Can Dyslexia Be an Advantage? What Actually Helps Kids Learn to Read with Russell Van Brocklen

Get a copy of the chapter “Grace: God’s Power to Crush the Impossible” from Thriving in Grace: Unleashing Wellness from a Biblical Perspective at karenadittman.com 

Want to be a guest on The Grace Cycle Show? Send Karen Dittman a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1733503318442796293a1fecb 

Connect with Russel at https://dyslexiaclasses.com/ 

Why is my child struggling to read—and what actually helps? 
Is dyslexia a lifelong limitation, or can it become a strength? 
And how do you keep hope when learning feels impossible? 

In this episode of The Grace Cycle Show, Karen Dittman talks with Russell Van Brocklen, who shares his personal journey with dyslexia, the setbacks he faced in higher education, and the breakthroughs he now attributes to God’s grace. 

Russell explains: 

• What’s happening in the brain with dyslexia—including differences in reading activation and word processing 
• Why many traditional approaches fall short 
• And how dyslexia can become an advantage when taught the right way 

He also demonstrates a practical, structured method that helps students build: 

• Reading, spelling, and grammar through typing-based sentence work 
• Confidence by using topics tied to a child’s interests (“specialty”) 
• Accuracy through reading aloud and self-correction 
• Mastery through intentional repetition and rewriting 

Russell shares real-world outcomes from: 

• A low-cost education program with measurable improvement 
• A homeschool case where a student’s reading and writing scores increased dramatically in under a year 

The conversation also explores: 

• How to move into more advanced writing using themes, quotes, and structured reasoning (“warrants”) 
• Why persistence, encouragement, and the right tools matter more than labels 
• And how faith shapes resilience when learning feels discouraging 

This episode is for anyone asking: 

• “What actually works for dyslexia?” 
• “Can my child catch up in reading and writing?” 
• “How do I help a struggling learner without frustration or shame?” 
• “Is there hope when school isn’t working?” 

Russell’s message is both practical and hopeful: with the right approach, what once felt impossible can become a pathway to strength—and grace meets us in the process. 

Want to be a guest on The Grace Cycle Show? Send Karen Dittman a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1733503318442796293a1fecb

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

He was once a student who struggled with dyslexia. And now Russell Van Brocklin helps parents and teachers unlock dyslexic children's skills using their unique abilities and brain strengths. Welcome to the Grace Cycle Show. I'm your host, Karen Ditman, and this is your place to stop striving and learn a new way to grow and thrive by God's grace. Russell, welcome to the Grace Cycle Show. I'm excited for our conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

So I'm going to invite you to start by just sharing with us a story of how you've seen God at work in your life by his grace.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Well, I would have to say that literally I can't other, I can't explain another reason for what I'm doing because this was the last thing in the world I was supposed to be doing in my life. And I can tell you that there are so many points in my journey where I was just about ready to give up because I was asked to do the impossible again and again. And then just when I was about ready to give up, I had an inspiration, I had a breakthrough, something happened that allowed me to keep going. But just really briefly, I did the New York State Assembly internship in 97. They gave me massive accommodations because of dyslexia and a recommended GPA of uh 3.67 uh RNA minus over 15 credits. But because the state's accommodations, the state's top public universities, the University of New York Center at Buffalo's political science department, didn't like the accommodations the state government gave me. So they flunked me. 15 credits of F. I then decided to solve dyslexia by going to grad school, and I was advised to go to law school when I had a reading and writing nobility of a first grader.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Oh my.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

So I somehow got myself to read a little bit. My second day in contracts, the professor called on me. Instead of answering like a student, I answered as his equal. We argued for 15 minutes, we couldn't beat each other. After that, I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. And then I went back, and the state said I had to get the approval of the New York State Education Department. I and they set it up so I had to have a SUNY distinguished professor in psychology advise them that this is a good idea, even though there's two in Western New York, and I did it anyway. And then they said I had to get it connected to their top professor out there, which was supposed to take years. I did it in less than two weeks. And then finally, when I got the state funding, after years of going through this, one class period a day for the school year, we took highly motivated, highly intelligent high school juniors and seniors with middle school writing skills. One class period a day for the school year, they increased their writing to the average range of entering graduate students. Cost New York State less than 900 bucks a kid. They all went out of college, they all graduated, GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6. But how successfully were we compared to the best to select a college at the time, landmark college, which was a transfer college at that point, a junior one. We were 3x as successful for less than 1% of the cost.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. And so there were so many times on that journey where again I was just about ready to give up again and again. And then I had inspiration, or something would happen that allowed me to continue. You can't tell me that was random. There was too many times.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

No, no, that's that's God, that's grace. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Dyslexia has been in the news lately because there are some who think that this is something that should disqualify a person from holding office because it's a learning disability, it's considered a detriment. But I think that there's a very, very different perspective that we can hold about dyslexia and how the dyslexic mind works. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Sure. Why don't we actually look at what the dyslexia mind is? This is the real science. It's called overcoming dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shewitz from Yale. All right. That's dyslexia. See how the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity? See how the back part of the dyslexic brain has like essentially nothing?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

But the front part of the dyslexic brain is about two and a half times overactive.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I would have to say that two and a half times overactive is not only a benefit for those in office, it is an unfair advantage. All right. Now, what I want to leave your audience with tonight is how is to understand exactly what this is and then how to use it in their most critical situation. So you have some experience raising with dyslected kids. Have you ever raised or been around or know a dyslectic kid who in elementary school was writing a bunch of apparently randomly placed misspelled words?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Okay. I'm going to show you exactly how to fix that in the next 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Oh, awesome. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Okay. Now, according to Yale, in the front part of the brain, it's word analysis followed by articulation. So, what I want you to do is we need to change the name of the dyslexic child you're talking about to protect their privacy. What's their made-up name?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Let's go with Jane.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Jane. And what is Jane's speciality? What's her area of extreme interest and ability?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Uh Jane is she loves makeup. She loves being beautiful and making things around her beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Okay, let's just go with makeup.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

All right. So, what we're gonna do is we're going to, first of all, you're gonna open up a laptop computer, not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. Okay, and you're going to type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about? And then Jane's going to copy that. And I can hear your parents now, but the kids aren't allowed to copy. Professor James Collins, Strategies for Struggling Writers, Default Writing Strategy of Copying. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

All right. So she's going to copy that until she gets it correct.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Then we're going to is she going to be typing this or writing it?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yes. You're you're going to no, never handwriting. It's always going to be typing because if you handwrite the letter W instead of hitting a key, it takes up so much working memory, this all collapses.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Okay. Totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Okay. So you're going to type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about? She's going to copy that. Okay. Then we're going to swap out hero for Jane. Jane plus sign, what are we talking about? Then we're going to go to a list of 10 things Jane really, really likes, and then 10 things she really, really dislikes. And on that list of what she really likes, the first one is makeup. So we have Jane plus sign, what are we talking about? We're going to swap out what are we talking about for makeup. So we got Jane plus sign makeup. See how we got there? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Now I'm going, I'm going to try to fool you with two of the simplest questions you've ever been asked. If you follow them exactly, this will work. If you don't, you're going to get very confused, and then you're going to have an epiphany on what dyslexia really is. Do you think I can fool you? Let's see. Okay, so we got Jane plus sign makeup. We gotta swap out the plus sign word for a word. Here's my question. Does Jane like or dislike makeup?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Jane likes makeup.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yes, but that's not what I asked. Let's try it again. We have Jane plus sign makeup. We have to swap out the plus sign. Here's my question. Does Jane like or dislike makeup?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Does Jane like or dislike makeup? That's what I heard is your question.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, is this you like or dislike makeup?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Okay, I'm really tricked because I would answer that question by saying Jane likes makeup.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

But that's not what I asked. Do I have you completely confused now?

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Do you remember I told you this is probably going to happen? Are you ready for your epiphany?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Okay, I asked, does Jane like or dislike makeup? As an educated person, you naturally added the S to make it Jane likes makeup. But I asked, does she like or dislike? Because if we look at the dyslexic brain, the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity where this is supposed to handle. Jane doesn't have anything going on back here. She doesn't know how to add the yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So the answer for her would be Jane like makeup. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Okay. That's yeah. So then we would have to figure out how do we get her to add the yes. And if you had to spare half a million dollars a year, half a million bucks around, you could send Jane to the Windward School in Manhattan. They've been doing this for decades. They have a 98% success rate. They take students in, work with them for four to five years, and then they send them back at$75,000 a year, and they send them back to where they came from, as educated as the best private schools in the world. What they use is they use a multi-sensory approach, seeing, touching, hearing. It's very complicated, but it works. For those of us who don't have a half million dollars sitting around, here's how we use modern neuroscience. The front part of the brain, because this is what we need to move things to, because that's two and a half times the neuroactivity. It's word analysis followed by articulation. So what we do is I would ask Jane, Jane, do you like or dislike makeup? She would say like. So we got Jane like makeup. How do we get her get her to add the yes? I would say, Jane, read what you just wrote out loud. Jane like makeup. Jane, does that sound generally correct? No. Fix it. Jane likes makeup. And we have her practice that with 10 likes and 10 dislikes. Do you see how that's a simple form of word analysis?

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Mm-hmm.

unknown 10:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Then we go because reason one. Give me a simple reason why Jane would like makeup.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Because it makes her pretty.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Jane likes makeup because it makes her pretty. Now, do you see how the reasons are a simple form of articulation? So we've now moved things 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. So now what we have to do is correct the grammar and the spelling. So I'd ask Jane, read what she wrote out loud. Jane likes makeup because it makes her feel pretty. All right. Now I'd ask Jane, does that sound generally correct? If it doesn't, keep going over it until it does. That gets rid of all those nasty major grammar errors. Now we're left with a with some little ones and a few medium ones. Okay? Teachers can deal with that. So we now made that usable. Next thing we say is we tell Jane, put a period down. Now every time you type this and you misspell the word, you have to retype the entire sentence until it's correct. Well, you'll take her between three and 13 times. She's going to keep saying, I'm not going to make that mistake. I'm not going to make that mistake. And she keeps does, keep doing it. And then she tries harder and harder, concentrates harder and harder in the front part of the brain, that's where the magic happens. Then after she eventually gets that correct, we do that for the other nine likes and ten dislikes. And then for the 20 sentences, reason one and reason two until they're all spelled correctly. Then reason one, reason two, and reason three until they're all spelled correctly. Now, every kid who does this now is re writing decent grammar, correct spelling, three reasoned sentences, and their writing, I'm sorry, their reading has also improved because if you can write it, you can read it. If you can write it, you can read it.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Now you just learned how to do the basics in about 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Oh, that's great. That is really good. Yeah. There are, I know there are curriculums, homeschool curriculums I've seen and used before that are about learning to read through learning to spell and write first. So that totally makes sense to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Well, the other thing is when you're dealing with these kids, the number one thing you have to deal with, especially when you're dealing with ADHD, is and you're in dyslexies, you have to focus on their speciality. Let me give you an example. My most successful case ever. Her name was Casey, and I just went over now. I never saw this before, Casey. I will never see this again. This was a one-off-edge case. Casey was 10 years old at fifth grade, and she was uh reading and writing at the second grade level. She was phenomenally interested in Theod Roosevelt. So I assigned her this book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. All 900 pages. He insisted on doing reading first, so I gave her the process. She goes up to her room, shuts the door for three hours a night for six months, most of the days during summertime. At the end of that, you could flip to this random page, point to a random word, and she would tell you the dictionary definition. She jumped eight grade levels in six months, and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

But that's not the point. Here's the point. I asked Casey, we moved to a book that she hated. I asked her how much did her motivation drop? The most motivated kid I've ever seen. She said it was down about 50%. Normal kids are down 75 to 90. You step outside of that speciality, your intervention program is not going to work. So during the intervention period only, we focus on the specialty. Then if you ask a kid with ADHD, ADD, or dyslexia, in your specialty, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization? And they're going to say yes. So what we have to do is force the dyslexic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me give you an example on that. Imagine you were asked, what effect did Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream Speech have on the American 60s 19 civil rights movement? You know instantly how to go and start to research and write that paper, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

But and dyslex Well, well, no, I mean you know generally go to the library, you know generally just go do the research, it'll lead you, you write it up. Tell that to a dyslectic. It's like grabbing fog. We got nothing to grip on to. So we have to ask a specific question at a very specific point, and then eventually go out. So we ask what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech. And then we've looked that information up because it's very specific. That answer gives us a question, which gives us an answer, which gives us a question, which gives us an answer. That forces the dyslexic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. And then we use word analysis followed by articulation. That's the model.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Okay. That is just so fascinating. And it's just counterintuitive for most of us, but it is totally intuitive, I'm sure, for the dyslexic and the ADHD brain.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Well, now let's look at what parents use normally ask me, okay, well, that's nice, but can I do this? No, I like in my book that's coming out pretty soon. It's about Kimberly. She's a very religious homeschooling mom with five kids. The book is titled, If you can write, you can read. And it's about her son Reed. Kimberly, through traditional methods, remember she has some college, through traditional methods, taught her other four kids to read brilliantly, way above average. She failed miserably with Reed. She was embarrassed. She was humiliated. She was scared for her son. And I said, okay, we can work together to fix it. Just before I met her on December 27th of 2024, she spent$700 and had the state of Ohio test her kids. Reed was reading at the 11th percentile. He was writing at the fourth percentile. So I worked with Kimberly for half an hour a week for the rest of the school year. She worked with Reed for three 30-minute sessions a week on average, so about an hour and a half. Most parents will do 10 to 15 minute sessions. At the end of the school year, he was tested again. And I'm not telling you those results because over the summertime, Reed's friends came to him and said, Reed, we want you in school with us socially. So in the beginning of August, called eight and a half months later, he was tested in a public school. Mom is miles away, much better data. His reading jumped from the 11th percentile to the 64th. His writing went from the fourth percentile to the 65th. His grammar went to the 97th percentile. I asked Kimberly how was Reed doing in February of 2026. She said he's in all mainstream classes, getting mainly A's and Bs. They had a huge family tragedy, so he hasn't been turning in his English homework. So he's at a C plus in English. When he turns it in, probably a B minus or somewhere around there. Kimberly succeeded, where every parent dreams of. And she did it at home in a fraction of the time of these private schools. She didn't take four to five years. She did this in under nine months.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

That's an amazing story. That is an amazing story. So I'm thinking about I've got a kiddo who is autistic with the PDA profile. It's the demand avoidance and does not like English, especially because of the writing portion. Um, still extremely creative, but does not want to do any writing assignments. And I'm thinking that this exercise that you shared, you know, just this simple exercise could be really helpful for kids to kind of engage their minds in a way that would help them just learn the structure and the grammar without feeling like it's too hard.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

How old is the kid?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Twelve, sixth grade.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Okay. Well, we we gotta go something more advanced than what I just showed you because honestly, that's for that's for second grade.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Well, and my Jane is already in is in second grade, so perfect.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, for your kids who is in 12. Just want to know how far did you go in your education?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

How far did I go? I have a master's degree.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Okay. What if I told you the solution to helping your 12-year-old is a way of writing body paragraphs you probably know nothing about?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I would not be surprised.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Okay. No, well, think about it. This is a way of writing body paragraphs that you haven't learned in a master's degree, most likely. Are you ready? Sure. Okay. So we have to do more evolved body paragraphs. So the way that I do this is I use movie reviews, and it'll make sense in a moment, because I use universal themes. I want you to tell me about a movie that you know intimately well, you think is one of the best of all times, but everybody has all has seen. What's the name of that movie?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

We'll go with the Fellowship of the Ring.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

The Fellowship of the Rings. Okay. Now I'm going to ask you a hard question. It's going to take you a little bit of time to figure out. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

I need you to condense the Fellowship of the Ring into a one-word universal theme that best represents it in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Okay. Sacrifice.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Sacrifice. Now, do you see with a master's degree how long that took you? Okay. This requires thinking. But your ADD and dyslexic kids have two and a half times the neuroactivity in the front part of the brain. This is now you're playing in their sandbox.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

This is where when they say the politician, you shouldn't be doing this because you have dyslexia. No, this is where you should be required to do this because you're dyslexic, because that overactive front part of the brain. I'm about to show you why. Sacrifice. So do you remember back when the Fellowship of the Ring came out, if you read a review from the New York Times or some major publication written by some Ivy League graduate, they would say, This happened, then this happened, then this happened, and essentially ruined the movie?

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Mm-hmm. Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Here's how we read review, so we're not doing it as a child. Okay. What we would do is say, I'm using the universal theme of sacrifice. You're going to pick your favorite actors. How did they deal with the universal theme of sacrifice? How did the director do? How did the screenwriter do? Then you write it up, and people can read it and say, Do I want to watch this movie or not? If they do want to watch it, you've enhanced their experience because now they know what it's what to look for. Okay? Because you wrote it like an adult. Here's the problem: sacrifice is such a broad universal theme. You're painting with a brush, a broad brush. You can't laser focus. We have to laser focus. Okay, if you're going to deal with neurodiverse kids. So what we do is I'm now going to sorry, I have to traumatize your audience.

unknown 21:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Just because Shakespeare was the best communicator in English in English written history. So typically, what happened in a Shakespeare play? You have a hero. Hero would want to do something associated with one or more universal themes. Then there would be an ultimate villain represented by a person, a concept, or some combination there too, trying to provide. Prevent the hero from accomplishing their goal. Their conflict would start in act one, accelerate well into act two, and then resolve in act three. Sound familiar?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Let's simplify that to write advanced body paragraphs. So you're going to write out paragraphs of what the hero wants to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

For each sentence, you're going to pick the most important word. Then you're going to list all the most important words in a row. Okay? And then here's the key. This is going to make parents freak out. You're going to have the kid type out the most important word. Then you're going to go to Marion Webster's online dictionary, and you're going to have them pick out their definition. Then they're going to type out and copy the definition. Not copy and paste. Not copy and paste. They're going to type it. And I can hear your parents screaming now, but they won't do it. Here's what you have to understand. I sit down with these kids and I say, they understand when I go over the brain science. I ask them those questions, like, yeah, that's my brain. That's how it works. Then I point out, again, this is so critical. That overactive front part of the brain, I said, this deals with word analysis. How are you going to use word analysis if you don't know exactly what that word means? You can't. Okay. And then I say, This is our go or no go decision. Are you going to solve the problem with me working with you in your specialty, or are you never going to get this fixed? Because I tell them, we're going to do this in your specialty. Okay. I need you to do this work. I need you to type out the word and type out the definition. Once they understand that, the vast majority of kids will do it. You step outside their specialty, they're not doing anything because they're down 90%. Okay. Right. So they'll type out the word, they'll type out the definition. At some point, they're going to type this out so many times that they're going to remember it permanently. My kids do this at 11 and 12. When they're studying for their SATs in high school, five years later, they remember these words 70, 80% of the definitions. They don't have to remember word hundreds of words because they already know them. Okay. So they type out the word and they type out the definition. Eventually they'll just know what it is and they'll just say what it is. But they type out the word and definition for each one. Then you pick your best, most important word. That's your base universal theme. But just like sacrifice, it's so broad. How do we laser focus? We take that word and put it into the thesaurus and we look for the synonyms. You can do five at a time, ten at a time, the whole level, multiple levels, whatever the parent and teacher student decide. So then what you do is let's say you're doing five or ten. You type out the word, you type out the definition, and then you pick the one that best matches in the student's head. It's never going to be perfect if you're not happy. Keep going until you get one you're relatively happy with. Now you can laser focus because it's much more specific. You pick the ultimate villain. I start off with people, and then eventually I go to concepts. So now you got the hero, your universal theme, and now your optimal villain separated by two plus signs. Does it sound generally correct? No, fix it until it does. Do you see how that's an evolved form of word analysis?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

No, we're going to do an advanced form of articulation. We're going to go because give me three really good reasons. That's what you can come up with. Each reason we're going to simplify to a one-word universal theme. Then we're going to go to the script of the Fellowship of the Rings. And each we're going to take that universal theme and find a quote that deals exactly with that universal theme. One at the beginning of the script and one at the end. We're going to take those two quotes and put them together. That's going to be our data. Then those two quotes, we're from that, we're going to create our topic sentence. Now, have you ever noticed when you were in grad school, you'd have your topic sentence and then you'd have your data, be it statistics, be it quotes, be it whatever. Have you ever noticed that going from your topic sentence to your data, it didn't flow really very well?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've written a nonfiction book. So yeah, there's times it's just like, this how do I make that fit? Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Okay. Have you ever thought of applying a warrant to a body paragraph?

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Haven't thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Do you know what a warrant is?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Well, I'm thinking of an arrest warrant, but Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

So any anybody outside of a PhD candidate probably won't know what this is. It comes from a book called The Craft of Research from the University of Chicago. Came out in 1995, has since sold over a million copies, and it's to teach PhDs how to do their doctoral dissertations. And I was asked to teach dyslectic high school kids this type of writing, which no private school in the country does because it's too evolved. And yes, we do that. So what we do is a warrant is connects the topic sentence with the data by asking a by answering a how and why question. Okay. So when you do that, and give you an example of how important this is for a kid's motivation, I was dealing with a seventh-grade dyslectic kid, and his brother was an AP English senior fighting to be valedictorian and wrote brilliantly. I took one of his paragraphs and the seventh-grade dyslectic kid who used a warrant and we submitted them to a university professor. He said, Oh, that kid's using a warrant. That must be at the college level. That's technically a more evolved paragraph. Now, the older brother finding out his middle school dyslectic younger brother is writing technically more evolved than he is, is freaking out. I'm I'm the one who's an AP English, I'm the one going to be maybe Velvictorian. And I looked at his younger brother and I said, Isn't that beautiful? Now that shot his self-confidence to the moon.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So that's what you would do with your 12-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Okay. Thank you. That is awesome. So, Russell, in a minute, I'm going to ask you to share just a big takeaway for our audience. But before we go there, how can people get in touch with you? Find your book that's coming out soon? When is it going to be out?

SPEAKER_00 28:17

So let us uh probably in about six weeks. Famous last word of any author, the final editorial. Uh I would I would just search for the book. It's called If You Can Write, You Can Read.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

We're going to put it on Amazon and we're going to start it off at uh 99 cents. Why? Because technically I have to get 150 reviews. And we're going to keep it that at that price until we do. And what it discusses, it discusses Kimberly, how she overcame her issues. And for teachers out there, Evelyn White Bay is my co-author. She was on the New York State Dyslexia Task Force, which was came up with a plan to redo the entire K through 5 education system in New York State for elementary school kids. She had a bit of a better increase. Her student was in ninth grade, a little less time than Kimberly worked with Reed, and that student jumped 6.6 grade levels.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah. So that's what happens when you apply a master teacher. All right. So for teachers and parents, if you really want to know, I would go and look at the book. Uh besides that, the best thing to do is just visit us at dyslexiaclasses.com. That's within S DyslexiaClasses.com. There's a button there that says download free guide. Click on it, answer three questions. You can set up a time to speak with me for half an hour, and uh we answer all your questions. There's no cost for that.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, so we're recording here in mid-March. So hopefully your book will be out by the end of April, beginning of May. If you can write, you can read. Great.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Yes. If you can write, you can read. And it's exactly that. If you can write first, you can read. Because actually, give you a little hint. People are under the impression that dyslexia is a reading problem. It's just a symptom. I routinely teach dyslectics to read better than a lot of their high school and middle school reading teachers. For that, I use a little book called Postwar Japan is History, which is used at Harvard for their beginning graduate students in post-war Japanese history. And the first essay there was written by Professor Dauer, who won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. And I routinely have reading teachers that can't get past the first paragraph. Because it's so dense, it literally turns them dyslectic. Oh wow. And that's what I end up teaching dyslectics. I said, yes, you can do this, you can read better than a lot of reading teachers. And that's that's a whole other fascinating discussion to what dyslexia really is. So why do I bring this up? Because, as you said, a politician is being told he shouldn't be a politician because he's dyslectic. Give you a little hint: there's this guy in the New York State Assembly called Bobby C. He actually went to Winward. And then he was so successful after that. He went to the very best undergraduate program in the State University of New York system, City Center at Binghamton. And then he went on to this little thing called law school. And he was and is a very, very successful lawyer. And now he's a member of the New York State Assembly. Go ahead and try to tell him he doesn't belong in politics. Try to debate him. I guarantee you the people saying that are gonna come on the other end of the stick.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. Yeah. So, Russell, what's one takeaway you'd like our listeners to leave this conversation hearing?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

I think that my journey illustrates a point when I kept being asked to do the impossible so many times. You can't tell me randomly that over the past 25 years, because that's what it's taken to do this, that this hasn't been part of God's plan for me.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Especially when I had Kimberly outdoing just speed-wise, you know, the Winworth School. I mean, they take four to five years, and she did this in less than nine months, part-time. And there the reason why they're so expensive is because the student-to-teacher ratio is like four to one or five to one for four to five years.

SPEAKER_04 32:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

And I had a mom do similar results in less than nine months, an hour and a half a week. You can't tell me. Not because here's the thing, most parents out there, you're not gonna do what Kimberly did at a half an hour session, three sessions a week. You're gonna go 10 to 15 minute sessions a couple of times a week, and then a couple weeks on and a couple weeks off. And we still gotta solve the problem in a reasonable period of time. And we do that, and then when I was connected to Angela, who's gonna be teaching our class, we're up on a learning platform called school. We dropped it the price to 147 a month, because everybody else is 500 to 1,000 a month with in person with some actual instruction, and nobody can afford that. Angela is a religious homeschooling mom who's a certified elementary school teacher from the state of Texas with a two-year master's degree, and she's taught her son read this process, and she's gonna be on every week for 60 to 90 minutes answering parents' questions. You can't tell me that my getting involved with her was an accident. We met on a podcast where she was a producer and she was so skeptical until she saw it work with her son. You can't tell me that homeschooling religious moms who I keep running into aren't the reason that I keep doing this. This this is you can't tell me this is random.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Right. Right. So true. And I love that you are taking something hard in your life and you are turning it around, and you're helping so many people. So thank you so much for your time today, Russell.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

You're welcome. After our conversation, I'm kind of blown away, and we only scratch to the surface of understanding how a dyslexic person's brain works. The more I interact with the neurodiverse people in my world, both children and adults, the more amazed I become at how uniquely wired brains can bring out different strengths. It's a question Russell asked me at the beginning of our interview. It showed me how I adapted my answer to his question without hearing the word literally. And it helped me to understand the strength of a dyslexic mind. And I mentioned during our conversation that I have a neurodivergent kiddo who experiences what's usually called pathological demand avoidance. But recently, this child is teaching me that it's okay to say no to demands that feel like too much so that I can say yes to things that God has actually gifted me for. And yes, in our world, there are challenges for kids with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and other neurodiverse profiles. But I'm beginning by God's grace to see the beauty in this diversity. So if you're in a place where you feel like you need more of God's grace in your life, maybe to support a child with learning differences such as dyslexia, I'd love to offer you a chapter of my book, Thriving in Grace: Unleashing Wellness from a Biblical Perspective. This is the chapter that dives into what grace really is and how God uses it, and how you can tap into God's grace and the grace cycle in your own life. So you can download that chapter from my website at Karenaditman.com. And that's it for today. Until next time, remember get curious, stay connected, and live in grace.