes just bug out. I said, I was you a long time ago. And he just he just the look on his face is priceless.
KellieYeah.
Russell Van BrocklenAll right, so the best thing is just contact us, let us help you get started. And the goal is I just don't want people to go through the hell that I went through.
KellieYeah. Well, and that's a beautiful gift.
ErinAs you're talking, just kept getting this little voice in my head saying, you have turned your pain into purpose in a way that is so beautiful and so extraordinary. And I have so much respect and admiration for you and the work that you are doing to help others, and you can relate to them in a way that very few can and to help them in a way that seemingly nobody else has really been able to do. And kudos to you. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your wisdom and experience and insight and and personal journey. I know that can be vulnerable, and we are really grateful that we got to hold space for you today to share that.
Russell Van BrocklenWell, I hand out my neuropsych, which is the most private thing for a dyslexic, like water. And I've done this over 250 times. So, you guys asked me more questions than anybody else. I'll have to say this is the record for me being on a podcast, which is great. And most of the time on my podcast have nothing to do with this. I'm on, How do you do wine tasting? I show them how to do to remember the advanced terminology. Or, How do we do AI? Literally, the most interesting one that I'm going to be on is Irish folk music ethics.
KellieFascinating.
Russell Van BrocklenThey were trying to figure out, you know, because people spend years before they asked to join. They said, How do we do this? They want to know how do we convey the unwritten rules. And I walked them through a version of the advanced body paragraph. And they said, This is exactly what we need to convey this.
KellieWow. That's so cool.
ErinIncredible.
KellieThis has been a great conversation.
ErinYeah, thank you so much.
Final Reflections
KellieWe hope today's conversation offered you insight, encouragement, or even just a moment to pause and reflect on the story you're living and the legacy you're creating.
ErinIf something in this episode moved you, please consider sharing it with someone you love. A small share can make a big impact. You can also join us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn and connect further at theP-I-Gpodcast.com.
KellieAnd if you're enjoying this podcast, one of the most meaningful ways you can support us is by leaving a five-star rating, writing a short review, or simply letting us know your thoughts. Your feedback helps us reach others and reminds us why we do this work.
ErinBecause The P-I-G isn't just a podcast. It's a place to remember that even in the midst of grief, life goes on, resilience matters, and love never leaves. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Until next time, hogs and kisses, everyone.
