The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
The oral testing, untimed test, the separate classroom… and I’m going to start with oral testing cause that’s the first thing we ran into. But I’m also going to say this was in the early 70s, you know. This was before IDEA, the re-authorization of IDEA. This was back when basically my mom had an amazing way of thinking about things. And in retrospect it was an amazingly simple way of thinking about things. But if you keep it simple you’re able to plow through and get the results that you want, right. So where did oral testing come from? Oral testing came from the second grade. That’s when I got my first accommodation. And I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia til eighth grade, but in second grade I got my first accommodation. Where did that come from? Well I graduated first grade and they handed my mom a list of two hundred words and said ‘these are the words he will learn this year. What you need to do is go over them with him this summer and make sure when he comes back for second grade, that’s it fresh in his mind.’ Right. So mom says ‘okay what we’ll do is Rob you read me the questions… I mean read me the words, we’ll start with the ones you don’t know so read all the ones you do know.’ I could recognize and use in a sentence two words on that list – I and A. Then my mom looks at me and says ‘Rob what happened? You’re in the advance reading group at school. You can’t read at all.’ I said ‘no mom, I can’t read.’ How did that happen? What I’m telling you is the L-D child, although in the polls they’ve done in the past, society still equates that with mental retardation – which we know is a totally different diagnosis. But that’s the way we think of it when we’re looking at an L-D child. What I’m telling you today is these are some of your best and brightest. These are smart kids. And when I talk to parents and teachers, I tell you they are smart enough to trick you. They will trick you because see they’re in fight or flight. What we’ve figured out later on too when I was working for the Charles and Helen Schwab Family Foundation in San Francisco, we realized kids aren’t sharing. As a society we really don’t share naturally right. So what we got to do is ‘why aren’t these kids sharing and what are they doing to trick us?’ Well I was lying, hiding, cheating, memorizing, and you talk about an interesting point for future life. Let’s think about this: in first grade I knew I had what we now know in business called instant rapport. I had to create instant rapport with other children on the PE field. Why was that? Because I had to get them to like me so much that they liked me more than they feared the authority figure in their life – at that time, the teacher. Now why’d they have to do that? They had to do that because they had to let me cheat. I had to get them to like me enough to let me cheat off them despite what the teacher wants them to do and says is appropriate and not appropriate. Now in business and life that instant rapport is a powerful tool – it’s called sales. If you can sell yourself then you can sell other things. So that was a by-product of it, but if you look at what I was in, literally fight or flight mode, I have to win people to my cause in order to accomplish what I want to accomplish which was to survive in school. So not only that but then I’m also adding hiding, literally trying not to turn in my paperwork. I’m cheating; I’m memorizing cause that’s where the reading group came in. My mom was baffled, she said ‘Rob you’re in the advanced reading group. How did you do that?’ Well it was really pretty simple: 1. I sat like the third or fourth kid in the reading group, right. And this is the little round half moon table in the back that the teacher scooted right up in the middle, right. And she’s going let’s read around the room, right. And she’s reading around the table… well the kids are reading and what I’m doing is listening and then at least by the second round if not by the first – if this was See Spot Run stuff back in my first grade year – so you know, they read the whole book; the next person reads the whole book, teacher makes corrections of them, right. I add the teacher’s corrections to what I’m going to say, right, and then I read it perfectly. I literally tilt my book back so they can’t see what page I’m on. You can stop my, start me and I know exactly where I am – I’m doing it verbatim from what I just heard. Why? Because my auditory processing skills because of my written language deficiency is powerful… powerful… and I am smart. I can say that today and I can tell you how I got to that point but back then I didn’t believe I was. But you think about what I was doing to get through school and get through life, right. So all of a sudden I’m telling mom ‘I can’t write what I know.’ I can’t write what I know. That’s what the basic statement that came out of me when I was finally confronted with what mom was asking me why I couldn’t do what I could do. Alright, I said well I can’t write what I know. My mom made a decision that day that changed my entire educational career. She said I want my son tested for what he knows not just what he can write. This is in second grade. But now I told you I graduated from the University of West Georgia with written language skills as low as a third grade level. What if we’d held me to that level? I would be one of the people that I told you about at the beginning of this program, in the penal system, cause my self esteem would have taken a hit. I’d have been held back again and again. And I would have been understanding that I can’t do it. I would have bought into that. But see my mom didn’t buy into that. She said I got a smart, intelligent child at home that’s failing at school so there’s something wrong with school. You know that was her whole thought process and like I said this was the early 70s, you don’t challenge the school, back then especially. But my mom said ‘no I’m going to get you what you need. I’m going to do it, if I have to do it one teacher at a time.’ So then I go into the… I’ll tell you another thing that happened here cause my perception is different from my mom’s, and one day hopefully we’ll get mom’s perception captured for everybody, but I still kind of… even though I’d shared as a child I didn’t register that everybody was now trying to help me, right. I didn’t realize the behind-the-scenes that was happening, so I was still feeling like I was out there having to accomplish whatever I could accomplish, right. So I’m telling you I’m still lying, cheating, hiding, and memorizing just because I started announcing it, that’s the first step for getting help, but it takes a long time to even erase one year. One year… think about that. One full year of trying to be this person who had to do those things to get through school. I’m here today to tell you one day’s too much. Our children learn fast and these are bright, intelligent kids. So my mom says ‘okay Rob I’m going to get you help.’ But still I’m using my techniques. And one of my techniques at home was to talk my parents into educating me the way I wanted to be educated, right. I’m a charismatic child. I go in there and I tell mom ‘okay I’m going to do this now… second grade’s going to be different,’ right. And so what we did was I said you read me the chapters, you know, and then you read me the questions at the end of the chapters and if I know the stuff I’m going to be able to answer the questions. If I answer them right, I get to go play, right. That’s all I really cared about… I get to go back to the sandbox if I get everything right, right. So sure enough mom does that for me. She’s helping me, right; parents want to help. She’s reading me this information; she’s reading me the questions at the end; I’m telling her the answers then I go to take the test. The only problem is I still don’t have any skills. I still don’t have any written language skills to communicate what I know, because I’m still hiding, lying and cheating. So now, I can take my test right. I go into the class; I take my test… at the end of an hour I’ve got two incomplete answers on the page, right. And they’re not even spelled right. So sure enough I turn that paper in and the next day I get my F back, right. So I take my F home and I hand it to my mom. My mom looks at it and says, ‘Rob what happened? You knew all this stuff last night. Did you forget? I mean that’s a nature progression right. You forgot – that’s okay, we all forget. Did you forget?’ I said ‘no mom I still know the information I just can’t write what I know. I can’t get it out of my head.’ So my mom said ‘okay I got to do something,’ cause my writing… even though cause I said that the first time, and they’re working on my writing… but it’s no good, right. So now my mom… and my mom’s what you call an advocate, and for me advocate’s a very simple definition – advocate means action. You take action on a child’s behalf. And I’ll also tell you like I tell all parents and teachers, go with your gut. Your gut instinct is right. My mom did it 99.9% right, just listening to her gut. But then she had the confidence to act on what her gut was telling her, right. So sure enough my mom says ‘okay I got to get you tested the way I test you.’ So here we go… we head into school with me in tow, right. We go to the teacher that I had just taken the test for and mom says ‘I was wondering if you would test Rob the way I test Rob.’ And the teacher said ‘well how’s that?’ and my mom said orally. Teacher said ‘what’s that?’ early 70s right. So my mom said ‘if you will read him the questions, if he answers the questions to your satisfaction, will you give him credit for knowing the answers to the test…to the questions?’ She talked one teacher into doing that and let me tell you this, the education system is set up the same way the legal system is – if you start setting those precedents early and you document them, they will follow you and you can build on them, right. So she talks this one… as a matter of fact that teacher says ‘I don’t want any hanky business, I want you to go home and study or anything… we’ll do it right now.’ So she flips the test out of the desk starts reading me the questions, I start telling her the answers, at the end of the test she looks up and she says ‘well you do know this stuff.’ Now the number one thing my mom protected my entire educational career was my self esteem. How important is it for me to know that the teacher knows that I’m smart? That’s powerful stuff. That’s powerful stuff. Why? Because all of a sudden my teacher… cause understand this and I played into this big time… teacher use to think of the L-D child as the one that you hoped didn’t explode in your classroom. You know, I mean that’s kind of how they were looking at me, ‘just don’t set him off whatever you do.’ Now I was a very docile child because I was scared to death everyday in class but at the same time I knew they thought this. So what did I do? I put my head down everyday, right. You know, am I sleeping? No, I’m not sleeping; I’m listening because I’m a bright, intelligent kid. I’m taking information; I just don’t want to be called on to read out loud. I don’t want to be called on to do these things. So I knew that teacher would let me do that because they were worried about the L-D child erupting in their classroom, right. So all of a sudden I’m sitting there and I’m playing into this. Well this teacher now looks at me and has expectations of me, right. You’re looking at a totally different child now… you just got a hundred on the test. You didn’t even think he was listening. Two minutes ago he was fidgeting with his head down, trying to take naps in your classroom. This child’s a behavior problem right. This child… this child’s going to… this child’s going to disrupt in my class by not listening to me, not paying attention to me. No, not at all. This child doesn’t understand what’s going on in this child’s life. It’s up to us as adults to understand and meet that child’s needs, right. So all of a sudden this teacher starts having expectations… and she starts sharing what’s she doing with Rob in her class with other teachers. So then other teachers start thinking well if he can do that in your class then maybe he can do that in my class, right. So oral testing starts spreading. And that’s nice right, because that’s a major accommodation for me early on was… now they’re still working. I still worked on my reading, writing… I’m not telling you that’s not important cause it is. I went to a special class during school every day. I went to a special school after school every day. I went to… I was tutored both sessions every summer up to about eighth grade to try to teach me to read and write. So I wasn’t giving up on it but what do we want to test a child for in front of us at the moment in class? Their intelligence – what they know, not just what they can write. And my mom instinctively knew ‘he’ll write when he wants to. I don’t know when we’re going to get there but that’s something we’re going to worry about at a later date.’ So now I’ve got oral testing and that’s a good thing.
The Dyslexia Educational Network
The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
Video Transcript
So what I’m going to do now is I’m going to tell you some stories about the charismatic adults in my life. The #1 one being my mother cause my mother had an impact on me that was amazing, because of the way she thought about me, and the way she thought about school and education. Because when we were going through school we didn’t realize we’d done anything all that special. Until I actually graduated from the university and then people started saying ‘Rob how’d you do that? You know with no reading, writing or arithmetic skills, how do you have a diploma? How are you out there? So what we’re going to talk about today is what the education system can do for you. Cause people also say ‘Rob the education system really failed you didn’t it?’ No. It didn’t fail me at all. It turned out a lifetime learner that loves learning, by meeting my learning style and meeting my learning needs. That’s powerful stuff. And that’s what education can do today. We have a system in place to save these kids before they go to prison. It’s called education. And we can do it. So how important is it that you’re here today? What I’m telling you is it’s life or death for these kids. It is literally life or death for these kids. Cause if they’re not making it in education today, they’re not making it. It’s absolutely that simple. So in understanding this I got to thinking about it and I thought ‘well I need to reflect back on how this all happened.’ Now I could get up here… and I have a little sheet of paper here… and I could just go down and tell you, okay if you make these accommodations for students they’ll have a chance to survive. And I could tell you the oral testing, untimed test, separate classroom… I could tell you all these accommodations but what I want to do today for you is tell you the story behind the accommodation, cause that’s where we are. That’s where the charismatic adults are. That’s where the people who can make a difference for these children are. So in order to do that I’d like to start with my entering college. So I started… I entered college in 1986, the University of West Georgia. Back then it was West Georgia College and when I entered the university they said ‘Rob you’re the first student we’ve had to make accommodations for based on a learning disability.’ Now was I the first L-D ever to go to college? No. Absolutely not, but what we’re going to talk about today really, really is that new of a concept -- L-D kids in college. I did my first talk back in 1991 to a group of high school students that were learning disabled that did not believe they could go to college. Not one single student in that room believed they could go to college. That’s why they brought me in to talk to them, because I was already in college making it happen. So that’s… it’s really amazing how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. And we’ll cover that as well too. But… so I entered in 1986 and Dr. Anne Phillips there said, ‘Rob how are we going to introduce you to your professors so they understand the gravity of the situation?’ see cause I use to call my disability an invisible physical disability. Right. You couldn’t see it. It’s not like I have a wheelchair to back me up; I don’t have casts. I don’t have anything to outwardly show that I have a disability. And Anne said the professors just aren’t going to make accommodations for you, because they’re going to look at you – you speak well, you talk well, you know, you sound intelligent... they’re not going to be willing to do it. So what are we going to do?’ And we actually came up with the wheelchair form. That’s what I call it. I don’t know what it’s really called but all I know is there’s a wheelchair picture in the top right-hand corner of my page. And what we did was the same thing you do for somebody with a physical disability, you know – we said here’s Rob’s strengths and here’s Robs weaknesses. And so we put that on that form and Dr. Anne Phillips said 'you take this to a professor, they’ll understand what you’re talking about.'
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Can one person… lot of people in here… can one person really make a difference in a child’s life? Yeah, oh your mom can, sure, a parent can, a guardian can, a teacher can… that’s powerful stuff. But one single person? How about someone who didn’t believe in it in the first place? Like my high school science teacher, who said ‘Rob’s failing my class.’ Right. The F comes home. What happens? Mom’s in there, right. We’re both in there, Dr. Newton says, ‘okay you’re failing my class, you’re not really doing that well, I don’t know what to do about it. What can we do?’ Right. Well how about you give me oral testing, untimed tests, separate classroom to take the test in…. Dr. Newton says ‘okay meet me before school test day; I’ll actually read it to you myself cause I like administering my own tests, and if you answer the questions I’ll give you credit for knowing the answers.’ Right. And he did that. And so the end of the semester…the end of the school, he then turns around – and I’m going to see if I can nail it quickly or not in here – he turns around and writes a letter. A one-page hand-written letter that paraphrasing says ‘Rob was failing my class until I gave him alternative class time, oral testing and maybe the combinations for him. When I did that he became an A-B student in my class. Why do I have this one hand written letter from my high school science teacher? Do you want me to tell you when I got it? When I was going to do my book. I got it because I went to the school… the university and I said I would like to have all my documents from my education. Right. So they went and got the hand truck; they brought everything out, you know, because I had a lot of paperwork to get me through school. You want the paper trail. Don’t fear the paper trail. Don’t fear the diagnosis. Get it. Make it work for you right. They wheel it out. I take this big – literally its not this big – and I take this folder, I’m getting ready to walk out… true story, piece of paper falls on the floor. I reach down; I pick it up. It’s that hand-written letter from my high school science teacher. I’m looking at it. I didn’t’ even know this letter was in existence. I mean what’s this letter for? So when I’m confused and don’t know what to do, what do I do? Call my momma, right? I called mom, said ‘mom you’re not going to believe this. I was just walking out of the school and a letter from Dr. Newton fell out on the ground. Where’d that come from?’ She said, ‘well I put it in there.’ I said ‘why’d you put it in there?’ She goes ‘that one letter is what allowed you to take your SAT test, untimed, in a separate classroom, with a reader. That one letter’s what allowed you to take your regents test, untimed, in a separate classroom, with a reader.’ One hand-written letter from my high school science teacher enabled me to even the playing field for my education. That’s powerful stuff. Can one person make a difference? Absolutely, absolutely they can.