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.
So you know, when do you let go? You don’t have to let go. And so all of a sudden, here we come into the school with me in tow. This time mom doesn’t go to the teacher though. She goes to the administrator, right. She goes to the vice principal. And she said, I’ve got a problem. Rob… the changing of bells and the changing of classes is messing up Rob when it comes to his testing. What I need is the third accommodation – I need for you to give him a separate classroom for him to take his test in. Right so what’s the school say? Oh we have tons of class, we’ve got tons of room, tons of teachers. Yeah, we’ll do that for Rob. No problem. Well no it wasn’t that easy, right? But my mom will tell you, she cried, she got angry. She did whatever she had to do to get me what I needed. So what they literally did… and I tell this story to kids all over the country. I have half a million kids that I’ve spoken to at elementary school age around the country… and I tell them that was my first special ed classroom. Because literally we went down the hall; we went into this classroom, they took the sink off the wall. They took all the mops and the brooms out and they stuck me in the janitor’s closet. And I tell kids, now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Rob they haven’t done you any favors here.’ You know right. But the fact of the matter is, what that first classroom was, worked for me. What was it? My first special education teacher’s job was to test me, right. So what happened? My job wasn’t… also my mom realized this early on too… her job was not to make the regular general ed teacher’s job harder. Her job was to make it easier for someone to help her child. So what does that teacher do? Now they don’t have resources galore, right? What do they do? They give me a teacher to go in that classroom and on class day… now I’m in regular ed classes the rest of the time. Bright intelligent child, I can take in the information no problem. But on test day, what happens? I go to my special ed room – a desk literally in the janitor’s closet, right. And the regular ed teacher puts the test in the box in the teacher’s office right. And on the day of the test, she grabs the test, comes down to the room. I come down to the room, walk in there. We sit down, then she reads me the questions, I tell her the answers. Verbatim – she writes them verbatim, still testing me for what I know, not just what I can write, right. And then she forwards that back to the regular ed teacher through her box for the… to be graded. Right. So what are we doing now? We’re making it easier on the regular ed teacher. We’re still testing me for what I know and that’s my separate classroom. Now I also got to say, if you meet my learning style. If you meet my learning needs, do I need to untimed tests anymore? No, actually I don’t. I held on to it because I was smart enough to know that the path I was blazing would help other students eventually, right. So I kept it in the repertoire but I don’t need untimed test anymore. If you read me the answers and I tell you the answers I’m done in five minutes because I know and I can tell you more than you can write. You know we could go on for days on what I know about this subject ‘cause I’m an auditory learner. I take it in auditorially and I can spit it back out auditorially. That’s powerful stuff. So now if you meet my learning style, you meet my learning needs, what happens? I’m back in the class before the regular class starts taking the regular test that day. So what happens? Now I’m sitting in there doing just busy work and my friends are looking around going ‘Rob, why aren’t you taking the test?’ ‘Oh, I’m finished.’ Self esteem goes up, right. ‘Cause now we’re talking about my intelligence level. Intelligent child… that’s powerful stuff.
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 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.
And actually my foreign language requirement set up my next accommodation which is a reader. Because when… what they do when they test you for foreign language… I mean, your learning disability, what they’re looking for, right, is the variance. You know, is he really high on some levels and then really low or blocked on other levels. Cause that tells you it’s not an IQ problem, right. It’s actually an intelligence… it’s a blocked way that the brain is wired. So that’s what causes that variance. Well in testing that, I tested out at functionally illiterate. Lower than a 5th grade reading level, right. So now they’re saying, so Rob, we need to give him a reader, you know, in the classrooms. Now I’m five years into college. How did I get five years into college without the reader before this? Well I’ll also tell you what my mom and I figured out is. There’s a blue-collar method – that’s just what I call it, a blue-collar method – to get anything you want in school, it feels like. So what was my blue-collar method? My blue-collar method… by the time I left college I had this down to such an art… I actually listened to my friends’ voices and if I heard a voice that I liked and thought I could to for a long period of time, I would ask them ‘do you read well?’ and if they said ‘yes I do’, I would say ‘I would like to pay you to read my syllabuses on to tape for me.’ Now understand this, people who can read have no clue what a great gift that really is. None whatsoever. So I’m talking about pennies on the dollar. I’m talking about five dollars, ten dollars, to have an entire syllabus read onto tape for me by someone who reads really well. And if they were in the class, they weren’t going to read it anyway. They were going to go get the cliff notes; they were going to knock it out, right. But now if they’re in my class it’s a dual benefit because they’re actually going to hear the information, right. So now okay I’m going to have it read onto tape for me and you know because when the teacher says we’re reading Machiavelli next week. Pages, you know, 300 to 500… what do I do? Back then I grabbed my cassette which I had it recorded on; I popped in my cassette and I listened to it while I drove around town… while I drove back and forth from the college to home. And guess what? Teachers picked the information because it’s good information. It’s worth learning. So what am I doing? I’m listening to it and I do a process what I call internalizing it. Meaning if it’s good, I don’t listen to it just once. I listen to it two, three, four, five times, right, until I can internalize the information and then use it in life. That’s a powerful difference. Because what do we want to do with education? What was education build to do? Education is built to give you something – a tool – that you can use in life to get the results you want, right. Well I’ve figured out now how to internalize it. I just take it… and I’ll tell you a sidebar story. My brother calls me up one time and says, ‘Rob have you got Bush, Sr.’s book on his presidency? Right. And I was like ‘no I haven’t.’ and he goes, ‘well it’s a great book you ought to get it.’ So what do I do? I swing by the Barnes and Noble, you know. I run in there; I get the book on tape, right… on cds. I go out, I stick it in my cd player, about a week, I knock it right out. Right. I call my brother back, ‘oh my gosh, how about the story when he was shot down in the ocean and he’s floating out there and he doesn’t want to float ashore because they’re eating the hearts of the enemy on the shores and he’s trying to stay out to sea til he gets rescued.’ My brother goes, ‘I didn’t read that one.’ I said, ‘why not? best story in the whole book!’ Now think about this, when I did my first book. My publisher told me ‘doesn’t matter what’s in it, Rob, because 85% of all books that are bought are not read. They’re read maybe a little bit but they’re not finished.’ Right. So now I got to thinking, who’s learning at full capacity here: the person who can’t read and is getting the information – and all of it – or the person who can read and isn’t reading – isn’t getting the information? So what am I telling you? I’m telling you, I’m not talking about L-D kids. I’m talking about learning at full capacity. I’m talking about taking education and applying it back to life. How novel’s that approach? Let’s take what we learn in school and apply it to our lives to make our lives better. That’s powerful stuff, right? L-D kid’s figuring it out. You know, I’m figuring it out but I’m looking around going ‘this is amazing.’ See my mom gave me an incredible gift – she taught me my learning style and said, ‘Rob go out and learn.’ That’s powerful, powerful stuff. Every student needs that. Right. So getting back to the story though… we got the reader, right. So when I took my test they said ‘Rob needs a reader.’ Well I already had my blue-collar method and actually back then I had to get qualified by the library of the blind – which is who was providing that stuff. And I had already done that back in like 8th grade. My parents flew us to New York because you had to have a medical doctor sign off on this, right. And so I was getting my textbooks… the only problem was the library of the blind sent you the entire textbook and it was on tape. Big orange recorder… don’t know if any of y’all have seen these, you know -- the big orange recorder, you stick it in there so only you can play it, right. But you can’t find the page number. I mean you can’t find what the professor has picked out for you to learn on that syllabus, right. Cause they go through a lot of trouble to find what’s good and what they want to teach in that class, right? So all of a sudden I’m getting these books on tape but I can’t use them because I can’t find where I am or what I’m doing. Right. So the reader, the blue-collar method, actually worked better for me.
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.
How does it affect you today? I mean, how does your disability work for you today and does it work in public, in life and all that kind of stuff? Well I can tell you I still have it obviously. I still… I read on a fifth grade level today. I don’t know my multiplication tables. I’m on a kindergarten level for memory with names. I don’t know my ending sounds or my beginning sounds in words. And I got a… I’m on a kindergarten level on numbering and sequencing. So how does that affect me in life everyday? Right. The story I’d like to share with this one – I call it ‘A dyslexic walks into a doctor’s office.’ Have you heard this one? Yeah, no it’s my story… so I walk to a doctor’s office right. And I went into my doctor’s office and I’m thinking, okay I’ve been out of town… I’ve actually been in California and I’ve been out there for three days and then I was… had a five hour flight back, five hour flight there, three time zone difference, you know. What all that equates to for me is a need for caffeine, right. The problem is at my age the need for caffeine can also translate into a urinary tract infection. You know a UTI, right. So I get home from this world wind tour I was doing and I’m having a problem. I’m ‘okay I got to go to the doctor, right.’ So I go to the doctor. I walk in there and I’m fine, right. I’ve been to this doctor a hundred times, no big deal. I walk in there. And a new lady’s at the reception desk and I said you know ‘I’m Rob Langston, I need to, you know, make an appointment and get in here and see y’all one day.’ And she goes ‘okay well we’re under new management and here’s some forms you need to fill out.’ I take the forms and guess what? I got a problem. You know I’m not expecting this, right. So I’m looking at the form and I’m thinking what am I going to do. And you know it’s simple questions, you know: what’ the problem…. I can’t spell urinary tract or infection. I can’t spell either one of those, right. So I’m like ‘oh my gosh, what am I going to do?’ You know, where were you born. And I was born in Birmingham, Alabama but I can’t spell Birmingham. Right. And so I’m trying to spell that and then it says are you allergic to anything. Well I’m allergic to omnicef – I think what it’s called – but how do you spell omnicef, right. You know, are you taking anything. Well I take rini-do-ding-ding, you know, for my acid reflux, you know. I don’t know what the name or how to spell that either. You know I’m literally writing all this down just as I can try to spell it, you know, off the top of my head, right. And I’m writing all these things down and I get to like the last question and again, if it had been a computer it would have been yellow, right, staring me in the face. I get to the last… and this is the ironic part, right… get to the last question and it says, occupation. And I put author. And I’m thinking, what are they going to think, you know, when they see this?! This guy’s an author and he’s got everything on this page misspelled, there’s not…. and sure enough I hand it in and I tell them, you know I’m dyslexic; can I apologize? Is there anything on there you have questions… you can ask me and I can tell you orally what it is, right. And then I receive services and I went away fine. And I’m thinking you know normally too, I can call my wife and say I need help with some spellings of stuff too, you know. Or I need to know this or that but in the doctor’s office, a big sign – no cell phones, right. So now I’m losing one of my assistant technologies, right. I need that cell phone to make this work for me. So I get it now… so the other end of this story is again, a dyslexic walks into a doctor’s office, right. Except for this time it’s for my kids, right. I have two children – six and ten. And I got to pick up their prescription, right. So I go in there to pick up their prescription and I walk up to the counter – what’ the first thing they ask you for when you’re going to fill a prescription? Child’s birth date… I don’t store anything. It’s not in there. They’re my children, I love them, but I can’t recall their birth dates automatically. So what am I doing now? I’m standing there, you know. Right there at the counter with the lady looking at me like ‘what’s your child’s birth date?, you know. And I’m going through it in my head and I’m actually talk it out loud, ‘okay my – this is for my son – alright my daughter was born in 2002 and my son, he’s two years older than her… so 2003, 2004…. Yeah, it’s 2004 and it’s um… it’s St. Patrick’s day… it’s St. Patrick’s day, what is St. Patrick’s day? And the lady said ‘March.’ March, yeah March, okay! So we got March and we got 2000… and um, you know, what day is St. Patrick’s day on? Is it the 15th, something like that? Oh no 17th. Oh the 17th, right. And so I’m going through all this in my head and everything and then she pulls it up on the computer and goes ‘oh here it is, March 17th 2004.’ Or 2005, that’s what it was… 2005. Got the wrong year, you know. This lady’s looking at me like ‘do you even know your children,’ you know. But it’s dyslexia, you know, and it’s there. And I have my technology today and I can pull it out, I can hit my notes, I can open it up and there’s my kids’ birth dates, you know. And I can review that before I go in to get their subscriptions… prescriptions now, you know. What was the total cost to me at that moment? My momma’s tefloned my self esteem, right. So well a little bit of embarrassment there, but not that big a deal. What is the true cost of that moment? I still got doctor services when I needed them. My children still love me no matter whether I can recall their birth dates on cue or not. In the big picture of that moment, the cost is very little. The cost is very little. We don’t need to put the emphasis on it that we do. We put too much emphasis on it and we make it too hard. We make it too hard. We have to protect their self esteem. We have to give them their learning styles. We have to test them and teach them the way that they learn. If you do that you will turn out life long learners – kids that can move mountains. And we need that today more than ever. I’m telling you we can’t afford to lose one dyslexic – one of these children – because they’re going to have the impact on our lives. And the last thing I’d like to do today to open the conference actually comes from my mom and myself, because as a parent in here or as a teacher in here – if you’re a teacher in here I’d like to tell you my mom had told me when you leave a conference Rob that’s full of a room of teachers, what I want you to do is thank them for me. I want you to thank them for me because if it wasn’t for the partnerships and teachers that cared, we would have lost you and that is too big of a loss for me and as it turns out for our society today, what would have happened. So I want you to thank them for me. And the next thing is as a parent or as a teacher I know you don’t get to hear this. So I’m going to close today with a thank you from me, the L-D child. I’m not a teacher; I’m not a professor; I’m not even in the education system although I visit it almost every day. What I am is an L-D child that people like you, here doing this, when it’s life or death, making a difference for children like me, that changes the world. And I’d like to close today by saying ‘thank you’ from me and my mom. Thanks for having me today.
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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.
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…was a note taker. Where’d that come from? Well when I tested out I think I was like 22… I can look it up in the book but I think I was 22 years old at the time and when I took the test for Richard I was actually listening and comprehensive skills on a 33-year-old level. Right. So in the classroom what am I doing? I’ve got tremendous auditory skills. I’m listening, taking in information on a 33-year-old level, right? That same test proved that I’m writing on as low as a 3rd grade level. So what am I doing when I’m taking notes? What am I not doing when I’m taking notes? Listening. I get 85% of what I know from listening. What should I be doing the entire time I’m in a classroom? Listening! Is it really that simple? Absolutely. So what do I need? I need a note taker. Why do you need a note taker? ‘Cause again people who take notes well don’t know what a great gift that is. ‘Cause what are they actually listening for? They’re listening for what’s going to be on the test. They’re listening for what the emphasis are in the class. And they’re taking all this information down and I want that. Now I’m only reading on a 5th grade level but that’s going to give me my outline for studying. Right? So what do I do? As a blue-collar method before they require that I have a note taker for the class… what do I do? I walk up… at the first week of class I’m sitting here and I’m watching pencils. Right? That’s what I do in class. I’m listening to the teacher but I’m watching pencils, right. And then if I see someone taking notes really well then I kind of look real close and see if they write neatly, you know. And then if they write neatly, I walk up to them after class and I say, “Hey my name’s Ron Langston; I have this thing called dyslexia. I was wondering if I could pay you to copy your notes.” Now again, how many people turn me down to pay them for something they were going to do anyway and did well? Didn’t have any clue what a gift it was. Right? Pennies on the dollar, five dollars… ten dollars… in order for me to get my entire notes for the entire semester taken for me by the best note taker in the class. Who’s learning at full capacity here? Who’s learning they’re learning style despite being able to read, write and do math, right? So all of a sudden, you know, the note taker and the reader come out. So that’s great. And the school actually find…now I’m in my 5th year but they give me a note taker and it boiled down to the professor at the beginning of the quarter would raise their… or semester and would say, “who in here takes notes well?” And inevitably somebody’s hands would go up, right. And he’d say, “I would like for you to speak with Rob Langston after class, you know, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do for your effort. Right? And so then they… sure enough, that’s how I got my note takers from my classes from then on forward. But prior to that I used my blue-collar method.