What if the problem isn’t your child, but the way we’re asking their brain to learn?
We sit down with Russell Van Brocklen, who once tested at a first-grade reading level and later held his ground in law school, to unpack a strength-first approach that helps dyslexic and ADHD learners thrive. Instead of forcing kids through slow, demoralizing drills, Russell shows how to harness what’s already overactive and powerful: motivation in a specialty, rapid articulation, and the ability to lock in when the work feels meaningful.
We walk through a simple writing protocol that parents can run at home. Start with a topic the child loves, use tight sentence frames, require read-aloud self-checks, and repeat with deliberate rewrites until accuracy sticks. Then add “because” reasons, stacking clarity one line at a time. The result is fast, measurable gains—often in weeks—because writing becomes a tool to organize racing thoughts. Reading rises with it, since if a child can write a word correctly, they can usually read it. Russell contrasts this with expensive private programs, sharing data where his method delivered multi-grade improvements at a fraction of the cost and time.
If you’ve felt stuck between accommodation and frustration, this conversation offers a clear, doable path forward and a different kind of hope grounded in results.
If this resonates, follow the steps with your child this week and tell us what changed first—accuracy, confidence, or focus. Subscribe, share this with a parent who needs it, and leave a review so more families can find practical help.
To connect with Russell go to his website and book a call with him at: dyslexiaclasses.com or follow him on LinkedIn.
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about. This podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Russell Van Brocklin. I really like saying that. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? And what I love about his story is how he took what would be considered a broken piece, his dyslexia, and turned it into a massive superpower. Because that’s who he works with now is kids that are dyslexic and who can’t use someone like Russell to help them out. And I think that’s awesome because in this day and age, people tend to be ashamed of the things that others deem, I don’t know, negative about us, but in turn, they don’t really know the superpower that lies in our brokenness sometimes. So without further ado, thank you so much for joining us today, Russell, on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Thanks for having me.
It’s a pleasure to have you. Where are you at, Russell?
Right outside of Albany, New York, which is about 155 miles north of New York City.
So you’re not in New York City proper, which is nice. You’re in the burbs to a degree.
I’m in the state capitol. I am 150 miles away from that place. Uh we don’t like to deal with their craziness.
Yeah, I don’t like to deal with downtown Austin either. I’m in Austin, Texas, but I’m like the furthest up north you can be without being in a different city. I’m also in the burbs, and I quite like it. I hate traffic. I do not like uh being having to find parking that’s outrageous either. I think it’s ridiculous. But they charge us in parking, so I’d rather do, you know, metros and anything else but driving into a majority.
Well, Tesla and a lot of other people are leaving California to come to Texas for the regulatory and the tax breaks, but they want to stay in their own liberal conclave, and that’s Austin. So your population has exploded. And there’s more on the way.
Yes, because our friend Elon Musk decided to come from California to Texas. We know.
And now most of the buddies are coming.
Yes, and then he ended up going to my hometown, to South Texas, to build that whole space shuttle station or whatever, the space station, and he ruined our beaches. Thank you, Elon. We really appreciate it. But, anyways, moving on to our amazing story of transformation. Do tell us, Russell, how you landed in this space of working with dyslexic kids.
Well, I have the worst case of dyslexia people have ever seen. Um, literally New York State funded the study for it. And after 20 hours with this New York State distinguished professor in psychology, it came back. I have a first-grade reading and writing level. So when I turn my system on, it’s above average college, and then it veers between the two. So when before I made that fix, I went to the New York State Assembly internship program in the late 90s because I wanted to know how government worked. I didn’t want a theory, I wanted to know. So I go there and I say, Here’s my neuropsych, I have a first-grade reading and writing level. And they looked at me like this is not going to work. So they completely changed the internship, gave me a much better one in the Capitol. They put in the majority leaders program, the council’s office, because I had to do some writing, and they had three administrative assistants who could help take my horrendous stuff and turn it into something appropriate. For the academic portion, I had I gave a massive uh presentation in a long QA instead of writing a paper. Very standard accommodation for me back then. Well, they recommended 15 credits of A-. That doesn’t mean the school has to take that. They almost 99 plus percent of the time do, or they may make a few small adjustments around the margin. Not for me. It goes back to the political science department of the State University of New York Center at Buffalo, and they said, we don’t like these accommodations. So instead of 15 credits of A minus, here’s your 15 credits of F. And I was like, I am done with this discrimination garbage. So what I did is I talked to my professors and I said, Where can I force myself to learn to read and write at the graduate level? They kind of jokingly were saying law school. So I went to law school. All right. So I went to see a specific dyslectic professor, and he’s dyslectic, and it’s for contracts. Second day I walk in. They use the Socratic method. So if you don’t know the answer, they keep asking you questions that purposely embarrass you. This is much more severe than undergrad. If you want to know about it, there’s a famous movie in the 70s called The Paper Chase that goes into it in detail. Well, he called on me. Second day, my classmates kind of gasped because they knew it was coming. But it didn’t happen to me. What I found out later is as a dyslectic, we walk into grad school, it’s our area of extreme interest and ability we’re really good at. We own the place day one or shortly thereafter. So he starts uh so the professor keeps calling on me, then he gets a little snarky. He’s really pushing me. And so I’m getting a little snarky back. These are supposed to be very short discussions. The professor crushes the new student and moves on to the next victim. Not with me. I answer him back. Before I know it, I’m leaning forward, shouting at him. He’s leaning forward, shouting at me. My classmates kept waiting for this to be over. And he finally said, Russell, I’m sorry, but I in the interest of time I have to move on the next case onto the next case. You couldn’t be any more correct. And he said afterwards, he was trying to press my buttons. I said, I was trying to press yours. I couldn’t beat him, he couldn’t beat me. My second day in contracts. Within a month, I could learn to read at the law school level. Within a couple of years, I could write. And then I wanted to share what I’ve learned with everybody else. So I went back, and the senator, my senator at the time was the majority leader of the state senator, his name was Senator Bruno. I said, this is what I wanted. Now, when you’re dealing with Republicans, it’s very simple. Better, faster, cheaper, get it into the school system, let the teachers and the school system tell us if they want this. Democrats are on the other side. Start off with a bill and then go from the top down. So I went over to the State Education Department and I said this is what they’re looking for. And they’re like, okay, how do I get rid of this person? Uh we want a SUNY distinguished professor in psychology, they’re top rank. Where is this out of? I said, Buffalo. Go get a distinguished professor to give, say this is good. Two distinguished professors in the entire Western New York who are psychologists. Dr. Holichka happened to do my first evaluation, so she did she volunteered to do the second. Years later, we’re finally in a public school, Averill Park Central School District. We picked, I only I wanted the ideal. Highly intelligent, highly motivated, dyslexic juniors and seniors, with and they ended up with middle school writing skills. Took their best special ed teacher, Susan Ford, one class period a day for the school year. They increased their writing to the average range of entering graduate school students. They had the writing skills of college graduates before they started. Boston New York State less than$900 a kid. They all went on to college, all graduated accommodations of 2.5 to 3.6. For business people, compared to the best to select to college, this was uh we were 3x as successful for less than 1% of the cost, less than 125th of the effort. And that’s what got me started.
I’m blown away, dude. Like seriously, blowing away. I think I love your spirit and your attitude because a lot of people wouldn’t even have bothered. Think about it. Like they would have looked at their brokenness and said, okay, I I obviously can’t do this. And so tell us beyond like your motivation, what do you think also propelled you to go to law school and and do everything that you did? Because we find kids nowadays give up before before it even begins. How would you motivate them?
Because when you’re dyslectic like me, one of two things happens to you. You’re either becoming the most motivated person you’ll ever meet, or you’re shattered as a person. I was the first one, and that’s the way I was ever since elementary school. It was just a natural extension. I just finally blew up and said, I’m done with this garbage, this discrimination. The concept that an academic department, a political science department, at SUNY Center of Buffalo would look at the committee of the assembly, where they had a senior instructor, a professor from Syracuse, when they had people running this program for decades, and to say that they don’t know how to accommodate somebody? The Hutzpa, I just had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I just said I was going to solve this. And what I showed you, I thought I was done. I thought I did something amazing. I was wrong. Then they asked, how can we apply this to typical students? And I said, You can’t. This the can’t this is so intense. The normal kids can’t take this. And they tried it against my advice, and it was an abject failure. So I said, How do I take this and move this on to everybody? And for your moms out there who are going through this, this is the top book in my field. It’s called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally She was an MD from Yale. Okay. Second edition, page 78, figure 23. That’s dyslexia.
Wow.
Do you see how the back part of your brain has all this massive neuroactivity? Yep. And the back part of mine has next to nothing? Yep. But the front part of my brain is two and a half times overactive?
Yes.
Okay. So I looked at that and I said, why don’t we focus on the dyslexic strength? So initially they said it’s articulation followed by word analysis. Alright. GRE, graduate records exam, analytical writing, analytical articulation, same thing. But when I had to deal with this with typical students, I found I had to switch that over. Word analysis followed by articulation. Okay? So a lot of your clients are going to have kids who are, this is what they say when I present a major dyslexia conference, they’re writing a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words. How do we fix that? So instead of going to a private dyslectic school, for example, uh in the Windward School, if your kid is fourth grade or over, you have a 98% success rate. It takes four to five years at$75,000 a year. You don’t have house money or want to send your kid away to a boarding school. Here’s how we fix this really quickly. We’re going to do word analysis followed by articulation. Do you know any dyslexic elementary school kids at all?
I may, actually. Now that I think about it, because my kids are under the 504 planning, anyways. We’ve got ADD and O C D and anxiety. So the trilogy of these things. Okay. And uh we oftentimes run into the dyslexic kids, right?
Okay. A D D and ADHD, same thing, same solution. Okay. So uh the kid you’re talking about, let’s make up a name for them. What’s how old are they and make up a name?
Okay, so Ben 10.
Okay, Ben, 10. Okay. So what is Ben’s speciality? What’s his area of extreme interest and ability? What does he love to do?
Read.
Read about what?
Dragons and Dragons.
Dragons. Okay, let’s start off with that. So let’s assume Ben is writing randomly placed misspelled words. I’m gonna show you how to fix that real fast.
Okay.
We’re gonna have him, you’re gonna you’re gonna type out hero plus sign, what are we talking about? And he’s gonna copy that. Why is that okay? Strategies for struggling writers, Professor James Collins, three default strategies of copying, visualization, and narrative, million and a half dollars in federal funding for the that idea. So you type out hero plus sign, what are we talking about? He types it out. He’s copying. Then you’re gonna get rid of hero and swap it for Ben. Ben plus sign, what are we talking about? Then he does the same thing. You’re gonna swap out what are we talking about for dragons. Now we have Ben plus sign dragons. The plus sign indicates it’s a visual cue that we probably have to add words, subtract words, and move words around. We have to add a word to make this a proper three-word sentence. Alright? I’m gonna ask you the easiest questions you ever had in your life. If you follow them correctly, it works. If not, it doesn’t. You’re about to have an epiphany. Do you think I can fool you?
I don’t know. Can you?
70% of the teachers when I present this at major dyslexia conferences are cool. Here’s my question. Are you ready? Alright. Here’s my question. We’ve got to replace the plus sign. Does Ben like or dislike dragons?
Ben likes dragons.
But that’s not what I asked. Do you see the mistake? Huh.
No.
Okay, I asked, does Ben like or dislike? As an educated person, you automatically added the S and correctly. Ben’s dyslexic. He can’t do that.
Okay.
So we are beginning with how do we add the S. Now, that school I told you about, the 75 grand a year, what they do is an Orton Gillingham multi-century structured language approach, which is a simple way, a complicated way of saying that you seeing, touching, hearing, it’s complicated as all heck, takes two years to become qualified in that approach. And the kids, it’s crazy because it’s we’re using 1950s ideas. Orton passed away in 1948. Here’s how we use modern ideas, modern neuroscience. We have Ben like Dragons, because that’s what I asked him. That’s what he wrote. How do we get him to add DS? We asked Ben to read what he wrote out loud and ask him, Ben, does that sound generally correct? He’s gonna say no. Ben likes dragons. And I’ll say, fix it. Ben likes dragons. Do you see how like and dislike is a form of word analysis? Yes. Now we’re gonna go because, and the reasons can you see how they’re a form of articulation? Yes. Okay, now give me a reason that Ben likes dragons, a simple reason.
They fly.
Because they fly. Ben likes dragons because they fly. Now do you see how we got a whole bunch of misspelled words?
Yes.
Orton Gillingham would take you months to learn how to really fix that and years to correct. Let’s do that a lot faster. So what we do is we tell Ben, before he puts period down, he can he can ask any question. So he might say, Did I spell dragons correctly? If he didn’t put the period down, you could type out dragons. He would copy it. He’s good. If that was it. But most of these kids drop the period, which is what you kind of want. Because then they have to retype the entire sentence. They start to get annoyed with themselves. So they type it out and they think they’re going to get it right, but they keep making mistakes. They keep saying to themselves, I’m not going to make that mistake again. And they keep doing it between three and thirteen times. As they progress between 10 and 13 times, you can start seeing sweat coming down their forehead. They’re lying so hard, concentrating so hard, and that’s where the magic happens. That’s where they finally start getting it right. You do that for each step. Ben likes dragons 20 times, 20 likes, and 10 likes, 10 dislikes until that’s done perfectly. Then we do because reason one, 20 times until it’s done perfectly. Reason one and reason two twenty times. Reason one, reason two, and reason three. Each time they’re rewrite typing what they did before. Or somebody’s Ben’s age, he may take anywhere from two to three weeks to a month, month and a half. But then you’re increasing the writing from the kindergarten level to the end of second, beginning, third grade. And here’s a little thing about reading. If you can write a word, you can read it. So reading’s a little far behind. I just told you in a couple of minutes how to do a multiple grade level in Greece. It’s that simple.
It is. My goodness, I’m kind of digging this. Okay. Because, well, because we gotta use their strengths. I love what you said about using the dyslexic strength instead of focusing on the weaknesses. Where does that come from to focus on the weaknesses and not the strengths?
Well, I’m just gonna show you the neuroscience again. I’m holding up again page 78, figure 23. What they’re trying to do is the back part of the dysleptic brain, they’re trying to make it look more like a normal brain.
Yeah.
That’s what that’s what they’re trying to do. And they’ve had some success, but nothing like what is needed. I had the weird idea of let’s use what’s overactive. This is not where you’re supposed to be doing that stuff. I found it works brilliantly. But here’s the problem. After you get done with this, everything else, the kid doesn’t want to do the work. All right, and this is where I pulled from what I learned from law school. Dyslectics go to brad school, do doctoral level things. We own the place they want, or soon thereafter. I withdrew from that their speciality. So for Ben, he’s really big into dragons. So we will get a book on dragons that are preferably one or two grade levels ahead of where he is, so he can grow into it. An audio, an uh somebody who’s on the audio book who they like, all right. And what we’re going, so you know, they have to like the narrator. So that’s the first thing. Because if you’re in the kid’s specialty, and this is very important for ADD or ADHD, let’s let’s discuss that for a moment. Did you ever watch the movie Fast and Furious, the original one?
No, unfortunately, no, even though I’m a Paul Walker fan. Yeah.
Well, Paul Walker’s in a scene, they bring in this car from the dump, and they’re re-gonna do it, you know, from the junkyard. And he’s with this this computer kid, and he’s saying, You’re amazing at this. How come you’re not at MIT? He said, I can do this really good. I can’t do the other stuff. So for the intervention period, we’re gonna focus on their speciality. Number two is we can’t teach these kids from the general to the specific. It’s like you can’t imagine you go to a high school, a kid who was college bound, and you say, What effect did a Martin Luther King’s famous I have a dream speech have on the Americans with the Civil Rights Movement? They go and write it up. Asking a dyslectic to do that is like grabbing thought. You can’t do it. But if you ask a dyslectic from the specific to the general, what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous I have a dream speech? You can go to his biography and find out, you get an answer, which gives you another question, which gives you an answer. What this does is it forces the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me say that again. It forces the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Because if you ask a dysleptic this question, in your speciality, so we asked Ben this question. When you’re when you’re in your specialty, when you’re thinking about dragons, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization? He’s going to say yes. And then what we have to do is we’re going to tell him we have to force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable outlet. So it’s his speciality, specific to in general, word analysis followed by articulation. How successful is this? Uh Kimberly gave me full permission to tell her story. I met her on December 27th of last year, 2024. Her son reads, she’s a homeschooling mom. She had all her kids tested by the state, spent 700 bucks on it. He came back at the beginning third grade level for reading and writing halfway through first grade. I’m sorry, halfway through fifth grade. We had for the next end of the school year, according to their statistics, they were expecting a 1.86 increase. That didn’t happen. It really got him to increase by 20 points. So a little bit above grade, 11x higher than expected. Then Reed’s friend said over the summer, we want you in public school with us because for for social reasons. If it was January, he would have been in special ed, away from his friends, miserable. But now he’s in mainstream classes, doing extremely well, and his mom solved the issue. Now, how much time did she spend? People think, oh, she spent all day on this, she was homeschooling. No, it came out to about three half hour sessions a week for that six months. I worked with her for about a half an hour a week just force correcting as we’re going along. All right. That’s how powerful this is. Private dyslectic schools that are 75k a year don’t get those results.
You know, I’m I’m loving the fact that you’re on this podcast right now because I think a lot of parents are in Kimberley’s position and they don’t know what to do. And the the school districts are, let’s be really honest. They’re ill-equipped, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the staffing.
And we’re over 40 grand a kid. We’re spending more than anybody. I’ll tell you why this is happening. Again, going back to the dyslexic brain, page 78, figure 23. You see that massive overactivity in the back? Yes. 80 plus percent of the kids are not dyslectic or ADHD. They’re teaching for them. Okay? But our brains are completely different. So what they’re trying to do is we’re going to accommodate you. Let’s see how successful that is. Let me give you a good analogy. For sports, there’s one sport I’m the worst at. It’s basketball. I stink. What sport are you really, really bad at?
Me? Football or lacrosse or something like that.
Okay, let’s take lacrosse. Let’s say you were told your economic future depends on how well you do lacrosse. But we’ll accommodate you, we’ll get you a$2,000 lacrosse stick. We’ll get you$10,000 padding. We will give you the best of everything. And we’ll make sure the people you’re going up against who are naturally gifted in that area, we’ll give them used equipment from Walmart. Is it going to make any difference on your ability to beat them?
No.
No. You will lose. That’s what’s going on with dyslexia. That is because we got nothing going on back here, basically.
Yeah.
The other people are going crazy. The accommodations don’t work. We have to go and bring the reading and writing skills up to grade level or above, and then put them back into normal classes. And during that time, we absolutely must be teaching them in their specialty, from the specific to the general, word analysis followed by articulation. But what do the schools do? An English class, instead of one book, they’ll be doing five or ten. They’re teaching from the general to the specific, and they certainly aren’t doing word analysis followed by articulation. In other words, they’re doing everything against the dyslectic kid or the ADHD kid, not on purpose, because those methods work brilliantly for typical students.
Yeah.
But the exact opposite or for dyslectics. And I just showed you multiple times how our brains are completely different.
Yeah. They are. I was talking about this with a buddy of mine after pickleball today. His uh, my boy, we didn’t realize he had ADHD until like way later. He got put on medication. That started a whole new conundrum of issues. Um, it actually made his anxiety worse and his OCD worse, and because it was a stimulant and it did not do well in his system, right? But this is years ago. Fast forward to today, you know, I realized I also have ADD. I remember quote unquote blacking out, and I don’t mean like passing out in class, but rather my mind would likely wander because I couldn’t keep up. And then the teacher would call me and I was totally lost. And I remember my mind feeling like this blackness, like of zero information, retention. And when my daughter started to tell me, mom, I’m my mind is going black. I was like, oh no. This is the same concept, right? So ADD, fast forward, she ended up going on COGMED. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.
I was maxed out on medication and made me even crazier.
Okay.
So I know exactly what you’re I know, I know what you’re going through.
But do you know what COGMED is? Like that’s a different, that’s not medication. Cogmed is a series of computer games designed to kind of push the mind to focus for longer periods of time, and the games get harder and harder. It’s like they’re pushing them to follow.
But they’re doing it. Let me ask you a few questions so you can understand exactly what this is, because the science behind what you’re doing, it’s the symptom. It’s like when you’re in a cold, you have a stuffy nose, they treat the symptom. The problem’s in your chest. Okay? I’m going to show you how we get right at the heart of this. Here’s my first question. What is your speciality? What is your area of extreme interest and ability?
Me? Writing.
Yes. Writing. Writing about what?
Self-help faith.
Self-help. Okay. So let’s that was the first thing you said. When you’re thinking about self-help, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization?
Yes.
Okay. That tells me your ADD, ADHD, or mildly dyslexia, or some combination there into. Now, next question. Fingers, keyboard. Fingers, keyboard. The ideas in your head about self-improvement, self-help. You want to communicate it in writing, so you’re going to type it. You take your fingers, put them on the keyboard. Does the idea fly out of your head, leading you with an empty brain? Sound familiar or not really?
Not really. I keep going for a while. Like I can just type. Like I write, write, write, I get downloads, so I just start writing.
Well, that works out severe dyslexia. You’re not severely dyslectic.
No.
Third question. When you were in elementary or middle school, were you ever threatened to be with held back from school because of bad grades?
No.
Okay. So what that tells me, those three questions, is that you are ADD, ADHD, or mildly dyslectic. Okay? Now, you think learning is difficult. If we were, I want you to imagine we’re going to send you back through, let’s say, a college degree. But it was just going to be on self-help and faith. That’s it. Let’s say somebody else was taking care of your family for a while. You had no concerns. Alright? Can you imagine it would be hard to pull you away from learning about things?
Well, if if it was self-help and faith, it would be difficult to pull me away, yes.
Yes. Okay. So this is what your audience needs to understand. You’re talking, you know, I hear this all the time. My kid’s hyperactive. I have ADHD. I have a really bad case of it. Alright. My big thing was history. Alright. You get your kid in their speciality. Just try pulling them away. I’ve had parents who I finally started teaching their kids this and they got so into it, you know, they left them alone on a Saturday, you know, started them Saturday morning at you know eight o’clock in the morning. They thought they’d go play the co it’s now eight o’clock at night. And they literally, I said, get your husband and physically force the kid, who by the way was about eleven, up to the room. Like literally had to drag the kid to their room to sleep. That it is, I am not they are so into it. But they’re in that area for the length of getting them to grade level or way above.
Okay.
Okay. Then you can put them back into typical schools and they will be kicking and screaming, I don’t know, like with Reed. I don’t want to write in math. I don’t like this. Well, his mom, very faith-based, she she a big part of what they did to help overcome his reading and writing issues was reading the Bible in Sunday school. All right. Finally I said, just tell him like this is going to happen. Reed, you’re going to do writing in math class. Okay. He he was testing the boundaries. He hated it. But now he he’s doing fine. He can do it. Yeah. And the kid’s doing fine, but you have to push them back when they’re doing everything. Yeah. And uh he’s having fun with his friends, which is the whole point of him going to public school. So what you need so again, it’s during that intervention period.
Okay.
Okay, what I try to show parents is how to do this themselves so they don’t have to spend house money to get it done at a private school. Yeah, because$75,000 a year for four to five years. And that’s bigging expenses. That’s just tuition.
That’s crazy, man. That’s how do people do that? I mean, you have to be like millionaires to send kids like that.
Oh no, I’ll tell you how they do it. Uh I’m going to use the Gowell School, which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year. South of Buffalo, the oldest school in the world. South of Buffalo, New York. They will have living there cost about$86,000, but they have a scholarship to help out families in need, averaging$26 grand. So only$60,000. That’s it. How do they do it? Moms go back to working full-time, dad works overtime, the rest of the kids’ needs are completely ignored, and it it kills them.
It’s called divorce.
Oh no, no, it actually typically in that community it makes the partnership stronger. But the dad is working full time, I mean overtime like crazy. Mom goes back to work.
Yeah, and who’s with the kids? Who’s with the kids?
They try to do the best they can. Everything is sacrificed for the dyslectic.
See, and that builds up some resentment and balanced siblings big time because they’re like, well, what about me? You know, it was I had two problems to like like brother and sister, you know, growing up. They one was lazy or had X, Y, or Z, and this one they couldn’t get to do. She was the rebellious one, and I’m the oldest. And so they kind of left me alone, but I was like, uh, hello, I’m still a kid here.
No, you’re the oldest. You were you essentially raised them. See that all the time. I know, but it sucks.
That sucks. Yeah, no, and it builds up all sorts of resentment. So I’m glad you’re you’re in the school district. I’m glad that within, what did you say?
Within three months. Okay. All on her own, a little under six months.
Because she homeschooled him, right? She homeschooled him.
Half an hour session, three days a week for six months.
Okay, I was gonna say it was it took her six months to really learn the the strategy that you were teaching.
And to improve no she got it very quickly, but again, she was 11 times as successful as the school. 11, not double, not triple, 11 times.
Um and think about it though, it makes sense. She’s one-on-one with her child versus a school system is how many kids to a classroom.
Oh, no, especially that the student-to-teacher ratio is much smaller. She had him for an hour and a half a week doing this.
Okay.
And they had a master’s degree in this, and she doesn’t have a back educational background in this.
No, but she had you. And you did. Yes. Okay.
Yes, but I was able, but again, the magnitude. Yeah. A fraction of the level of the effort, 11 times the results.
Yes. And I think that’s awesome because it’s not how hard you’re working, it’s how efficiently you’re you’re working, as what the gist of this is. It’s like, is your strategy working? Yes or no? No. Then why are you doing it for 30 hours a week?
It’s an analogy that I found is the fact that this is explaining because I’m working with how the dyslexic brain actually works. Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger as a child, I mean as a teenager. Putting him in a weightlifting regiment, good idea. Yeah. Asking him to become a marathon runner, not a good idea because his body’s not designed for that. Or it’s like asking a kid who you know is going to be a good mechanic and say, you have to go and get a PhD in electrical engineering.
Yeah, no.
Not happening. Focus on the strengths, and they do so much better.
Yes, I’ll have to look at my kids’ strengths and just zero in on that and be like, hey, listen, you can do this. I know you can do this. Um last words of encouragement for parents out there, Russell, that are in this dark chapter.
When they’re yeah, when when it comes down to this, we set this up to be very simple. So if you go to dyslexiaclasses.com, uh Pro within S DyslexiaClasses.com, the easiest thing to do is there’s a form button there that says download free report. Click on that, answer a few questions, you get a document the three reasons your child’s having trouble in school due to dyslexia, how to get past it. Essentially a lot of what we discussed today. You set up a half an hour appointment with me, I go over things with you, with your child, and I ask them those questions. They start off very skeptical. Then they’re like, How do you know this about me? One of them I joked, well, we have a mind machine so we can read your thoughts. Really? I was like, no, not really. I went through this. Is then we talk about is this how you want to overcome your concerns? They say yes. Then I work with your parents, we work with them on a yearly basis. That’s something people can afford. And I give Kimberly as an example. Some kids go faster, some go slower. But we can generally get things solved a fraction of the time of even the best private schools.
So if I wanted to hire you, how do I find you?
You go to dyslexiaclasses.com, hit that button, fill out the form, and we set up a free appointment.
Okay. Where else are you on social media? Like if I wanted to follow you and do you post anything?
Uh oh yeah, we’re starting to post a lot. I’m mainly on LinkedIn. Okay. Um, I just find the other ones are kind of not as serious as LinkedIn. No. And we discuss things and sh and you know, share a lot of things there. I’m also coming out up with a book about Kimberly’s experience, and we’re doing one from moms for homeschooling. And I’m why am I saying moms? Because statistically, when Facebook was telling us way too much information, I ran in numbers, 90% moms take care of K-12. Dads do when the kid fails to launch after college or during college, that’s when dads get involved typically. We’re also doing a book for educators. Uh, I’m working with Evelyn White Bay, who’s on the dyslexia task force for New York State. And uh, we’re just uh the goal is just to get people to have the same experiences that Reed did, to get them out of special ed and then in typical classes where they can excel.
Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for saying that out loud, because I’m with you. Because life does not give you accommodations. So we got to teach these kids how to how to be thriving in this moment uh right.
Well, the other thing that I’ve equip them for later. I I use a book called The Craft of Research from the University of Chicago, which was designed for PhD students who didn’t write their dissertation. No private school in New York City deals with this. It’s too evolved. It’s context, problem, solution. I drop context to eight and eight to uh nine to ten-year-olds, problem for 11 through 16, and solution, something completely original for writing for 17-year-olds. You follow that and you combine it with Chat GPT probe uh level, you can not only work with the AI and create reports like you can’t believe, research you can’t believe, but guide it as well. If you know nothing about AI and you know those skills, you can learn that in a matter of weeks and be very valuable to your future employers.
That’s amazing. Thank you so much, Russell, for joining us and sharing your wisdom and and your journey with us because I think it’s it’s it’s a good way to start for a lot. A lot of kids out there have a lot of mental health issues among them, um, dyslexia, ADHD, and we’ve touched on both of these um issues today, and I’m I’m grateful because this is a ray of light and hope for people here in Texas, not just New York State. Um, any last words of encouragement before we sign off?
Nope, just I have a mom who’s certified in Texas as a as a uh elementary school teacher, Jen Ed. She could her son’s nine years old, couldn’t get anything done with him. Those basic sentences, September through December, is what she thinks. She’ll have it done by beginning of December. And she’s seeing improvements that she has never seen before.
That’s all.
Just by applying the yeah.
The methodology that that you shared with us on the podcast. Well, thanks so much, Russell. I really am thrilled that I that you came on the show and that you shared your wisdom. And for the listeners who released that reveal purpose, remember Matthew 5.14 to always be the light because you are the light, and this world needs you. Look what he did, look what Russell did. He was dyslexic, and then he made he made his brokenness shine and thrive, and look what he’s doing for dyslexic kids around the country. So we really, really need you to shine your bright light, don’t be afraid. And for the rest of you, thank you so much for joining us. Have a wonderful week. Thank you. Bye now.
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