Dyslexia Explored

We have a very special guest in this episode. He’s a dyslexic venture capitalist from California, who has been open about his dyslexia story and how it helps and, in turn, affects him. He’s been featured in a TEDtalk where he shared why he can’t remember names and has appeared in podcasts and blogs too. Let’s find out more about the dyslexia story of David Hornik. In this episode, David shares a l...

Rossie Stone was the very first guest we featured here in Dyslexia Explored. In that episode, he shared how he came up with creating a company, Dekko Comics, that takes real school subjects and makes it easy to absorb for kids through fun and visually engaging comics. Listen to the first episode to learn more. This time, Rossie came to the show to share more of what happened after. A continuation...

This is the story of Micki Boas, a mom of 2 children with dyslexia, who legally fought the school for 4 years just for her child to have access to proper dyslexic support which is supposed to be provided through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In this episode, Micki shares her dyslexia story and how she came up with writing a book called "ONE IN FIVE: How we're fighting for...

This is Part 2 of our interview with Kerry Pace, the founder of Diverse Learners, a tutoring service where they support students and workers with Special Learning Difficulties by online tutoring. In the previous episode, we talked about her life story and how she found out that she has dyspraxia, ADD, and sensory processing disorder. In this episode, we find out how she saw a need to create her ow...

After relating to a dyspraxia report of someone else, she asks her colleague, who is an occupational therapist, if she thinks she might be dyspraxic. The therapist said she knew right away after 30 minutes of meeting her. All the clues were visible. That shocked her. Kerry Pace was helping students with dyslexia without knowing that she has Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and Sensory...

A conversation about shame and dyslexia and the power of empathy with Stan Gloss, inspired by Brene Brown’s books on shame. Two years ago we made a mind map animation video of the story of Stan Gloss based on an article by understood.org. For those who are not familiar, Stan is the CEO and co-founder of BioTeam and dyslexic. He talked about his life growing up with dyslexia and how he used it to h...

Karen Murdarasi said she had no difficulty in reading. She was doing well at school and didn’t remember having trouble school. She remembered being called careless by her parents and teachers but she didn’t really pay attention to it. Until one teacher noticed that there’s a disparity between her performance in her oral participation and her written submissions. Being trained with identifying dysl...

Driven by the growing frustration that she didn’t have enough skills to help dyslexic children, she trained for the Level 5 specific learning difficulty teacher training course at the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Center, then became a headteacher of Moon Hall School. Sarah George had a nice conversation with Darius about her dyslexia journey, dyslexia schools particularly Moon Hall School, and the advant...

This is the 2nd part of our talk with Moira Thomson, MBE. In this episode, she talked about accommodations. Is it really worth it to have young people have adjustments to the arrangements? Is it not considered cheating to give one child extra time in the exams where others don't? She also talks about the misidentification of dyslexia as a child and how Scotland is ahead in terms of dealing with dy...

In this episode, we have a special guest. Moira Thomson, who got an MBE from the Queen, the sovereign of the UK – Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, for her service to children and families with dyslexia for the last 50 years, was a huge contributor to Scotland dyslexia in more ways than I can imagine. Moira graduated from Edinburgh University before doing a post-grad diploma at Oxford...

As a trainer of teachers who train other teachers, Sara Shunkwiler, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Education and tutor of dyslexia, finds it hard to access research about dyslexia and related subjects. Even with the professor's ID, she still gets blocked on a lot of research papers in the library. Research papers that could’ve helped teachers improve teaching non-linear thinking...

Steve McCue stopped going to school at age 14 because he did not think he had the academic ability.  He worked different jobs and performed in festivals as a musician but at age 35 he went back to school and got identified with dyslexia. He was given a computer to work with and that helped him a lot. However, assistive technologies were pretty basic at that time and some even caused roadblock...

When Evie found out she was dyslexic she cried in the car saying “I don’t want to be different. Don’t tell anybody.” Now she and her mum, Janine, sat down with Darius to share about their dyslexia story. In this episode of the Dyslexia Explored, we learn how Evie, a 12-year-old child with dyslexia, got her self-written story chosen as top 5 out of 1,300 entries submitted.  Links you might wan...

How you can fail an easier multiple-choice medical exam and get 98% in a harder diagnostic exam! Discussing strategies she uses in medicine and research. Plus her COVID drug research trial in Glasgow and Care homes.  Links you might want to check: Dr. Janet's profile: https://www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/iii/cvr/staff/groups/janetscott/   Bulletmap Academy Page: https://bulletmapacad...

Want a few tips on planning with dyslexia? Here are my top 3 tips for helping children with dyslexia get things done: Tip #1: Tasks need to take less than 25 min to complete. Tip #2 “Tell them to return to the board! Tip #3: Make your ‘to do list’ feel physical This is our topic for today’s parent’s coffee. Links you might want to check: Bulletmap Academy Page: https://bulletmapacademy.com Doodle...

Today we are going to talk about the valuable connections the minds of dyslexic thinkers can make. The problem is that dyslexia can get in the way with poor spelling, grammar, and handwriting but once you find teachers that can look past that and help you wrestle with your thoughts then you can start to enjoy learning again. The dyslexic advantage chapter 10 Page 79-84 Links you might want to chec...

How Einstein was an uncooperative child and had a bad temper. Also Isaac Newton was regarded as a “simpleton” who only knew how to make toys Let’s talk about how toys aren’t just toys in the hands of children with strong 3D minds. Sometimes teachers can overlook the seed of a child’s future as just another crazy elaborate toy experiment. Yet many of these children become people who practically sol...

In today's coffee time, we are going to talk about how often it’s puzzling to teachers why bright students with dyslexia find it so hard to answer open-ended questions. Einstein, a famous dyslexic, once complained that “thinking in words is not natural for him”. Let's talk about how we need to translate our non-verbal thoughts into words. Often it's easier to explain ourselves in drawings and diag...

You might be surprised to hear that flipping letters while you read or write isn't a common trait of dyslexia. But it is often a sign of extreme dyslexia like Leonardo da Vinci. I used to think I wasn't dyslexic because words didn't shake, jiggle, or reverse. In this episode, we are going to do our book club on the Dyslexic Advantage page 61-63. Links you might want to check: Bulletmap Academy Pag...

How it’s helpful to take a school project all the way to its full completion in the real world. For example, turning a school essay into a blog or a business idea into a pop-up business - and why that’s when dyslexia shines. Links you might want to check: Bulletmap Academy Page: https://bulletmapacademy.com Doodle Club: https://bulletmapacademy.com/doodle/ BulletMap Academy Workshop: https://bulle...

In today's live podcast/parent's coffee time, let's explore how critical verbal or visual feedback is to people with the dyslexic mind. For example, how conversations are so important, secondly how doodling is helpful, plus a whole lot more... Links you might want to check: Bulletmap Academy Page: https://bulletmapacademy.com Doodle Club: https://bulletmapacademy.com/doodle/ BulletMap Academy Work...

In today's podcast/parent's coffee time, we're going to explore the story of Stan Gloss and some advice he gave in an interview with understood.org and some interesting comments and ideas on how to help children with dyslexia deal with the blizzard of ideas and inventions that go through their minds. His biggest tip was to find materials that can help children prototype their ideas quickly. Links...

I want to share with you a cool little technique that helps children with dyslexia learn things faster. We use it a lot with the children that we tutor. It's a variation of the Feynman technique. In this live recording of the podcast, you'll get a preview of the explanation. It involves 4 steps. 1) Write everything on a piece of paper, 2) Explain it out loud to an imaginary class, 3) Find the bits...

The "zero-gravity workshop" of a dyslexic thinker's mind. Get a preview of podcast episode 61 where we explain how a dyslexic mind is like working in a zero-gravity workshop and what we can do about it. Children really love this analogy. It's a great way to explain how their minds work. Links you might want to check: Bulletmap Academy Page: https://bulletmapacademy.com Doodle Club: https://bulletm...

There's a term commonly encountered when we talk about dyslexia. It is the working memory. We've talked about it in most of the episodes in dyslexia explored but we haven't really explained what it is and how is it affecting people with dyslexia. In this episode, we are going to talk about the role of working memory does in relation to the 5 gears of dyslexia that we talked about in the previous e...