Compendium Podcast – Lois Letchford Author of Reversed

leadership books. In just moments, our host Michael Stickler will be joining us with a very special guest. Before we get started, I would like to introduce you to Michael. He's a 4-time bestselling author, philanthropist, publisher, and highly sought-after conference speaker. His passion is to see life-changing books find their audience— books that will change your life, change your business, And Change Your Soul. And he specializes in helping authors and business owners achieve publishing success. Won't you please welcome Michael Stickler.

Well, thank you, Ron, so much for the incredible introduction. I am Mike Stickler, and today I have an incredible guest with us, Lois Letchford. Now, Lois is, um, from Down Under. She's a pretty amazing woman. She has some great things she wants to share with you and some innovative ideas about in and around dyslexia. Now, Lois, her adventure really, or her efforts really came to light at age 39 when she was faced with teaching her 7-year-old non-reading son Nicholas. Examining her reading failure caused her to adapt and to change for her son. The results were dramatic, and Lois qualified as a reading specialist to use her non-traditional background, multi-continental experience, and passion to assist other failing students. Her teaching and learning have equipped her with unique skill set and perspective, and as a teacher, she considers herself, herself a literacy problem solver. Now, I have met with Lois previously, and she's a very special woman. Lois, I just want to welcome you to the Compendium Podcast.

Thank you, Mike. I'm delighted to be here.

Now, Lois, you have a book out. It's called Reversed, and I, um, I'm just fascinated to know a little bit more of your backstory. How did you, how did you get into this? It sounds like you were kind of reluctantly, or maybe maybe compelled, maybe that's a better way to put it, to really kind of delve into literacy and helping people with learning disabilities, or is that the right term to use nowadays?

I think that's the right terminology. Yes, you're right. I did not choose this field at all. In fact, I think I was thrown into a flooded river.

Okay.

And it's sink or swim. For me and for my son. My son was 7 years old when I took him on. He had failed first grade and the failure happened from day one. And the teacher, I spoke to her and I said, how's he doing in the first week of school? And she just threw up her hands and said, well, I don't know how I'm going to cope with him this year. He's so far behind. And when a child starts so low, the child is in trouble and the prognosis is dire. And in fact, I sent him to school every day that year. He wet his pants, bit his fingernails, and I didn't know the teacher shouted at him every day and he was isolated in the lunchroom. At the end of the year, he gets tested and the testing reveals he can read 10 words. He's got no strengths and he's got a low IQ.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah. The chances of getting out of that are really low.

Yeah.

So that was the start of the story. And then my husband's a professor. We had the opportunity to homeschool him for 6 months when my husband has study leave in Oxford. And I went with this series of books to help me. They're certainly going to help. Titled Success for All. And I failed, just like the first grade teacher, I failed. So my mother-in-law was with me and she said, Lois, put away what's not working and make learning fun.

There you go.

Okay. Because at that point, you know, I knew it wasn't working, but I didn't know what else to do. And it's like I was stuck in a hole too. And her words, gave me the opportunity to say, rethink, rethink. And that's what I did. And I started to write simple poems. And the poetry was immediately transformative. Because I didn't ask Nicholas to do anything. He had to listen, repeat the poem, find the right— find the rhyming words. And we did everything together. And it changed instantly.

And wait a minute, wait a minute. So you You wrote poems, you wrote them, so you were the author, and then you just used those as like exercise material for Nicholas? Is that what you're saying, or was it more than that?

It was more than exercise material. It was everything. It— because you're— I was writing the poems based around a sound, which gives you a word, and then it gives you a picture. So you've got the repetition of the pole poem, you can pull it out to find the rhyming words, pull the words out to find the rhyming words, and from the rhyming words, you're focusing on the sound. So it was a complete program in a nutshell.

That's pretty amazing. I mean, it's actually— so I take it this was kind of the beginning, kind of maybe the breakthrough, and you went, okay, I think I'm onto something here. I'm seeing progress. What were the next steps?

The next steps came with, again, with poetry. I wrote a poem about Captain Cook, the last of the great explorers.

Why?

Because double O comes up and it's Cook, look and book. So my goal in my mind is to teach my son double O words. Because I'm dealing with the content of Captain James Cook, the last of the great explorers, we found a map published in about 1550. And I looked at the map, and this was the first time we'd done visuals with that poem. And I said to Nicholas, look, Nicholas, there's no Australia. There's a gap in the map. And over time he said to me, who came before Captain Cook? I said, that's easy, Nicholas. That was Christopher Columbus. And he said, and who came before Columbus? Now this question threw me.

Sure. Did you—

do you know who came before Columbus?

I, I don't off the top of my head. I don't even know because Captain Cook did so much in the Pacific. I don't know if I'd even have said Christopher Columbus, but who came before? Magellan?

Magellan came after Columbus. Okay. But the mapping for Columbus was actually drawn in 240 AD. So Columbus's map was over 1,000 years old. And that just put Nicholas and I into this exploration mode. Now here's the interesting part. If I read any book to Nicholas, you know, he's 7, any kid's book on Cook, I lost him. His head would just turn away and it's like there are too many words. And he couldn't take it in. So I would take that book and read it, turn the information into a poem. Ah, now I've got Nicholas back. Now we can work again.

And it was—

I'm now seeing a child who on one level is taking minuscule steps with decoding. He can do it, but it's very slow. His thinking, on the other hand, and his learning was like a 12 or 14-year-old.

Wow.

And I'm going, wow. And the teaching changed everything. And that 6 months, in fact, I only had 4 months for teaching Nicholas, was just transformative in all of my understanding about literacy.

And learning.

And I bet it was.

So, so in your book Reversed, I'm taking— I understand that you've, you're basically distilled and kind of wrote the whole journey. What are some of the details in there, some of the meat that, that a reader would take away? I'm just picturing myself, you know, maybe a dad or a mom who's kind of stuck in a very similar situ— situation with a child with a learning disability and And everyone around them has thrown their hands up in the air, and I know they do that, um, what are they going to gain out of the book to help them in their own journey?

And they will also say, well, I can't write the poems.

Yeah, me either.

And I can't, I can't, I can't. The takeaway is that when we went back to school to Brisbane, Australia, because that was our home at the time, I saw the lady who'd done the testing. And I said, this is what Nicholas has done. She stood there in front of me, put her hands on her hips and said, well, he's the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching.

No encouragement, huh?

And deliberately saying to me, you're wrong. You know, and they set up a power struggle. And when someone says something like that to me, I just I can't say anything. And I walked away and I thought about it, came back to school and said, you can call him whatever you like, but if he is the worst child you've seen in 20 years of teaching, don't expect him to learn like everybody else.

Right.

And that was critical for me to then continue to change the teaching method. So what do I want parents to take away? When you are told Your child can't, can't, can't. Come back and say, well, we know that, but what can we do and what are we going to do to get this child to read? Because we know he can learn, therefore he can learn to read. So what are we going to do about it?

That's amazing. That's great. So inside of the book, when, you know, because I really want people to get, grab a hold of this and be, equipped with that, what are we going to— what are we going to be able to utilize? What are the 5 key aha moments, maybe?

That literacy is far more complex than we— than is portrayed. That's the first. That our children speak the words we're trying to teach them. That has to be a strength. And that's the strength you build on. So when children are given words to learn, use it in their oral language first and write your words down so they're connecting the oral language and the written language. Encourage them to reflect, but you model, you model and get the kids to talk about those words first up. That's number 2. Decoding is critical. Often they make the jumps too big rather than too small.

What do you mean by that? Big to small? What do you mean by that?

Okay, there are things like vowels and then there are things called consonant blends, which are, you know, the PL, the ST, the SL.

Sure.

The 3 of them. They often put all of those letters together with then muddling up the vowel sounds, short vowels and long vowels. We overwhelm our children with too much information. Reduce it to what they can do and can recall. And that to me is a critical component. Don't ask them to do too much. Slow it down so that they can learn it and they come back with these words. Ah, I've got that word. Yes, I do use that word. And Think about the words you're using because the problem with these, you know, consonant blend words, often they are unusual. You know, and the difference between play and pray. The next thing you've got to ask is, do we use this word regularly in our oral language? And that will be dependent on the child and their background. I think of words like tug and mug. You know, now have you used— because, you know, that vowel, consonant, vowel. Oh, everyone could do that. Well, they can't. When was the last time you used the word tug?

Yeah, not— I can't— I used the word mug more recently than I have tug that I could think of.

Yes. And it's, you know, we forget that words are culturally based.

Yeah.

Where you are culturally. We use the word tug here because I'm overlooking the Hudson River and tugboats go up and down the river.

Right. And I use the word mug because I live in agriculture, in agriculture community. And often we talk about mugging the animal, basically restraining the animal, whatever it is, a cow or sheep or whatever.

Now, that's a new meaning for me. I would not have got that. And there's the third point that we're coming up with, is that words have multiple meanings.

Mmm.

And we tend to teach one word, one meaning. And there's a little video clip I've got on my YouTube channel of my son talking about the word saw. And he said, you know, I thought English would have been logical. Logic is Every word has one meaning, because why would you have multiple meanings for multiple— for one word? That's crazy.

Right.

And so when we teach kids that words only have one meaning, we do them a disservice. We've got to show them how the written language works. And that's huge. And it's words with multiple meaning. It's words with pronouns. It works with to and too. And teaching that saw has 3 meanings.

Sure.

You know, and that there is a thing called present tense, past tense, and future tense. And again, always connecting that oral language to the written language. And when you're teaching, number 4, actions are more memorable than just speech. So if you can do something as you're talking about it, like doing past tense words -ed, I closed the door. And you do it. I am closing the door. I closed the door. I am walking through the door. I walked. So you're talking and doing an action and the child goes, ah, now I remember. And so the final one is multisensory teaching, is that you're teaching across multiple modes, not just pen and paper sitting in front of you.

Different kinds of modes like?

Like action. Acting it out, not just sitting at the table writing out the words, talking about it, acting it out, finding multiple ways of learning the same thing, doing the same thing in different ways. Spelling, yep.

This feels very much like, you know, I know a lot of people who do translations And well, a fair amount of people that do translations, and I also have a dear friend who has worked with the deaf in the Caribbean for years, and it really feels very much like you're teaching another language. Is that what— it's not really another language, but it is a— it's another type of language. Is that about right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, definitely. And that's the gap between the spoken language, oral language, and written language. Spoken language is informal. I'm talking to you, I get clues from you through all that you're doing. You know, your tone of voice, what your hands are doing.

That's right.

Your body language, all of— and it's informal. It's acceptable for me to stop and think and say, ah, and then to change my mind in the middle, and you still follow my conversation.

That's right.

Written language is formal. It's highly edited. It's refined. It's a wider use of language. And you've got no clues other than the words on the page.

That's right.

And that— you're right, there's a total gap there. And then you've got the other component, that the child, children who struggle stay in picture mode much longer than children who've got excellent language skills. So everything has to go through a train, like you're right, a translation process from what did they say to one part of the brain that's got pictures. Now it's in pictures. Now it's gotta go back to the language component, find the right words in the brain, put them in the right order now to actually physically speak them. It's a process in a child like Nicholas that you can physically see.

Yeah, yeah. When I talk about translators, I, uh, the ones that I'm— I know are really taking, um, tribal languages and archaic languages and, and helping them, um, get it into a written word or written form. And then, and then translate other literature, whether it's in English or, I don't know, Latin or whatever, and bring it back into their language. And it's fascinating to listen and to how they do it. And they use a lot of auditory learning processes to get to help the people and demonstration, like you say, demonstration and different— they have different mediums to a certain extent. But yeah, it's fascinating what you're saying. You really are talking about teaching. teaching a child not just their auditory language, but a whole other kind of language that doesn't come easy for them.

That's right.

Yeah, that's really fascinating. You know, I always like to ask authors at this point, you know, what, what did you discover about yourself or learn when you were writing a book? Or, you know, tell me a little bit that's not in your book Reverse that that is, uh, was key for you?

Ah, well, you know, I'm dyslexic. And the problem with that is really the lack of practice you have leading up to writing a book. So that was a problem for me. And I, I knew I had a phenomenal story, right, that my son had lived, or we had lived. And so the first time I wrote it, the first 6 months, I just wrote and it was terrible. No one would have read it.

Right.

And I needed a young editor to sit with me and show me how to write and edit my work and have me practice with her support.

Right.

Positive reinforcement's critical in writing because it's very easy to shut down people who struggle.

Yeah, it is.

And say, well, it's just not good enough. You're right, it's not good enough. I know that. But what are you going to do to help me? And if you praise, the praise that you receive— Lois, this is a brilliant ending. This is fantastic. It encourages you to try again.

Yes.

And that's a takeaway for parents working with children. Praise everything they do that is right. Because we put ourselves down so quickly and we know we can't do it and we need the support from everyone else to say you're okay. I mean, it moves me to tears now because we shut people down so quickly.

Yes. Yeah, we need to listen a lot more and understand what people are going through before we, we make a fast judgment and shut them down. I, I really relate to that. I know that in the pre-interview you and I shared, I shared with you that I was dyslexic as a child, and back in the '60s, and, and I had a real struggle reading and kind of getting, getting caught up and stay up with the class. And my 4th grade teacher, she asked me to stand up and read in front of the class, and I struggled with it. And she, she looked at me and said, sit down, you can't read. And that— it's funny how in 4th grade, here I am 61 years old now, And that, that old tape wants to tempt me over and over again to say, I can't do this. Even though I'm a, a 4-time bestselling author, um, and I speak all over the world, I still get that from time to time, right when I'm about to read in front of— especially in front of people. And, and, uh, I don't, you know, I like to give her grace and think, well, she just didn't understand in those days what was going on with children, or that this was an issue or whatnot. But, but still, those things become very lasting, you know, old tapes.

Language is insidious, flies into our brain, and it sticks there in unusual, unpredictable ways.

Yeah, that's a good, that's a good way to look at it. So your book Reversed It's out now. What are your— what— tell us a little bit about what you're doing and how we can help you get the word out about what you're doing in these, in these times.

My story hasn't finished. And my learning hasn't finished because after I talked to my son when he was 30, I realized then that he was actually traumatized from his experience in grade 1. Which I had never acknowledged. So from there, I've done a podcast series, When Learning Is Trauma, where we speak to people like you and others who are far more damaged through the schooling process. And we speak to experts to say, this is what you've got to do to reduce the trauma or help people deal with trauma. So that's ongoing. The second is I've written a reading program. for teaching students with dyslexia to encourage the love of learning and teaching children to read.

Excellent.

From all of my experiences. And I'm working on a couple of more books. One is When Learning Is Trauma, and the other one talks of my latest student who was 16 years old when he came to me and could not read a sentence. The title of that at the moment is Failed. Because the school system failed him. The public school system, the private school system, and tutors all failed him.

Yeah, and I don't want our listeners to step away because I know you. I don't want our listeners to step away thinking you're condemning all of learning or the education system. What I believe you're saying, and maybe you can help me out here, is that there's just a lack of understanding of what children with learning disabilities are going through. Is that, is that a good way to put it?

Absolutely.

There's a lot of brave teachers out there doing lots of great things, and, and yet it's awful hard to take on, uh, to understand what everyone's going through.

Yeah.

So I thank you. I think I'm just so thankful that you have taken the time to slow it down and taken your story and reversed and just really helped will help all the readers, um, to, to understand, um, what these children are going through and how you can help them overcome it. Lois, I appreciate you being here today so, so very much. I hope the listeners hear just how— what an outstanding woman you are and, and, uh, how you're making a difference in the world. You can get Lois's book by clicking on the link right below Maybe it's up above. I, I'm not really sure, but it's on this page somewhere. So make sure you click on that link and pick up a copy of her book. And, um, until next time, the Compendium Podcast will have another great author that's changing the world in some little way, in some big ways sometimes. Till that, uh, our next podcast, may God bless each and every one of you.

Amen.

Thank you for joining us for today's broadcast. I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And be sure to visit us online at leadershipbooks.store. There you'll find the works of some of the finest thought leaders today. And be sure to tune in here each week to gain even deeper insights from one of those leaders on the Compendium Podcast.