America faces a reading crisis that's worsening despite decades of curriculum changes and interventions. In this eye-opening continuation of our Brainy Moms series on reading, Dr. Amy and Sandy interview reading and dyslexia specialist Donesa Walker. We explore why reading scores keep declining nationwide and what parents can do about it.
Louisiana's dramatic rise from near-bottom to 16th in national reading rankings offers valuable insights. Their success came through mandatory science of reading training for all teachers, high-dose tutoring for struggling students, and crucially, empowering parents with educational choices. Yet even this success story highlights a fundamental truth: schools cannot bear sole responsibility for reading achievement.
The discussion takes a fascinating turn when we examine the cognitive foundations of reading. Processing speed, working memory, attention, and other brain skills form the bedrock upon which reading abilities are built. Without these foundations, reading interventions become like "laying asphalt over potholes" – temporarily effective but ultimately failing to create lasting change.
Donesa explains why traditional reading interventions often show disappointing results in research studies – they simply don't address the underlying cognitive weaknesses. Meanwhile, a program called ReadRx combine cognitive training with reading instruction and has demonstrated dramatic improvements, with studies showing 4-5 year gains in just 24 weeks.
We also explore how background knowledge shapes reading comprehension. When children lack rich experiences that build vocabulary and background knowledge, reading becomes an empty exercise. This explains why the number of books in a home directly correlates with reading test results, and why programs providing free books to children make such a difference.
The conversation concludes with a paradigm-shifting perspective: every parent is essentially a homeschool parent, simply choosing where and by whom curriculum is delivered. This perspective empowers families to take control of their children's reading journey, filling curriculum gaps and providing the experiences and cognitive development necessary for reading success.
Join us to discover practical strategies for developing your child's reading skills beyond the classroom, and learn why brain health deserves the same attention as physical health in today's educational landscape.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Amy Moore (00:00):
Hi, smart moms and dads, we're so excited for
you to come back and join us forpart two of our Brainy Moms
series, with reading anddyslexia specialist Donesa
Walker.
If you tuned in to our priorepisode, we talked about the
latest Nation's Report Cardresults in reading, what's
happening there, what are thepotential reasons for this
continued decline in readingperformance across America?
(00:30):
And we ended that episode bydrawing the conclusion that we
cannot expect schools to havethe sole responsibility for
reading performance andinstruction even because of the
importance of prior knowledge toreading fluency and
(00:51):
comprehension.
And we need to dig in a littlebit further on that idea,
because if we can't expectschools to be solely responsible
for reading instruction andperformance, then who can we
lean on?
And so that's what we're goingto talk about in part two of
this episode.
Welcome, Donesa.
We're so excited that you'respending so much time with us on
(01:12):
this really critical topic.
Donesa Walker (01:15):
Thank you for having me.
Sandy Zamalis (01:18):
Donesa.
So Education Week just had anarticle recently that was
talking about the NAEP scoresand it highlighted Louisiana,
which is your state, and ittalked about the massive gains
that your state was able to make.
In the same time period thatwe've been talking about they, I
believe they went from correctme if I'm wrong almost dead last
in reading yeah To being in thetop 16th.
(01:42):
You're right 16th now afterbeing in the bottom.
Yeah, I was going to say top 20.
Yeah, but that's a significantmove from where you guys started
.
Can you share with ourlisteners, because we want to
talk about positive ways we canaddress this issue?
What is the state doing thathas made such an impact?
Donesa Walker (02:04):
Well, I think that we've turned the ship here
very quickly in the science ofreading.
So that was one of the thingsthat made.
A big difference is that everyteacher was mandated to go
through the science of readingcourse and learned the
principles behind, no matterwhat grade you taught, and that
was a requirement.
So, again leading back into that, teachers that you know were
(02:26):
science teachers and maybe theywere accountants and went back
to school to be a math teacher.
They didn't know anything aboutreading, but now they do.
So they started understandingthe principles behind reading
and helping children understandthat reading actually is a
process that begins in the brainand that you do have to have
these core skills, and also inunderstanding that there is a
(02:49):
significant amount of buildingprocess that has to happen in
vocabularies, and helping themto understand and build that
knowledge that I'm going to callit's weaved together maybe is
the best, best way.
So when you start with aprocess that you have to build
and you have to constantly weaveand move up and weave and move
(03:11):
up, and so you have to go backand pull through, go back and
pull through, like with yourcrochet and a quilt, you have to
go back and pull through theprior knowledge and to the new
knowledge, and so building thatbackground and relating to that
was a key part of that.
Guidebooks has been part ofthat process.
Sandy Zamalis (03:31):
What are guidebooks for our listeners,
who maybe don't know what thatis.
Donesa Walker (03:34):
So basically giving an overview, direction
and putting it process.
I'm going to say it's adirection scoping sequence maybe
is the easiest way for them toget it.
A scoping sequence that helpsthem have the fullness.
Basically, that's what we'vetalked about.
You've chosen one curriculum,then you choose another
(04:07):
curriculum and then you go toanother curriculum.
There's loss of content andknowledge, there's big holes and
we our state is a very mobilestate and people are moving in
and out a lot for differentreasons.
So getting that knowledge wherethere's a consistency across
the whole state and that you canpick where the child is and
(04:31):
what the lack of knowledge is bydoing an attainment of where
they are, so when they come inyou actually find out exactly
what knowledge that they knowand what basis that they know
and where the potholes are, andI think that's been a big key.
I think it's a really big keyto making big changes,
understanding where the potholeis and helping them to pull
forward.
Sandy Zamalis (04:50):
So what I'm hearing you say is they assessed
right.
They assessed kids from that Kthrough five and probably even
beyond, and then they reallylooked at statewide measures of
consistency to try to build.
Donesa Walker (05:04):
And there's a constant assessment process.
That's an ongoing, constantprocess that they're doing.
So they integrated this whatthey call high dose tutoring so
that every child who is at a lowlevel had to receive high dose
tutoring every day, no more thanfour to one, and it had to be
(05:26):
by a highly qualified teacher.
And when they did not have theability to do that, they pulled
in outside resources SESproviders such as myself and we
were able to go into theclassrooms and deliver that high
dose for them to be able toreceive that.
So they had specialists whowere on board and when the
(05:47):
district didn't have the rightappropriate people it's still a
work in progress.
It's still very much a work inprogress.
In my area, you know there's alot of motility.
Still that happens.
There's a lot of people who arestill homeschooling.
There's a very groundswellgroup of people who are
realizing homeschooling.
There's a very groundswellgroup of people who are
realizing that they need to takeauthority for their own
(06:10):
children's knowledge andschooling, and so there's in my
city there's 45 private schools,so that's an enormous amount of
people who are makingalternative choices, and so
that's why the state has movedinto this philosophy that it is
(06:31):
the parent's choice of how theeducation is going to be driven
and so what school you choose.
If your school was a school thatwas an F school and it wasn't
making growth, then you couldactually move your child to a
different school and it wasapproved.
We have magnet programs whereyou actually test into a certain
(06:51):
school that specializes inscience and math or in arts, and
so you can actually move yourchild to a school that is going
to feed into their process.
And then we actually have alsointroduced some other schools
that cater to specialdisabilities, such as the
(07:11):
Louisiana Key Academy, whichspecializes in dyslexia, and we
have one of those in down Southand now we have two more, so we
have three of those across thestate.
Sandy Zamalis (07:22):
So I imagine, yeah, so I imagine the state
really had to look at with thatscholarship that you were just
talking about.
They had to take into accountthe socioeconomic factors here,
so families that could afford topull their kids out and put
them into private schools thatleft kids left in school that
(07:43):
maybe had some socioeconomichindrances that would keep them
from moving.
So they really had to key in onhow are they going to help all
kids build skill so that itwasn't going to be affected if
large portions of kids can moveout of the system.
Donesa Walker (08:00):
Correct.
The embracing and the knowledgeof that I think made a big
difference to your scores.
You're going to have a lot morewhen you're looking at it as
like we need to get to what thecause is and then we need to
start addressing that root cause.
We need to be very realisticabout this is where the child is
struggling and we need to meetthem where they are and move
(08:20):
them forward from where they are, and I think that is a key to
the school process, and I thinkthat the state as a whole has
really pressed that issue thatthe parent needs to make the
choices, and that's why ourwebsite is called Louisiana
Believes that's our educationalwebsite, believes that's our
(08:47):
educational website and it's gota plethora of information on it
, including all the tutoringguides and building the UFILI
guides that you can go to wherethe parent can actually work on
these things at home, that theycan access those things at home.
And that's hard in a worldthat's gone very technological,
when there's not workbooks goinghome and there's not textbooks
going home and math is donedifferently than it used to be
(09:09):
done, and so there's a lot ofchanges that are still needing
to happen, but that isdefinitely what has moved our
state forward?
Sandy Zamalis (09:18):
I love that.
Oh sorry, go ahead, that's okay,I was just going to say I love
that there's been a shift inwe're not assuming anymore that
all kids have what they need.
I think if there's any, I thinkhighlight for me it's that this
myth of neurotypical and thatwe've all got the same
(09:41):
background, knowledge and thesame information and so we
should be expected to thrive inthese situations.
That myth has been debunked now, and now we're going to really
try to assess, figure out wheregaps are and try to really meet
kids where they're at.
I think probably it's been thebiggest win of all of this, even
though it's hard to see withall of the data coming out.
Dr. Amy Moore (10:06):
Yeah.
So I want to point out, while Ithink this is absolutely cause
for celebrating for the state ofLouisiana, for a state who has
really struggled for decades tomove the needle on reading
absolutely let's celebrate itbut I also want to point out
(10:27):
that Louisiana is not above thenational average.
Louisiana is 16th, so stillright there in the problematic
national issue.
So you've made improvementsfrom coming up from the bottom
as a state right, but you'restill in the struggle.
(10:47):
You're still right in themiddle of the struggle that
america is having with readingright, and so you're going to
hit a ceiling.
You're going to, you're goingto get to a place where you can
still only do so much right asan education right If we look at
it, the realistic.
Donesa Walker (11:06):
Here's my miniature soapbox, because my
soapbox is about dyslexia.
A lot we have.
1% of our kids in our state arediagnosed with dyslexia.
The national average is 20.
Okay, Hello, what's going onwith this other 19%?
I'll tell you what's going on.
We also have a huge amount ofour kids that are diagnosed with
(11:27):
ADHD and on medicine.
With changes that are happening,a lot of these kids are not
getting the process.
So it is going to catch us ifwe don't start addressing it.
It will catch us just like welooked at those scores and said
Louisiana made good gains, butwe made good gains, but we made
good gains in one area.
Look at our eighth grade scores.
(11:48):
Just this is the whole thing isthat it wasn't just, it was in
an area and, yes, we madeintervention and we made some
changes and we put some thingsin place, but there are some
massive things that are going tocatch us if we don't start
addressing that and saying, okay, we have to take authority and
make moves and decisions thatare going to be about every
(12:10):
brain, not about a cookie cutterapproach that has never worked
and never will work.
Okay, and if we go backhistorically, honestly,
truthfully, schools were puttogether out of convenience,
right, it was, the parent wasresponsible for the child.
And then it was like, ok, let'sgroup together and let's create
(12:33):
this micro classroom and oneteacher is going to teach it and
one parent, and then we aregoing to hire a teacher.
And then it became, throughhistory, the process of what we
have in our public schoolsystems and became more systemic
and the more systemic that itbecame the process of what we
have in our public schoolsystems and became more systemic
and the more systemic that itbecame, the more loss of the
child.
And so I think we have to lookback at what was working, and
(12:55):
that's why we see a lot ofparents who have moved to like
classical delivery models forhomeschooling is because they
see the value in thefoundational approach.
And so I think that we have tolook as a society and say, okay,
where are we headed as asociety and where do we want to
go in order to stay competitiveand educationally attain the
(13:20):
direction that we want to go.
When I, my kids were in publicschool, when I was a public
school teacher, and then, whenmy kids moved, when I started
learning Rx, my children were insecond grade and fourth grade
and at that point in time I waslike I now have the opportunity
as a business owner that I canactually homeschool my own
(13:42):
children, and so I chose to pullthem out of the public system
because that was where theircurriculum had been delivered
before, and now I chose tohomeschool them so that I could
give them the best.
My two children were raised inthe same home and they had the
same parents and they had thesame upbringing and they had
(14:03):
very different schemas that werebuilt, their schematis because
of how they approached things,very different in their brains.
Okay, john was an avid reader.
Gabriel did not love reading.
Gabriel struggled with somedyslexic tendencies, he had ADHD
, he had a little bit of atemper, but he was a much
(14:24):
quicker on his feet thinkingprocess.
I had to look at education verydifferent for them.
I had to choose actuallydifferent curriculum,
surprisingly for them, becauseone curriculum didn't fit them
for everything Right, and soeven one approach, even the way
that we approach things, wasvery different.
So I think that's where we haveto really get.
(14:46):
I'm not saying that every childhas to homeschool.
I'm saying that we need to getnot so stuck on a one size fits
all for every child and we needto start looking at it as an
individualized process for everychild.
Not only the child who needs a504 needs to be on an IAP, not
the child who needs intensiveintervention and needs to be on
an IAP, not the child who needsintensive intervention and needs
(15:07):
an IEP.
I think we're going to have tostart looking and say everyone
needs an individualized plan andthat is a broad approach to
thinking and as a former teacher, I think, oh my God.
Sandy Zamalis (15:22):
I know I was thinking all the teachers
listening to this.
I just went.
What would that look like?
Donesa Walker (15:25):
in my classroom.
What would that look like andhow would that look?
But it's more of kind of thatMontessori look of.
These are the skills that youneed to learn, but you need to
go through the process oflearning them differently than
everybody and it is challenging.
It is challenging from theschool perspective.
(15:46):
But I think if we as a societyembraced it and said, okay, the
parent has to know what is beingdelivered at that school, what
is being delivered and what isthe lack, and then make up the
difference for that lack.
Okay.
So if this curriculum has thislack, then I need to be doing
this.
That's what I did as ahomeschool parent was, when that
(16:09):
lack was there, I had to makeup the difference or change
curriculum or choose the wholething.
So we have to get our mindsetwhere every parent understands
is you are a homeschool parent,every single parent is a
homeschool parent.
You're just choosing for yourchild's curriculum to be
delivered in a differentlocation by a different
authority and you are stillresponsible for what does that
(16:31):
curriculum look like?
Okay, so if you're choosing thatschool, that location, that you
need to know where thestrengths and weaknesses of that
curriculum are, because therealistic thing to know is that
some of this curriculum iseither above or below my child's
head and what they need to knowin their knowledge base and
(16:51):
I'll drop back to Louisianaagain.
I have some phenomenal thingsthat blow my mind.
Oh, my word, these thirdgraders are studying the
American revolution and theyhave this vocabulary that's this
huge and they have to spellthat.
It does not follow any patterns.
It's challenging for them,right?
(17:12):
And so you see a lot ofstruggle through that.
And I remember having thisconversation with my
daughter-in-law and she's it'sjust so above their heads and I
said you just have to teach themto think, erase what they know
and say let's embrace it,instead of like this, don't say
(17:33):
every child has to know this,instead say what do you know?
That's your ground, and thenyou start building from what you
do know to where you need toknow.
Dr. Amy Moore (17:42):
Yeah, All right, so I have a couple of questions.
Okay, so if we look at thebreakdown on the nation's report
card, if we look at the graph,we can see that strong readers
typically stay strong readers,and we can surmise that it's
because, hey, I'm a good reader,therefore I'm motivated to
continue reading, because when Iread I learn more, or it brings
(18:05):
me pleasure, right.
And then poor readers continueto decline.
And we could say this is theMatthew effect.
Right, it's that strong readersget stronger, poor readers get
poorer.
It's a phenomenon that we cansee across the board in
different types of skill sets,based on motivation or attention
(18:26):
or whatever contributes to thateffect.
And we also know that some kidsare going to learn to read more
easily than others, than others,and that we would guess that
(18:47):
those kids in that top 10% justhad this more natural
inclination and it was in thatvisual word form area in the
brain developed more easily forthem.
So what is happening in thelower half of this graph?
What is happening in weakerreaders that has made it more
difficult for them to learn toread?
(19:09):
What is happening in theirbrains?
What do we need to do about it?
Let's talk about how can westop that Matthew effect in
these poor readers Because inthe absence of an intervention
they are going to continue todecline.
Correct.
Donesa Walker (19:27):
And it goes back to making sure that they have
experiential knowledge.
I think one of the biggestfactors and not just COVID, but
in finances and in budgets isthat we removed some of the
experiences going on field tripsand having experiences and
(19:47):
understanding this.
And I'll just give you a primeexample.
I have a young man who hasastounded me.
He is 19 years old.
He went to and his story isgoing to be something that's
going to probably blow up theworld because he's such a
precious and sweet young man buthe never went to school.
He absolutely lived off thestreets, never.
(20:11):
Ever.
Even his mother birthed him athome.
He never.
He just lived off the streetsand a local businessman brought
him to me and said this childhas never been to school at all,
has no knowledge of reading,math et cetera, nothing.
What can you do?
And I said give me a year.
So now this young man, a yearlater, is reading and doing math
(20:32):
and writing and it's phenomenalto watch how his life changed,
and so I can see so much for himin that process.
But as we're sitting therereading and we are reading a
story in his life, we're readinga story and it was about mowing
the weeds and he falls outlaughing and he was like, yeah,
(20:53):
I know what he's doing.
And I was like, yeah, hisconcept of mowing the weeds and
my concept of mowing the weedswere nowhere the same.
Okay, and so it was a wholedifferent mindset, right?
Just the word weed was not thesame at all.
As you can imagine, this iswhat we see in a lot of the
(21:17):
lowest quartile kiddos.
Okay, is that theirexperiential knowledge is so
incredibly weak.
And if we keep removing art,music, experiential things that
stimulate the brain, like fieldtrips and like those types of
things, because of we need tospend more time reading.
It's a key component to reading.
(21:38):
That is a key component.
If you never experienced anescalator, you're never going to
know what it is, right.
Somebody can say moving stairsall day long and you have no
idea.
If you never experienced themove of me on the screen, you
have no idea what I'm talkingabout.
Right, sorry, did that onpurpose, didn't mean to make you
sick, but the purpose of it isunderstanding.
Experience is the greatestteacher, it's the greatest
(22:02):
teacher, and so if you don'texperience it, you don't really
know it.
You know it, but you don'treally know it, and I think
that's the key finding that Ihave is like how can we get more
experience to this lowestquartile of children?
I love the Imagination LibraryDolly Parton does, where she
(22:25):
sends books to kids when they'refrom birth.
You all familiar withImagination Library.
Oh my gosh, it's so amazing.
Basically, dolly Parton hasthis program that a child can
start getting a book.
You can register when they'reborn and they get a book shipped
to them like every month forthe rest of their life.
It's really cool.
But the different areas have tosupport it, the different towns
(22:46):
and cities have to support it.
But it's really a cool projectbecause it puts books ownership
into the hands of children andthat's an incredible thing.
Is that ownership?
And as a child who I was apreacher's kid, we were not
wealthy I love Ruby Payne'sChildren of Poverty because I
relate to a lot of that, becausethat was my lifestyle when I
(23:10):
was young.
That was the thing of beingdependent.
I was a kid who was on freelunch.
I was a kid who had those typesof things and I know I
mentioned that my siblings wentto private school, but it's only
because my dad was a pastor andsomebody was willing to help my
siblings go there.
We were not wealthy, we werefree lunch kids, and so I think
(23:33):
that the reality is that manytimes we make assumptions about
kiddos and their wealth ofknowledge, or their lack thereof
, just because of the way thatthey look or the way that they
dress or the background thatthey have, and we miss out on
building that experience of kids, that in our area we have a ton
(23:56):
of homeless children, a tonthat live out of their car, live
out of a hotel, and they don'thave the experience.
We have to have a whole group ofpeople that manage just our
homeless children, and I thinkthat many people don't realize
that.
They don't realize that depthor lack.
We have a lot of children infoster care that are not getting
(24:19):
a lot of it, and these are ourkids in our public schools and
they need extra.
They need extra to be given tothem extra experiences.
Next, because those are goingto feed.
That's going to be our future,that's going to be our test
scores on our NAP in a few years, right, and if we're not giving
them the experiential knowledge, and even if we have the
science of reading or teachingthem how to read a word, but we
(24:41):
give them no meaning to thatword.
We place them in front of a TVand they are getting image after
image put on their brain andthen they never learned to
create imagery for themselves.
That's incredibly building adeficit that we don't even
realize.
That will affect them.
My passion, if I had unlimitedfunds and that, would be to get
(25:05):
every single child a cognitiveassessment and know where their
starting place was.
Because I think that should bethe thing that should be done
for every single child everysingle year of their life,
because if you did that then youwould actually know where the
gaps were and you could startclosing gaps and you could start
making significant differencein their educational attainment
(25:27):
long-term.
And that's why I'm a LearningMarks franchisee, because I'm
passionate about that.
I love the whole learningprocess and the reading process
and I've trained in all kinds ofmethodology Orton-Gillingham.
There's a whole bunch ofdifferent Orton-Gillinghams.
That Orton-Gillingham is amethodology but there's a whole
different all kinds of programsthat I trained in that were
based on that methodology.
(25:48):
It's good methodology for SOARscience of reading and based on
that, and so I do see validityand that's what we're looking at
.
But if our memory is poor, ifour processing is poor.
If we're struggling in all ofthese other areas and we never
address those issues, then allwe're doing is throwing jello at
(26:11):
a tree and hoping it sticks.
It's not going to work longtime.
Dr. Amy Moore (26:16):
All right, let's talk about that.
That's a bold statement to saythat you could give a cognitive
assessment to every child everyyear.
Then we could really move theneedle on the reading challenges
.
So how did these cognitiveskill deficits impact reading?
(26:37):
Talk us through that, because Ibet a lot of our listeners
don't understand that connection.
Donesa Walker (26:43):
So one of the biggest areas that everybody
understands and gets isattention.
Okay, so really, the reality is, everybody says, oh,
everybody's ADD.
The reality is, executiveprocessing is one of the key
underpinning skills foreverything that we do in the
learning process, and thatincludes your ability to have
good working memory, which meansyou can multitask, you can task
(27:03):
, switch back and forth, you canpull that information from what
you're learning and linking itto the information that you
already have.
That is a key skill thataffects so many different things
, and it affects it is the weakskill in so many different
disabilities and neurodivergentchanges, from autism to dyslexia
to ADHD.
(27:24):
So many people.
It's because of the workingmemory, and so we see a lot of
programs and I'm going to talkabout online programs a lot of
digitized that say we changedthe working memory.
Working memory is only one keyto that.
The biggest issue that I see alot with my kiddos and even
adults, it's the processingspeed.
Processing speed is a key pieceto that too, and it's one of
(27:46):
the hardest things to move,probably.
A famous saying is he walks tothe beat of his own drummer.
So we talk about processingspeed being slow, but processing
speed affects a lot of things.
It affects the speed of traffic.
So what I like to people is, ifyou think of it as you can have
a race car brain and on theracetrack when you're thinking
(28:06):
about you know great thoughtsand creative thoughts and all
these kinds of things, you'rezooming around that racetrack,
but if you get out on theregular road and you don't
change the tread, you just endup in a ditch.
Okay.
So you have to change the treador have that, what I call
cognitive flexibility to be ableto move in between settings of
(28:27):
what you're doing.
And that's one of the biggestskills that we ignore.
Is that cognitive flexibilitythat's affected by your
executive processing.
Okay, and so if you can getthrough that and then you move
up that line, so your problemsolving, your logic and
reasoning, do you have goodlogic and reasoning?
So a lot of kids withneurodiversity struggle with
that logic and reasoning or thatproblem solving.
(28:49):
Or in reality, I see a lot ofkiddos that mom and dad have
solved a lot of problems forthem and did not let them sit
and have to think through theproblem.
They didn't have a board box atB-O-R-E-D because that was the
thing when my kids said I'mbored and I would say go get
something out of the board boxand I just dumped stuff in there
(29:11):
that was loose in my junkdrawer or whatever, and they had
to go create.
That was the thing is.
Just that type of thing iscritical for that, and a lot of
times we throw technology atthat.
I'm bored, okay, we'll go playa game, go watch a TV show Okay,
instead of actually lettingthem stir through a problem and
(29:33):
figure it out and I think that'sreally an important skill that
we, as parents, often helicopterwe want to solve the problem
for them instead of making themsolve the problem and watching
them fail and be able to get up.
A baby doesn't learn to walkunless that baby falls and sees
that depth perception right, andso if they do, they have
(29:55):
troubles, okay, and so this isthe thing is that you have to be
able to let them experience thefall, and a lot of us are
scared for our children to fail,and that's a really important
lesson to learn that fallingforward is, learning to fall is
a really good thing, andlearning to pick yourself back
up and that's great.
So these are all these keythings and that problem solving,
(30:17):
and then you have your auditoryprocessing and your visual
processing and those are keyunderpinnings, like we've talked
about, being able to hear thosesounds and know those sounds,
and with a ton of kids who hadear infections, they're
prevalent.
You know, this time of yearespecially, this is just it
affects think about hearingunderwater.
And so there's differenttechnology now that allows them.
(30:39):
There's phonics, phones,there's, you know, different
technology that helps childrenbe able to hear through bone
conduction and things so thatthey can learn to hear properly
because for so long they haven'theard.
And you cannot undervalue theprocess of just listening.
When I grew up, we would sitaround and listen to my
(31:00):
grandmother tell tales.
It was a thing.
We sat around and told stories.
We've lost a lot of thatbecause of technology, because
we were busy.
We're too busy to do that, andso a critical piece of that is
reading to your kids at night,having that storytelling time,
that creative storytelling time,where you say something that
(31:23):
they have to do it and you haveto say it back.
And fortunately andunfortunately, I love that book.
I love where you say somethingand you have to go back and
forth and play that game wherethey have to twist the story,
and that's fun.
It's a good thing Playing gameslike 20 questions.
Get an empty box, put somethingin it.
(31:43):
Let them ask you 20 questionsso they have to think in their
mind what in the world?
So that thinking process socritical?
And taking in those auditoryclues and moving that into a
thinking process where they haveto do that, visualizing it in
their head, picturing it asthey're hearing the clues and
picturing what that could be ornot be as a teacher.
(32:06):
I remember I had this way ofdiscipline in my classroom.
I called it the mysteryenvelope, and the mystery
envelope was index card that Ihad written something on and I
put it in the mystery envelope,okay, and every time the class
had good behavior, pure thing.
Then they got to ask me onequestion.
Okay, and so I taught middleschool a lot.
(32:28):
The questions had to be yes orno and I only answered it one
time, so if you missed it, okay.
And when the class solved it,they got what was ever in the
mystery envelope, and so it washighly competitive.
It was so interesting to watchthe kiddos who would go from one
class period to the other classperiod and they would be
(32:49):
walking out the room and saywhat question did you ask?
What question did you ask?
And they were like we ain'ttelling you, we're holding our
question, we're not telling you,because they didn't want to
give that clue to that nextclass and that next class be
able to solve it in advance.
And so it was so funny becausethis is pre-google, this is.
(33:12):
This is not what they can goand see, and it was not
something I would have posted,but it's the fun thing.
It's like AI can't solve thatfor you.
It can't, nothing can solve itfor you.
But you thinking and you tryingto figure it out and maybe get
with your classmates and thinkwhat they're thinking and figure
(33:32):
it out problem, solve it to getto that answer.
And that's a key.
That's a key thing ofvisualization and creating it.
And then so any teachers orparents, the mystery envelope's
huge.
It works.
It works really well.
That's one one thing thatcreates their mindset and their
processing and works on thoseskills.
And all of that goes into theschema.
(33:52):
All of that that goes into thatfiling cabinet of long-term
memory and then linking it andpulling it back and the more.
When I was teaching, one of thethings that was a key thing was
learning styles, and I know thata lot of that has been debunked
a little bit, but the realityis there are some value systems
(34:13):
to the learning styles it isimportant to give kids, but if
you teach them to only learn inone learning style and not to
learn when it's uncomfortable,then you are basically creating
a deficit for them.
And I think of it in the termsof I had surgery on my right arm
and I'm right-handed.
(34:33):
I'm right-handed because mythird grade teacher takes my
right hand I mean my left handto my desk.
I was left-handed until thirdgrade.
Wow, and my whole third gradeyear my teacher would duct tape
my hand because the prevalentthought at that time was
(34:55):
left-handedness caused learningdisabilities, and so she wanted
me to be better, and so that waswhat she was going to do.
Now people go to jail for that,but it was a little abusive.
It's a little abusive, right,but I did become a premier
speller because of it.
Sandy Zamalis (35:14):
I'm just saying it required you to really hone
in your brain skills, becauseyou were not writing with your
dominant hand.
Donesa Walker (35:24):
There was things that came from it.
I'm not gonna bash her foreverything, but yeah, like
brushing your teeth with yournon-prime example of cognitive
flexibility it's a prime exampleof cognitive flexibility.
So I go back here I am as anadult and having surgery on my
right arm, and everybody is.
I told my doctor, I said I justneed six weeks and then we're
(35:45):
going to do the surgery and I'llbe fine.
And he was like how you're notgonna be able to write for for
probably three months?
And I was like, oh yeah, I willjust do it with my left hand.
And he was like I just lookedthis way, you're crazy.
Okay, then that's because thenI just went back and so that's
the whole thing is, I findmyself I'll just change hands
(36:06):
midstream.
One hand start, I'll justchange to the other and I'll
just midstream do that.
And that's part of that process, as you just retrained.
Okay, we know that's possible.
We know retraining the brain ispossible for strengths.
We know it's possible for somany other things like the
handwriting and things like that.
We just have to embrace that'spossible to learn in a different
(36:30):
manner.
So, instead of saying I'm justa visual learner and saying I
need everything to be presentedand I need you to give me
accommodations because I don'tknow how to learn in another
methodology, why not train it?
Why not become the learner,where you can learn in any
method, in any way.
And I was an adult before I.
Honestly, actually, the firsttime I went to a learning or X
(36:53):
to be trained as a franchisee,hilariously enough, I cried
balls like boohoo, but babycried in front of everybody
because I was not a good visualprocessor.
I had good imagination and loveto read, but it impacted my
math OK, so I was not picturingthings in my math.
So I remember going and doingthe training as an adult and the
(37:17):
experience of what happened tome as an adult and thinking, oh
my gosh, but it changed thingsin my life that I had just taken
, that were always going to beweaknesses.
I told you my husband was agame board.
You could drop him off inTimbuktu and he'd find his way
out in no time because he has agreat sense of direction.
And again, if you had droppedme in those same woods, I'd just
(37:39):
sit down by a tree and crybecause I had no sense of
direction at all.
I remember people who went tothe franchise training with me
who would laugh at me because Ihad no sense of direction.
You know the elevator and allthat direction to go to my hotel
room.
It's the whole thing thatchanged for me, and it changed
for me because I trained thatprocess.
(37:59):
So, as I boohooed and criedthrough attention compute, going
through doing this drill, itchanged the way my brain
processed information, andthat's so crazy when you see
that, as an adult, I remember in2018, going and sitting in a.
I was in the hospital, uh, foreight months and I had eight
(38:21):
surgeries and it was crazy and Ilost a lot of memory and I
owned this business at that timeand I had that pre-test.
So, going back to thatcognitive test, I'm looking back
, amy, I know so I'm just goingback there, but I had that
cognitive baseline, right.
So after my surgeries andeverything, I knew that I was
foggy, right.
I did that baseline.
(38:42):
I was like, oh my God, I reallylost a lot.
So I did brain training formyself to get my skills back.
It's incredible to get yourselfback.
There is nothing quite like itof being able to go from a
weakness into a strength andbeing able to gain that back,
and so I'm completely a believerpersonally, having experienced
(39:03):
it as a parent, havingexperienced it and just the
whole.
We know the science supports itand we see that it's not a
learning arts thing.
The science says your brain canbe retrained.
So we know that's there andthat's possible.
It's just us as parents, as asociety, as a group of people,
wrapping our brain around.
This is our responsibility.
(39:24):
Our brain health is ourresponsibility, just like any
other health checkup.
It is so important.
Okay, if we're going to go tothe doctor for a yearly checkup
and he says you're pre-diabeticand you need to change your diet
and you need to get thesethings going on, we should be
(39:46):
doing the same thing for ourbrain.
We need to be going becauseyour brain's brain is your gut
and if you're being affected byother things, then you are
actually being affected in yourbrain.
So think about the processesand say, okay, I need to take
ownership of this.
Whether my child is four or mychild is 15 or my brain my own
50 year old brain needs to befit.
(40:08):
Okay, it's incrediblybeneficial long-term for you, no
matter what your age is, andit's going to impact us as a
society.
Because, if we look at Dr SandraChapman has coined that term
brainomics.
I'm not sure if you guys aresuper familiar with her, but I
love some of her research andstuff.
Yeah yeah, it's just phenomenalIf we start looking at it and
(40:30):
many parents and people don'trealize that your IQ points
they're actually have a value.
One IQ point is equivalent to$20,000 now on the NASDAQ.
It's actually a tradedcommodity.
Look it up.
You blow your mind.
Okay, that is actually acommodity that you can look up
(40:52):
to see how much an IQ point isworth.
That's crazy to think aboutthat.
But you can change your brain.
You can change your potential.
It's basically earningspotential over a lifetime, but
still it is.
It's enormous.
So if we talk about the lowestquartile, how do we make a
difference?
We have to give them thepotential.
Dr. Amy Moore (41:13):
So I have one last question as we wrap up.
So you mentionedOrton-Gillingham based programs
and how they are based in thescience of reading and as a
reading specialist, as adyslexia specialist, I would
like you to speak to this.
So we know that there was ameta-analysis a couple of years
ago on Gillingham based programsthat showed overall they were
(41:35):
not contributing tostatistically significant
changes in reading frequency,and on the research on ReadRx.
The LearningRx ReadingIntervention Program shows, or
has shown, anywhere from 4.1years to 5.8 year gains in 24
(41:59):
weeks, statistically significantchanges across all of those
different reading skills and allof the cognitive skills tested
for thousands and thousands ofresearch participants.
What do you think thedifference is?
Why has ReadRx shownstatistically significant
(42:20):
changes and Orton-Gillinghambased programs in that
meta-analysis did not?
Donesa Walker (42:29):
Because it's the foundational approach.
Okay, so note, this is thewhole reason why I opened a
LearningRx franchise.
Okay, so go back and look, Ihad delivered Orton-Gillingham
and I saw two steps forward, onestep back, constantly for 20
plus years.
Okay, and that was my biggestfrustration is we're not moving
the needle.
Why are we not moving theneedle with these kids?
(42:50):
And it's because foundationally, the weaknesses are there of
processing speed and memory andproblem solving, and that
executive function and all ofthe core cognitive skills were
not being changed.
The Orton-Gillinghammethodology actually does change
two areas auditory processing,which is good, okay, and it can
change the auditory processing.
(43:11):
But if the memory is poor, thenyou can't measure that change
in auditory processing becauseit's two steps forward, one step
back, right.
So even though the child maylearn the sounds, you spend two
years trying to learn the soundsand trying to link those sounds
and then you may not get thefull measure of what that child
potentially could do if you hadaddressed the memory weakness,
(43:33):
the processing weakness.
And we know, like, withdyslexics and children who
struggle with reading, dld andyou know all these different
diagnoses that have to do withthe reading deficits, it's they
have these developmentallanguage issues.
That's what dyslexia means.
Dyslexia means broken language,and the majority of the people
who go to interventions andreading like this are doing this
(43:55):
because there is a deficit inthe learning process, there is a
weakness in the reading processokay, and so if you never
address the underlying, it'slike trying to lay asphalt over
big old potholes in your road.
So it may look like it'sworking for a while, but drive
on it for a minute and it'sgoing to break the asphalt right
(44:15):
back up.
In a year or so from now it'sgoing to look exactly like it
did before.
And that's the reason whyyou're not getting significant,
statistically significant changeis because you're never
addressing the underlying base.
You're not really digging downto that bedrock and getting
where the weaknesses are andaddressing it from that
foundational purpose.
(44:36):
And I think that that's thewhole reason why I actually
exited the public school systemand opened a learning rec center
was for that very reason,because I could not move the
needle significantly for thosekiddos and we needed that in
Louisiana.
We needed a huge win here andthat's why I opened it.
(45:01):
That's why I've been doing thisfor 17 years.
That's the reason why I'm superpassionate about getting into
my classrooms and talking to myteachers and telling them we
need to look at the foundationshere.
We need to be using this is howyou can apply it in the
classroom.
When I talk to my parents, I dothat and my society and my
community that we really need toembrace the foundational issues
(45:25):
and quit just saying we'regoing to settle for this.
Even while we're on here, I hadsomeone text me and say I'm
looking at a curriculum change.
This is a curriculum instructorfor our school and I'm looking
at an OG methodology, and so mymind is spinning thinking, yeah,
we're going to have a top girl.
Okay, og has really greatmethodology.
(45:47):
I actually am trained in it andI love it.
But you have to get to thatroot bedrock or you're not going
to have good, significantchange and it doesn't matter
which brands you go with.
Okay, and there's a ton.
There's like the whole thing isyou have to get to that root.
Dr. Amy Moore (46:03):
So you have to have a strong cognitive skill
foundation of working inlong-term memory attention,
visual processing, auditoryprocessing, speed, logic and
reasoning all of those skillsthat you just walked us through.
That seems to be the secretsauce that underlies the ability
(46:23):
to read.
Donesa Walker (46:23):
Yeah, and if you look at the books that are
written by the researchersreading in the brain, if you
look at those books they tellyou, they show you that the
brain lights up in differentparts of the brain when you.
The reality is your brain hasto use so many different
processes to read.
So if you are weak in one ofthose skills, you are working at
a deficit, whether you call itdyslexia or language development
(46:47):
or just reading issues, and youthink about it.
Now we're at two out of fivepeople struggling to read.
85% of people in prison arethere because of a reading
deficit or a learning deficit.
We could change our whole worldif we would start looking at
the roots.
Just is.
Dr. Amy Moore (47:10):
Love it, Donesa, thank you so much for being with
us today sharing your wisdomand your expertise and your
passion about reading.
This has been just an amazingcouple of hours with you.
Thank you so much for all thework that you're doing down
there in Louisiana and acrossthe entire LearningRx system to
(47:35):
help get the word out about whywe need strong cognitive skills
in order to be strong readers.
Sandy Zamalis (47:40):
Amy, I want to leave our listeners with
something tangible that they cango right now and grab more
information on.
How can our listeners find outmore information about this
issue and this topic?
Dr. Amy Moore (47:52):
Yeah.
So for listeners who haven'theard about LearningRx before,
LearningRx is the largestnetwork of cognitive training
centers in the entire world.
We are in 43 countries, sowe're LearningRx in the United
States and America and we'reBrainRx in the rest of the world
.
And the cool part is you don'thave to live near one of our
(48:16):
centers in order to takeadvantage of our interventions.
We also provide them over Zoom,and our research shows that
it's just as effective that wayas well.
And so we start with thatfoundational cognitive training
program.
It's called ThinkRx.
That begins with an assessmentso that Donisa was talking about
(48:39):
where we can identify which ofthose skills needs to be
strengthened, where those gapsmight be she calls those
potholes in the road.
So that's what thoseassessments will identify.
And then our centers create anindividualized program
specifically for your child, oreven for you, that drills down
on those skills that need to bestrengthened.
(49:00):
And then the reading program iscalled ReadRx, and it's a
24-week program that covers allof those foundational reading
skills that we know areessential, based on the science
of reading, and underlyingcognitive skill remediation at
the exact same time.
And then, for kids that arestruggling in math, we also have
(49:20):
a math remediation at the exactsame time and then for kids
that are struggling in math, wealso have a math remediation
program as well, an earlychildhood program.
When we can see that kids,maybe age five, that are already
looking like they're struggling, we can get some early
intervention in there for them.
So, listeners, you can go tolearningrxcom that's the
national website where you cantype in a zip code, find the
(49:42):
center closest to you.
There's an 800 number, it's1-866-BRAIN-01.
You can call and talk to anactual person.
If you'd rather do that, thensearch the website and then, if
you go to the resources tab ofthe website, we've got free
stuff on there.
So Dr Ken Gibson, who createdthis program really, he started
(50:04):
creating the program back in the1980s.
It evolved through multipleiterations before it became what
we know now as LearningRx.
But he wrote a book calledUnlock the Einstein Inside and
we will give you that book forfree, the digital version of
that book for free, so you candownload that.
We have six or seven differentcognitive training exercises
(50:25):
that you can download and trywith yourself, with your kids.
Just lots of cool stuff that wegive away for free.
So that's really where I wouldsuggest that you start.
If you wanna see some of thoseexercises demonstrated, you can
find Sandy on TikTok atthebraintrainerlady.
She does some cool stuff onthere and she talks about our
research too.
(50:45):
You'll see my name because I amthe primary researcher for the
LearningRx methodology and youknow we've really looked at this
with thousands and thousands ofresearch participants and it's
such a message of hope that wereally can move the needle on
reading fluency, decoding,comprehension, as well as moving
(51:10):
the needle on attention andmemory and processing speed
issues all at the same time.
Sandy Zamalis (51:16):
It's a message of hope.
It really is.
Yeah, don't give up.
It's a message of hope itreally is, yeah, don't give up
For sure, and I love that.
Dr. Amy Moore (51:23):
Donesa's message was that we can't rely on the
school system to do this for ourkids, that even if our kids go
to public school, it still fallson us to make sure that we fill
in those gaps.
And one of the interestingfindings in that latest report
(51:44):
the nation's report card wasthat the number of books in the
home was directly correlatedwith the test results.
That speaks volumes.
No pun intended, right, and soI love that.
She mentioned Dolly Parton'sprogram, and I think there are
other lending library typeprograms too, so you don't have
to actually buy the books, justcheck them out from the library
(52:07):
or sign up for one of thoseprograms and then really expose
your kids to experiences thatbuild their filing cabinet of
information.
Schema is a mental framework.
It's what we know about eachthing in the world, right, like
what we know about the grass,what we know about the oceans,
(52:28):
what we know about communities,like really anything that you
can possibly know about, iscalled a schema or a mental
framework.
And so the more we build that,the more it contributes to
fluency and comprehension inreading and learning too.
Sandy Zamalis (52:45):
Amen.
Dr. Amy Moore (52:46):
Yeah, all right listeners, thank you so much for
being with us today If youliked our show.
We would love it if you wouldleave us a five-star rating and
review on Apple Podcasts so thatwe get ranked higher, and
getting ranked higher means wecan reach more parents like you
guys.
We'd love it if you wouldfollow us on social media.
We @thebrainymoms on Instagramand Facebook.
(53:08):
If you'd rather see our faces,you can find us on YouTube at
@thebrainymoms.
And that is all the smart stuffthat we have for you today.
We hope you feel a littlesmarter.
We're going to catch you nexttime.
Hi, smart moms and dads, we're so excited for
you to come back and join us forpart two of our Brainy Moms
series, with reading anddyslexia specialist Donesa
Walker.
If you tuned in to our priorepisode, we talked about the
latest Nation's Report Cardresults in reading, what's
happening there, what are thepotential reasons for this
continued decline in readingperformance across America?
(00:30):
And we ended that episode bydrawing the conclusion that we
cannot expect schools to havethe sole responsibility for
reading performance andinstruction even because of the
importance of prior knowledge toreading fluency and
(00:51):
comprehension.
And we need to dig in a littlebit further on that idea,
because if we can't expectschools to be solely responsible
for reading instruction andperformance, then who can we
lean on?
And so that's what we're goingto talk about in part two of
this episode.
Welcome, Donesa.
We're so excited that you'respending so much time with us on
(01:12):
this really critical topic.
Donesa Walker (01:15):
Thank you for having me.
Sandy Zamalis (01:18):
Donesa.
So Education Week just had anarticle recently that was
talking about the NAEP scoresand it highlighted Louisiana,
which is your state, and ittalked about the massive gains
that your state was able to make.
In the same time period thatwe've been talking about they, I
believe they went from correctme if I'm wrong almost dead last
in reading yeah To being in thetop 16th.
(01:42):
You're right 16th now afterbeing in the bottom.
Yeah, I was going to say top 20.
Yeah, but that's a significantmove from where you guys started
.
Can you share with ourlisteners, because we want to
talk about positive ways we canaddress this issue?
What is the state doing thathas made such an impact?
Donesa Walker (02:04):
Well, I think that we've turned the ship here
very quickly in the science ofreading.
So that was one of the thingsthat made.
A big difference is that everyteacher was mandated to go
through the science of readingcourse and learned the
principles behind, no matterwhat grade you taught, and that
was a requirement.
So, again leading back into that, teachers that you know were
(02:26):
science teachers and maybe theywere accountants and went back
to school to be a math teacher.
They didn't know anything aboutreading, but now they do.
So they started understandingthe principles behind reading
and helping children understandthat reading actually is a
process that begins in the brainand that you do have to have
these core skills, and also inunderstanding that there is a
(02:49):
significant amount of buildingprocess that has to happen in
vocabularies, and helping themto understand and build that
knowledge that I'm going to callit's weaved together maybe is
the best, best way.
So when you start with aprocess that you have to build
and you have to constantly weaveand move up and weave and move
(03:11):
up, and so you have to go backand pull through, go back and
pull through, like with yourcrochet and a quilt, you have to
go back and pull through theprior knowledge and to the new
knowledge, and so building thatbackground and relating to that
was a key part of that.
Guidebooks has been part ofthat process.
Sandy Zamalis (03:31):
What are guidebooks for our listeners,
who maybe don't know what thatis.
Donesa Walker (03:34):
So basically giving an overview, direction
and putting it process.
I'm going to say it's adirection scoping sequence maybe
is the easiest way for them toget it.
A scoping sequence that helpsthem have the fullness.
Basically, that's what we'vetalked about.
You've chosen one curriculum,then you choose another
(04:07):
curriculum and then you go toanother curriculum.
There's loss of content andknowledge, there's big holes and
we our state is a very mobilestate and people are moving in
and out a lot for differentreasons.
So getting that knowledge wherethere's a consistency across
the whole state and that you canpick where the child is and
(04:31):
what the lack of knowledge is bydoing an attainment of where
they are, so when they come inyou actually find out exactly
what knowledge that they knowand what basis that they know
and where the potholes are, andI think that's been a big key.
I think it's a really big keyto making big changes,
understanding where the potholeis and helping them to pull
forward.
Sandy Zamalis (04:50):
So what I'm hearing you say is they assessed
right.
They assessed kids from that Kthrough five and probably even
beyond, and then they reallylooked at statewide measures of
consistency to try to build.
Donesa Walker (05:04):
And there's a constant assessment process.
That's an ongoing, constantprocess that they're doing.
So they integrated this whatthey call high dose tutoring so
that every child who is at a lowlevel had to receive high dose
tutoring every day, no more thanfour to one, and it had to be
(05:26):
by a highly qualified teacher.
And when they did not have theability to do that, they pulled
in outside resources SESproviders such as myself and we
were able to go into theclassrooms and deliver that high
dose for them to be able toreceive that.
So they had specialists whowere on board and when the
(05:47):
district didn't have the rightappropriate people it's still a
work in progress.
It's still very much a work inprogress.
In my area, you know there's alot of motility.
Still that happens.
There's a lot of people who arestill homeschooling.
There's a very groundswellgroup of people who are
realizing homeschooling.
There's a very groundswellgroup of people who are
realizing that they need to takeauthority for their own
(06:10):
children's knowledge andschooling, and so there's in my
city there's 45 private schools,so that's an enormous amount of
people who are makingalternative choices, and so
that's why the state has movedinto this philosophy that it is
(06:31):
the parent's choice of how theeducation is going to be driven
and so what school you choose.
If your school was a school thatwas an F school and it wasn't
making growth, then you couldactually move your child to a
different school and it wasapproved.
We have magnet programs whereyou actually test into a certain
(06:51):
school that specializes inscience and math or in arts, and
so you can actually move yourchild to a school that is going
to feed into their process.
And then we actually have alsointroduced some other schools
that cater to specialdisabilities, such as the
(07:11):
Louisiana Key Academy, whichspecializes in dyslexia, and we
have one of those in down Southand now we have two more, so we
have three of those across thestate.
Sandy Zamalis (07:22):
So I imagine, yeah, so I imagine the state
really had to look at with thatscholarship that you were just
talking about.
They had to take into accountthe socioeconomic factors here,
so families that could afford topull their kids out and put
them into private schools thatleft kids left in school that
(07:43):
maybe had some socioeconomichindrances that would keep them
from moving.
So they really had to key in onhow are they going to help all
kids build skill so that itwasn't going to be affected if
large portions of kids can moveout of the system.
Donesa Walker (08:00):
Correct.
The embracing and the knowledgeof that I think made a big
difference to your scores.
You're going to have a lot morewhen you're looking at it as
like we need to get to what thecause is and then we need to
start addressing that root cause.
We need to be very realisticabout this is where the child is
struggling and we need to meetthem where they are and move
(08:20):
them forward from where they are, and I think that is a key to
the school process, and I thinkthat the state as a whole has
really pressed that issue thatthe parent needs to make the
choices, and that's why ourwebsite is called Louisiana
Believes that's our educationalwebsite, believes that's our
(08:47):
educational website and it's gota plethora of information on it
, including all the tutoringguides and building the UFILI
guides that you can go to wherethe parent can actually work on
these things at home, that theycan access those things at home.
And that's hard in a worldthat's gone very technological,
when there's not workbooks goinghome and there's not textbooks
going home and math is donedifferently than it used to be
(09:09):
done, and so there's a lot ofchanges that are still needing
to happen, but that isdefinitely what has moved our
state forward?
Sandy Zamalis (09:18):
I love that.
Oh sorry, go ahead, that's okay,I was just going to say I love
that there's been a shift inwe're not assuming anymore that
all kids have what they need.
I think if there's any, I thinkhighlight for me it's that this
myth of neurotypical and thatwe've all got the same
(09:41):
background, knowledge and thesame information and so we
should be expected to thrive inthese situations.
That myth has been debunked now, and now we're going to really
try to assess, figure out wheregaps are and try to really meet
kids where they're at.
I think probably it's been thebiggest win of all of this, even
though it's hard to see withall of the data coming out.
Dr. Amy Moore (10:06):
Yeah.
So I want to point out, while Ithink this is absolutely cause
for celebrating for the state ofLouisiana, for a state who has
really struggled for decades tomove the needle on reading
absolutely let's celebrate itbut I also want to point out
(10:27):
that Louisiana is not above thenational average.
Louisiana is 16th, so stillright there in the problematic
national issue.
So you've made improvementsfrom coming up from the bottom
as a state right, but you'restill in the struggle.
(10:47):
You're still right in themiddle of the struggle that
america is having with readingright, and so you're going to
hit a ceiling.
You're going to, you're goingto get to a place where you can
still only do so much right asan education right If we look at
it, the realistic.
Donesa Walker (11:06):
Here's my miniature soapbox, because my
soapbox is about dyslexia.
A lot we have.
1% of our kids in our state arediagnosed with dyslexia.
The national average is 20.
Okay, Hello, what's going onwith this other 19%?
I'll tell you what's going on.
We also have a huge amount ofour kids that are diagnosed with
(11:27):
ADHD and on medicine.
With changes that are happening,a lot of these kids are not
getting the process.
So it is going to catch us ifwe don't start addressing it.
It will catch us just like welooked at those scores and said
Louisiana made good gains, butwe made good gains, but we made
good gains in one area.
Look at our eighth grade scores.
(11:48):
Just this is the whole thing isthat it wasn't just, it was in
an area and, yes, we madeintervention and we made some
changes and we put some thingsin place, but there are some
massive things that are going tocatch us if we don't start
addressing that and saying, okay, we have to take authority and
make moves and decisions thatare going to be about every
(12:10):
brain, not about a cookie cutterapproach that has never worked
and never will work.
Okay, and if we go backhistorically, honestly,
truthfully, schools were puttogether out of convenience,
right, it was, the parent wasresponsible for the child.
And then it was like, ok, let'sgroup together and let's create
(12:33):
this micro classroom and oneteacher is going to teach it and
one parent, and then we aregoing to hire a teacher.
And then it became, throughhistory, the process of what we
have in our public schoolsystems and became more systemic
and the more systemic that itbecame the process of what we
have in our public schoolsystems and became more systemic
and the more systemic that itbecame, the more loss of the
child.
And so I think we have to lookback at what was working, and
(12:55):
that's why we see a lot ofparents who have moved to like
classical delivery models forhomeschooling is because they
see the value in thefoundational approach.
And so I think that we have tolook as a society and say, okay,
where are we headed as asociety and where do we want to
go in order to stay competitiveand educationally attain the
(13:20):
direction that we want to go.
When I, my kids were in publicschool, when I was a public
school teacher, and then, whenmy kids moved, when I started
learning Rx, my children were insecond grade and fourth grade
and at that point in time I waslike I now have the opportunity
as a business owner that I canactually homeschool my own
(13:42):
children, and so I chose to pullthem out of the public system
because that was where theircurriculum had been delivered
before, and now I chose tohomeschool them so that I could
give them the best.
My two children were raised inthe same home and they had the
same parents and they had thesame upbringing and they had
(14:03):
very different schemas that werebuilt, their schematis because
of how they approached things,very different in their brains.
Okay, john was an avid reader.
Gabriel did not love reading.
Gabriel struggled with somedyslexic tendencies, he had ADHD
, he had a little bit of atemper, but he was a much
(14:24):
quicker on his feet thinkingprocess.
I had to look at education verydifferent for them.
I had to choose actuallydifferent curriculum,
surprisingly for them, becauseone curriculum didn't fit them
for everything Right, and soeven one approach, even the way
that we approach things, wasvery different.
So I think that's where we haveto really get.
(14:46):
I'm not saying that every childhas to homeschool.
I'm saying that we need to getnot so stuck on a one size fits
all for every child and we needto start looking at it as an
individualized process for everychild.
Not only the child who needs a504 needs to be on an IAP, not
the child who needs intensiveintervention and needs to be on
an IAP, not the child who needsintensive intervention and needs
(15:07):
an IEP.
I think we're going to have tostart looking and say everyone
needs an individualized plan andthat is a broad approach to
thinking and as a former teacher, I think, oh my God.
Sandy Zamalis (15:22):
I know I was thinking all the teachers
listening to this.
I just went.
What would that look like?
Donesa Walker (15:25):
in my classroom.
What would that look like andhow would that look?
But it's more of kind of thatMontessori look of.
These are the skills that youneed to learn, but you need to
go through the process oflearning them differently than
everybody and it is challenging.
It is challenging from theschool perspective.
(15:46):
But I think if we as a societyembraced it and said, okay, the
parent has to know what is beingdelivered at that school, what
is being delivered and what isthe lack, and then make up the
difference for that lack.
Okay.
So if this curriculum has thislack, then I need to be doing
this.
That's what I did as ahomeschool parent was, when that
(16:09):
lack was there, I had to makeup the difference or change
curriculum or choose the wholething.
So we have to get our mindsetwhere every parent understands
is you are a homeschool parent,every single parent is a
homeschool parent.
You're just choosing for yourchild's curriculum to be
delivered in a differentlocation by a different
authority and you are stillresponsible for what does that
(16:31):
curriculum look like?
Okay, so if you're choosing thatschool, that location, that you
need to know where thestrengths and weaknesses of that
curriculum are, because therealistic thing to know is that
some of this curriculum iseither above or below my child's
head and what they need to knowin their knowledge base and
(16:51):
I'll drop back to Louisianaagain.
I have some phenomenal thingsthat blow my mind.
Oh, my word, these thirdgraders are studying the
American revolution and theyhave this vocabulary that's this
huge and they have to spellthat.
It does not follow any patterns.
It's challenging for them,right?
(17:12):
And so you see a lot ofstruggle through that.
And I remember having thisconversation with my
daughter-in-law and she's it'sjust so above their heads and I
said you just have to teach themto think, erase what they know
and say let's embrace it,instead of like this, don't say
(17:33):
every child has to know this,instead say what do you know?
That's your ground, and thenyou start building from what you
do know to where you need toknow.
Dr. Amy Moore (17:42):
Yeah, All right, so I have a couple of questions.
Okay, so if we look at thebreakdown on the nation's report
card, if we look at the graph,we can see that strong readers
typically stay strong readers,and we can surmise that it's
because, hey, I'm a good reader,therefore I'm motivated to
continue reading, because when Iread I learn more, or it brings
(18:05):
me pleasure, right.
And then poor readers continueto decline.
And we could say this is theMatthew effect.
Right, it's that strong readersget stronger, poor readers get
poorer.
It's a phenomenon that we cansee across the board in
different types of skill sets,based on motivation or attention
(18:26):
or whatever contributes to thateffect.
And we also know that some kidsare going to learn to read more
easily than others, than others,and that we would guess that
(18:47):
those kids in that top 10% justhad this more natural
inclination and it was in thatvisual word form area in the
brain developed more easily forthem.
So what is happening in thelower half of this graph?
What is happening in weakerreaders that has made it more
difficult for them to learn toread?
(19:09):
What is happening in theirbrains?
What do we need to do about it?
Let's talk about how can westop that Matthew effect in
these poor readers Because inthe absence of an intervention
they are going to continue todecline.
Correct.
Donesa Walker (19:27):
And it goes back to making sure that they have
experiential knowledge.
I think one of the biggestfactors and not just COVID, but
in finances and in budgets isthat we removed some of the
experiences going on field tripsand having experiences and
(19:47):
understanding this.
And I'll just give you a primeexample.
I have a young man who hasastounded me.
He is 19 years old.
He went to and his story isgoing to be something that's
going to probably blow up theworld because he's such a
precious and sweet young man buthe never went to school.
He absolutely lived off thestreets, never.
(20:11):
Ever.
Even his mother birthed him athome.
He never.
He just lived off the streetsand a local businessman brought
him to me and said this childhas never been to school at all,
has no knowledge of reading,math et cetera, nothing.
What can you do?
And I said give me a year.
So now this young man, a yearlater, is reading and doing math
(20:32):
and writing and it's phenomenalto watch how his life changed,
and so I can see so much for himin that process.
But as we're sitting therereading and we are reading a
story in his life, we're readinga story and it was about mowing
the weeds and he falls outlaughing and he was like, yeah,
(20:53):
I know what he's doing.
And I was like, yeah, hisconcept of mowing the weeds and
my concept of mowing the weedswere nowhere the same.
Okay, and so it was a wholedifferent mindset, right?
Just the word weed was not thesame at all.
As you can imagine, this iswhat we see in a lot of the
(21:17):
lowest quartile kiddos.
Okay, is that theirexperiential knowledge is so
incredibly weak.
And if we keep removing art,music, experiential things that
stimulate the brain, like fieldtrips and like those types of
things, because of we need tospend more time reading.
It's a key component to reading.
(21:38):
That is a key component.
If you never experienced anescalator, you're never going to
know what it is, right.
Somebody can say moving stairsall day long and you have no
idea.
If you never experienced themove of me on the screen, you
have no idea what I'm talkingabout.
Right, sorry, did that onpurpose, didn't mean to make you
sick, but the purpose of it isunderstanding.
Experience is the greatestteacher, it's the greatest
(22:02):
teacher, and so if you don'texperience it, you don't really
know it.
You know it, but you don'treally know it, and I think
that's the key finding that Ihave is like how can we get more
experience to this lowestquartile of children?
I love the Imagination LibraryDolly Parton does, where she
(22:25):
sends books to kids when they'refrom birth.
You all familiar withImagination Library.
Oh my gosh, it's so amazing.
Basically, dolly Parton hasthis program that a child can
start getting a book.
You can register when they'reborn and they get a book shipped
to them like every month forthe rest of their life.
It's really cool.
But the different areas have tosupport it, the different towns
(22:46):
and cities have to support it.
But it's really a cool projectbecause it puts books ownership
into the hands of children andthat's an incredible thing.
Is that ownership?
And as a child who I was apreacher's kid, we were not
wealthy I love Ruby Payne'sChildren of Poverty because I
relate to a lot of that, becausethat was my lifestyle when I
(23:10):
was young.
That was the thing of beingdependent.
I was a kid who was on freelunch.
I was a kid who had those typesof things and I know I
mentioned that my siblings wentto private school, but it's only
because my dad was a pastor andsomebody was willing to help my
siblings go there.
We were not wealthy, we werefree lunch kids, and so I think
(23:33):
that the reality is that manytimes we make assumptions about
kiddos and their wealth ofknowledge, or their lack thereof
, just because of the way thatthey look or the way that they
dress or the background thatthey have, and we miss out on
building that experience of kids, that in our area we have a ton
(23:56):
of homeless children, a tonthat live out of their car, live
out of a hotel, and they don'thave the experience.
We have to have a whole group ofpeople that manage just our
homeless children, and I thinkthat many people don't realize
that.
They don't realize that depthor lack.
We have a lot of children infoster care that are not getting
(24:19):
a lot of it, and these are ourkids in our public schools and
they need extra.
They need extra to be given tothem extra experiences.
Next, because those are goingto feed.
That's going to be our future,that's going to be our test
scores on our NAP in a few years, right, and if we're not giving
them the experiential knowledge, and even if we have the
science of reading or teachingthem how to read a word, but we
(24:41):
give them no meaning to thatword.
We place them in front of a TVand they are getting image after
image put on their brain andthen they never learned to
create imagery for themselves.
That's incredibly building adeficit that we don't even
realize.
That will affect them.
My passion, if I had unlimitedfunds and that, would be to get
(25:05):
every single child a cognitiveassessment and know where their
starting place was.
Because I think that should bethe thing that should be done
for every single child everysingle year of their life,
because if you did that then youwould actually know where the
gaps were and you could startclosing gaps and you could start
making significant differencein their educational attainment
(25:27):
long-term.
And that's why I'm a LearningMarks franchisee, because I'm
passionate about that.
I love the whole learningprocess and the reading process
and I've trained in all kinds ofmethodology Orton-Gillingham.
There's a whole bunch ofdifferent Orton-Gillinghams.
That Orton-Gillingham is amethodology but there's a whole
different all kinds of programsthat I trained in that were
based on that methodology.
(25:48):
It's good methodology for SOARscience of reading and based on
that, and so I do see validityand that's what we're looking at
.
But if our memory is poor, ifour processing is poor.
If we're struggling in all ofthese other areas and we never
address those issues, then allwe're doing is throwing jello at
(26:11):
a tree and hoping it sticks.
It's not going to work longtime.
Dr. Amy Moore (26:16):
All right, let's talk about that.
That's a bold statement to saythat you could give a cognitive
assessment to every child everyyear.
Then we could really move theneedle on the reading challenges
.
So how did these cognitiveskill deficits impact reading?
(26:37):
Talk us through that, because Ibet a lot of our listeners
don't understand that connection.
Donesa Walker (26:43):
So one of the biggest areas that everybody
understands and gets isattention.
Okay, so really, the reality is, everybody says, oh,
everybody's ADD.
The reality is, executiveprocessing is one of the key
underpinning skills foreverything that we do in the
learning process, and thatincludes your ability to have
good working memory, which meansyou can multitask, you can task
(27:03):
, switch back and forth, you canpull that information from what
you're learning and linking itto the information that you
already have.
That is a key skill thataffects so many different things
, and it affects it is the weakskill in so many different
disabilities and neurodivergentchanges, from autism to dyslexia
to ADHD.
(27:24):
So many people.
It's because of the workingmemory, and so we see a lot of
programs and I'm going to talkabout online programs a lot of
digitized that say we changedthe working memory.
Working memory is only one keyto that.
The biggest issue that I see alot with my kiddos and even
adults, it's the processingspeed.
Processing speed is a key pieceto that too, and it's one of
(27:46):
the hardest things to move,probably.
A famous saying is he walks tothe beat of his own drummer.
So we talk about processingspeed being slow, but processing
speed affects a lot of things.
It affects the speed of traffic.
So what I like to people is, ifyou think of it as you can have
a race car brain and on theracetrack when you're thinking
(28:06):
about you know great thoughtsand creative thoughts and all
these kinds of things, you'rezooming around that racetrack,
but if you get out on theregular road and you don't
change the tread, you just endup in a ditch.
Okay.
So you have to change the treador have that, what I call
cognitive flexibility to be ableto move in between settings of
(28:27):
what you're doing.
And that's one of the biggestskills that we ignore.
Is that cognitive flexibilitythat's affected by your
executive processing.
Okay, and so if you can getthrough that and then you move
up that line, so your problemsolving, your logic and
reasoning, do you have goodlogic and reasoning?
So a lot of kids withneurodiversity struggle with
that logic and reasoning or thatproblem solving.
(28:49):
Or in reality, I see a lot ofkiddos that mom and dad have
solved a lot of problems forthem and did not let them sit
and have to think through theproblem.
They didn't have a board box atB-O-R-E-D because that was the
thing when my kids said I'mbored and I would say go get
something out of the board boxand I just dumped stuff in there
(29:11):
that was loose in my junkdrawer or whatever, and they had
to go create.
That was the thing is.
Just that type of thing iscritical for that, and a lot of
times we throw technology atthat.
I'm bored, okay, we'll go playa game, go watch a TV show Okay,
instead of actually lettingthem stir through a problem and
(29:33):
figure it out and I think that'sreally an important skill that
we, as parents, often helicopterwe want to solve the problem
for them instead of making themsolve the problem and watching
them fail and be able to get up.
A baby doesn't learn to walkunless that baby falls and sees
that depth perception right, andso if they do, they have
(29:55):
troubles, okay, and so this isthe thing is that you have to be
able to let them experience thefall, and a lot of us are
scared for our children to fail,and that's a really important
lesson to learn that fallingforward is, learning to fall is
a really good thing, andlearning to pick yourself back
up and that's great.
So these are all these keythings and that problem solving,
(30:17):
and then you have your auditoryprocessing and your visual
processing and those are keyunderpinnings, like we've talked
about, being able to hear thosesounds and know those sounds,
and with a ton of kids who hadear infections, they're
prevalent.
You know, this time of yearespecially, this is just it
affects think about hearingunderwater.
And so there's differenttechnology now that allows them.
(30:39):
There's phonics, phones,there's, you know, different
technology that helps childrenbe able to hear through bone
conduction and things so thatthey can learn to hear properly
because for so long they haven'theard.
And you cannot undervalue theprocess of just listening.
When I grew up, we would sitaround and listen to my
(31:00):
grandmother tell tales.
It was a thing.
We sat around and told stories.
We've lost a lot of thatbecause of technology, because
we were busy.
We're too busy to do that, andso a critical piece of that is
reading to your kids at night,having that storytelling time,
that creative storytelling time,where you say something that
(31:23):
they have to do it and you haveto say it back.
And fortunately andunfortunately, I love that book.
I love where you say somethingand you have to go back and
forth and play that game wherethey have to twist the story,
and that's fun.
It's a good thing Playing gameslike 20 questions.
Get an empty box, put somethingin it.
(31:43):
Let them ask you 20 questionsso they have to think in their
mind what in the world?
So that thinking process socritical?
And taking in those auditoryclues and moving that into a
thinking process where they haveto do that, visualizing it in
their head, picturing it asthey're hearing the clues and
picturing what that could be ornot be as a teacher.
(32:06):
I remember I had this way ofdiscipline in my classroom.
I called it the mysteryenvelope, and the mystery
envelope was index card that Ihad written something on and I
put it in the mystery envelope,okay, and every time the class
had good behavior, pure thing.
Then they got to ask me onequestion.
Okay, and so I taught middleschool a lot.
(32:28):
The questions had to be yes orno and I only answered it one
time, so if you missed it, okay.
And when the class solved it,they got what was ever in the
mystery envelope, and so it washighly competitive.
It was so interesting to watchthe kiddos who would go from one
class period to the other classperiod and they would be
(32:49):
walking out the room and saywhat question did you ask?
What question did you ask?
And they were like we ain'ttelling you, we're holding our
question, we're not telling you,because they didn't want to
give that clue to that nextclass and that next class be
able to solve it in advance.
And so it was so funny becausethis is pre-google, this is.
(33:12):
This is not what they can goand see, and it was not
something I would have posted,but it's the fun thing.
It's like AI can't solve thatfor you.
It can't, nothing can solve itfor you.
But you thinking and you tryingto figure it out and maybe get
with your classmates and thinkwhat they're thinking and figure
(33:32):
it out problem, solve it to getto that answer.
And that's a key.
That's a key thing ofvisualization and creating it.
And then so any teachers orparents, the mystery envelope's
huge.
It works.
It works really well.
That's one one thing thatcreates their mindset and their
processing and works on thoseskills.
And all of that goes into theschema.
(33:52):
All of that that goes into thatfiling cabinet of long-term
memory and then linking it andpulling it back and the more.
When I was teaching, one of thethings that was a key thing was
learning styles, and I know thata lot of that has been debunked
a little bit, but the realityis there are some value systems
(34:13):
to the learning styles it isimportant to give kids, but if
you teach them to only learn inone learning style and not to
learn when it's uncomfortable,then you are basically creating
a deficit for them.
And I think of it in the termsof I had surgery on my right arm
and I'm right-handed.
(34:33):
I'm right-handed because mythird grade teacher takes my
right hand I mean my left handto my desk.
I was left-handed until thirdgrade.
Wow, and my whole third gradeyear my teacher would duct tape
my hand because the prevalentthought at that time was
(34:55):
left-handedness caused learningdisabilities, and so she wanted
me to be better, and so that waswhat she was going to do.
Now people go to jail for that,but it was a little abusive.
It's a little abusive, right,but I did become a premier
speller because of it.
Sandy Zamalis (35:14):
I'm just saying it required you to really hone
in your brain skills, becauseyou were not writing with your
dominant hand.
Donesa Walker (35:24):
There was things that came from it.
I'm not gonna bash her foreverything, but yeah, like
brushing your teeth with yournon-prime example of cognitive
flexibility it's a prime exampleof cognitive flexibility.
So I go back here I am as anadult and having surgery on my
right arm, and everybody is.
I told my doctor, I said I justneed six weeks and then we're
(35:45):
going to do the surgery and I'llbe fine.
And he was like how you're notgonna be able to write for for
probably three months?
And I was like, oh yeah, I willjust do it with my left hand.
And he was like I just lookedthis way, you're crazy.
Okay, then that's because thenI just went back and so that's
the whole thing is, I findmyself I'll just change hands
(36:06):
midstream.
One hand start, I'll justchange to the other and I'll
just midstream do that.
And that's part of that process, as you just retrained.
Okay, we know that's possible.
We know retraining the brain ispossible for strengths.
We know it's possible for somany other things like the
handwriting and things like that.
We just have to embrace that'spossible to learn in a different
(36:30):
manner.
So, instead of saying I'm justa visual learner and saying I
need everything to be presentedand I need you to give me
accommodations because I don'tknow how to learn in another
methodology, why not train it?
Why not become the learner,where you can learn in any
method, in any way.
And I was an adult before I.
Honestly, actually, the firsttime I went to a learning or X
(36:53):
to be trained as a franchisee,hilariously enough, I cried
balls like boohoo, but babycried in front of everybody
because I was not a good visualprocessor.
I had good imagination and loveto read, but it impacted my
math OK, so I was not picturingthings in my math.
So I remember going and doingthe training as an adult and the
(37:17):
experience of what happened tome as an adult and thinking, oh
my gosh, but it changed thingsin my life that I had just taken
, that were always going to beweaknesses.
I told you my husband was agame board.
You could drop him off inTimbuktu and he'd find his way
out in no time because he has agreat sense of direction.
And again, if you had droppedme in those same woods, I'd just
(37:39):
sit down by a tree and crybecause I had no sense of
direction at all.
I remember people who went tothe franchise training with me
who would laugh at me because Ihad no sense of direction.
You know the elevator and allthat direction to go to my hotel
room.
It's the whole thing thatchanged for me, and it changed
for me because I trained thatprocess.
(37:59):
So, as I boohooed and criedthrough attention compute, going
through doing this drill, itchanged the way my brain
processed information, andthat's so crazy when you see
that, as an adult, I remember in2018, going and sitting in a.
I was in the hospital, uh, foreight months and I had eight
(38:21):
surgeries and it was crazy and Ilost a lot of memory and I
owned this business at that timeand I had that pre-test.
So, going back to thatcognitive test, I'm looking back
, amy, I know so I'm just goingback there, but I had that
cognitive baseline, right.
So after my surgeries andeverything, I knew that I was
foggy, right.
I did that baseline.
(38:42):
I was like, oh my God, I reallylost a lot.
So I did brain training formyself to get my skills back.
It's incredible to get yourselfback.
There is nothing quite like itof being able to go from a
weakness into a strength andbeing able to gain that back,
and so I'm completely a believerpersonally, having experienced
(39:03):
it as a parent, havingexperienced it and just the
whole.
We know the science supports itand we see that it's not a
learning arts thing.
The science says your brain canbe retrained.
So we know that's there andthat's possible.
It's just us as parents, as asociety, as a group of people,
wrapping our brain around.
This is our responsibility.
(39:24):
Our brain health is ourresponsibility, just like any
other health checkup.
It is so important.
Okay, if we're going to go tothe doctor for a yearly checkup
and he says you're pre-diabeticand you need to change your diet
and you need to get thesethings going on, we should be
(39:46):
doing the same thing for ourbrain.
We need to be going becauseyour brain's brain is your gut
and if you're being affected byother things, then you are
actually being affected in yourbrain.
So think about the processesand say, okay, I need to take
ownership of this.
Whether my child is four or mychild is 15 or my brain my own
50 year old brain needs to befit.
(40:08):
Okay, it's incrediblybeneficial long-term for you, no
matter what your age is, andit's going to impact us as a
society.
Because, if we look at Dr SandraChapman has coined that term
brainomics.
I'm not sure if you guys aresuper familiar with her, but I
love some of her research andstuff.
Yeah yeah, it's just phenomenalIf we start looking at it and
(40:30):
many parents and people don'trealize that your IQ points
they're actually have a value.
One IQ point is equivalent to$20,000 now on the NASDAQ.
It's actually a tradedcommodity.
Look it up.
You blow your mind.
Okay, that is actually acommodity that you can look up
(40:52):
to see how much an IQ point isworth.
That's crazy to think aboutthat.
But you can change your brain.
You can change your potential.
It's basically earningspotential over a lifetime, but
still it is.
It's enormous.
So if we talk about the lowestquartile, how do we make a
difference?
We have to give them thepotential.
Dr. Amy Moore (41:13):
So I have one last question as we wrap up.
So you mentionedOrton-Gillingham based programs
and how they are based in thescience of reading and as a
reading specialist, as adyslexia specialist, I would
like you to speak to this.
So we know that there was ameta-analysis a couple of years
ago on Gillingham based programsthat showed overall they were
(41:35):
not contributing tostatistically significant
changes in reading frequency,and on the research on ReadRx.
The LearningRx ReadingIntervention Program shows, or
has shown, anywhere from 4.1years to 5.8 year gains in 24
(41:59):
weeks, statistically significantchanges across all of those
different reading skills and allof the cognitive skills tested
for thousands and thousands ofresearch participants.
What do you think thedifference is?
Why has ReadRx shownstatistically significant
(42:20):
changes and Orton-Gillinghambased programs in that
meta-analysis did not?
Donesa Walker (42:29):
Because it's the foundational approach.
Okay, so note, this is thewhole reason why I opened a
LearningRx franchise.
Okay, so go back and look, Ihad delivered Orton-Gillingham
and I saw two steps forward, onestep back, constantly for 20
plus years.
Okay, and that was my biggestfrustration is we're not moving
the needle.
Why are we not moving theneedle with these kids?
(42:50):
And it's because foundationally, the weaknesses are there of
processing speed and memory andproblem solving, and that
executive function and all ofthe core cognitive skills were
not being changed.
The Orton-Gillinghammethodology actually does change
two areas auditory processing,which is good, okay, and it can
change the auditory processing.
(43:11):
But if the memory is poor, thenyou can't measure that change
in auditory processing becauseit's two steps forward, one step
back, right.
So even though the child maylearn the sounds, you spend two
years trying to learn the soundsand trying to link those sounds
and then you may not get thefull measure of what that child
potentially could do if you hadaddressed the memory weakness,
(43:33):
the processing weakness.
And we know, like, withdyslexics and children who
struggle with reading, dld andyou know all these different
diagnoses that have to do withthe reading deficits, it's they
have these developmentallanguage issues.
That's what dyslexia means.
Dyslexia means broken language,and the majority of the people
who go to interventions andreading like this are doing this
(43:55):
because there is a deficit inthe learning process, there is a
weakness in the reading processokay, and so if you never
address the underlying, it'slike trying to lay asphalt over
big old potholes in your road.
So it may look like it'sworking for a while, but drive
on it for a minute and it'sgoing to break the asphalt right
(44:15):
back up.
In a year or so from now it'sgoing to look exactly like it
did before.
And that's the reason whyyou're not getting significant,
statistically significant changeis because you're never
addressing the underlying base.
You're not really digging downto that bedrock and getting
where the weaknesses are andaddressing it from that
foundational purpose.
(44:36):
And I think that that's thewhole reason why I actually
exited the public school systemand opened a learning rec center
was for that very reason,because I could not move the
needle significantly for thosekiddos and we needed that in
Louisiana.
We needed a huge win here andthat's why I opened it.
(45:01):
That's why I've been doing thisfor 17 years.
That's the reason why I'm superpassionate about getting into
my classrooms and talking to myteachers and telling them we
need to look at the foundationshere.
We need to be using this is howyou can apply it in the
classroom.
When I talk to my parents, I dothat and my society and my
community that we really need toembrace the foundational issues
(45:25):
and quit just saying we'regoing to settle for this.
Even while we're on here, I hadsomeone text me and say I'm
looking at a curriculum change.
This is a curriculum instructorfor our school and I'm looking
at an OG methodology, and so mymind is spinning thinking, yeah,
we're going to have a top girl.
Okay, og has really greatmethodology.
(45:47):
I actually am trained in it andI love it.
But you have to get to thatroot bedrock or you're not going
to have good, significantchange and it doesn't matter
which brands you go with.
Okay, and there's a ton.
There's like the whole thing isyou have to get to that root.
Dr. Amy Moore (46:03):
So you have to have a strong cognitive skill
foundation of working inlong-term memory attention,
visual processing, auditoryprocessing, speed, logic and
reasoning all of those skillsthat you just walked us through.
That seems to be the secretsauce that underlies the ability
(46:23):
to read.
Donesa Walker (46:23):
Yeah, and if you look at the books that are
written by the researchersreading in the brain, if you
look at those books they tellyou, they show you that the
brain lights up in differentparts of the brain when you.
The reality is your brain hasto use so many different
processes to read.
So if you are weak in one ofthose skills, you are working at
a deficit, whether you call itdyslexia or language development
(46:47):
or just reading issues, and youthink about it.
Now we're at two out of fivepeople struggling to read.
85% of people in prison arethere because of a reading
deficit or a learning deficit.
We could change our whole worldif we would start looking at
the roots.
Just is.
Dr. Amy Moore (47:10):
Love it, Donesa, thank you so much for being with
us today sharing your wisdomand your expertise and your
passion about reading.
This has been just an amazingcouple of hours with you.
Thank you so much for all thework that you're doing down
there in Louisiana and acrossthe entire LearningRx system to
(47:35):
help get the word out about whywe need strong cognitive skills
in order to be strong readers.
Sandy Zamalis (47:40):
Amy, I want to leave our listeners with
something tangible that they cango right now and grab more
information on.
How can our listeners find outmore information about this
issue and this topic?
Dr. Amy Moore (47:52):
Yeah.
So for listeners who haven'theard about LearningRx before,
LearningRx is the largestnetwork of cognitive training
centers in the entire world.
We are in 43 countries, sowe're LearningRx in the United
States and America and we'reBrainRx in the rest of the world
.
And the cool part is you don'thave to live near one of our
(48:16):
centers in order to takeadvantage of our interventions.
We also provide them over Zoom,and our research shows that
it's just as effective that wayas well.
And so we start with thatfoundational cognitive training
program.
It's called ThinkRx.
That begins with an assessmentso that Donisa was talking about
(48:39):
where we can identify which ofthose skills needs to be
strengthened, where those gapsmight be she calls those
potholes in the road.
So that's what thoseassessments will identify.
And then our centers create anindividualized program
specifically for your child, oreven for you, that drills down
on those skills that need to bestrengthened.
(49:00):
And then the reading program iscalled ReadRx, and it's a
24-week program that covers allof those foundational reading
skills that we know areessential, based on the science
of reading, and underlyingcognitive skill remediation at
the exact same time.
And then, for kids that arestruggling in math, we also have
(49:20):
a math remediation at the exactsame time and then for kids
that are struggling in math, wealso have a math remediation
program as well, an earlychildhood program.
When we can see that kids,maybe age five, that are already
looking like they're struggling, we can get some early
intervention in there for them.
So, listeners, you can go tolearningrxcom that's the
national website where you cantype in a zip code, find the
(49:42):
center closest to you.
There's an 800 number, it's1-866-BRAIN-01.
You can call and talk to anactual person.
If you'd rather do that, thensearch the website and then, if
you go to the resources tab ofthe website, we've got free
stuff on there.
So Dr Ken Gibson, who createdthis program really, he started
(50:04):
creating the program back in the1980s.
It evolved through multipleiterations before it became what
we know now as LearningRx.
But he wrote a book calledUnlock the Einstein Inside and
we will give you that book forfree, the digital version of
that book for free, so you candownload that.
We have six or seven differentcognitive training exercises
(50:25):
that you can download and trywith yourself, with your kids.
Just lots of cool stuff that wegive away for free.
So that's really where I wouldsuggest that you start.
If you wanna see some of thoseexercises demonstrated, you can
find Sandy on TikTok atthebraintrainerlady.
She does some cool stuff onthere and she talks about our
research too.
(50:45):
You'll see my name because I amthe primary researcher for the
LearningRx methodology and youknow we've really looked at this
with thousands and thousands ofresearch participants and it's
such a message of hope that wereally can move the needle on
reading fluency, decoding,comprehension, as well as moving
(51:10):
the needle on attention andmemory and processing speed
issues all at the same time.
Sandy Zamalis (51:16):
It's a message of hope.
It really is.
Yeah, don't give up.
It's a message of hope itreally is, yeah, don't give up
For sure, and I love that.
Dr. Amy Moore (51:23):
Donesa's message was that we can't rely on the
school system to do this for ourkids, that even if our kids go
to public school, it still fallson us to make sure that we fill
in those gaps.
And one of the interestingfindings in that latest report
(51:44):
the nation's report card wasthat the number of books in the
home was directly correlatedwith the test results.
That speaks volumes.
No pun intended, right, and soI love that.
She mentioned Dolly Parton'sprogram, and I think there are
other lending library typeprograms too, so you don't have
to actually buy the books, justcheck them out from the library
(52:07):
or sign up for one of thoseprograms and then really expose
your kids to experiences thatbuild their filing cabinet of
information.
Schema is a mental framework.
It's what we know about eachthing in the world, right, like
what we know about the grass,what we know about the oceans,
(52:28):
what we know about communities,like really anything that you
can possibly know about, iscalled a schema or a mental
framework.
And so the more we build that,the more it contributes to
fluency and comprehension inreading and learning too.
Sandy Zamalis (52:45):
Amen.
Dr. Amy Moore (52:46):
Yeah, all right listeners, thank you so much for
being with us today If youliked our show.
We would love it if you wouldleave us a five-star rating and
review on Apple Podcasts so thatwe get ranked higher, and
getting ranked higher means wecan reach more parents like you
guys.
We'd love it if you wouldfollow us on social media.
We @thebrainymoms on Instagramand Facebook.
(53:08):
If you'd rather see our faces,you can find us on YouTube at
@thebrainymoms.
And that is all the smart stuffthat we have for you today.
We hope you feel a littlesmarter.
We're going to catch you nexttime.
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