dyslexia

I don't want to cast dispersions, but they're not always qualified to give those labels.

The challenge that we have is the business of the disses, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, have become enterprise in many school districts.

And I don't want you as a parent to have those diagnoses and then say, oh, that's why my child cannot learn.

You may need a different path forward, but it does not mean that your child does not have the capacity to And I can say that because I come from a place of having had two children who had profound diet, one who had a profound diagnosis and one who had a mild diagnosis.

I'm having this kind of a conversation with parents roughly 10 times a week now.

And sometimes it's with parents who are already have diagnoses.

They've been somewhere, they've done evaluations and they come to me, my child has ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and it goes on and on.

And then I start asking these questions and vision has never been counted as a possibility.

Yeah.

So I think, I think you should make, uh, your chat agent named Dyslexia now, you know, based on what Avi said.

[laughs] Yeah.

Actually, her name, her name's Veronica.

Hi, everyone.

And today we've got a mother and a teacher who has started her life as a public school teacher and discovered the challenges of dyslexia in that, and ended up in Chicago becoming a dyslexia specialist and working and creating a dyslexia school.

Uh, not school, but learning centers.

And we really wanna hear the story of dyslexia, reading, you know, raising children.

You know the story, and we've heard it lots of different ways, and every time you hear a person's dyslexia story, it's just got even more richness to it.

You see the same threads, you see the s- same kind of colors, but it paints a different picture.

And we're going to hear from Kate Variante.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for having me, Orla.

Katie is the founder of Empower Dyslexia and you're a dyslexia specialist, teacher and consultant.

That's a huge title.

Now you can tell us a little bit about the work that you do and how you've come to it.

Be brave today.

So

back in 2017, I did a master's in dyslexia or specific learning difficulties, as it was called.

And I graduated in 2019, but there's no role within the education system for a dyslexia specialist teacher in Ireland.

It would actually give you a many, right? So in that sense, it's the idea that it encourages the player to actually lean into the problems that they're having and actually make that part of the play as opposed to trying to avoid them and just add them on there because you're getting points for it.

Like originally in champions or groups or whatever, you would like, oh, I'm the one-eyed, one-armed champion Dyslexic, hydrophobic, whatever the hell you are, because that would give you all sorts of different advantages.

But if it never came up in play, it wouldn't hurt you.

It wouldn't actually increase the drama at all.

And today we've got an interesting guest from Scotland, someone local.

If you ask anyone in Scotland, "Who shall I go and get a dyslexia assessment form from?" This guest's name will probably be in one of those top three people mentioned.

So our guest tonight, Jenny Guise, is a practitioner psychologist who's moved into the world of dyslexia, you know, 20 years ago, and we're gonna hear a fascinating story of how she's experienced the world of dyslexia from, uh, an assessor's point of view.

She's taught, assessed children all the way to adults.

She's doing mostly adults now.

She's part of the Dyslexia Scotland board.

She's part of Helen Arkell, if you, if you know them in, down in England, and also part of the Scottish Parliamentary groups on dyslexia as well.

Written a number of books on dyslexia, and she is one of these people who takes the research and makes it really practical from a one-to-one point of view with the people she assesses and in, in a general sense.

The first is in childhood, I had a learning disability, uh, dyslexia.

It was-

Dyslexia?

...

it was very bad.

Yeah

... and some other, you know, brilliant person did too, you go, "Dude." You know? So, like-

Well, I think my tutor at one point showed me a book, uh, which I think is called The Gift is, of Dyslexia, and on the back cover, it had a list of maybe 12 people that were somewhat famous throughout history, uh, who had dyslexia or were considered to have had dyslexia based off of their childhood, uh, in a h- historical perspective.

You guys are the best, honestly.

And thanks for all the advice for, um, Mad Mitch with the Dyslexia stuff.

I remember, you know, Scott would say, like, he couldn't take his car through the car wash, like a drive-through car wash where you stay in the car.

He's like, "I, I couldn't follow the instructions." And I'm like, "Really?" You know, reading that, and he's just like, "No, it's like, you know, put your car in neutral, put your mirrors in, you know, proceed to this thing." And he's like, "Nope, going home and I'll wash it myself." [laughs] So everybody has their thing, right? Oh, Josie, you're so kind.

You're terrified of car washes? That's hysterical.

I miss him too, Poker Jesus, or is it Jesus? Aw.

Dyslexia is hard to spell.

All right, guys.