Sally Shaywitz

Hey everyone, it's Catherine Crestani with another episode of Willow Healing Matters and today I am joined by Russell Van Brocklen.

So he's a New York State Senate funded dyslexia research and the founder of dyslexiaclasses.com. Evaluated at a first grade reading and writing level in college, he went on to develop a word analysis first instructional method grounded in Yale neuroimaging research by Dr. Sally Shaywitz.

His inaugural program moved highly motivated college bound students from a middle school writing level to the average range of entering graduate students on the GRE analytical writing assessment, a seven to eight year old grade level leap in one school year.

for under $900 per student as well.

That's... [laughs] Every parent can relate to that.

When your kids are young, you just have not a whole lot of time for, you know, extra leisure reading, especially if you also work outside the home, right? And this woman works hard outside the home and has very high-stakes things going on in her life.

Little Blue Truck, love the series.

Who didn't? [laughs] Love the answer too.

Mm.

At a time when New York State needed it, we had another former federal prosecutor become attorney general and bring law and order to the state.

This woman's a badass.

I love her.

All right? Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr.

Shaywitz.

Okay.

Now, if you look at the back part of the brain where all this stuff is supposed to be happening.

... like, one in five.

Dr. and Dr. Shaywitz at Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity were the first ones to do functional MRIs, which means that they were doing an MRI while the brain was functioning.

So they were scanning-

Mm

But, but, uh, both those assumptions were false.

And like I said, we, we knew about that, that the Shaywitz had actually shown that in a study, uh, back in, in '92 that it was a normal distribution.

But we showed a few years later that that normal distribution, uh, took a while to happen.

That when kids first started reading, the distribution had a floor effect to it.

So I know, uh, Rebecca, you had posted something earlier, um, that you didn't wanna interrupt for.

So, um, why don't you go for that?

that?Well, it's, it's okay 'cause, um, well, what I, what I was thinking about as you were, uh, talking Dr. Katz, is that, uh, if we can identify, um, for example, through the Sha- Shaywitz has a screener for dyslexia risk.

It doesn't identify dyslexia, but the risk for dyslexia.

And I began... doing a lot of research, reading everything I could find.

Sally Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia, Pete Wright's From Emotion to Advocacy, and realized that there was this whole body of knowledge that my district and my teachers did not have access to, that we knew how to teach children to read But my district was not equipped to do that.

And so I started this journey, about a 10-year journey, to change that.

and bring evidence-based literacy instruction into every classroom.

I mean, that cannot be what is wrong.

So when I...

Really, it was Sally Shaywitz's book.

But I came upon, through her, Overcoming Dyslexia, this whole body of scientific knowledge with cognitive neuroscientists and speech-language pathologists.

That's fantastic.

Now, tell me a little bit about how Sally Shaywitz and James Collins formed the basis for your research.

Well, the first thing I had to do was to figure out what's the real neuroscience.

And this is the book Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz.

That's dyslexia.

So essentially, do you see how the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity and the dyslexic has next to nothing? Yes.

There are some very famous ones who, in keeping with the theme of tonight, my brain can absolutely not remember.

But I know that in the Overcoming Dyslexia book by Sally Shaywitz, one of the examples she has in there is a lawyer.

And then in Dyslexic Advantage, at least one or two examples they have in there are lawyers.

And in my book, I have somebody in there who is...