EP 130: Beyond the Label — Dyslexia, Potential & Thriving Differently with Russell Van Brocklen

In this episode of Thriving in Intersectionality, Dr. Lola Adeyemo sits down with Russell Van Brocklen, dyslexia educator, researcher, and advocate, for a conversation about learning differences, identity, confidence, and human potential.

The conversation begins with a reminder that intersectionality extends beyond the identities we immediately see. Learning differences, educational experiences, and the systems that shape opportunity also influence how people move through the world, develop confidence, and see themselves.

Russell shares his personal journey growing up with dyslexia, navigating educational systems that often underestimated his abilities, and facing years of frustration, labels, and barriers. Despite being told what he could not achieve, Russell went on to develop innovative approaches to supporting students with dyslexia and helping families access tools that build confidence and academic success.

Together, Dr. Lola and Russell explore how learning differences impact identity, the importance of looking beyond traditional definitions of intelligence, and the role that schools, families, and communities play in helping people reach their full potential.

This conversation is not just about dyslexia.

It's about what happens when we focus on people's strengths instead of their struggles.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Understanding dyslexia beyond common misconceptions
• How learning differences shape identity and confidence
• Navigating educational systems that were not designed for every learner
• The relationship between labels and human potential
• Russell's personal journey from struggling student to dyslexia educator
• Why intelligence and learning style are not the same thing
• Supporting students through strengths-based approaches
• The role of parents, educators, and communities in student success
• Creating more accessible pathways to learning
• Building confidence through accomplishment and belonging

About the Guest

Russell Van Brocklen is a dyslexia educator, researcher, and advocate who helps students and families overcome academic barriers through innovative learning approaches. Drawing on both professional expertise and lived experience, he develops accessible strategies that help students with dyslexia strengthen reading, writing, and academic confidence while focusing on their strengths and long-term potential.

Learn more about his work at Dyslexia Classes.

Reflection Question

What assumptions might we be making about someone's potential based solely on the way they learn, communicate, or process information?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast, a podcast that explores the real experiences of professionals navigating the workplace with layered lead identities. I'm your host, Dr. Lola Ateemo, the CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of the nonprofit Immigrants Incorporate, Inc. I'm also an author, speaker, and a workplace inclusion strategist. I work with organizations to build communities of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change. This podcast amplifies the voices of professionals from intersectional backgrounds, immigrants, ethnic minorities, first-gen professionals, veterans, working parents, individuals with disabilities, and so many more. Through solo reflections and guest conversations, we'll uncover the eating challenges, celebrate the wins, and offer insights to help you thrive, not just survive, in the corporate world. Because in today's global workforce, belonging isn't just a bonus, it's the catalyst for real growth and impact. Let's dive in. Mostly visible differences. But ability, learning differences, and the way people experience education systems are also deeply connected to how people move through the world. And this dyslexia is one of those experiences that impact far more people than many realize. Dyslexia is a learning difference that primarily affects reading, spelling, and language processing. But it does not reflect intelligence or capability. In fact, many people with dyslexia are highly creative, they're strategic thinkers, they're problem solvers. And still, for many of these people, it shows up early in life as frustration in school. And over time, that frustration can become shame, self-doubt, feeling behind, feeling misunderstood, or quietly believing they are not intelligent because they process information differently. And a lot of times we carry that with us into school, into college, into workplaces, in life. And what struck me most in this conversation with Russell is that this was not just a conversation about reading. It really was a conversation about identity, about confidence, about systems, about labels, about parenting, about potential. And Russell lived it and he's also spent years working in it. There's a huge gap that he saw and he created solutions, but he also has lived experience. So what happens when people are seen only through what they struggle with instead of what they are capable of? That's what is worked on. And as someone that often speaks about belonging and human potential, I think these conversations matter because workplaces, schools, and even families are still learning how to support people beyond narrow definitions of success or intelligence. It brings both professional insights and deep personal conviction into this conversation. And we went deep very quickly. So I recorded this intro to provide a context. And whether you are a parent, an educator, a leader, someone navigating dyslexia yourself, or simply someone trying to better understand how people experience the world differently. I hope this is one of those conversations that expands how you think about all of these and how you learn to thrive in intersectionality and support the people in your circle to thrive in intersectionality. Let's get into the conversation. And I love shedding light on the word intersectionality as a start. And she's done a lot of research around the experience. She had a social science research a couple of years ago around race and gender. She was doing studies on black women experience. So I'd love to highlight that in case anyone is looking to learn more about the word and the work that Kimberly Crenshaw is doing. Feel free to check it, check out our work. But when I think of that word, what exactly does intersectionality mean? I grant it in this brief explanation. Intersectionality itself is a framework that recognizes how multiple aspects of identity, such as gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, class, among so many others, how all of these identity categories overlap and interact, creating very unique experiences of privilege or discrimination. And you can understand these by examining a single one of these. What makes it unique is how it's really layered for everyone. And so I love using this framework and this lens to explore how leaders have grown and how we see our identities and our context, how it shapes the work that we currently do. And I have a great guest here with me today that I've been trying to lock down for a while. And I'm so excited to have Russell here finally, because I think, you know, sometimes when we think of the word intersectionality, we picture certain individuals, we picture visible differences, we picture whatever we think we have in mind. But we are all very layered, and what you think you know is usually not what you know about people. Um so today I'm going to bring Russell on. Russell Van Brooklyn is a dyslexia professor and he shifts daily reading frustrations into confident academic wins for students facing dyslexia, but it's so much more than that, and I'm going to let him introduce himself through his lens. Hi Russell, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 7:19

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I'm excited to have you on here. All right, so let's get to know you a little bit more beyond the titles. When you think of the word intersectionality, Russell, what aspects of your life and experience have most shaped how you show up, how you see yourself and your work in the world today?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Well, I think the intersection best represents what actually got me to do this, because this was the last thing I was ever supposed to do with my life. I was supposed to be a bureaucrat for the state government in New York State. Um, what happened was it was the late 90s. I was finishing up college and I just had an inkling and want to know how laws were created. Now, some class I wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York State Assembly internship program, which was just absolutely insanely ridiculous because I showed up and I said, here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first-grade reading and writing ability, which meant I couldn't do the internship the way it was designed. So the speaker at the time was Sheldon Silver, and he his office pretty much made the decision that they were going to accommodate the living daylights out of me. They got a senior committee together to figure out what to do with me, and they literally took me out of the legislative office building and brought me over to the Capitol, where I was placed in the Majority Leaders Program Council's office that ran the assembly day-to-day, and they had no idea what to do with an undergrad. So they treated me like a graduate student, and which was a real internship. Now, when I walked in, I immediately see why they did it. They had three administrative assistants that could help take my horrendous writing and turned it into something that I could turn in each week. One great academic portion, I did an uh hours-long uh QA, a paper and a QA, instead of the standard research paper, which was a standard accommodation for me back then. They wrapped everything up together, recommended 15 credits of A-. Then they sent it back to the State University of New York Political Science Department. And they looked at the accommodations and they didn't like them. Now you're a PhD, you are certainly qualified to be a university professor. They looked at my this these massive accommodations and decided to lower my grade from 15 credits of A-. What do you think they lowered it to? I don't know. 15 credits of F. They flunked me. 29 years later, that's still on my record, the only time in the history of that program. And that thing's been around, that program's been around for like 50 plush years with hundreds of students going through it each year. I'm the only one that this has ever happened to. So then I went to my professors and I said, I am done with the discrimination. I'm going to solve dyslexia. Like thousands of people before me, tens of thousands. I actually did. So what happened is I asked, where can I go to grad school to force myself to learn to read and write? And my professor said, Well, if you like politics, it's obvious. Law school. So I went to audit two law school classes. In my contracts class, my professor was a professor longer than I was alive at that point. So on the second day of class, he called on me. Are you familiar with how they operate in law school?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Um, not really, you know, the full details.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Okay. Well, they use the Socratic method. So if you don't know what the answer is, they will ask you questions you can't answer, which nobody does the first week, until they ask you questions you can't answer to embarrass you publicly until you eventually adapt. Well, that didn't happen to me. I didn't respond as a student. I responded as the professor's equal. He started asking me questions, I responded, and then I started attacking him, which kind of shocked him. And then we're going back and forth. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Nobody's ever heard of anything like this. Finally, he throws up his arms and he says, Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. In the interest of time, I have to move on to the next case. Okay. I learned to read in a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. Then I go back to the New York State Senate and I said, I solve dyslexia. I want you to fund my dyslexia research program, which they don't do. But my uh my senator was the majority leader of the Senate. His name was Senator Bruno. So he he sent me over to the education department, his educational aid, and I walk in. Now you have to remember, this guy runs the Senate. So they have to take me very seriously. They said, Where is this out of? And I said, Buffalo. They said, okay, we want a New York State distinguished professor in psychology to evaluate this. And we want a recommendation, a good report, and if we don't get it back, uh then you're done. But they would pay for it. So I go out there, I'm like, this can't be hard. Famous last words. There were two distinguished professors in psychology in entire western New York. The one who gave me my original evaluation happens to be one of them. Her name was Dr. Irene Halichka. So she went over to the Buff State Psychology Department and said, What is the most insane evaluation I can give this kid? And which she was the for previous chair and dean. And so that she got it. Then I sat down for 20 hours over three days with the smartest woman I ever met. And she's beating me up like you can't believe to make sure this is real. At the end, she said, I evaluated this kid a couple of years ago. His reading and writing, as I'm confirming again, without accommodations, at the six, he's like a six-year-old. When his accommodation is turned on, when his system is turned on, it's like a light switch, his writing jumps up to about the 70th percentile of entering grad students. And then turns off, it goes back down to first grade. Here's five, here's five pages explaining what's going on. Essentially, we're going from the part of the brain that works, that doesn't work, to one that works, and vice versa. I bring the report back to the education department. They weren't expecting this. At that point, they said, okay, you got to connect this to current research. So I go back to Buffalo, and there's one person that makes any sort of sense. His name was Professor James Collins, full professor. Uh, he wrote a book called Strategies for Struggling Writers, found default writing strategies of copying visualization narrative. Million and a half dollar research grant from the U.S. Education Department. As you remember, to get the approval of a final paper from a professor was supposed to take years. How long do you think it took me months? Under two weeks. Oh wow. That's fine. Yes, are you noticing I'm doing really well in grad school here? So then I go and I I had to do that because there's a university-wide competition I entered, of which I got second place for 15,000. So then we went and tested it out on our first student. I want everybody to know I cheated. I wanted to work an issue with students like me. Extremely motivated, extremely intelligent. Okay. Juniors and seniors that were dyslexic. They all had middle school writing skills. So her name was Michaela. She was reading and writing at the eighth grade level, 17-year-old college junior. Now, I want you to tell me honestly, brutally honestly, if you have an eighth-grade writing skill and you're going to college, what's going to happen?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

If you have an eighth-grade writing skill, yes, you're writing like a 13-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

What's going to happen in college? Are you going to pass or are you just going to flunk out? Honestly. So we I decided to give them the writing skills of a college graduate before they entered school. So do you remember when you took the GRE? Yeah. Do you remember the writing assessment? Oh, yeah. That's what we gave Michaela. Think about it. She's a 17-year-old high school junior with an eighth-grade writing skill, and we give her a writing assessment for people who have graduated from college applying to grad school. How do you think she did?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Well, now that I've I'm seeing the trend here beyond expectation, I would say No, she scored in the zero percentile. So, what was the purpose of trying to get that foundation established? Is that well?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Remember, this is the pretest. I haven't worked with her.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Pre-test. Oh, okay. Okay. This is before working with her. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Dr. Holitchka, the SUNY distinguished professor in psychology, is the evaluator. And she's really hard on us because this is her reputation. She said the spelling and grammar were absolutely atrocious. The ideas are over the place, zero percentile.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Five months later, what do you think she increased to?

SPEAKER_01 16:34

After working with you?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yes, five months later.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

About the 50th percentile. Wow. Okay. Spelling and grammar jump to clean at the grad level.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

The same assessment, the same decision.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yes, but think about this. Horrendous spelling and grammar five months later, clean at the grad level. She's cool. Okay. Next student we I I asked for. Really intelligent and really bad. His name was Adam. 19-year-old uh college, I mean high school senior. He was held back twice. His writing was so bad, Dr. Holychka wanted him banned from college. Okay. He did horrendous. Increased his writing to the to the 70th percentile. Then we got the funding from New York State. Now, I had to train a teacher to do this. My competition takes two years. Literally, $11,000 two years to become certified. We had their best special. It was back in the Avery Park Central School District, right outside of Albany, New York, our state capital. In New York State, this is where I went to high school. Susan Ford was their best teacher. Okay, she she learned the process. Guess how long it took her. Hours. That's it. Hours.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

For the training for her to be able to administer.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yes, my competition is two years. She learned this in hours. She rewrote it to meet her teaching style and who she's working with. We kept the student-to-teacher ratio at five to one and then the next year six to one because that's about what the private dyslectic schools are. The kids entered. They all had the super motivated, super intelligent juniors and seniors. They had reading and writing skills at the seventh or eighth grade level. They increased their uh most of them essentially scored the zero percentile in the GRE, one class purity day for the school year. They ended up scoring the 30th to 70th percentile of their in grad students. They all went on to college, they all graduated GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6. Now, the cost, the best competition had at the time was landmark college. We were 3x as successful as they were for less than 1% of the cost. They were over $100,000. I was under nine under 900 bucks all in, and that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Well, we went pretty deep pretty quickly. Because I was like, okay, I I that's how you got started. No, but that's not how you got started. I want to know. Well, maybe for those listening, I mean, I already introduced Russell, is a dyslexia professor, so you know why we went deep pretty quickly. But I want to know about you. When did you get diagnosed?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Oh, yeah. Well, that was that's a bit more painful of a story. It um I just gave you the more interesting part. So for me, when I I was held back in pre-first. Uh instead of going to first grade after kindergarten, I went to pre-first, held back for a year, and they thought that would help and did nothing. And then in third grade.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Did you get diagnosed already?

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Or did you did they just think they did some crappy diagnosis, nothing real?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Um, so uh until Dr. Holitchka gave me that neuropsych. Okay, I was like, you know, my mid-20s by that point. Until she did that, I didn't know what the heck was going on. Not not really good. So what happened was they put me in special ed in third grade, said it wasn't a punishment. It was what it really affected me was I had two relatives on the Mayflower. I had the religious leader who was a relative, and the Collee's biggest malcontent as a as a relative. So they had this major project in fifth grade on the pilgrims, which I couldn't do because I was in special ed. Hated it. So finally in seventh grade, I had a neighbor. He and his son got our Eagle Scouts at the same point, same time. I was 17, he was 16. And he was on the school board. And through my parents, I said, You gotta get me out of this thing. He said, I can do one class. So I did history in eighth grade. Couldn't read or write worth a darn. I could force myself to read a little bit during tests, and I got hundreds on every test and every quiz. I didn't study, I just remembered what the teacher said. And I won the history award for being the best history student in my grade. And then I went into all college prep classes. We called them regions at the time in New York State. I had an 86.5 average the first semester, 95.5 the fourth semester, fourth of my class, and they said, Well, you're never gonna mount anything, you're gonna be a janitor. After that, I just didn't care about grades. Got through school, stumbled through college until what I told you just happened.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Until that experience. And I and I do, you know, I do really like to push a little bit for you to share that because again, I think there's a lot of people, this this podcast is about intersectionality and our own identity. And there's a lot of people that struggle through school the same way you did. Um a little bit more about what dyslexia is for anyone listening that doesn't understand it. Maybe start intersectional.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Then let's go to the top book in the field. Oh, this is the name of the Yeah, it's Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shewitz. I don't know if we can get this.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

I'll put it, I'll put a link on the show note.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Okay, well the main thing that I'm trying to do is show you uh you can take out the background if you need to. Yeah, how do I do that?

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Uh go back to settings and uh remove the background because I think it's it's worth taking a look at what you're showing us.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Okay, I'm just gonna keep it like that. This is the book Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Salah Sheawitz. Okay. That's dyslexia. So do you see how the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity? See how the back part you have all this? See how the back part of mine has nothing? See how the front part of my brain's about two and a half times overactive?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

This deals with word analysis followed by articulation. That's what I focus on.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

And so your your lived experience, your own live experience kind of started from what you experienced at school growing up with education with this non-profitly diagnosed thing that really has a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Well, you can diagnose it, but the thing is that it here's the horrible truth about what's going on. If you contact Yale with the kids in kindergarten, they can literally teach the teachers how to find dyslexia and like you know, it's like 40-50 bucks. The teacher does it. You find out who's dyslexic and who's not. If you got 200 kids in a grade, you know, if there goes 10 grand out of a school district with a budget into tens of millions, once you find out they're dyslectic, Yale has programs that have been peer-reviewed for decades. Okay. I mean, they knew about this before you were born. All right. The guy the Gow Schools was celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. This is the original dyslectic school. Then you follow that from Kindergarten through third grade. By the end of third grade, in the United States, we take a reading test. Because K through three, we learn to read fourth and above, we read to learn. If you pass that test, you're gonna be fine statistically. If you fail it, it's a 911 emergency. And then you go to a $75,000 a year private school for four to five years. Okay. I've dropped that. I work with parents, I show them how to do it for $147 a month by focusing on the front part of the brain. So that's the frustration. Everybody should be doing this. Nobody does. Federal judges call it gross negligence. They force schools to pay for those $75,000 a year solutions. The whole thing's insane.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah. And so that's how you got to the work you've been doing.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yes, that's that's how I that's that's the work I do. I do this because I don't want kids to go through the hell that I went through. And when I looked at the economics of it, the only people that can do this is parents do it. And I just in California a couple months ago, I came in and I went to a pretty major charity, and I worked with, I taught over 40 people how to teach how to do basic sentences through basic body paragraphs. And I show them exactly how to do that. So they could do that in their uh in their community groups.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah. And and when we when we talk about intersections and leadership, it's it's a huge part of, you know, a lot of people see gaps and just close it and move on and push through it. I I think you turned what was a horrible experience for you into a passion and work and a whole body of work.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Oh, yeah. It's uh the the the most advanced student we're working with now for Gen Ed, his name is Grayson. He's not dyslexic in the least, he's in the 99th percentile for math and science. He wants to get his PhD, work at NASA, to terraform Mars. So I have to get him published, which you know how much fun that is. So we got to get him past a desk rejection and get rejected by a reviewer. And then uh we already have a board member who's at one of our top five technical universities. At the right time, we will connect, you'll connect Grayson with the right professor. You know, Grayson will go and say, I got rejected from the journal article. Here's what I need to work on so we can get this accepted. Will you work on with me? The issue is Grayson's on the young side. Uh, how old do you think he is?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Grayson that you just shared about now? Uh I don't know. What grade did you say he was? Fifth grade?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I didn't. Well, how old do you think he is? He's on the young side.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Oh. 12.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

He's 10.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

13. Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yes, and I'm not teaching him, I'm training his father to trick to teach him.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Okay. We literally are we're we're literally uh we're doing advanced body paragraphs, then we're going right into doctoral level stuff. We use a book called The Craft of Research from the University of Chicago. You're familiar with the PhD process, the doc the dissertation. That's the best book in the field. It sold over a million copies. And those professors, your peers, want me to teach that to high school dyslectic kids. And we finally figured that one out. Oh, yes, that uh your your peers came to me after I presented in New York City, and they said, I'm this is not a joke. They said two of your students scored in the 70th pro percentile approximately on the GRE from the eighth grade level. We don't care, we want the craft of research. I was like, the craft of what? They said the craft of research, it's a book on how to do a PhD, how to do your doctoral dissertation, sold over a million copies, and they wanted me to teach that to high school dyslectic students, so they knew it before they went to college. And they were serious. Only took about another 20 years to figure out, but we do that now.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

All right. I love this. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to do a little bit of intro and context for this conversation. I'm so glad we had it. And and one of the things um that I don't bring, well, when I bring guests, I try to find a little bit of the invisible layers, invisible layers of differences and people that are bringing changes to the system. And so tell us a little bit for um, I think for the final session, one of the things I like to do is tie it to your background, your own story, your own identity, which you I I kind of feel like you already did, right? So for anyone listening now that maybe can relate with your own personal experience when they were younger, your your own struggles, whether they are parents or they are students themselves that are navigating learning um challenge now with the system. Basically, it's it's not even with the learning process, it's with how the system is supporting them. What um advice do you have for them right now? Um, not not specifically dyslexia now, just overall, and they were not going to dyslexia.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Well, what I can tell you is one of the things that got me through this is I eventually got my Eagle Scout. And Scouting America has done something profound. They finally brought uh boys and girls together. So it's a shared experience. But what I can tell you was going through my project, and what I ended up doing was reconditioning the beach where I live. Okay, I had to completely redo it, had to submit audit. It was it was I considered kind of like a passage, a rite of passage into adulthood. So, what I would advise people is join scouting and get that eagle. Do your project. And what that did to me is for until I was about 25, and it still happened after that, but really big until then, I would go into job interviews that everybody wanted. And then I mentioned, oh, it's you're an Eagle Scout, and the guy's like, the interview guy was literally like, Well, I tried it, but only got the star. What did you do for your project? And I just talked about my project. I didn't say anything about the job opportunity, what it was, anything. And because we talked about that, we went way over, had to he had to reschedule some things, I got the job. And he said he didn't give it it's entry level, he didn't give a damn about the traditional it's entry level, they didn't care. But because I was an eagle, they could trust me on that. Or I would talk to another guy who got the eagle. We would just talk about the Eagle project, and nothing about what we were going on, and then through that networking thing, I automatically got it. And the military, good grief, they wouldn't let me be for a while. All right, so I'm just saying join scouts, get the eagle, it'll help out what you can't believe.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah, I love it. Thank you. And I think it's what it also represents is the being able to commit to something and and complete it and accomplish it by I mean, that's what every employer is looking for, right? Forget about the projects you have worked on. Is can you commit, can you learn, can you complete it?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Right, but here's the other thing the project has to be something to enhance the community. All right, something that's you're really big into DEI, okay? Into this into people trying to figure out how do we get into the community. Okay, you understand. So imagine you're and you're in a committee to hire an entry-level person, and somebody comes in and said, Well, I'm in, I was an Eagle Scout in San Francisco. There were problems with people that had concerned concerns with DEI. I did a project, it has now enhanced that community, and the community said, Yeah, this helped out a lot. I had to supervise 36 people over seven weekends, and we did this. Yeah, that has your attention on your 22.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Okay. That's what I mean. That's what it's the it it's also about the community because a big part is when you're hiring somebody at the entry level, it's like, do I want to be around this person 10, 12 hours a day? And a lot of times it's no, I have turned down people that look perfect on paper. But Cooker, I don't want to be around that person for more than an hour a day. It drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's what it represents a lot more than it's about you. It's about the community, it's about the skills or the personality that I can see coming through from you completing that program. Thank you, Russell. Um, and then let's let's focus on dyslexia specifically now. Um, I would like you to speak to maybe parents or educators um around your work right now who are maybe having kids or students in their classroom that are on a path that needs a different non-traditional learning support. What would you say to them? What are the things to watch out for? How do they connect with you? Maybe there are some quick things that you could share with them right now that they could implement it quickly. And then how do you think that's it?

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Sure. Let me just tell you what the general model is. And schools aren't going to want to hear this. Dyslectics are academic specialists. Uh, our society wants us to become journalists before we specialize in grad school. Okay. During the intervention period, we have to focus on the kids' speciality, their area of extreme interest or nobility, otherwise, their motivation drops 75 to 90%. It's not going to work. We don't teach from the general to the specific, we teach from the specific to the general, and we teach word analysis followed by articulation. You follow that. I have had parents in under nine months solve dyslexia, and the kids go into public school and they're just doing just fine. And that's part-time. Okay. We take students from basic sentences, show them how to do basic body paragraphs, advanced body paragraphs, and then we literally combine that with a craft of research, and we literally take them all the way through advanced problem statements, how to come up with something where the reader learns something substantial. And that's currently what we're working on with Grayson. This also works for super smart gen ed kits. And if you want to know more about us, the best thing to do is just go to uh this platform called schoolskol.com. S K O O L dot com and just type in dyslexia classes. We have a course for $147 a month that teaches parents how to do this. Our instructor is Angela. She's a certified elementary school teacher with a two-year master's degree and 11 years of experience, and she teaches her kids, her dyslectic and non-dyslectic kids, this material. And she's there on a weekly basis to answer your questions. And that's the best way we can help help help uh uh help parents. And we also have a course for professional teachers, and you'll go through that very rapidly in a matter of hours.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

All right. Well, thank you. I'm so glad to have this resource in my in my pockets, in my toolbox, because again, you are the first guest I've had around this. Um and I I think what you're doing, uh, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for turning a otherwise painful experience and struggle with the system, with the process into a solution that actually works and that is a little bit more accessible. Um, I have a kid with an IEP, so I am in the thick of it with the system. And he's only six and have been in this. So I I know exactly how much the system can be endurance, can be this very cloudy space where you don't even know what your, you know, what kind of support your child is getting, you don't know what's going on. Um uh and I'm looking forward to sharing these and and following up with you as well. Is there anything? I'm gonna have I have a final question that I like to ask my guest, but is there anything else you want to share or say?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Nope. That's that's what's your final question?

SPEAKER_01 36:49

All right, if you were to share a meal with your co-workers, what would you be and why?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Uh what meal would I be?

SPEAKER_01 36:58

A meal. If you were to share a meal, like take a meal or snack or something to people that um chicken curry from India. Ooh, okay. I did not see that coming. I love curry.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

I spent a month and a half in India.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

And what gets me nuts is the southern part of the country is all about vegetarian. And it's not the plastic cakes that we have here. It's really good food. I didn't miss meat at all. And my favorite thing is chicken curry. And there's a local restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Vegetarian version?

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Is that why you're saying there's well, it's it's all vegetarian down south. North is the e-meat. Uh, India's kind of just it's a it's not a natural country. It was thrown together by the British. But um the curry sauce I really like. I just like the chicken curry.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Um, but that's no vegetarian.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Did you say oh it's not, you're right, it's not vegetarian. I'm just saying southern India is vegetarian. Oh, but generally, I like to get the chicken sauce when uh when I when I do it. So what I literally do now is I go there and I order a standard one, then an additional 32 ounces of curry sauce, and I get the high-spice one, I take and I freeze with like a tape, like a very small amount, and then I just cook my own Indian rice. I get the chicken uh tenders from the store, cook those up in the slow cooker, then I combine it with the curry sauce, and it's like it's a it's a great way to help lose weight.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Oh, I love that. Okay, thank you for sharing that. I love Indian food, and I the spicier the better for me. I'm Nigerian, so my spice tolerance. I I like to think it's pretty good. It has changed a little bit. Um, but thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yes, well, yeah, and I it works out great. The reason why I get the super spicy is because after you nuke it, it goes down to like normal.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

It goes down to okay, okay. So you start from there. Oh, well, so nice to meet you, Russell. Thank you for the work you're doing. For those listening, uh, please check out um the resources will be on the page, and um, I will have a lot more details added to the show notes for this episode in the next couple of months. I think Russell has a couple of things coming down the pipeline as well, as far as resources, and we'll be sharing that. Um, follow our Substack and follow us on all your platforms. Make sure to share this episode. Thank you for coming, Russell. And thank you for having me. Thank you for being part of today's conversation on thriving in intersectionality. If you're an HR or DEI leader and you need employee resource group or business resource group resources, let's connect and LinkedIn. I help organizations build inclusive cultures through inclusive workplace communities, strategy, and storytelling. Immigrants and first-gen professionals, join our free community at www.immigrantsincorporate.org for career support, networking, and resources in community with peers who understand your journey. Tag our podcast page on LinkedIn or connect with me directly to continue the conversation. Please don't forget to rate and review to help others discover these discussions. Keep thriving in your intersections. Your story matters. I'm Dr. Lola Adeyemo, and this has been Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast.