From “Not Smart Enough” to Changing Lives: Dyslexia Explained (feat. Russell Van Brocklen)

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Every journey has a story. And every story has the power to heal. My story hasn't been ordinary. I was adopted. I'm a survivor of abuse and trauma, and I have more than a dozen siblings. That's just the beginning of my story. Life has taken me on a long and winding road of healing and personal growth. A journey that ultimately led me back to myself and the path I was meant to walk. Along the way, I discovered that stories have power. The power to connect us, to help us grow, and even to help us heal. This is Travel Time Stories with Shannon. Real journeys, real stories, and real healing. What if the thing you've struggled with your whole life was never the problem?

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What if the real problem was being told that you were the problem?

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For millions of people living with dyslexia, that story starts early.

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And for many, it shapes everything that comes after.

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Until one moment changes the way they see themselves forever. Welcome back to Travel Time Stories with Shannon, where we share real journeys, real stories, and real healing.

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And today's conversation is one that so many people are going to relate to, whether it's about learning differences, uh, self-doubt, or feeling like you just don't fit the mold.

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We're joined by Russell Van Brocklin, known as the Dyslexia Professor, who helps families understand dyslexia in a completely different way. One that replaces frustration with clarity and real practical tools.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Russell, we're so glad you're here. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So, Russell, let's start with your story. What was it like growing up with dyslexia?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

It was absolute hell. So, what happened to me was I was placed in special ed at third grade. They say it wasn't a punishment. It was. In fifth grade, I had two relatives who were on the Mayflower, the religious leader and the biggest male content of the entire population. And I wanted to do the fifth grade Pilgrims Project, but I couldn't because I was in special ed. So then at the end of seventh grade, my neighbor is on the school board. His son's a year younger than me, and we got our Eagle Scouts at the same time. Through my mother, she went over and said, You got to get my son out of one class to eighth grade. He said, I can do one. So I did history. I couldn't read or write. I could force myself to read a little bit during the test, and I got perfect hundreds on every test. I won the history award. And I never studied because I couldn't take notes. I went full college prep for high school, went through AP European, AP American history, again, reading, writing out the window. Went through college where it got interesting was in the late 90s, I wanted to know how laws were created, not some class I wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York State Assembly internship program, which was completely insane because I showed up and I said, Here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing level, so I couldn't do the internship. So it went right up to the New York State uh Speaker's Office, Assembly Speaker's Office, his name was Sheldon Silver, and his people said, You are not getting rid of this kid. You're going to combinate the daylights out of him. We don't care what it costs. So they got a committee together and they decided to do this really big thing. They pulled me out of the legislative office building because a big part of the internship is being with your peers. So that was done. I went over to the Capitol and to the Majority Leaders Program and Council's office. When I walked in, I see immediately why they did it. They had three administrative assistants that could help take my cruddy writing and put it into something I could turn in each week. They had no clue what to do with an undergrad, which is go get the coffee and do some photocopying. I would mess all that up. So they treated me like a grad student. I had the best internship out of anybody. For the actual academic portion, instead of a big paper, I gave an hour-long presentation QA session, which was standard for me back then. So they wrapped all that up, recommended 15 credits of A-Dur this disaster's going? It goes back to the State University of New York Center's Political Science Department. They look at these absolutely insane accommodations and say, we don't like this, so we're lowering your grade, which they did to 15 credits of F. They flunked me. Okay, at that point, I said, I'm gonna solve dyslexia, so nobody else has to go through this. I actually did. My solution to that was kind of fun. I decided, I talked to my professors, I said, where can I go to force myself to learn to read and write in grad school? They said, if you like politics, it's simple. Law school, where you read and write more than anybody. So I showed up and then I found out what freaking unfair advantage it is to be dyslectic. I walked into my second day of contracts, and what they do is they use the Socratic method. If you don't know the answer, they'll keep asking you questions until you can't answer them to embarrass you publicly until you eventually adapt. That didn't happen to me. Professor went after me, I answered, then I went after him. He had this perplexed look on his face, 15 minutes. He throws up his arm, says, Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. In the interest of time, I have to move on to the next case. I learned to read in about a month. Took me a couple of years to learn to write. So then I go back to the New York State Senate because my senator is the majority leader of the Senate. And I said, I want you to fund my dyslexia research program, which they don't do, but they were very intrigued. So they sent me over to the New York State Education Department. Now remember, you walk in there saying the majority leader sent you over from the Senate. They have to take you extremely seriously. So they said, Exactly, where is this out of? And I said, Buffalo. And they said, Well, we want a New York State distinguished professor in psychology to evaluate this, and they have to recommend it, or you're done, and they'll pay for the exam. So I went out there, I said, that can't be hard. There are two distinguished professors in Western New York and psychology. One of them happened to be the professor that started the evaluation that started this craziness. Her name was Dr. Ivan Reed Halitchka. She tested me for three days, 20 hours over three days, with the most intelligent woman I ever met. And she was beating me up like crazy to make sure this was real. In the end, she wrote out, Well, I tested this kid a couple of years before. His base reading and writing is confirmed at about six years old. When he turns the system on, his writing jumps up to about the 70th percentile of entering grad students and turns it off. It's a light switch. It's going from the part of the brain that does the work to the part that does. And here's five pages explaining it. So I go back to the education department, and they're like, we weren't expecting this. So then they said you have to connect this to current research, to a current researcher. So that was Professor James Collins. He's the only guy that made sense. Million and a half dollar education uh grant from the U.S. Education Department, wrote a book called Strategies for Struggling Writers with three default strategies of copying the visualization narrative. So people said, You're going to be so lucky if you can get this done ever. Takes years. I was done in less than two weeks. Oh my gosh. Yeah, full approval. Now, understand he approved these. He said, A plus, excellent. So then, why was it done in less than two weeks? Because there's a university-wide competition, which I entered, and I got second place for 15 grand. So then I didn't have to go back asking for money yet. So I go back to my old high school, the Aver Park Central School District, right outside of Albany, New York, our state capital, and I cheated. I wanted to work with people just like me. Super motivated, super intelligent. First student, her name was Michaela, 17-year-old high school junior with who was writing at the eighth grade level. What we gave her the test of writing for entering grad students, and she promptly scored in the zero percentile. Okay. Five months later, she retook it. Her grammar went from horrendous to clean at the grad level. She scored in the average range, like average, like about the 50th percentile. Next student jumped to the 70th percentile. With all of this, the Senate said, okay, we'll fund you. It was a two-year study. Okay, one class period of day for the school year. Now the school teacher got their best teacher. Her name was Susan Ford. By competition is literally two years to become certified. She learned this in under five hours.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Oh my gosh. Okay. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

So we purposely kept it at five to one one year, six to one another year. Why? Because in the private schools, it's four to one to five to one. One class period days of the school year, they increased their writing to uh essentially mostly the zero percentile and the GRE to the 30th to 70th percentile. They all went out of college, all graduated, GPEs is 2.5 to 3.6. We were, compared to the best to select a college at the time, Landmark College. Remember, this was in the OOs. We were 3x as successful as they were for less than 1% of the cost. They were over 100 grand per kid, we were under 900. And that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

That's absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Your determination to get this done and to not let anything stand in your way is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And it paid off so big.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Not really, because then I went down to present what happened in New York City at the International Dyslexia Association's New York City branch. Two things came back. Number one, the professors came to me and said, we don't care about some of your kids hitting the 70th percentile on the GRE. We want the craft of research. I said, craft of what? They said the craft of research. It's a book published by the University of Chicago. It's since 1995, sold over a million copies, and teaches PhD students how to write their doctoral dissertations through context, getting everybody on the same page, coming up with a unique problem statement, and then a unique solution where the reader learned something substantive. And they wanted me to teach that to dyslectic high school kids, knowing no private school in the country addresses this material because it's too evolved. And then the teachers said, This is great. Does this work for normal kids? And I said, no. And they said, come back when it does. So I came back eight years later. And now what I want to kind of go over you is to leave your audience with something that they can use tonight. So I want you to imagine you're a parent. You got a dyslexic kid in elementary to middle school writing essentially randomly placed misspelled words. Nobody has a clue how to fix this. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to fix this in about 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Okay.

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So just so everybody knows what's going on, this is the top book on dyslexia. It's overcoming dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shewitz from Yale, Medical Doctor, Second Edition. That's dyslexia. See how the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity? See how the back part of mine is essentially next to nothing?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Front part of my brain is about two and a half times overactive? Okay. So we need to stop worrying about this because we got nothing there, and we're going to focus on this, the front part. According to Yale, that's word analysis followed by articulation. That's exactly why I'm about to do what I propose. Now, do either of you know any time in your life, any dyslectic kid in elementary middle school who was writing essentially randomly placed misspelled words? Okay. So I'm going to give you a girl I use in this example. Her name is Sarah. Sarah was 10 years old at the time. She was writing randomly placed missbelt words in fifth grade. Thing about Sarah is her speciality was swimming. She was on the swim team, she got in the pull every chance she could get. That's important. Now, as I go through this, I'm going to ask you two questions that I asked seven-year-olds. It's not a trick question. If you answer it 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. Okay? So just know that's coming. So what we do, if you wanted, if we wanted to train you to teach Sarah, is you would pull out a laptop computer with a real keyboard, not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. You're going to type out hero plus sign, what are we talking about? And then Sarah's going to copy that below until it's correct. Okay. After that, we're going to swap out hero for Sarah. So we got Sarah plus sign, what are we talking about? Then we're going to go to a list of 10 things that Sarah really, really likes, and then 10 things she really, really dislikes. The first thing I'm what she really, really likes is swimming. So we got Sarah plus sign, what are we talking about? We're going to swap out what are we talking about for swimming. So we got Sarah plus sign swimming. See how we got there?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Okay. Now, these I'm going to ask you two really specific questions. If you get them exactly right, you answer them exactly, this will work. If not, you're going to get incredibly confused and then have an epiphany. Think I can fool you with two of the simplest questions ever? Probably. Okay. So we got Sarah plus sign swimming. We have to swap out the plus sign for a word. Here's the question. Does Sarah like or dislike swimming?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

She likes swimming.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

But that's not what I asked. Let's try again. We got Sarah plus sign swimming. We have to swap out the plus sign for a word.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Does Sarah like or dislike swimming? Obviously, it's probably dislike because like didn't work for you. So it's her favorite thing in the world. Sarah loves swimming?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yes, but that's not what I asked. Do I have you thoroughly confused now? So much. Are you ready for your epiphany on what dyslexia really is?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Okay. Let's go back to the science. I'm assuming this is your brain of a normal brain. So you tried to run it through this. Sarah's got nothing going on back here. Okay? So when I asked Sarah like or dislike, you did, both of you did one of two things. The first time is you automatically added the S to make it a proper sentence. Sarah's dyslexic. She doesn't know how to add the S. You changed it from like to love. You came up with a more appropriate word. Okay? Sarah has nothing going on back here. She doesn't know how to do this. She would have said exactly what I asked. Like Sarah liked swimming. So we now have a sentence that's not grammatically correct. Do you see that? See what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah, got it.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Okay. Now I want you to think back to when you were young girls. And remember when the teacher would tell you an elementary school rule and she had to explain it to some kids four or five times, she got really frustrated. The teacher got very frustrated. Now I want you to think about this. She could explain it to Sarah a thousand times, and nothing's going to happen because there's nothing going on back here. So we got to move it forward. We have to apply word analysis initially. How do we know that? Because Yale told us that's what's going on there in the front part of the brain. So what we would do is I'd ask Sarah to read what she wrote out loud. Sarah, like swimming. And I say, Sarah, read it out loud again and answer this question. Does that sound generally correct? She's going to say no. And I'm going to say, Sarah, fix it. Sarah likes swimming. We practice that with another nine likes and ten dislikes. You see how that's a simple form of word analysis? Then we're going to go because reason one, tell me a simple reason why a 10-year-old girl would like swimming. That's what everybody says. Sarah likes swimming because it's fun. Now, the problem is we've still got a mess of grammar here. So we tell Sarah to keep reading that out loud and answering does it sound generally correct until the entire sentence sounds generally correct. Now all the horrendous grammar mistakes are gone. We got little ones and maybe some medium ones. Teachers are trained to deal with that. So now they can deal with this with the grammar. The spelling is still a problem. We tell Sarah to drop a period, and then every time she types out the sentence, any mistake, she has to retype it. And she says, I'm not going to make that mistake. And she keeps making it three to thirteen times essentially. Eventually she gets it correct. Then we move, we do the same thing for the other nine likes and ten dislikes. Does that make sense? Then we go, we we keep exactly that. We come up with a second reason and connect it with a glue word end, and we go through the same thing, 10 likes and 10 dislikes. Then we add a third reason and go through the whole thing, 10 likes and 10 dislikes. So everything, everyone correct all the time. Now, if you're a nine-year-old boy, how long does this take a dyslexic nine-year-old boy? How long does it take mom and dad to do this? Most parents do 10 to 15 minutes a session for two to four sessions a week. Even if it's all four, which is rare, that's only an hour. Okay? So a nine-year-old boy takes about five months. A 13-year-old, you're probably going to be done in a couple of weeks. An 18-year-old within a week. The older you are, the quicker you pick it up. Okay. And the reading also improves because if you write it, you can read it.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

But that's only part three of the model. The first part is really important. And then this is the most important out of anything. As a general rule, kindergarten through the first two years of college, they want us to become well-rounded individuals. Dyslectics, this is a nightmare because we're academic specialists. Same with ADD or ADHD. We can only begin to specialize our last two years of college. When we hit grad school, we own the place because it's in our speciality. During the intervention period, we have to focus on that speciality. Let me explain how important that is. The student I'm about to tell you about, her name is Casey. I never saw anything like this before. Casey, I will never see it again. The hundreds of teachers I taught will never see anything like this. It's a one-off edge case to make a point. Casey came from a lower middle class family in the Midwestern United States. I met her at the end of fifth grade. She was 10. She turned 11 over the summertime. And she was reading and writing at the second grade level. She was frantically interested about the President Theod Roosevelt. So I assigned her this massive book, The Rise of Theod Roosevelt. Oh, 900 pages of it. This thing won the Pulitzer. Yep. 10th grade to first year college level, I think 15 to 18. Nobody suggested this to Casey. This is just Casey. She went up to her room, shut the door for three hours a night for the next six months, most of the day during the summertime. At the end of that time frame, you could turn to this random page, point to that random word, and she would tell you the dictionary definition. I worked with her for 15 minutes a week, and she jumped eight grade levels in six months. And that is not the point. The point is when we moved to a book she liked, the one she hated, wanted to see what would happen, if this was just for something she liked, took three months. And here's the key point of all this. I asked Casey what happened when we went from book she loved to one she hated, most motivated kid I ever met. It dropped about 50%. Most kids will drop 75 to 90% outside their specialty. So during that intervention period, if you do not keep inside that specialty, it's probably not going to work just because of that. I get them a book and an audio book, same thing. That's usually a couple of years ahead of where they want to be. And then we it gives them a chance to grow into it. All right. Number two, if you ask a dyslectic in their specialty, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization, they're going to say yes. And what we have to do is force the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me put that in English. I want you to imagine, could you write this paper now? If you're given a couple of weeks and access to a major research library, but you can't ask any questions. And the output is ninth grade level. What effect did Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream Speech have on the civil rights movement of the 1960s? Based on those instructions, could you just go to the research library and write out a high school paper in a couple of weeks? Yes, because you like how that's phrased. Big question. Eventually go into the details. For a dyslexic, our brains are opposite. It's like grabbing fog. There's nothing there, and we get extremely frustrated. Okay? We need to flip that script to starting off at a very specific point and slowly going out. We would ask, what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech? Well, then we just go to his biography, read around that time period, and it'll tell us. That answer would give us a question, which would give us an answer, which would give us a question that forces the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a national output. And then we do word analysis followed by articulation. You do that, and parents do this because schools certainly will not. And this works. Parents want to know how long does this take.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Before we continue, I want to share something really special we've created for this community. If you've ever listened to an episode and felt something deeper, like a moment that stayed with you, or a story that made you reflect on your own life, we wanted to. Give you a place to go with that. We've officially launched our Travel Time Stories membership where you can go beyond listening and become part of the experience. Inside the membership, you'll get access to the Story Circle, our private community where we reflect on each episode through guided journal prompts, share our stories, and connect through monthly meetups. There are also additional tiers with opportunities to go even deeper from storytelling and sharing your voice to being part of the creative journey behind the scenes and joining us on our yearly group travels. If this speaks to you, you can join us through the link in the show notes or visit our website, travel timestories.com. We would truly love to have you join the community.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

A quick example. I'm writing a book now called If You Write, You Can Read. My side is about Kimberly. I met Kimberly in December 27th of 2024. She is a very religious homeschooling mom with just some college. She has five kids. Couple weeks before, she spent 700 bucks at the state of Ohio to test her kids. Her four gen ed kids learned to read brilliantly using standard methods. But her 10-year-old son Reed, who is dyslexic, was reading at the 11th percentile, writing at the fourth percentile. This normally requires a private school intervention based on Orton Gillingham of about 75 grand a year for four to five years. That's what the typical thing is at that age. That didn't happen. I worked with Kimbley for half an hour a week for the next eight months. She worked with Reed for three half hour sessions a week for a week and a half, for an hour and a half. Remember, she's homeschooling mom. Most parents do 10 to 15 minutes a week sessions. 10 to 15 minute sessions, whatever number of times a week. Over the summer of 25, Reed's friends said, We want you in school with us publicly to come with us, to be in class with us for social reasons. So in August of 25, call it eight and a half months later, Reed was tested in a public school. Much better data. His reading went from the 11th percentile to the 64th. His writing went from the fourth percentile to the 65th. His grammar jumped to the 97th percentile. As of April of 26th, he's in mainstream classes with his friends. That's a key point, getting mainly A's and B's. Kimberly did in less than nine months what every parent dreams of at home without selling their house.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

That is that's got to give other parents hope, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

It it absolutely does. What we do to try to help parents is when I looked at this, the cost of any instruction is so stupidly insane to have any for any sort of personal interactions at all. It's 500 to 1,000 bucks a month. Now, unless if you're looking out your window and seeing two newish BMWs, this is not going to work for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

So the number we found that worked was 147 a month. We're on a learning platform called schoolskol.com. You just type in dyslexia classes to find us. And I had to have an instructor that was credible. Her name is Angela. Angela is a certified elementary school teacher in the state of Texas with a two-year master's degree and 11 years of experience. And she teaches her kids this material is a homeschooling mom. Both her dyslexic son, August, and her super gen ed STEM kid, uh, who is in twelve who's uh Alfred, who's 12 years old and is going to be a scientist or an engineer or something like that. He's a super STEM kid. This isn't just for typical kids. And she's there each week for an hour to answer your questions. And I found that was critical because my competition charges a lot, I mean, an insane amount. And it's like, here are videos made in the 1990s or 2000s, and just learn that way. I find that never works.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Receive that one-on-one support like that.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

That's well, it's just so everybody knows, it's it's not one-on-one. It's a group webinar. For an hour a week, we ask you to submit your questions a few days ahead of time. Most parents are asking the same question at the same point where they're having issues. All right. So she's there and we open it up so parents can ask questions at the end of a webinar. And but having that interaction there, and then we we save it so people can look at it, you know, as they have have questions. But that's that's what I found works the best. At schoolskol.com just is more of a community as well, besides just a learning platform, which is critical.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yeah, that's very important to have that community.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yeah, I wanted to start going instead of doing this just one-on-one, so where I can eventually help hundreds and thousands of families. So that was the big goal, and I can tell you my competition will send you just to do reading, something that thick, just to start off with. My process to get kids through, you know, grad school is more like that. The whole process.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

That's amazing.

unknown 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

The most advanced kid that we're working with, his name is Grayson. He's not dyslectic in the least. He's just the 99th percentile student for both math and for science. Grayson wants to get his PhD so he can work for NASA to terraform Mars. So we have to get him published. So I got to get him to write a journal article that'll pass desk rejection, and then it will be rejected by the reviewer. If you miss a comma, you're rejected, to have a list of things that need to get fixed. Then we're going to introduce Grayson. I already met a podcaster who's on the board of one of our top ten technical universities. Grayson will then speak to that professor and say, you know, I my article was rejected. Here's the reasons. I want to work with you to get this published so I can go work at NASA and see the guys draw drop because Grayson's on the young side. How old do you think he is? Nine.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I was gonna say ten. I was gonna say ten, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah. His dad's teaching him this process now. That's as far that's that's that that's the most advanced stuff we do. And yes, Grayson's just a super genius. Every time I test him on things, I'm like, wow, I can't imagine this kid when he actually grows up.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Yeah. What he'll be capable of doing, and yeah, what we'll see cream.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

So when Well, Elon Musk wants to set up a colony on Mars, you gotta terraform it. And just so you know what his project, what we're looking to do, hasn't been done in 14 years, is nobody's updated what's been going on. So I literally have to have him read like every article out there, like every one, and then write up somewhere. That's what we're thinking now.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

That's so incredible.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Well, maybe one day you can travel to Mars.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Not quite ready for that.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

I don't know about that, especially since my fear is height, so I think Mars is is too high for me to go. Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yep. Well, they have a mountain there that makes Mount Everest look like a slight hill, Mount Olympus. So yeah, I don't know. But I honestly I don't think I could either. The G Force is, I don't like I I don't like roller coasters.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Imagine that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

No, me either. No, I'll I'll pass on that. I'll just look at pictures. Right. And interview people that go and come back. So there you go.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah, that that would that would be interesting, but I swear there, that's what the goal is, is to get them to launch, do that, and come back. But I am learning step by step of what it's going to take to terraform that planet. And would you believe a big part is releasing a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? It's to retain the heat. That was that's the first start that what they're thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

I can't imagine what it would take for for them to accomplish all that. But I know that's that's essentially the goal out there is to make it.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yep. They're they're working on it. The parents are like, wait, this kid's not dyslectic. Why are you working with them? It's because the craft of research doesn't say you have to be dyslectic. I just combined the craft of research with this and found that this works for Gen Ed kids as well. I work with the smart gen ed kids, the ones that are go that if you're in any state, your big state university, if they're going to be qualified to go to that place, I'm not saying they would be accepted, but their grades are good enough to go. Those are the kids that we work with.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

They get those kids get passed over too. I mean, not as much as the dyslexic kids, but the the kids that are way above the teachers that are teaching them in school get passed over too because the teachers don't know what to do with them because they're on another level.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

So Yeah, and and here's a little hint. You can send the kid to a community college for 30 credits, and they don't care what they did in high school. They don't have to take the SAT. Because when you look at the admissions office, I had one kid, I said, You're not doing this, you're going to the community college for a year. Don't worry, you're going to do it through your master's so you're not getting robbed because they went crazy. Because literally what they wanted, and this is at a big state you was class president, super high grades, captain of a sports team, you did all this humanitarian work. I'm just like, do you want a student or do you want like everything? I mean, all the time they would have to put in beside school. I'm like, what do you expect these kids to do? Get five hours of sleep a night? Right. And I've had that argument with admissions officers, but now they're running into a bit of a problem because we're entering the baby busts. Because right after the Great Recession, the birth rate dropped like crazy. Notice that Boy Scouts went to allowing girls in. A lot of schools, like the Gal School for Dyslectics, moved to co-ed and dropped the first year from sixth grade to fifth grade. And that's boarding school mostly. So now the colleges are going to find out they're going to have to actually want to take these kids and then they can't send all these ridiculous requirements. I'm literally, I had one Gen A kid that I worked with, okay, got her up, you know, really far, went through the whole process. Then she went to a community college and she got she yelled at me because she was the liberal arts man. She said, This is a joke. I said, take two classes at the major university around you for free. It's called cross-registration. So she did. Then after 30 credits, she got the heck out of there, but she didn't do the SAT and she stopped carrying what she had in high school. And she said, You know, I got rid of my gen end requirements that I hate at the community college, where it was a joke. But at this real university, Big State U, it's so hard to do that. She had one that she forgot, and she said it was so hard. Now I'm in my major and I'm loving it. She said, Thank you for letting me avoid all this nonsense. And she was doing a two-year major, a two-year master's, so she didn't feel robbed about missing her time in college. Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

And save some money that way, too. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah, I would have one of the best examples I had as I had a student, because I'm by Hudson Valley Community College. Rensselaer Polytech Institute is a bus ride away. That's one of that's our oldest tech university. Their graduates are top 10 for pay halfway through your career. This wasn't a client. This was just somebody that I was giving some advice to. I said, go to Hudson Valley. And at the time they went over, they took two classes a semester over at RPI, which they made, I told the parents, this kid's not working. You have no idea how hard they're gonna have to work. They had a 4.0 at both colleges, which is really freaking hard at RPI because it's one of our best in the country, it's top 50. The kid went over after they had almost junior stand, almost full junior year because they took so many classes at RPI and said, I have a 4.0 here. Can I get a scholarship? And the scholarship was tremendous. It was far cheaper than going to the state university at Albany. They finished up, got their degree, stayed on for a master's degree, somehow got a scholarship for most of that. And then when they got out, walked in, they started making over six figures, when six figures meant something. It's incredible. Paid off the student loans in six months. Parents were so parents were so and the the students said, you know what? My rel my friends have these massive student loans. I got nothing.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, that's great. Because so many kids are struggling with student loans.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Very much. Oh yeah. Holds them back financially and mentally.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Especially the millennials who were told to go to college and get art history and borrow as much money as you can. I met one poor soul who went to private undergrad, private law school, owes literally, not joking, $300,000 and the job pays $45K a year.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

That's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

The guy's bankrupt. He can never buy a house.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

I have I I knew one student who went to a state university for the first year. They did they did the Hudson Valley big State U thing, and then did this the law school for uh for an undergrad, then transferred to a top 10 law school. Really top law school. Ended up with these massive loans, and then did what was an edge of what was considered non-for-profit type work. They got it accepted under that, worked on there for 10 years, and the law school, which is Ivy League, paid for their entire thing. Yeah. That helped out. Oh, and they wanted that. And it was the government quasi thing that they had to kind of fudge it, but they were able to get that. Because yeah, Matt, there's nothing liberal than a law student. They have so much debt. Then they got to go and work for a big white shoe law firm, which is as conservative as you can get. And now they're defending the companies that they wanted that they were trying to attack when they were in the the law clinic. And they're miserable. I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Yeah, exactly. Well, Russell, this conversation is such a powerful reminder that sometimes the thing that we think it's holding us back just hasn't been understood yet. And I'm so glad that someone like you has put in the time and the effort and understanding this and has come up with a plan that parents and kids themselves can implement and move ahead in their lives and take away that stigma of they're not good enough or there's something wrong with them.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yeah, no, just understand what I did. I explained to you the model. I showed you how to do word analysis well by articulation. The next step is we do basic body paragraphs, advanced body paragraphs, five-paragraph essay at the basic craft of research level, then we show you how to come up with a unique problem statement and then a unique solution. Okay? Now, if you know the craft of research and you don't know a thing about AI, you will be just fine. I've had parents who think AI is the devil. I said, fine, show them this and the kids can make their own decision at 18. And the parent says, okay, that's fair. And the kids are like, but I'm going to be so far behind. I said, no, you're not. I've had kids do that who hated AI, they got a job, and within three weeks, they're not only doing excellent with AI, they're teaching their peers how to use it. And they knew nothing about it because I tell them to go through those three steps context, problem, statement, solution. And they'd come back, I hate this. I said, Welcome to the adult world. They would produce something, the boss says, we can use this. This is original. Can you teach this to others? Well, yeah, but and then they're teaching the others, and they have no idea what those things are. So they're teaching them what I taught them in high school. And they said, This is so stupid. I said, Yes, but yeah, I'm on my way to get a big promotion, a big raise, but this is so I said, yes, but there are advantages to being dyslexic, and you're just beginning to find that out.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Russell, where can listeners find out more about your work and get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 38:26

Best thing to do is just go to SKO L.com, school, and type in dyslexia classes, and we have one for parents, and you can just that that's what the best way we're trying to send folks. Okay. Because honestly, the cost of doing this individually is so incredibly ridiculously high that I I suggest parents do this to do it themselves, and if they can't hire a high school AP English kid or a college kid in the writing assistance center that's knows how to relate to students, pay to they're pretty inexpensive. We can train them and they can train your kid. I don't want you spending $150 an hour a couple times a week forever.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Yeah, most people can't afford that.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

So if you have anyone in your life that is suffering d from dyslexia, you might want to listen to this and maybe reach out to Russell. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Yeah, thank you so much, Russell, for sharing your story and giving people real hope and real tools to use. And for listeners, if you know someone who needs to hear this, please share this episode with them because sometimes one new understanding can change everything. And we will have Russell's links in the show notes and on our website where guests have a dedicated page so you can find out more about them and watch their episodes. We invite you to become a member of our private community, the story circle, and information is on the website.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

And until next time, keep traveling your story and keep making memories for life.