Packers Assistant Coach Takes On Dyslexia
Packers Assistant Coach Takes On Dyslexia
By Lori Nickel of the Journal Sentinel
Photo by: Mark Hoffman
The night before Joe Whitt Jr. was supposed to get up in front of every Southeastern Conference football and basketball coach and athletic director to give a speech as the student advisory representative, he pulled out his notes.
Reading them, the old anxieties came back.
So he made a bold choice: He would memorize the speech. And toss the notes.
The next day, he got up in front of all those famous, powerful people and hit a home run. He delivered on the key topics, spoke with confidence and authority and was congratulated by the SEC's biggest names for a job well done.
But what they didn't know - what most people didn't know, what even he didn't know for a long time - was that he had to memorize that speech. He was dyslexic, and reading that speech might have just garbled the whole thing up.
"It's a curse. But it's a gift at the same time," said Whitt. "You just have to not be afraid to get help. And then you can flourish from there."
Taking on the challenge
Now, the Green Bay Packers defensive backs coach is still working around the challenges of dyslexia. He has just completed "The 48 Laws of Power" by both reading it and listening to the book on tape.
And now he's reading "The Power of Who" page by page.
"And with my dyslexia, it's hard for me," said Whitt. "It takes me a long time to read a book, to be honest with you. But I fight through it. I'm trying to read as much as I can, because my kids are young and I want them to see Daddy reading."
Whitt has an agenda here, starting with his 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, but reaching further than that, if he can help it. He is a "geek" - as in, the nationwide library campaign that encourages everyone, especially children, to use these carefree summer days to crack open a book and open their worlds.
When Whitt opened up about his dyslexia right before Super Bowl XLV he looked like a good role model for the library campaign, so they contacted him and he agreed to help.
Whitt poses with the Lombardi Trophy and his Super Bowl XLV ring in his home office in Alabama and the photo is displayed in libraries all over his home state: Joe Whitt Jr. "Geeks" Competition.
There was a time when this subject was very painful for him, mostly because he didn't know what it was. He never knew anyone with dyslexia.
"I just knew I was being pulled out of class up until fifth grade," said Whitt. "As a kid I was terrified to be called on in class to read aloud. In the ninth grade, I started telling my teachers - all the way up to my professors in college - don't call on me to read. I'm not going to do it. Because I was just terrified.
"And at the same time, I'm president of the class, now. I made good grades. It's just - I wasn't very good at reading. I had dyslexia."
Father's career
His father, Joe Whitt, is legendary in the SEC and Alabama, a gifted former assistant coach at Auburn who helped the Tigers win five SEC titles and appear in 17 bowl games. He also coached 20 players who were drafted in the NFL. But he probably just worked around his dyslexia, never officially diagnosed, as well, said his son.
As for Joe Whitt Jr.'s son, yes, he looks for signs of it constantly, but only because Whitt wants to make sure he can help his son in every way possible and encourage him to not give up because reading is hard.
You just don't tell a Whitt he can't do something.
"I could care less if my kids play sports," said Whitt. "It's OK if they want to. But what I want is them to be given every chance to be successful through their education."
Memory skills
Whitt believes his dyslexia actually might enhance his memory skills. He was told about a recent development in which research showed some people with dyslexia might have excellent peripheral vision.
To Whitt, that was no surprise at all. For him, his memory is exceptional. He also gave his high school graduation speech from memory, not notes. And he said his dyslexia presents no challenges to him in his role with the Packers.
"I don't read well, but my memory is unbelievable. So, if I hear something? I have it," said Whitt. "It really helps me now because as we're putting in systems and schemes, if it doesn't flow, it doesn't make sense to me. So, I won't let it go until it makes sense to me. Because I know once it makes sense to me, it's going to make sense to my players.
"And I can see that my dad has the same memory that I have. He can give a speech off of memory, just look at a couple of bullet points and go with it."
So there's really two messages here from Whitt, who delighted in seeing Miami Heat superstar LeBron James reading before one of the NBA Finals games.
Helping out
He wants kids to get help if they need it and he wants kids to go to the library and get "geeked" about something.
"I want to get kids to know that it's cool to read," said Whitt. "Right now, especially in the black community, there are too many kids who think the only thing they can do is play football, basketball, or be a rapper or a singer, or an entertainer to make it out of their situation.
"I don't think it's said enough, so I'll say it. I want kids to realize, you can be smart - and still have a learning disability. You have to work around it."
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Dyslexia Could Never Sack Jets' Tebow
Dyslexia Could Never Sack Jets' Tebow
Photo by Bill Kostroun/New York Post
nypost.com
By Brian Costello
CORTLAND — Tim Tebow was 7 years old when his mother Pam had him tested for learning disabilities. Tebow took a few tests to see how he processed information and what his IQ was. The results showed he was dyslexic.
Seventeen years later, Tebow is sitting on the edge of the Jets’ practice field. The quarterback just finished his best practice of training camp as he sat down with The Post to discuss the challenges dyslexia has presented.
“There’s a lot of people that have certain processing disabilities and it has nothing to do with your intelligence, which I think is a big misconception that people have,” Tebow said. “Coach [Rex] Ryan has dyslexia. He’s one of the most intelligent football coaches around. I’ve always tried to share, especially with kids, to be confident with it. You know, ‘hey, this isn’t something that’s a handicap. You just have to learn how you learn and overcome it. It’s something that you can be better off because of, because you know how you learn.’ ’’
Tebow is a kinesthetic learner, meaning he learns by doing rather than by sitting and listening to a lecture. He said he learns best by walking through things, then writing them down.
Some people have theorized that Tebow struggles in practice because he has a tough time learning the playbook. But Tebow said he does not think dyslexia has affected him on the field at all.
Since the Jets acquired him in March from the Broncos, he has spent his time learning offensive coordinator Tony Sparano’s system and feels he has not had a problem.
“This is my third offense in three years, so I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job in trying to understand each offense and grasp it,” Tebow said. “Who knows? Pretty soon I might have all the offenses.”
Dyslexia runs in Tebow’s family. Both his father Bob and older brother, Robby, are dyslexic, too.
Tebow was home-schooled by his mother, who would quiz Tebow and his siblings at the dinner table. When he got to college at Florida, he found the classes in Gainesville were easier than what his mother threw at him back home.
“My mom was sometimes pretty tough,” Tebow said. “She made me work hard. I think [college] was easier because I was never the best test taker, but I felt like I was pretty good at doing my work and projects and getting things done and everything like that. So, I was very blessed at Florida to graduate with honors and did some pretty good things there.”
Tebow majored in family youth and community sciences with a minor in communication. He wanted to learn about starting his own foundation and become a better public speaker. At Florida, Tebow was permitted an extra 30 minutes to finish exams because of his dyslexia. But he declined the extra time.
“I felt like if I knew it, I knew it,” Tebow said. “If I didn’t, it wasn’t going to come to me. I just felt like I’m going to study hard and have this information down. I didn’t feel like I needed the extra time.”
He graduated with a 3.7 GPA.
Tebow now spends time speaking to children with dyslexia about what he’s been through. Many of the kids feel insecure about the disability.
“When kids get labeled as a dyslexic, they think, ‘oh man, does this make me dumb? Does this make me stupid? Does this make me not as intelligent as this person?’ Absolutely not,” Tebow said.
Kids now see an NFL quarterback, who is one of the most popular figures in the country and who overcame his learning challenge.
“I’ve always looked at it like if I can take this and help kids that might be shy about it or insecure about it,” Tebow said, “or it’s something that affects their self-esteem, then I’m glad I have it.”
The Dyslexia Educational Network Broadcasting at DyslexiaEd.com
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Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
Dyslexic Engineer
The Dyslexic Engineer
by Paul J Clarke MIET
I found out I was Dyslexic when I started secondary school at the age of 12. By the time I left I had poor grades and was told I would not amount to much. However Dyslexia is not a disability or have something missing in our brains, its just the way we are wired up. So how does someone with dyslexia get by in a world or words and what magic powers have some of us harnessed that has given us an advantage over others, like me in becoming an electronics design engineer.
At the beginning I can remember looking at black boards or pages of text having no idea what other kids around me were seeing. For me the pages may have well as been blank for all I could gleam from them. However I was lucky as when I started my secondary school my teacher spotted what I was having problems. I was tested for Dyslexia and found to have a mild form. The approach for me in my English lesions from my teacher was not to learn to read although that was a part of it, but more to focus on the things that dyslexics and autistic people have, the ability to see things differently. For me I was able to rotate images in my head and look at drawings and describe what could not be seen or how it would look form a different angle. I also found i could memorize chucks of maps, drawings etc in a almost photographic type way. My teacher encouraged these skills and gave me and others more confidence which lead us to start learning to read more and more. By the time I left school at 16 I had reading age of around 10.
Over the years I have slowly got better at reading and writing but its still painfully slow compared to the speed my brain wants to run at. Computers and PCs were just entering homes and when I started my ONC in electronics at collage I know I would have never finished it or my HNC without Word and a spell checker!
Since then I've relied heavily on computers to get by in my working day. Lists are important to me and where I work we have an internal wiki which I use to assemble ideas. Just more recently I have found www.workflowy.com which is a really nice little online tool for generating lists. I have also used a package called Bugzilla which is fab at tracking faults, bug or issues on software projects. Bugzilla however is quite flexible and can be used on hardware projects or even just you day to day life. Being dyslexic meant I had to be better at project managing my day at work - unfortunately I've never quite got it to work at home.!
Another really good tool I use is to block out my calender in Outlook using bright colours. each colour means a different type of task and allows me to look and see quickly what I've got planed. I also block out my whole day, not just for appointments or meeting, but anything I want to get done. This way I don't forget what I have planed and have already set aside time to do it.
Many of these things may look and sound like project management tools. In away I have stolen them from this area of business but you will find that these techniques are being taught to people today with dyslexia. these are methods of giving back Dyslexics some control.
There was recently a program on the BBC called "Don't Call Me Stupid" which follows the UK actress Kara Tointon who explain just what it like to be dyslexic and for anyone who watches it you will also see the emotional impact that it can have on a individual too. For me I forgot just how hard I found it to get though school and now having tools and work arounds I don't get those feelings of depression and frustration anymore.
For me I now find Dyslexia a gift. I do not think I could come up with design ideas and play around with stuff in my head if I was not like this. I now talk around with large chunks of circuits and software in my head that I can think over, try ideas and work stuff out. It’s like having a 3D whiteboard in my head. I still need pen and paper but in a funny way I like being dyslexic. I can get by with the reading and writing and getting my words mixed up, however I think I've come out better off in my career because of the way my head is wired up.
I would say to anyone who is dyslexia not to give up. Many are told that they will never come to much and give up too easy. I have always aspired to be more, maybe because I'm dyslexic,and so should others.
Posted by Paul J Clarke MIET
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Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
The Paradox of Dyslexia: Slow Reading, Fast Thinking
MOLLY PATTERSON APRIL 3, 2011 2
Dr. Sally Shaywitz is the Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development, and Dr. Bennett Shaywitz is the Charles and Helen Schwab Professor in Dyslexia and Learning Development and Chief of Child Neurology at Yale University. Together they head The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, which studies the correlation between reading and IQ in dyslexic and typical students, shedding new light on what has been termed “the hidden disability.”
Dyslexic students are often frustrated or confused as to why certain assignments – reading, for example – take them longer to complete than their peers. “Someone once said to me, ‘I wonder what it feels like when a child first realizes that he or she can’t do what those around him or her are doing.’ And that was really quite devastating,” says Sally Shaywitz.
She and her husband Bennett set out to help these students by examining the science of dyslexia. Most recently, the Shaywitzes at the Yale Center for Creativity & Dyslexia have established a connection between IQ and reading in dyslexic students versus typical students.
Connecting IQ, Cognition, and Behavior
The Shaywitzes conducted epidemiologic longitudinal research on a large sample population of Connecticut students. Twenty-four elementary schools were chosen from the state of Connecticut – two were randomly selected from twelve separate towns across the state – and students were tested upon entry into kindergarten. The same students were tracked over more than twenty years, each taking a reading test annually and an IQ test biannually until adolescence. The tests were individually administered, constituting a statistical “gold standard,” according to Sally Shaywitz. Including these tests, researchers examined the cognition and behavior of dyslexic versus typical students and then recorded and compared the brain images of dyslexic and typical students.
The results show that in typical readers, IQ and reading track together and are dynamically linked over time. Sally Shaywitz calls the two components “kissing cousins” because they are “intertwined,” a conclusion that she notes has been widely accepted by the public. In contrast, the Shaywitzes found that in dyslexic readers, IQ and reading diverge. Thus, a highly intelligent dyslexic student can have a low reading score. This paradox is illustrated in Figure 1, where the left panel shows the dynamic link between reading and IQ development in typical readers, and the right panel shows the disconnection between reading and IQ in dyslexic readers.
figure 1
Figure 1: The dynamic (left) and dissociated (right) links between IQ and reading in typical and dyslexic students. Graphic courtesy of Drs. Shaywitz, The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record images of dyslexic and typical children and adoslecents. Figure 2 illustrates these images: The left figure is a composite fMRI of 74 typical readers contrasted with 70 dyslexic readers. The yellow regions are parts of the brain that are more active in typical readers com-pared to dyslexic readers. The right figure is a schematic view. Both images show three systems for reading: an anterior system in the region of the inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area), which is believed to serve articulation and word analysis, and two posterior systems, one in the parietotemporal region, which is believed to serve word analysis, and a second in the occipitotemporal region (the word-form area), which is believed to enable the rapid, automatic, fluent identification of words. These systems are used for fast, fluent automatic reading, but the scans show that dyslexic individuals are neurobiologically wired to read slowly.
figure 2
Figure 2: An illustration of three neural systems for reading on the surface of the left hemisphere. Graphic courtesy of Drs. Shaywitz, The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.
Functional brain imaging has made the once-hidden disability of dyslexia a visible one, increasing awareness and understanding of dyslexia in education and policy-making. As one of many resulting policies in education, dyslexic students are often allotted additional testing time. This allows them to demonstrate what they know and not be penalized for slow reading that is biologically determined and therefore beyond their control. These compelling findings of a neural signature for dyslexia are, according to Bennett Shaywitz, “replicable around the world.”
Dyslexia Around the World
Dyslexia, a fundamental difficulty in separating the sounds of a spoken language, is common to every alphabetic and logographic language. In languages with increased transparency between sounds and letters, including Italian or Finnish, dyslexic children may initially appear to read accurately, with difficulties often not emerging until adolescence or young adulthood. Bennett Shaywitz cites a study by Eraldo Paulesu, who aimed to compare dyslexia in Italian, English, and French college students. He had to recruit Italian college students in schools of engineering because so few Italians had been diagnosed with dyslexia. Indeed, dyslexics not only succeed in engineering but in a range of fields including medicine and law. Ultimately, although they are slower readers, dyslexic students have strengths in higher order thinking and reasoning skills. In fact, as Bennett Shaywitz points out, the 2009 Nobel Laureate in medicine, molecular biologist Dr. Carol Greider, is dyslexic.
The scientific and educational communities have reacted positively to the results of the IQ and reading study, says Sally Shaywitz. The results are particularly compelling because they confirm the relationship between IQ and reading, elucidate the experiences of the dyslexic, and corroborate the clinical findings of other researchers.
As a secondary result of the study, the data identified certain basics of dyslexia that were initially unknown or misunderstood. “From an epidemiologic perspective, we’ve been able to determine from the random sample of Connecticut school children that dyslexia affects one in five individuals,” says Sally Shaywitz. “We’ve also found that there is no significant difference between the number of girls and boys identified [as having dyslexia].”
figure 3
A neural signature for dyslexia. Image courtesy of Drs. Bennett and Sally Shaywitz.
Identifying Dyslexia in School Systems
School systems often have trouble identifying dyslexic students because testing students for dyslexia is not a standard procedure, and dyslexic individuals often exhibit only subtle symptoms. It is often difficult for teachers to recognize that the same child who is extremely bright can also be the one who is struggling to retrieve spoken words or to read fluently.
To better help students with dyslexia, Sally Shaywitz suggests teachers instruct dyslexic students in smaller groups of a size no bigger than five students. Instruction needs to be delivered in this manner consistently – 60 to 90 minutes a day, 4 to 5 days a week – by educators trained in teaching dyslexic students. This is a tall order and “a very slow, laborious process,” Sally Shaywitz concedes, but rewarding in the end. Sally Shaywitz says that accuracy can be taught; however, closing the gap in reading fluency continues to remain an elusive goal.
Looking Ahead: Standardized Testing
The Shaywitzes are focuing new research on how the disparity between IQ and reading in dyslexics affects their performance on high-stakes exams such as the SAT, MCAT, and other standardized tests. Dyslexic students require the accommodation of extra time, which is supported both by scientific evidence and the law; but testing agencies often withhold this accommodation “to the detriment of the student and society,” says Sally Shaywitz. The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity has focused its efforts on determining the “predictive validity” of these tests. Such results may be uneven between dyslexic and typical students, given the heavy emphasis of reading fluency on standardized exams. The data on this new research is not yet available, but will certainly be anticipated by students, educators, and testing companies alike.
About the Author
MOLLY PATTERSON is a sophomore Chemical Engineering major in Trumbull College.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz for their time and for their dedication to research.
Further Reading
Ferrer, E., Shaywitz, B.A., Holahan, J.M., Marchione, K., and Shaywitz, S.E. Uncoupling of Reading and IQ Over Time: Empirical Evidence for a Definition of Dyslexia. Psychological Science, 21(1) 93–101, 2010.
Shaywitz, S. Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for reading problems at any level. 2003. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Bennett A. Shaywitz, Pawel Skudlarski, John M. Holahan, Karen E. Marchione, R. Todd Constable, Robert K. Fulbright, Daniel Zelterman, Cheryl Lacadie and Sally E. Shaywitz, “Age-Related Changes in Reading Systems of Dyslexic Children,” Annals of Neurology, Volume 61, Number 4, (2007): 363 – 370.
Sally E. Shaywitz, Maria Mody and Bennett A. Shaywitz, “Neural Mechanisms in Dyslexia,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 15, Number 6, (2006): 278-281.
Topics:
dyslexia resources for parents, dyslexia resources for teachers, dyslexia resources for students, dyslexia resources for educators
Dyslexia organizations, Orton gillingham, international dyslexia association, ldonline, national center for learning disabilities, ncld, council for exceptional children, cec, learning disability association, lda, yale center for dyslexia
Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
Lisa Beizberg
Lisa Beizberg
Founder and Chair Emerita, PENCIL (Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning)
The Huffington Post
Can Dyslexics Succeed at School or Only in Life?
There's something funny about learning that a successful CEO or politician received bad grades in school. We're amused to hear that Steve Jobs earned C's on his way to a 2.6 GPA in high school-- before creating the most profitable company on Earth. But what if stories like these say more about the quality of our schools than we think? Indeed, statistics show that schools in the United States may not be fostering the skills needed to succeed in life after high school. A shocking number of high school graduates require remediation when they get to college. In New York City - which, unlike most other districts, is tracking the data and attempting to do something about it - more than half of high school graduates aren't prepared for coursework in in community college. Naturally, cities and states (and the authors of the Common Core Standards) have begun adjusting their approach, shifting focus to higher level skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, and even creativity. It's time we took a similar approach to the education of students with learning differences and learning disabilities.
For too long, educating students with disabilities has been treated as a challenge separate from educating students in "mainstream" classrooms; for many casual observers, "special education" brings to mind a population with severe physical and intellectual disabilities. Even the term "special" suggests an entirely different approach is required, not meant for students who can sit still and memorize facts on a smartboard. Indeed, many students with severe disabilities - such as autism or developmental disorders - require special attention, and often separate facilities. But most of the 3 million students with disabilities (out of roughly 54 million students in schools today) are fully capable of being taught in a mainstream classroom, provided our schools are willing to make some changes. Students with learning differences have tremendous talent, creativity, and academic potential--not to mention potential to enhance the learning experience of those around them. That most school systems have failed to recognize this is a regrettable missed opportunity, both for students who learn differently and for their general education peers.
Take dyslexia, for instance. A long list of dyslexics have had remarkable success in their careers, from President Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and General George S. Patton, to Tommy Hilfiger, Steven Spielberg and Richard Branson. A study conducted by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that a disproportionately high percentage of American entrepreneurs identified themselves as dyslexic--more than a third of entrepreneurs, compared with ten percent of the overall population who identify as dyslexic.
Why are so many entrepreneurs dyslexic? Perhaps dyslexics are accustomed to being stuck in a system that doesn't nurture or recognize their own skills, so it becomes necessary to think outside the box. Or, perhaps because they have faced adversity from a very young age, dyslexics develop what the expert Paul Tough has termed "grit." As he has written, students who learn to overcome failure and demonstrate resilience and persistence (often in combination with a nurturing family environment) are most successful in school and beyond. In a similar way, my daughter - who is dyslexic - has developed a determination and, yes, grit that I know will come to benefit her after high school. And yet, throughout her life, she continues to be told: "school doesn't work for you, but life certainly will." Now, in her early teens, she's asking, "why can't school work for me, too?"
There's no reason it shouldn't. Dyslexics possess a set of skills that equip them well for what Daniel Pink calls the new "conceptual age." Abilities once thought frivolous, like creativity, empathy, and inventiveness will, Pink writes, "increasingly determine who flourishes and who flounders." These also happen to be skills observed in students with dyslexia. If dyslexic students appear to be adept at thinking outside the box, adapting to new situations, and solving problems - which are key to success in the workplace - our schools ought to reward these skills as opposed to, say, rote memorization and the ability to complete a test in under two hours. Instead, dyslexics are typically consigned to years of adversity in the classroom, stuck in a system where success is often out of reach.
Even the corporate world has figured out that problem-solving skills are a better predictor of success than an employee's performance on standardized tests. Google's partnership with Cornell NYC Tech, a new graduate school to be located on Roosevelt Island, is just one example of businesses making a commitment to help students succeed in a 21st century economy. The same goes for IBM's investment in P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School), a recently created high school in Brooklyn, where students can earn an associate's degree within six years and a job with IBM. A similar approach can and must be brought to educating students with learning differences.
While schools systems may be avoiding it, many educators across the country are tackling the challenge head on. At the Kildonan School, an all-dyslexia school in upstate New York, one-to-one tutoring sessions tailor instruction to each child's individual needs--allowing students to advance at their own pace, rather than fall behind while the rest of the class moves on. At the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, Dr. Sally Shaywitz leads research on the best ways to help dyslexics draw on their strengths - the creativity, empathy, and critical thinking - to "hit their targets in life." However, accommodations for dyslexia and other learning disabilities are far from the norm.
As is often the case, our children know better. Dr. Diana King, a leading expert on dyslexia for the last 50 years, often asks young students to raise their hands if they would like her to sprinkle magic fairy dust and make their dyslexia disappear. Never more than one hand rises. Our children are eager and ready to meet their potential, not after high school or college or "in life', but at the beginning of kindergarten. It's time for schools to help them get there. Perhaps, then, the next Steve Jobs will find school more useful.
dyslexia resources for parents, dyslexia resources for teachers, dyslexia resources for students, dyslexia resources for educators
Dyslexia organizations, Orton gillingham, international dyslexia association, ldonline, national center for learning disabilities, ncld, council for exceptional children, cec, learning disability association, lda, yale center for dyslexia
Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
One on One with Robert Langston
What’s powering Robert Langston’s dyslexic thinking lately? Following our review of his book, The Power of Dyslexic Thinking: How a Learning DisAbility Shaped Six Successful Careers,we engaged him in an exclusive interview to get a “direct read.”
RFB&D: How did readers respond to your second book? Any key learnings to share?
Robert Langston: The book was really well-received, by both the learning-differences and general dyslexia communities, as well as by other CEOs.
People are still looking for inspiration – reassurance that, “if my child is struggling right now, it’ll still be okay.” In hearing their stories, I felt like I was the one being motivated, not the motivator, which is what others usually look to me for. It really wasn’t about me, or for me, so much as the people I was around, and our shared experiences. At the International Dyslexia Association national conference, there was a line around the booth to get the book – it sold out, and they had to place a second order after the fact.
Most of my followers are Moms. For them, these are intensely personal issues. They feel a tremendous need to help their children experience success and preserve their kids’ self-esteem as they persevere through today’s educational system. Their greatest desire is to see their kids ultimately be able to provide for themselves and their families. Their greatest fear is to see their kids on the wrong side of that upside-down bell curve I describe in my book.
Based on what you’ve experienced since the second book came out, what do you see as the possible subject of your next book?
My second book pretty much touched upon what I was experiencing and learning over the past 15 years – from my time in college [University of West Georgia, despite being functionally illiterate] to now. I continue to come across studies examining whether dyslexia is a gift for every dyslexic, or are a subset of dyslexics gifted, and thus more adept at using compensatory strategies to overcome dyslexic challenges.
The findings in my book came mostly through experientially learning – anecdotally. I was privileged to have met a whole lot of successful dyslexics. That’s why I continue to follow, with great interest, some studies from major foundations, specifically, those related to dyslexics in business settings, CEO traits – to determine if there are any differences in giftedness, or whether dyslexia is a gift overall.
If we could cure dyslexia, rewiring the brain so that these people don’t get the conceptual ability, would they go for it?
What else?
Well, I did sort of “leave open” a big question near the end of my book[1] about a hypothetical dyslexia “pill”: if we could cure dyslexia, rewiring the brain so that these people don’t get the conceptual ability . . . would they go for it? And there are proponents of both sides. On the one hand, there is a real worry that simply teaching kids the things they need to pass tests in school may not translate to what will bring success in the workforce, and could siphon away many of our best and brightest as well.
On the other hand, many word-renowned researchers feel that we are born the way we are, to be able to benefit from early intervention[2] – an additive, not a subtractive process that could bring out even more of the giftedness that is sometimes missed in compensating for dyslexia. “Which came first?”
And so how do your first two books set the stage for what may be your next book?
My first book, “For the Children: Redefining Success in School and Success in Life,” was about my Mom and me; the second book was about other people who influenced me. My next book, which is probably about three to five years away, will likely test out the above theories in full, and will also be about the “fourth generation” of my relatives that have been dyslexic. My grandfather, Alonza Smoot Langston (Big Smoot), was the only child of five without a bachelor’s degree. The education system of the time told my father, Alonza Smoot Jr. (Smoot) that he was “mirror-eyed” – and now he is director of development for Georgia National Produce.
From third grade onward, it’s more about ‘reading to learn’ than ‘learning to read.’
My five-year-old son has LD issues – in fact, he already has an Individual Education Plan – and is presenting all of the classic signs, just like me. My daughter, seven years old, is, like my wife, extremely book-smart. Grades K-3 are a critical time, so my wife and I want to make a proper intervention within the school system, Child Find, and so on. While my wife’s first reaction was “wait and see,” now she is all for proactive intervention. Typically it’s best not to wait, and to accept the help that is available. From third grade onward, it’s more about “reading to learn” than “learning to read.”
What was the question you were asked the most after the second book came out?
It was about the decoding process [i.e., the process by which a word is broken into individual phonemes and recognized based on those phonemes]: what it is, and how to get “affordably good” tutoring assistance.
Like many of these parents, I am familiar with exceptional schools in my general area – in my case, Atlanta, Georgia, offers The Schenck School, Atlanta Speech School, the Galloway School, and others – but also like many of these parents’ situations, these schools are at least a 90 minute-drive away. Like any parent, I want what’s best for my child, without having to pull up stakes and move (although the nationally ranked school system in Oconee County, Georgia is one of the reasons why we moved to this area). The question then becomes, do you pick a school system based on overall test scores, or on whether it is great for every child? (i.e., those with learning differences)
And I know, from these discussions with parents that this issue of where to find affordable tutoring is not limited to Georgia. In the book, for example, I mention the Newgrange School near RFB&D in Princeton, N.J., which has students bussed in from all over the state. During my March 4 appearance on a local morning show, “Good Day Atlanta,” “How do I find a tutor in my area?” was a major concern that I heard.
It can literally be as simple as parents sharing the positive, proven things that work.
The IDA Provider Directory is one place to look; Orton-Gillingham is another potential resource. Parents can also keep an eye out for free seminars in their area that explain IEPs and the legal rights of students with disabilities.[3] According to Charles Schwab, founder, chairman and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporation, it can literally be as simple as parents sharing the positive, proven things that work.
And also like many of these parents, I simply want to make the best decision for my son today – to get him what he needs so he can at least stay on the reading level for his grade. His conceptual skills are presenting, just like mine did: his facility with video games, puzzles, and driving his electric vehicles all show his grasp of concepts not anchored to the written word.
And of course I want my son to not have to suffer like I did – even those I was so blessed to have the perspective and advocacy of two family generations in navigating me through the educational-system maze . . . as well as the opportunity to share a platform with leading lights of dyslexia research like the Shaywitzes. I continue to look into research related to use of accommodations, and whether interventions actually work.
So far, my overall experience has been very positive – with the understanding that, because of who I am, my experience won’t be the same as everyone else’s.
No matter who you are, however, the goal remains the same: what will make a difference for these kids.
[1] pp. 84-85; pp. 116-117; pp. 121-122
[2] e.g., demonstration of plasticity in the neural systems for reading and their ability to reorganize in response to an effective, evidence-based intervention; see: http://dyslexia.yale.edu/About_ShaywitzBios.html
[3] Example: In New Jersey, one such resource is practicing attorney, published author on education law, and parent of a special needs child Ralph Gerstein.
– Doug Sprei
dyslexia resources for parents, dyslexia resources for teachers, dyslexia resources for students, dyslexia resources for educators
Dyslexia organizations, Orton gillingham, international dyslexia association, ldonline, national center for learning disabilities, ncld, council for exceptional children, cec, learning disability association, lda, yale center for dyslexia
Dyslexia topics, signs of dyslexia, early reading problems
New Dyslexia Documentary Explains Entrepreneur Link
Posted by: Nick Leiber on May 12, 2011
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In 2007, Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at Cass Business School in London, released the results of a study of 102 entrepreneurs in the U.S. showing that 35 percent identified themselves as dyslexic. This is strikingly high when compared with a national incidence rate of 10 percent in the general population.
Among Logan’s findings: “dyslexic entrepreneurs were more likely to own several companies and to grow their companies more quickly than those who were not dyslexic. They employed more staff and reported an increased ability to delegate. Non-dyslexic entrepreneurs stayed with their companies for longer, suggesting they were able to cope with growth and the accompanying structure that is implemented. In contrast, dyslexic entrepreneurs seem to prefer the early stages of business start-up when they are able to control their environment.”
As Businessweek.com reported at the time:
The broader implication, [Logan] says, is that many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur. A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you’re constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done—an essential skill for anyone working to build a business.
Now HBO2 is airing Journey into Dyslexia, a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond that profiles dyslexic individuals from different fields and backgrounds. One subject is entrepreneur Steve Walker, founder of biofuels manufacturer New England Wood Pellet in Jaffrey, N.H. While the film’s goal is to examine misperceptions and implications of dyslexia inside and outside the business world, the husband-and-wife team say entrepreneurs deserve their own film.
Aware that many entrepreneurs view their dyslexia as a gift, the Raymonds say they were struck by the stories of how founders had discovered their strengths early in their lives, while struggling in school. “Carl Schramm [the CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, who is interviewed in the film] says there’s no particular reason to think that you could connect the dots between a learning disability and entrepreneurs. He believes it’s because they are visionary and they do have an ability to see things other people don’t. They’re people who don’t fit in typical societal norms, so they sort of create their own world. It’s a fascinating idea,” says Alan.
So far the biggest response to the documentary, which debuted last night, has been from entrepreneurs. “It’s three times higher from [them],” says Susan. It airs again on HBO2 on May 14 and May 22, and is on demand through June 5. More studies are on the Raymonds’ website.
The ability to grasp the big picture, persistence, and creativity are a few of the entrepreneurial traits of many dyslexics. Just ask Charles Schwab
by Gabrielle Coppola
When Alan Meckler, the CEO of IT and online imagery hub Jupitermedia (JUPM), was accepted to Columbia University in 1965, the dean's office told him he had some of the lowest college boards of any student ever admitted. "I got a 405 or 410 in English," he recalls. "In those days you got a 400 just for putting your name down! Yet I was on the dean's list every year I was there, and I won a prize for having the best essay in American history my senior year."
It wasn't until years later, at age 58, that Meckler learned he was dyslexic. He struggles with walking and driving directions, and interpreting charts and graphs. He prefers to listen to someone explain a problem to him, rather than sit down and read 20 pages describing it. As a youth, Meckler discovered a unique strength—baseball—and cultivated it religiously to compensate for weakness in other areas.
ASSET OR HANDICAP?
All of these things, according to Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a professor of learning development at Yale University, are classic signs of dyslexia. Shaywitz has long argued that dyslexia should be evaluated as an asset, not just a handicap. She recently co-founded the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, dedicated to studying the link between the two. "I want people to wish they were dyslexic," she says. "There are many positive attributes that can't be taught that people are generally not aware of. We always write about how we're losing human capital—dyslexics are not able to achieve their potential because they've had to go around the system."
It's not clear whether dyslexics develop their special talents by learning to negotiate their disability or whether such skills are the genetic inheritance of being dyslexic. It's a question Shaywitz plans to explore, along with trying to change the way dyslexia is viewed in the educational system and the business world. One project at the center will be an education series to train executives to recognize outside-the-box thinkers who don't perform well on standardized tests.
Shaywitz recently tested a well-known CEO (whom she declined to identify) for dyslexia. The man confessed that he'd hired an outside company to help identify future leaders within the organization by administering a reading test. "'The irony is,' I told him, 'you're eliminating and sifting out all the people like yourself who might actually be the ones to be creative and make a difference.'"
COPING SKILLS
That kind of rejection, along with a penchant for creativity, may help explain why so many dyslexics are inclined to become entrepreneurs. Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at Cass Business School in London, believes strongly in the connection.
In a study to be published in January, Logan found that 35% of entrepreneurs in the U.S. show signs of dyslexia, compared to 20% in Britain. Logan attributes the gap to a more flexible education system in the U.S., vs. rigid tracking in British schools, and better identification and remediation methods. "Most of the people in our study talked about the role of the mentor and how important that had been," Logan says. "The difference seems to be somebody who believes in you in school."
The broader implication, she says, is that many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur. A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you're constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done—an essential skill for anyone working to build a business.
"People really struggle to delegate, and these people have learned to do that already," she says. "If you're bogged down in the details, you're not out there looking at where your business needs to go."
LEMONADE FROM LEMONS
Paul Orfalea, who founded the copy-and-graphics chainKinko's 37 years ago, has both dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He proudly attributes much of his business success to an inability to do things most others can. "I would always hire people who didn't have my skills," he says. "My secret was to get out of their way and let them do their job." He is also inured to failure. "You know what's great about a C student? They have risk-reward pretty much well-wired," he says. "A students are always putting in maximum effort, and C students say, 'Well, is it really worth it?'"
Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers says dyslexia helps him step back and see the big picture. His third-grade teacher discovered his reading trouble; he says alternative teaching methods and supportive parents helped him learn to deal with it at an early age. "Dyslexia forces you to look at things in totality and not just as a single chess move. I play out the whole scenario in my mind and then work through it.… All of my life, I've built organizations with a broad perspective in mind."
Meckler, who was one of the first to convert his IT trade publications into a sustainable, ad-supported business model for Web publishing, also strives for the big picture and has little patience for details. "In business meetings…I can hear a whole bunch of people talking about a lot of things, and I seem to be able to cut right to the chase," he says. "I think my mind has been trained…to zero in on the salient point."
FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL DYSLEXICS
Those entrepreneurs who have embraced their dyslexia have also made it their personal mission to pave an easier way for the next generation. Discount brokerage pioneer Charles Schwab (SCHW) started the Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation, a resource center for kids and parents to overcome learning and attention disorders. Orfalea founded the Orfalea Family Foundation, to support and identify different learning styles and try to remove the stigma that comes with them.
Ben Foss, a researcher in assistive technologies in Intel's (INTC) Digital Health Group, started a nonprofit and made a documentary film about the first man in America to win an employee discrimination case based on dyslexia. He's now working to adapt technologies for the blind to also assist people with learning disabilities, too. Despite the titans of business disclosing their dyslexia to the world, Foss says it's still daunting to climb the corporate ladder as a dyslexic. "If you're John Chambers, Charles Schwab, or Richard Branson, sure. But if you're a corporate VP in the mid-ranks, there's a very large disincentive to saying you're dyslexic, because you're still being evaluated," he says. "Ironically, talking about it on your terms is what allows you to become successful."
Of course, being a misfit often lends itself to great entrepreneurship. Health-care entrepreneur and real estate magnate James LeVoy Sorenson has more than 40 medical patents to his name and is responsible for inventing the first computerized heart monitor, the first disposable paper surgical masks, and the first blood-recycling system for trauma and surgical procedures. He also dropped out of community college at 18, and was told by grade-school teachers he was either "slow-witted or developmentally disabled."
At 86, Sorenson says overcoming dyslexia trained him to be persistent and solve problems in new ways: "I like to add one word to the end of many sentences: 'yet.' Instead of saying, 'I can't do it,' I say, 'I can't do it—yet.'"
Coppola is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York .
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2007/db20071212_539295.htm
Is dyslexia inherited?
Published on January 10, 2010 by Robert Langston
Dyslexia is inherited, and my family tree is thick with dyslexic branches. My grandfather, father, older brother, and I all have struggled with dyslexia. Does it affect more boys than girls? Current research suggests it affects just as many girls as boys. My family seems to be a bit heavy on the male side, though. That is why I was not surprised when my wife and I started seeing signs that our four-year-old son might be having issues. It was not much, just an occasional "I don't like school" or "School's too hard." With my family history, we decided it would be better to be proactive than reactive.
So, the next day my wife walked into my son's preschool class and asked his teacher if she would meet with us concerning our son. She did not hesitate, and they set the meeting time. Our parental instincts were confirmed the day of the conference when his teacher leaned across the table and said as compassionately as she could, "It does not seem to be sticking." She was referring to his learning of letters and his memory for names. She explained that the letter of the week might be "A." They would work on this letter all week. At the end of the week, she would show him the apple they had used to illustrate the letter. She would ask, "What is this?" Instead of "apple," he would say "tractor." She told us he could describe an apple and could tell her it is something that people eat. He knows what an apple is, but he cannot recall the name of the object or the letter it starts with. Listening to my son's teacher, I was thinking, "This sounds just like me." I took the Woodcock-Johnson-Revised Test of Cognitive Ability at age twenty-three and scored on a kindergarten level in Memory for Names. Also, like my son, I have trouble with the beginning and ending sounds in words. I could tell by the tears swelling in my wife's eyes that she had been hoping that this was one family trait that would die on the vine, but as the reality of the situation set in, the tears became too much, and she had to take a break to compose herself.
I will admit I was a little shocked my wife was not better prepared for this eventuality, since she knew dyslexia runs at least three generations deep in my family, but I do understand that the reality of the moment was overwhelming for her. I also have to admit I was inwardly glad my son was like me. I know how devastating dyslexia can be, and I would be lying if I said I am not a little concerned, but my initial reaction was the same that I have expressed to countless parents who have approached me after my lectures and whispered mournfully, "My child has dyslexia." As they brace for an outpouring of sympathy, they are shocked as I announce in my biggest voice, "GREAT!" This is not the reaction most people expect, but it is how I feel. "GREAT!" I hope my son's mind is naturally wired with the same visual, spatial, conceptual, and intuitive gifts as mine.
Now, with all this said, my son may not have dyslexia like I do. In my opinion, it is too early to diagnose him with an "impaired ability to understand written language: a learning disorder marked by a severe difficulty in recognizing and understanding written language, leading to spelling and writing problems," as defined by Encarta ® World English Dictionary. Even so, my wife and I want to make sure our son has all the advantages available today, just in case the acorn has not fallen far from the tree.
At the end of our conference, the teacher indicated she would like to start the process to evaluate our son. I served on the State Advisory Panel for Special Education in Georgia for seven years, so I know she is asking to initiate the national Child Find process. Child Find is a continuous process of public awareness activities, screening, and evaluation designed to locate, identify, and refer, as early as possible, young children with disabilities and their families who are in need of Early Intervention Programs (EIP). She did a great job explaining that in our county there is a representative from the local public school system whom she could contact on our behalf to evaluate our son for initial signs of learning difficulties. First steps are basic: hearing and vision screenings to rule out problems in those areas, a parental questionnaire, and observation of the student in the classroom. The Child Find process is important in case an Individual Education Plan (IEP) is needed in the future.
Studies show that parents wait an average of twelve to eighteen months to act on their initial instinct that something might be wrong. The best advice I can give is don't wait; listen to your instinct, be proactive not reactive, and accept the help that is available.
My family has been on its journey with dyslexia for generations, and it will be interesting to see if my son sprouts as a new branch of this tree. I rejoice in the possibility that my son may have the power of dyslexic thinking within him and be gifted with a visual, spatial, conceptual, and intuitive brain. But at the same time, I hope we have come far enough that I can prune out some of the more painful limbs that have plagued the Langston men in the past, allowing him to grow even stronger than those that have come before him.
Wish us luck,
Rob
"Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees,"
-- Author unknown.
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201001/is-dyslexia-inherited
Welcome to the Age of Dyslexia Awareness
Published on February 28, 2010 by Robert Langston
On Wednesday, February 17, I was a guest on the blog talk radio show Midlife Matters with Les Brown. you can click on the blog talk microphone image (left) to hear the interview. The conversation Les and I had started me thinking about the global state of dyslexia. During the interview, I expressed this theory.
We are in phase two of a three-phase process necessary to eradicate dyslexia as a fundamental learning disability in our society. Phase one is what I am calling "The Age of Ignorance," phase two is the "The Age of Awareness," and phase three will be the "The Age of Consciousness."
Unfortunately, my father, grandfather, and the generations of dyslexics before them were born in the Age of Ignorance. Seeds for a language-based, multisensory, structured, sequential, cumulative approach to teaching reading were being sewn in the early 20th century by pioneers such as neuropsychiatrist Samuel Torrey Orton and psychologist Anna Gillingham, but the world as it pertained to dyslexics was still overwhelmingly dark. During this age of darkness, terms such as retarded, slow, lazy, and even mirror-eyed (referring to turning letters and words around on the page) were used to describe individuals with dyslexia. Misunderstanding ran rampant, and seemingly unbreakablestereotypes were born, such as "dyslexics read backwards." My heart goes out to the generations of dyslexics who suffered through these dark times.
The Age of Awareness
I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born at the beginning of the Age of Awareness. This is a time when dyslexics themselves have decided to walk into the light and not be shamed by their dyslexic way of thinking. Standing on the shoulders of dyslexic giants such as Charles Schwab, Paul Orfalea, Richard Branson, Henry Winkler, Diane Swonk, Whoopi Goldberg, Jewel, and many others who have lent some portion of their time, resources, or fame to the cause of global dyslexia awareness, it is my belief that a wave of awareness has been started.
Embracing this era of scientific discovery enveloping dyslexia, I believe this age will be expedited just as so many other modern phenomenons have been accelerated by technology. The science behind how dyslexics process the written language and moreover the world is here and now. Quantum leaps are being made in our current era, propelling us into an undeniable understanding of the power of dyslexic thinking.
MEG scans, fMRI technology, longitudinal studies, and research-based multisensory approaches to early childhood interventions are being entertained daily by people "within the know" who are financially or geographically able to take advantage of the modern age of dyslexia. Seeds have been sewn, and fruit is coming to bear, but the challenge of this age will be feeding the masses.
The Age of Consciousness
The third age will come when a shift in consciousness is felt around the world, with the realization that there is a better way, when the human race collectively realizes the systemic benefit of changing an antiquated system of education. Education will become a catalyst for change, and scientific certainty will promote better ways to teach.
I can feel the pain necessary for change building each time a teacher shares the heartbreak of watching another child fall behind. I hear the pain in the voices of parents desperately calling for help in a system that does not support their child's learning needs, and I see it in the eyes of our children being warehoused in juvenile detention centers, as half of them are functionally illiterate
What will be the benefits of this process of change? The visual, spatial, conceptual, and intuitive mind of the dyslexic will benefit. Teachers will succeed in a more holistic approach to meet their dyslexic students' educational needs, a free appropriate public education will be scientifically derived from a research-based multisensory learning environment, parents previously on a mission to litigiously tear down school systems for their inept attempts to meet their children's educational needs will pour their resources into supporting local schools, and last, there will be a reallocation of dollars being freed by a decreasing demand for beds in our juvenile detention facilities because our children are being caught before they fall through the cracks. All this will be brought on by a shift in global consciousness surrounding dyslexia.
There is a better way. Losing so many of our best and brightest is no longer acceptable, and their contributions to our society are worth the effort involved in changing a broken system.
At middle age, I find myself in the middle age of dyslexia.
Here's to a brighter future,
Rob
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201002/welcome-the-age-dyslexia-awareness
FREE audio books for people with print disabilities
Published on May 4, 2010 by Robert Langston
How people with print disabilities can get my books and many others for FREE
Wow, what an honor! The organization Learning Ally has recorded both my books (For the Children and The Power of Dyslexic Thinking) for its audio library.
Having my books available through Learning Ally brings my struggle with a print disability full circle. In the 1970s, this organization began to serve an increasing number of people who had learning disabilities, and I was one of them. I received my textbooks in audio format as part of my Individual Education Plan in school.
Now, my books will be available to people just like me through Learning Ally. The old Hair Club for Men commercial comes to mind: "I'm not only the president, but I'm also a client." I am not only an author, but I'm also a client!
You can imagine my delight when I received an email saying my books had been approved for recording. I was doubly delighted when I was asked to record an introduction for each book. Learning Ally has recording studios around the country utilizing a volunteer force of more than 5,000 people who donate over 332,000 hours annually to recording books. I was invited to the studio in Charlottesville, Virginia, for my recording session.
About a month after my invitation to record the introductions, my speaking schedule landed me within 60 miles of Charlottesville. I emailed Mary Ann, my contact at the studio, and asked if we could schedule my recording session for March 9 at 4:30 p.m., and she agreed. In preparation for the session, I called her on the hour drive to the studio and asked her what she wanted to accomplish during the session.
Mary Ann replied that she just wanted me to read the introductions to my books. With that, my heart jumped into my throat. It's true that I am the author of the material, but a ghostwriter wrote the books, and I read on a fifth-grade level! I then found myself having a slight out-of-body experience. I heard myself replying, "Oh! I can't do that. I can't read."
Mary Ann sounded shocked. "You can't read!" she said. It was in that moment that I realized she was thinking of me as an author, but not as an author with dyslexia. Mary Ann, being a consummate professional, recovered faster than I did from the shock. She said, "When you get here, we will figure it out."
I hung up the phone and did what I always do when dyslexia gets the better of me. I called my momma! When Mom answered, I asked her, "Do you have copies of my books handy?" She said she did, and I told her that we had less than an hour for me to try to memorize the introductions. Mom immediately started reading them to me. An hour later, I felt pretty good about the 133-word introduction to For the Children. On the other hand, the 833-word introduction to The Power of Dyslexic Thinking was not going to happen.
I arrived at Learning Ally and Mary Ann had assessed the situation just as I had. She asked if I could read the short introduction to For the Children and record a statement of introduction for The Power of Dyslexic Thinking. So, the plan was set.
The volunteer production assistant assigned to me must have been the patron saint for patience because it took me a full two hours and thirty minutes to read 133 words and dictate a 30-second introduction. By the time we were done, I was worn out, but she was still smiling and congratulating me on a good job.
My work is now done, and it is free to individuals with documented print disabilities, such as a learning disability, visual impairment, or other physical disability.
Learning Ally Individual Memberships are free. For more information, click this link Learning Ally, or call the Membership Services Department at 800-221-4792.
A gift from one dyslexic to another,
Rob
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201005/free-audio-books-people-print-disabilities
What Causes Dyslexia? We Do!
Published on December 20, 2009 by Robert Langston
Note: The thoughts expressed in this article are that of the author and in no way reflect the Virginia Department of Education's position on learning disabilities of a neurobiological nature (dyslexia).
What Causes Dyslexia?
I am asked this question frequently during television, radio, and print media interviews, but recently when a Facebook friend asked me what causes dyslexia, I did not feel restricted to the standard medical explanation I usually give as an answer. I decided to share what I believe to be a more humanistic and holistic cause of dyslexia. Here is my answer.
The cause of dyslexia is a perfectly healthy, functioning brain being born into a largely literate society. You see, the root cause of dyslexia is a largely illiterate society becoming largely literate over the last two hundred years. There is nothing medically wrong with a dyslexic person's brain. I have seen fMRI's and MEG scans to prove it. This leads me to believe that dyslexia is a technological disability, not a physical disability.
The technology is the written language, and the disability is that not every brain is born naturally wired to learn this technology easily.
Man created written language approximately four thousand years ago. When early symbols were drawn on tortoise shells, and then assigned value or meaning, which in turn other people could interpret, that was the equivalent of the Smart Board, I-Phone, and Internet all rolled into one. It was the newest, hottest, earth-shaking technology of its day. And, yes, it was a man-made technology. Now, fast forward to the last one hundred or so years. We, as a society, are dictating that everyone needs to be proficient with reading and writing.
So, you see, we, as a society, caused dyslexia. As little as two hundred years ago, if you had dyslexia, you probably would not have even known it. Now, don't get me wrong, striving to be a highly literate society is a good thing. The problem I see with this societal demand, relating to this relatively new technological revolution, is the inferred stereotype that people not proficient with the written language, are somehow stupid.
What causes dyslexia? In short, we do!
What causes the pain and suffering that almost always accompanies dyslexia, we do!
Some old food for some new thought,
Rob
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/200912/what-causes-dyslexia-we-do
More than a third of business owners may be dyslexic. But most reveal the reading disorder is a gift that aided their success.
A new film airing tonight on HBO2 examines the role of dyslexia in the lives of successful entrepreneurs and corporate leaders around the world.
The film, Journey into Dyslexia, directed by Alan and Susan Raymond, presents several prominent dyslexic adults including Ben Foss, inventor of the Intel Reader; Steve Walker, New England Wood Pellet founder and CEO; and Carol Greider, Ph.D., a 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine.
They're in good company. Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Ted Turner, and Cisco CEO John Chambers are all dyslexic. Even Henry Ford had the disorder.
"Are these people more visionary, can they see things differently?" asks Carl Schramm, CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to advance entrepreneurship, who also appears in the film. "They come to the realization that society pronounces the number of skill sets that are necessary for success that they don't seem to have. And they go out and build the environment in which they will impact. That's sort of my working hypothesis to explain why all these entrepreneurs exist who have traits of dyslexia."
The correlation betweeen dyslexia and entrepreneurship has long been a subject of scientific inquiry. In 2004, the Cass Business School in London found that 20 percent of English entrepreneurs polled said they were dyslexic, while managers "reflected the UK national dyslexia incidence level of 4 percent." In the U.S., however, the results were even more persuasive: the same researchers behind the U.K. study found that 35 percent of American entrepreneurs surveyed identified themselves as dyslexic.
"The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority and to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses," according to The New York Times, which first reported on the research back in 2007.
When Time magazine asked Richard Branson, the media mogul and founder of Virgin, whether his dyslexia hindered his businesses abilities, Branson had a pointedly candid response. "Strangely, I think my dyslexia has helped," he said. "When I launch a new company, I need to understand the advertising. If I can understand it, then I believe anybody can. Virgin speaks in normal language instead of using phrases that nobody understands, like 'financial-service industry.' "
Still, a 2010 Roper Poll showed that four out five Americans associate dyslexia with mental retardation even though it has nothing to do with intelligence or mental illness of any kind. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines dyslexia as "a brain-based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read." The institute notes that people with the condition "typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal intelligence."
Some academics attribute dyslexia's correlation with entrepreneurship to the fact that the disorder required them from a young age to rely on intuition and social cues. "There are many positive attributes that can't be taught that people are generally not aware of," Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a professor of learning development at Yale University, told BusinessWeek in 2007. "We always write about how we're losing human capital—dyslexics are not able to achieve their potential because they've had to go around the system."
Having a disability like dyslexia, however, forces one to develop street smarts as well as how to handle hardship and failure—solid preparation for life as an entrepreneur.
"Many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur," BusinessWeek noted. "A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you're constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done—an essential skill for anyone working to build a business."
Source: http://www.inc.com/articles/201105/are-dyslexics-better-visionaries.html
A dyslexic walks into a doctor's office...
Published on January 3, 2010 by Robert Langston
(Note: Some of the medical terms and situational content contained in this article may be unsuitable for children under the age of 18 years old.)
What does a urinary track infection and an ear infection have to do with dyslexia? Paperwork!
A major contributor to urinary track infections (UTI) is caffeine. A major contributor to caffeine being in my body is a hectic travel schedule: a five-hour plane ride, followed by a same-day, four-hour drive up the California coast to San Luis Obispo, four days of work, three time zones from home, and then steps one and two repeated to get back home. For me, this is a pretty good formula for UTI and a trip to the doctor.
I am a fairly active forty-two-year-old, and, as such, I have my records on file at several local urgent care facilities. The office I headed to for my UTI was one of them. I had previously visited it with two broken ribs from a freak zip line accident in my backyard. My wife had done the necessary paperwork, and I was admitted.
I was not anticipating any paperwork for this UTI trip because I was a returning patient, but a full dyslexic paperwork meltdown was on the way. I did not read the notice taped to the check-in desk window, which was not uncommon for me, so when I was handed the new patient form, I was horrified and glanced over and read the notice I had previously ignored: "As of 8-1-09 we will be using a new practice management system which will require all patients to fill out new paperwork in full."
Welcome to my dyslexic nightmare.
1. "Where were you born?" "Bermingham [Birmingham], Alabama."
2. "Are you currently taking any medicines?" "Rananadean [Ranitidine]." Can anyone spell this without a medical dictionary?
3. "Are you allergic to any medicines?" "Omeniself [Omnicef]." I was not likely to get that one either.
4. "Have you been here before?" "Returning paeshint [patient]."
5. "Date of birth?" "11/28/67." I got this one, but my own birthday is the only one I know by heart.
6. "What are you here for?" "Urinaray track infecksion [urinary track infection]." I did not know I could have put UTI until I noticed it on the take-home information sheet.
7. "What is your occupation?" "Author." Nice! The irony.
The list went on, but I think you get the point. I have been in this situation many times before, and I am comfortable enough with my dyslexia that I either just turn in the paperwork with a quick "I'm dyslexic. If you can't read anything, just ask me," or I call someone and have that person spell everything for me. The "No Cell Phones" sign in the lobby prompted me to go with the first choice. My second bout with the medical profession was not as familiar or as comfortable.
Several weeks earlier, my son had an ear infection. I met my wife at the pediatrician's office. After the appointment, I took my son's prescription to the Kroger pharmacy to be filled. The first thing the pharmacist asked me was my son's birth date. As I said before, the only birth date I know by heart is my own. Not one other birthday has been successfully stored in my brain. On my last formal test for learning disabilities, during college, I tested out on a kindergarten level in number sequencing. Months, days, and years just don't stick with me, not even my own children's birthdays.
I had to endure the look on the pharmacist's face while I went through my whole process of "He was born on St. Patrick's Day, so that's in March. January, February, March, so that's the third month. What day is St. Patrick's Day on? The 17th (with a little help from the pharmacist). Okay, I was married in 2000, my daughter was born two years later, that was 2002, and my son was born two years after that, so that would be 2004." At that point, the pharmacist said, "Here it is, Mr. Langston, 3/17/05."
Okay, he was born two-and-a-half years later. I sheepishly replied, "Whatever you have in the computer is going to be right because my wife put it in." I am quick to put my dyslexia out there, which normally gives me a sense of control of the situation, but this incident stung a little because not only did it take me by surprise, it involved my child.
As painful as going through situations like these can feel, I always ask myself how they will affect me in the grand scheme of my life. The answer is almost always "not very much." What's the prognosis? I still got medical treatment, even with a whole page of misspelled words, and my children still love me, even if I cannot recall their birthdays on demand. A dose of perspective always helps me remember that dyslexia is a part of who I am but does not define who I am.
Two doctors' visits, two bouts with dyslexia, and one big dose of perspective allow me to happily live to fight another day.
Rob
My own helpful tips:
1. I keep my doctor's business card in my wallet, so I wrote the medicine I take and the medicine I am allergic to on the back of his card.
2. I asked my wife to write the children's birth dates with a Sharpie on their insurance cards.
3. I have also entered this information into my cell phone.
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201001/dyslexic-walks-doctors-office
Why become a Techno Dyslexic?
Published on December 11, 2009 by Robert Langston
It is only appropriate that I start this blog by letting you know it is being posted from 30,000 feet in the air, on the Gogo in-flight internet. Yes - you and I, along with my computer and the Internet, are flying AirTran Airways from Los Angeles, California, to Atlanta, Georgia. Technology has come a long way, and the ability for dyslexics to utilize it has come just as far. The idea for this blog came to me as I was preparing for the trip to California last Saturday.
I was running around my house frantically looking for my Magellan RoadMate 700 portable GPS when it hit me. What would I do without my GPS system? For the past six years or so, I have been traveling approximately one hundred thousand miles per year to attend conferences, school assembly programs, and university lectures. My GPS has played a huge role in my being able to travel like this.
I go where my inspirational programs are needed. I board a plane, fly to my destination, and jump in a rental car. The first thing I do in the car is check the cigarette lighter, not because I smoke, because I don't, but because I have to plug in "my girl," who takes care of me on the roads and gets me to my destination. When she comes alive, it is like music to my ears: "Proceed to highlighted route," "Left turn in one mile," "Left turn now," and, yes, even "Whenever possible, make a legal U-turn" but eventually, I get to hear "You have arrived".
Most people love a little technological convenience in their lives, but for me as a dyslexic it is more than just a convenience. When that GPS box lights up, it is like a warm blanket telling me that I don't have to "literally" read the signs to get to where I am going. What a relief.
Before I got my first GPS nearly thirteen years ago, travel was brutal. I hated venturing outside the comfort zone of familiar roads. I knew that once I crossed that invisible line of knowing where I was, to depending on street signs, I was at the mercy of the streets. It was read or get lost.
I'm from the sprawling and mostly rural state of Georgia. Here, the jokes about "Go down to the Piggly Wiggly and turn right" are very real to me. In my comfort zone, I know where the "big oak tree" is and that I have to turn left there. When my occupation required me to travel across Georgia, however, and later throughout the whole United States, without my GPS the traveling could have been a deal breaker.
Before traveling with "my girl," travel was a nightmare, and I was a traffic disaster for myself and others. I was that fellow in the car almost at a dead stop at the green light, the one people would blow their horns at and give hand signals of encouragement to (you know the ones). But why was I doing this? I knew green meant go, but I couldn't read the street signs fast enough to know if that was my turn or not. You can't imagine how many times I have prayed for red lights and crawled through green lights. It became a joke. I would tell people that I had to leave early enough to "enjoy traffic." In Atlanta, I promise, there is plenty of traffic to "enjoy"!
What I found myself doing when driving, to compensate for dyslexia, was judging the general length of the words on the signs. When I was looking for a street name that was long, like Peachtree or International blvd, I would just ignore all the signs with short words, like Park or Main, on them. I could see the word was the right or wrong length long before I could read the actual word. I had learned that sounding out words at major intersections was not going to make me any new friends and just added to the overall stress of my travels. Navigating through life this way was no picnic.
Then I found "my girl," and today I find myself becoming more and more of a techno dyslexic. Although my Magellan RoadMate 700 is a clunky and oversized box compared to the ones currently on the market, "my girl" gets me where I am going, and I embrace her for it.
Likewise, I embrace other technologies that make reading and writing less evasive in my day to day life. I love the idea of voice recognition technology software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking and Kurzweil 3000. I like that my spell check caught about fifty words I misspelled in this blog alone. I am excited to see how far technology has come in my lifetime, and I look forward to embracing new technologies, whether it's a new "girl" helping me in my travels or whatever else technology holds for the future.
I am a techno dyslexic, and I look forward to seeing you on the road.
Rob
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/200912/why-become-techno-dyslexic
Dyslexics have good reason to love Garfield
Published on January 24, 2010 by Robert Langston
I was packing to go out of town when my seven-year-old daughter asked, "Dad, where are you going?" I replied, "Paws." She then asked, "What is Paws?" and I told her, "It is where Jim Davis creates the Garfield comic strip." She gasped and exclaimed, "You're going to Garfield's house!"
My plane landed at the Indianapolis International Airport, where I met up with a group of people from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation. We were going to Paws to facilitate the transition of SparkTop.org from the Schwab's Foundation to the Professor Garfield Foundation.
During the hour-and-half drive from Indianapolis to Muncie, I was trying to imagine what the corporate headquarters for the global icon Garfield would look like. After all, we were talking about Garfield, which is syndicated in 2,570 newspapers worldwide, is read by approximately two hundred and sixty-three million readers, and has won four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program. Guinness World Records named Garfield "The Most Widely Syndicated Comic Strip in the World." I was envisioning a large glass skyscraper with a twenty-foot-high bronze cat in the lobby.
During the last forty or so miles of the drive, all we could see around us were row crops. We were driving through the heartland of America, not corporate America. If our driver had not been paying very close attention, we would have missed our turn onto the little country road, next to a farmhouse, that would eventually bring us to Garfield's front door. Just when I was considering that we might have made a wrong turn, our driver announced, "Here we are."
The building was a combination of dark brown brick, light brown wood shingles, and glass. There was no large bronze cat to greet us, but it was apparent that we had arrived at "Garfield's house" by the five-foot round paw print in the bricks on the side of the building.
Inside, a Garfield figure greeted us, sitting on a park bench with his trademark grin. This was not the last we would see of this familiar feline. Something "Garfield" occupied every square foot of the building - from the boardroom, which was lined with countless awards, including the four Emmys, to the licensing room, which was filled with thousands of Garfield mugs, coats, clocks, collector plates, and more. The cafeteria we ate lunch in had a coin-operated Garfield kitty ride. Original art by Jim Davis hung on the walls, and every workspace of the more than twenty artists, writers, designers, web designers, sculptors, animators, and licensing business executives was adorned with Garfield items. This was truly the house that Garfield built.
I have had the pleasure of working with Jim Davis and his foundation for a little over a year now. The Professor Garfield Foundation is hoping to give credibility to the process of learning to read through reading comics. ProfessorGarfield.org is a wonderful site, and I highly recommend it. I also recommend SparkTop.org, the reason for my first visit to Paws.
SparkTop.org presents a unique blend of entertainment, technology, and information designed to nurture self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-advocacy among children with learning challenges. Targeting kids 8 to 12 years old, the site addresses several important areas in which they need support. Through an online community, kids can celebrate their hobbies, talk about their talents, and learn what other kids love doing. They can also create a music mix, write a poem, or draw a story - and share it with others. They can ask questions about learning disabilities, friends, or school - and get answers they can trust from people who know what they're going through. And they can turn to Dr. Bart, a learning disabilities expert, for tips on maximizing their learning strengths and managing their learning disabilities. SparkTop.org is free of charge, carries no advertising, and is fully compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
As I prepared to end my "play date" at "Garfield's house," I realized there was more going on under this roof than just turning out the comic cat. Even though it was not the glass skyscraper I had originally envisioned, this quaint studio in rural Muncie was a lot bigger in scope than I had thought.
The last thing I noticed before walking out the door was a plain sign that simply read "Take care of the cat, and the cat will take care of you," and it is true. The cat is taking care to make a difference for kids, whether it is by teaching them to read through comics or by providing a safe haven for kids with learning challenges such as dyslexia. So, I say, "Take care of the cat because the cat is helping to take care of some very special kids."
When I arrived back home, my daughter asked me, "How was your trip to Garfield's house?" and I answered, "His house is amazing and a lot bigger than I thought."
Big Garfield fan,
Rob
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201001/dyslexics-have-good-reason-love-garfield
7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed
Published on February 7, 2010 by Robert Langston
7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed
1. Full disclosure is the order of the day
It has been my experience that children want straight answers to what is happening with them and why. Educate yourself on dyslexia, and then share what you have learned with the child. If a child is left to his or her own devices to figure out what is wrong, the chances are what he or she comes up with will be worse than what is actually happening (i.e. 'I'm just stupid' or 'my brain is broken'). Educate yourself and your child to demystify the situation.
2. Reinforce strengths
The average child spends a tremendous amount of time mastering how to read and write. If a child has learning challenges, this time can become associated with struggle and defeat. It is critical that you find alternative ways for this child to experience success. Be attentive and aware; seek out the child's strengths and magnify them. Keep in mind that a child may look to you as a barometer of their overall worth. Remember that a child's strength may not always be a traditional strength like sports. It may be more unique, such as Lego construction or being a good friend to others.
3. Reading is hard work-- at least make it interesting
Dyslexic children might not like the reading process but they can really like the content. Finding passages that relate to the child's interests can make the experience more enjoyable. For example: If a child has an affinity for All Terrain Vehicles (ATV's) then take pages from ATV magazines and watch the motivation levels rise.
4. Provide current role models
Everyone has seen the black and white picture of Albert Einstein with his hair standing on end that has been associated with dyslexia. I feel it is harder for children today to draw self-confidence from someone who died in the 1950's, even though he is a great role model. Give them modern-day dyslexic role models: Orlando Bloom, Jackie Chan, McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, and don't forget some ladies too: Selma Hayek, Jewel, Whoopi Goldberg. Keeping it current can keep it real for children.
5. Assistive technology
Buying a child with dyslexia a computer is not giving them assistive technology. Adding Dragon Naturally Speaking or Kurzweil 3000 and working with them until they master using the voice recognition software is a step in the right direction. Let's face it. For dyslexics, the ability to have your computer read an email aloud and transcribe your response is an assistive technology home run. I'm not saying to stop trying to teach your child to read. A good balance of hard work and help can ensure betterproductivity in school and life.
6. Multi-sensory approach to learning at school or home
There are schools which I refer to in The Power of Dyslexic Thinking as 'pockets of greatness.' These are schools around the country that use a multi-sensory approach to teach children with learning challenges. If you cannot afford to send a child to schools such as Churchill Center & School in Missouri or Currey Ingram Academy in Tennessee then maybe you can find local tutors trained in the same methods that these schools use. Some of these methods include the Orton-Gillingham, Slingerland Approach or Wilson Reading System. Look online for local tutor-locating search engines.
7. Provide accommodations
Early intervention provides the greatest chance of success in reading fluency. Remember that preserving a child's self esteem intact is the most important factor in his or her surviving and thriving in the classroom and life. For this, I offer the accommodation list I used myself: Oral test-taking, classroom note-takers, people reading written assignments onto a recorder, audio books and un-timed test-taking. Focus on what it will take for a child to learn in his or her class tomorrow and you both will live to read another day.
In service to children,
Rob
The article you just read was a contribution I made to SheKnows.com. To see the article on SheKnows.com click this link 7 Ways to help dyslexic children succeed
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-dyslexic-thinking/201002/7-ways-help-dyslexic-children-succeed
Overcoming Dyslexia
By Betsy Morris Reporter Associate Lisa Munoz Research Associate Patricia Neering
May 13, 2002
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Consider the following four dead-end kids.
One was spanked by his teachers for bad grades and a poor attitude. He dropped out of school at 16. Another failed remedial English and came perilously close to flunking out of college. The third feared he'd never make it through school--and might not have without a tutor. The last finally learned to read in third grade, devouring Marvel comics, whose pictures provided clues to help him untangle the words.
These four losers are, respectively, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, John Chambers, and David Boies. Billionaire Branson developed one of Britain's top brands with Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airways. Schwab virtually created the discount brokerage business. Chambers is CEO of Cisco. Boies is a celebrated trial attorney, best known as the guy who beat Microsoft.
In one of the stranger bits of business trivia, they have something in common: They are all dyslexic. So is billionaire Craig McCaw, who pioneered the cellular industry; John Reed, who led Citibank to the top of banking; Donald Winkler, who until recently headed Ford Financial; Gaston Caperton, former governor of West Virginia and now head of the College Board; Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko's; Diane Swonk, chief economist of Bank One. The list goes on (see table, "Dyslexic Achievers"). Many of these adults seemed pretty hopeless as kids. All have been wildly successful in business. Most have now begun to talk about their dyslexia as a way to help children and parents cope with a condition that is still widely misunderstood. "This is very painful to talk about, even today," says Chambers. "The only reason I am talking about it is 100% for the kids and their parents."
What exactly is dyslexia? The Everyman definition calls it a reading disorder in which people jumble letters, confusing dog with god, say, or box with pox. The exact cause is unclear; scientists believe it has to do with the way a developing brain is wired. Difficulty reading, spelling, and writing are typical symptoms. But dyslexia often comes with one or more other learning problems as well, including trouble with math, auditory processing, organizational skills, and memory. No two dyslexics are alike--each has his own set of weaknesses and strengths. About 5% to 6% of American public school children have been diagnosed with a learning disability; 80% of the diagnoses are dyslexia-related. But some studies indicate that up to 20% of the population may have some degree of dyslexia (see box, "How to Help").
A generation ago this was a problem with no name. Boies, Schwab, and Bill Samuels Jr., the president of Maker's Mark, did not realize they were dyslexic until some of their own children were diagnosed with the disorder, which is often inherited. Samuels says he was sitting in a school office, listening to a description of his son's problems, when it dawned on him: "Oh, shoot. That's me." Most of the adults FORTUNE talked to had diagnosed themselves. Says Branson: "At some point, I think I decided that being dyslexic was better than being stupid."
Stupid. Dumb. Retard. Dyslexic kids have heard it all. According to a March 2000 Roper poll, almost two-thirds of Americans still associate learning disabilities with mental retardation. That's probably because dyslexics find it so difficult to learn through conventional methods. "It is a disability in learning," says Boies. "It is not an intelligence disability. It doesn't mean you can't think."
He's right. Dyslexia has nothing to do with IQ; many smart, accomplished people have it, or are thought to have had it, including Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. Sally Shaywitz, a leading dyslexia neuroscientist at Yale, believes the disorder can carry surprising talents along with its well-known disadvantages. "Dyslexics are overrepresented in the top ranks of people who are unusually insightful, who bring a new perspective, who think out of the box," says Shaywitz. She is co-director of the Center for Learning and Attention at Yale, along with her husband, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, a professor of pediatrics and neurology.
Dyslexics don't outgrow their problems--reading and writing usually remain hard work for life--but with patient teaching and deft tutoring, they do learn to manage. Absent that, dyslexia can snuff out dreams at an early age, as children lose their way in school, then lose their self-esteem and drive. "The prisons are filled with kids who can't read," says Caperton. "I suspect a lot of them have learning disabilities."
Dyslexia is a crucible, particularly in a high-pressure society that allows so little room for late bloomers. "People are either defeated by it or they become much more tenacious," says McCaw. Don Winkler, a top financial services executive at Bank One and then at Ford Motor, remembers coming home from school bloodied by fights he'd had with kids who called him dumb. Kinko's founder, Paul Orfalea, failed second grade and spent part of third in a class of mentally retarded children. He could not learn to read, despite the best efforts of parents who took him to testers, tutors, therapists, special reading groups, and eye doctors. As young classmates read aloud, Orfalea says it was as if "angels whispered words in their ears."
In his unpublished autobiography, Orfalea says that to a dyslexic, a sentence is worse than Egyptian hieroglyphics. "It's more like a road map with mouse holes or coffee stains in critical places. You're always turning into blind alleys and ending up on the wrong side of town." He finally graduated, but not before being "invited to leave...practically every high school in Los Angeles." One principal counseled his mother to enroll him in trade school, suggesting that Orfalea could become a carpet layer. His mother went home and tearfully told her husband, "I just know he can do more than lay carpet."
Charles Schwab was very strong in math, science, and sports (especially golf), which helped him get into Stanford. But anything involving English "was a disconnect." He couldn't write quickly enough to capture his thoughts. He couldn't listen to a lecture and take legible notes. He couldn't memorize four words in a row. He doesn't think he ever read a novel all the way through in high school. He was within one unit of flunking out of Stanford his freshman year. "God, I must just be really dumb in this stuff," he used to tell himself. "It was horrible, a real drag on me." So horrible that Schwab and his wife, Helen, created a foundation to help parents of children with learning disorders.
It was as if Schwab and the others were wearing a scarlet letter: D for dumb. Until about five years ago Chambers kept his dyslexia a secret. As CEO, he says, "you don't want people to see your weaknesses." One day a little girl at Cisco's Bring Your Children to Work Day forced him out of the closet. Chambers had called on her, and she was trying to ask a question before a crowd of 500 kids and parents. But she couldn't get the words out. "I have a learning disability," she said tearfully.
Chambers cannot tell this story without choking up himself. "You could immediately identify with what that was like," he says. "You know that pain. She started to leave, and you knew how hurt she was in front of the group and her parents." Chambers threw her a lifeline. "I have a learning disability too," he said. In front of the crowd, he began talking to her as if they were the only two people in the room. "You've just got to learn your way through it," Chambers told her. "Because there are some things you can do that others cannot, and there are some things others can do you're just not going to be able to do, ever. Now my experience has been that what works is to go a little bit slower...."
It was the kind of coaching that proved crucial to nearly everybody we talked to: mentors who took a genuine interest, parents who refused to give up, tutors who didn't even know what dyslexia was. Winkler recalls that his parents refused to let their fear of electrocution stand in the way of his fixing every iron and toaster in the neighborhood. "I wired every teacher's house," he says. "I got shocked all the time." His parents owned a mom-and-pop shop in Phillipsburg, N.J. His mother cleaned houses to pay for his tutoring. Chambers, who read right to left and up and down the page, says his parents, both doctors, claim they never once doubted his abilities, even though "I absolutely did." His parents' faith was important to him. So was his tutor, Mrs. Anderson. Even today Chambers remembers tutoring as excruciating: "It might have been once or twice a week," he says, "but it felt like every day." Nonetheless, he adds, "Mrs. Anderson had an influence on my life far bigger than she might have ever realized."
If you could survive childhood, dyslexia was a pretty good business boot camp. It fostered risk taking, problem solving, resilience. School was a chess game that required tactical brilliance. Schwab sat mostly in the back of the room. But he was conscientious and charming, and gutsy enough to ask for extra help. Boies took a minimum of math and avoided foreign languages and anything involving spatial skills. Orfalea worked out a symbiotic relationship with classmates on a group project at USC's Marshall Business School; they did the writing, he did the photocopying (and got the germ of the idea that led to Kinko's).
At Vanderbilt Law School, Samuels spent a lot of time in study-group discussions. "That's how I learned the cases," he says. His friends helped with the reading; he paid for the beer. Better than most people, dyslexics learn humility and how to get along with others. It's probably no accident that Kinko's, Cisco, and Schwab have all been on FORTUNE's list of the best places to work. "I never put people down, because I know what that feels like," says Branson, who seldom asks for a resume either, "because I haven't got one myself."
By the time these guys got into business, they had picked themselves up so many times that risk taking was second nature. "We're always expecting a curve ball," says Samuels. Schwab remembers how hard it was to watch his friends receive awards and become "General Motors Scholars, Merit Scholars, Baker Scholars. I was so jealous," he says. Later on, though, some of the prizewinners had trouble dealing with adversity.
If, as kids, the dyslexic executives had learned the downside of their disorder inside out, as adults they began to see its upside: a distinctly different way of processing information that gave them an edge in a volatile, fast-moving world. Bill Dreyer, an inventor and a biologist at Caltech, recalls a dinner-party conversation years ago in which he told a colleague how his dyslexic brain works: "I think in 3-D Technicolor pictures instead of words." "You what?" replied the incredulous colleague. The two argued the rest of the night about how that was possible.
Dreyer believes that thinking in pictures enabled him to develop groundbreaking theories about how antibodies are made, and then to invent one of the first protein-sequencing machines, which helped to launch the human genome revolution. "I was able to see the machine in my head and rotate valves and actually see the instrumentation," he says. "I don't think of dyslexia as a deficiency. It's like having CAD [computer-aided design] in your brain. I bet these other guys see business in 3-D too. I bet they see graphs and charts of how trends will unfold."
In his office, Chambers goes from wounded to animated as he heads to the dry-erase board to show that's exactly what he does. "I can't explain why, but I just approach problems differently," he says. "It's very easy for me to jump conceptually from A to Z. I picture a chess game on a multiple-layer dimensional cycle and almost play it out in my mind. But it's not a chess game. It's business. I don't make moves one at a time. I can usually anticipate the potential outcome and where the Y's in the road will occur." As he's talking, he's scrawling a grid depicting how Cisco diversified into switches, fiber optics, and wireless by acquisition, internal development, or partnering. It was a picture he used to explain his vision to the board of directors back in 1993, when he was an executive vice president and Cisco was a one-product company. It became a road map. "All we did was fill in the chart," he says.
Barely pausing, he's drawing again, this time a picture showing the evolution of networking, including the commoditization of telephone services. He first drew this picture in 1995. "I'm not always right," he says. He did not foresee the extent of last year's economic downturn or the subsequent collapse in demand. "But we knew there would be industry consolidation and a chance for us to break away."
Like Chambers, Schwab fast-forwards past the smaller, logical steps of sequential thinkers. "Many times I can see a solution to something and synthesize things differently and quicker than other people," he says. In meetings, "I would see the end zone and say, 'This is where we need to go.' " This annoys sequential thinkers, he says, because it shortcuts their "rigorous step-by-step process."
Diane Swonk's former boss and mentor at Bank One always thought Swonk had a "third eye." Swonk, an economist, says it's dyslexia. Although she has worked in the same building for 16 years, she still has a hard time figuring out which track her commuter train is on and which way to turn when she leaves the office elevator. She can't dial telephone numbers. She has a hard time with arithmetic, reversing and transposing numbers.
But she revels in higher-level math concepts, and in January 1999, when almost everyone was bemoaning the global financial crisis and fretting about the stock market--then trading at around 9300--she told the Executives Club of Chicago that the Dow would break 11,000 by year-end. The prediction seemed so surprising that the moderator made her repeat it. She was right then and right again last year, when she insisted--even after Sept. 11--that the economic downturn would not be as bad as feared. Why not? Because consumers would keep spending. Which they did. "I'm not in the consensus a lot," says Swonk. "In fact, being in the consensus makes me really uncomfortable."
Sometimes dyslexics are utterly incapable of seeing things the way others do. Craig McCaw could not understand conventional wisdom that said cellphones would never amount to much. "To me it just seemed completely obvious that if you could find a way not to be tethered to a six-foot cord in a five-by-nine office, you'd take it. Maybe if your mind isn't cluttered with too much information, some things are obvious." McCaw built the first almost-nationwide cellular company, which he sold to AT&T in 1994 for $11.5 billion. Now he's trying to build a global satellite system to make the Internet as pervasive and portable as cellphones--another seemingly impossible feat.
Bill Samuels Jr. couldn't see the improbability of turning tiny Maker's Mark into a national brand in 1975, even though bourbon sales were in a decade-long slump. "I can't write," says Samuels, "but I can organize old information into a different pattern easily." The old pattern was to advertise to the trade. The new one: to bypass both the trade and Madison Avenue with homespun ads to consumers that Samuels wrote himself. Within ten years Maker's Mark had become "perhaps the most fervently sought bourbon in the U.S.," according to Ad Age. "Many times in business, different is better than better," says Samuels. "And we dyslexics do different without blinking an eye."
David Boies turned dyslexic deficits into advantages. Because of his difficulty reading from a script, he makes an outline of his basic points and commits it to memory. Then, unlike trial lawyers who work from a script, he is free to improvise. That enables him to be more dramatic, more flexible. He can break the cardinal rule of cross-examination, which is never to ask a question if you don't know the answer (it messes up the script). He can wander around themes, trap witnesses. "It cuts down on the time the witness has to think and predict where you're going," says Boies.
On a recent trip to Boston, Richard Branson arrives in a spray of champagne to open a Virgin Megastore. He is a true business celebrity, having come straight from hosting a party in London celebrating the honorary knighthood of Rudy Giuliani (Sir Richard, too, is a knight) and going later that evening to address the blue-blood Chief Executives' Club of Boston.
Branson's success and his dyslexia seem like such a disconnect. He never made it through high school. He has a wickedly unreliable memory; because his mind goes blank at the most inopportune times, he writes important things--like names--in black ink on the back of his hand. He won't use a computer. He's terrible at math. Until recently, he confesses, he was still confusing gross profit with net. He'd been faking it, but not too well. One of his board members finally pulled him aside to give him a mnemonic, or memory aid, which often comes in handy for dyslexics. Pretend you're fishing, the board member said. Net is all the fish in your net at the end of the year. Gross is that plus everything that got away.
Branson approaches business completely differently from most. "I never, ever thought of myself as a businessman," he tells the Boston CEOs. "I was interested in creating things I would be proud of." He started Virgin Atlantic because flying other airlines was so dreadful. He knew he could provide better service. There's an irony here, says Branson: "Look, if I'd been good at math, I probably never would have started an airline."
Branson is not the only dyslexic CEO who has tried to bluff his way through problems. For years, Orfalea says, "I was a closet bad reader...I never showed anybody my handwriting until I was in my 40s." He cultivated a casual, can't-be-bothered-with-it management style that allowed him to avoid the written word. If he received a long letter, for instance, "I'd just hand it to somebody else and say, 'Here, read it.' " He mostly avoided the corporate office and instead went from Kinko's to Kinko's, observing, talking to customers, making changes. He wasn't goofing off; he was vacuuming up information in his own way--orally, visually, multisensorily.
For most dyslexic business leaders, reading is still not easy. They tend to like newspapers, short magazine articles, summaries. Says Chambers: "Short reading is fine. But long reading I just really labor over." His staff knows to deliver summaries in three pages or less, the major points highlighted in yellow. McCaw says he can read and write. "But to do either requires a lot of energy and concentration." He and the others are information grazers. "You learn for self-preservation to grasp the maximum amount of meaning out of the minimal amount of context," says McCaw, describing his reading like this: "You don't really view the piece of paper. You scan. You may pull something out of it," all the while alternating between "apparent disinterest and maniacal focus." Once McCaw makes short work of the short stack of papers in his in-box, they disappear. When government investigators asked to see his files during a routine antitrust inquiry in 1985, there were none. "Craig and a piece of paper do not remain together for very long," his COO told the investigators.
Boies calls dyslexia "primarily an input problem." He is highly selective about the information he takes in and constantly makes judgments about what's most important: the five or ten most relevant cases, the key points in those cases. Always, always, Boies says, he's looking at the big picture, at how the story will end. "You are always trying to figure out where something's going--to put it in context," he says. "It's harder to just read it straight." Seeing the big picture early on may be the dyslexic's best shortcut: If you know where you're going, you can figure out how to get there. "One of the things dyslexics do is learn to get the big picture, to grasp things very quickly rather than seeing the itty-bitty part," says Shaywitz. "They have no choice. It's a survival skill. But I've been struck by the perceptions and relationships they're able to see."
Dyslexics learn to soak up information in other ways than print. "When you're not focusing, you're grabbing at the abstract information in the atmosphere," says McCaw. "You don't even know where it comes from. But the receptors are highly reactive because they're trying to overcome what we'll call the lack of reading input." Schwab learned the plots and characters of Moby-Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, and other great books by reading Classic comics, which told the stories in pictures. Chambers prefers voicemail to e-mail because "it's so much easier for me to understand and visualize by hearing." Boies flourished in law school (Yale, magna cum laude) in part because he could learn by listening. "We all associate reading with knowledge and wisdom," he says. "But the Socratic Dialogues are dialogues. Teaching tools. There is a difference between knowledge and the means of acquiring knowledge."
Managing dyslexia is a lifelong effort. Winkler, who now teaches a leadership course at the University of Michigan Business School, starts his day with brain exercises he calls Wink's Warm-Ups. Sometimes he uses multiplication and division flash cards. Other mornings he practices "trigger" words, like "won't" or "didn't," that confuse him. The College Board's Caperton says he almost always has to redial phone numbers, often more than once. Swonk rechecks her calculations five times.
Chambers relies on his wife, Elaine, to help him navigate a phone book. He's terrible with written directions. He'll never forget the wild ride he gave Tom Ridge one night. Ridge, then governor of Pennsylvania, had come to Silicon Valley on an economic development mission. After the event, he asked Chambers for a ride to the restaurant where they were to have dinner. "I thought, 'Oh, no!' " says Chambers. He knew immediately that he would get lost. Sure enough, he led Ridge and an entourage of police escorts on a wild goose chase, crossing lanes and stopping at not one but two gas stations for directions. The next day he bought a GPS. "I can laugh about it now," says Chambers.
The Cisco CEO does something else every successful business leader should do, but often doesn't: He builds a team to shore up his weaknesses. "I will not spend as much time on individual details," Chambers says, so he hires detail people "who are able to go A to B, B to C, and to take the components apart." McCaw says dyslexics need a translator "who can take that conceptual or intuitive idea and get it into a form that's usable." Because he's more conceptual than analytical, he needs someone who can communicate with people who are the opposite. "One on one, you just drive them crazy," he says. "You come up with a pronouncement, and you have no facts to back it up. It just irritates the daylights out of them. You really need a translator with a foot in both camps."
At Maker's Mark, Samuels surrounds himself with "very verbal people who like to communicate what they're doing." Even his production vice president and his CFO--positions that don't normally attract chatty types--are that way because, he says, "I knew I'd have to find people who would tolerate my need to be talked to a lot." Orfalea recalls that his mother used to console him by saying that when everybody grows up, "the A students work for the B students. The C students run the businesses. And the D students dedicate the buildings."
Possible clues to the differences between A students and dyslexics can be seen under a microscope at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Some of the most interesting research on the disorder occurs here and at the Shaywitzes' Yale center. In Glen Rosen's Harvard lab, a slide shows how dark clouds of neurons have strayed from their normal path, probably during fetal development, and ended up in tiny clumps called ectopias (ectopia is Greek for "out of place"). Rosen, an associate professor of neurology, theorizes that the wandering neurons cause a "cascade of connectional differences" in brain wiring. Because the ectopias prevent some nerve fibers from going where they should, they migrate at random, wiring regions of the brain not normally connected. Scientists believe this might explain why no two dyslexics are alike and why one, like Branson, might be terrible at math but a good writer, and why another, like Schwab, might be quite the opposite.
Researchers used to think that many more boys than girls were dyslexic. (Schools were identifying four times as many boys as girls a decade ago.) But an ongoing study at Yale of 400 Connecticut children indicates that the numbers are about equal. The Shaywitzes believe that most discrepancies in diagnosis are social: Dyslexic girls tend to behave better and work harder than dyslexic boys, and therefore often escape detection.
Magnetic-resonance imaging at the Yale lab has shed new light on how the brain works, bolstering the belief that dyslexics have difficulty decoding the smallest meaningful segments of language, called phonemes. (The word "cat" has three phonemes: kuh, aah, and tuh.) When dyslexic subjects are asked to sound out words, MRI technology, by measuring blood flow, shows relatively less activity in the back of the brain and more activity in the front. In good readers, most of the activity occurs in the back of the brain.
Despite all the unknowns, dyslexia is clearly better understood and treated today than it was a generation ago. Yet in a high-pressure society where straight A's and high test scores count for so much, the disorder still carries a heavy penalty. Boies says nothing has been harder for him than watching the struggles of two of his own children who are dyslexic. "It is awful. Awful. The most difficult thing I've ever done," he says. One of the boys is in high school. The other graduated from Hamilton College summa cum laude and from Yale Law School--despite childhood testing, recalls Boies, that "was not very optimistic in terms of what he would be able to accomplish." Boies wishes that society allowed more room and more time for late bloomers. "In this environment," he says, "you get children who think they are masters of the universe, and children who think they are failures, when they're 10 years old. They're both wrong. And neither is well served by that misconception."
Where would we be, after all, if the bar had been set so high that none of these guys--not Schwab, not Chambers, not Boies, not Branson, not Dreyer, not McCaw--could have cleared it?
Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/05/13/322876/index.htm