ROCKET-MOTIVATION-Rod-Cate-EP30-Lois-Letchford-Reversed-Memior-Dyslexia-Podcast-FIN

His persistence and his discipline are way beyond normal, but he had to be persistent and disciplined even when he was 7 and learning with me. And we're learning together. I'm not the teacher with all the knowledge filling him up. It's an exploration. What was critical for me in this component of Nicholas was that learning became so much fun and teaching became so much fun. I think part of his success is related to his failure. He's failed so poorly, it's made him achieve at higher levels.

Hey everyone, this is Rod Cate, and welcome to this week's episode of Rocket Motivation. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Gat Creek, a wood furniture manufacturer making beautiful wood furniture, all handmade in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Visit gatcreek.com. This week's guest has struggled with dyslexia her entire life, but this episode is going to focus on this week's guest's son Nicholas's dyslexia and how this week's guest developed a method to teach her son how to read. She has used this method in teaching hundreds of other children with dyslexia. When Nicholas was age 7, this week's guest was told by his teacher that he's the worst child she had seen in 20 years. This week's guest would not accept that. She learned how to teach her dyslexic son to read, who then not only graduated from college with 2 degrees in mathematics, but obtained his PhD from Oxford University. This week's guest tells the story of Nicholas in her book, Reversed: A Memoir. Lois Letchford, welcome to Rocket Motivation.

Rod, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me on your show.

We're, we're so happy to have you on. Lois, kind of tell us where you are now in your life, your family, your career, where you are location-wise. Just kind of catch us up.

I am now in upstate New York. My husband is a professor. So that has actually allowed us to travel the world as he teaches. And he's moved from job to job for various reasons. And he now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. That's where we are now. And my sons are spread around the world. I have 3 sons. The eldest is now in California. Nicholas is still in Oxford and our youngest is with us here.

Okay. Take us back now. You know, we'll focus on your son Nicholas and, you know, talk about, you know, the early struggles he had with reading, how you first saw it, how it all happened, and then how you started taking control of the situation.

Nicholas started school in 1994 and he failed. He wet his pants, he bit his fingernails, and in school he just stared into space. Basically was frozen. And then we didn't know that the teacher shouted at him. I knew as a mother he had problems and he struggled. And he struggled with oral directions. And that was really difficult. And he would just phase out. And you wonder what's going on. But he was with a speech therapist and we're helping him as much as we can. And then when a child goes through school and they don't do very well, the first thing we have to do is get them tested for special education. Which we did, and the testing showed that he could read 10 words, he had no strength, and he has a low IQ. And that testing is disastrous for the future because it's— it puts an expectation on the child. They can do it or they can't do it. Is it worth the effort on our part, the school's part, or are we just going to give him whatever? In fact, he had a reading specialist 4 days a week, one-on-one. So that was really good. He was so severe. But it also takes a different mindset to teach a child as slow as Nicholas and as low as Nicholas. And in 1995, my husband had study leave in Oxford, UK, and our family went with him. And I thought, I'm going to take Nicholas on myself. So I did. And I go prepared with a series of books called Success for All. And again, I failed. I'm no better than his classroom teacher.

And why do you think that was? Why did you fail initially?

The books were dealing with decoding only. They had 3 and 4 letter sound words and the words had no support. It was literally decoding a word. The child had to get the letter, the sound and the word with no support, no pictures, no context, no nothing and he couldn't do it. Nicholas wasn't ready to do decoding at that stage. That's why he failed. And then when books like that propose success for all, they are used to dealing with children who are more equipped and who have less struggles than Nicholas.

All right, so then what did you do? All right, so you initially try to help Nicholas, you fail, now what?

Panic. Panic is the word. And my mother-in-law was with me and she said, Lois, make learning fun. So I've got that in the back of my mind, and then I thought, what can he do? I knew he could rhyme words, and I knew he could see patterns. And with that, I had the opportunity to think, hmm, I can write simple poems for him, and I wonder if that will work. So the first one I wrote was simply using the words bug and mug. What a mug of a bug he is to lug his rug along the kitchen floor. And I then read it to him, taking away anything. So he just listened. He did it. He could remember it. We could find the rhyming words. We did the illustrations together. We had fun. And then I wrote one poem and another and another. And our little classroom just transformed through the writing of poetry. And he's starting to learn to decode the words. Then I was given a series of books called Success for All to Teach— not Success for All— Hear It, See It, Say It, Do It. to help him with decoding. And that was transformative because we could touch the words, the letters and sound. I made word puzzles. It was much more inclusive. And that was fantastic. So he's succeeding on 2 levels. Then comes the words, the sounds double O, as in look, book, and cook. And I thought, ah, I'll write about Captain Cook. Captain Cook, the last of the great explorers. He's not well known in the United States. But in the world of mapping, it's huge. And he completed the mapping of Australia. And while we're doing this, and I wrote the poem, and we're saying it again and again and again, and Nicholas is remembering it, which is huge. We came across a world map of 1550. And I looked at the map and said, look, Nicholas, there's a gap in the map. There's no Australia. That's the first time I recognised every time we did some writing, he needed a picture. Because he's really still thinking in pictures. And when we saw that map, we thought, oh, what knowledge did Cook have when he left England? And Nicholas starts asking questions, and he said, who came before Captain Cook? And I said, ah, that's easy, that was Christopher Columbus. And then he said, and who came before Columbus? And I'm floored because I hadn't thought about that. And he's asking questions That I don't have answers for. The questions showed me he didn't have a low IQ. We're experiencing maps around the city of Oxford. We go to London, you see more maps. So we've got an experience, we've got an emotion of absolute excitement about finding maps that Cook drew, or, and who came before that, and the search that went on and on. And that, it was transformative. The curiosity that we tapped into to Nicholas was just astounding.

So you're getting the basics down on just words. You start with the rhyming. And then when he starts really interacting because he's— of his curiosity, then you know you got something there.

Yes. And we're learning together. I'm not the teacher with all the knowledge filling him up. It's, it's an exploration. And what was important was if I read a book to Nicholas, I lost him. He would turn away, his head would go down, and his eyes are on the floor. And you just— and I would think, Lois, stop it, stop it, stop it. And I would have to go away, read that passage, and turn it into a poem. That took a lot of work. And then I come back the next day and say, Nicholas, now I've got this poem for you. Then we can start discussing the learning. Because it was in doses. The poetry was in doses that he could take. A piece of— a page of text. It was too hard for him to comprehend. What was critical for me in this component of Nicholas was that learning became so much fun and teaching became so much fun, and that was a part that often reading teachers don't see or do, and that's what really drove me. So when anything went wrong, I thought, well, how will I teach this? Oh, think about it for quite a while, This is what I have to do. And then he's reading effectively. And it was only after we were reading effectively, we ended up in Lubbock, Texas from 1999 to 2007, from grade 4 to grade 12 for Nicholas.

Right. And so as he's going, progressing through those years and especially through high school, so he is reading, but does he have to work harder than the average student at reading?

Yes. And he's slower at reading. And guess what? He's still slower at reading today, but he can read everything. He can read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I haven't read that. I can't read it. He can read any of his colleagues' PhD theses and correct it. So he can do things that I can't do.

But he has to work at it.

Yes. Takes him longer.

Right. I think it's a great lesson here. Somebody who, I mean, as smart as he is, and we'll get into that with all of his degrees, But he knows he has to work harder on the reading aspect of it. I mean, I think there's a translation there as to people that if you know you got something you got to work hard at, you know, to be successful, you got to do it.

You've got to do it. Persistence. His persistence and his discipline are way beyond normal, way beyond normal. But he had to be persistent and disciplined even when he was 7 and learning with me. He knew he had to do it. And you're right, it did transpire. I mean, and someone I've spoken to said, I think part of his success is related to his failure. You know, he's failed so poorly, it's made him achieve at higher levels.

Right. I mean, you hear that all the time is the people that never fail at anything, you know, you don't learn, you don't learn from anything. And so it's almost like you got to be very fortunate just to be successful the first time. It sounds like Nicholas, I mean, he's had plenty of opportunity for failure early on, and he has taken that and has really made something of himself.

Yes. Yes.

So tell us about this. So when you— but when you guys get to Lubbock and he's— Nicholas starts in high school, you start teaching other students with dyslexia.

I did.

Okay. How'd that come about?

Well, when I was in Australia, I did get my certification for teaching literacy. I was a physical education teacher and I was able to transfer it to literacy. So I go to Lubbock as a 4-year trained teacher with a specialist in literacy, and one of the first people I meet was a mother whose 13-year-old son had spent 4 years in a phonics-only reading program and came out non-reading, unable to read a book or a sentence accurately and with meaning. And that was devastating for her. And, you know, I knew what it was like to have Nicholas stressed. I mean, not reading at 7, but to have a child at 13 not reading, the stress levels just rise. And I said, I think I know what to do. I taught him over the summer. The school district paid me. At the end of the summer, the mother writes to the school district and says, you employ this woman or I sue you. I got employed.

And so how many kids then were you starting to work with who had dyslexia?

I only taught children who were failing. I taught one-on-one. I went from school to school to school to teach the kids. So I taught over the 7 years we were there, I taught over 100 students. And what was critical was I was teaching them one-on-one, 3 or 5 days a week, depending on the circumstances, and 30 to 45 or 30 minutes to an hour every single day. So I'm teaching under ideal circumstances.

And so what was your success rate? Did all of your students, were they able to learn to read?

Yes.

All right. And so here's the, here's the question then.

Why?

Why were you so successful in teaching all these dyslexic children how to read?

That's a good question. First up, I made everything student-centered. That was critical. Students, once they've been stuck in the classrooms and failed, they get stuck in reading programs. And reading programs are designed to programs for older children are only minimally successful because you're making guesses about what they have achieved and what they haven't achieved. And because my teaching started with Nicholas, Nicholas's acceptable label is 2nd percentile speech language impaired. If you know mathematics, that's 2 out of 100. To teach him, I had to get everything right. So when I take on other students, I'm like reteaching Nicholas. What do they have to do? What do they know? What don't they know? What do I as a teacher have to do? What do I have to change? Ah, they didn't get this right, they couldn't do that, I have to come in and think what else do I have to do to teach them. And you know there's big discussions about phonics and this and that and the other, I don't get into those discussions at all because when you teach children who have failed you've got to get everything right, it's not enough to say just teach them to decode. What else goes wrong? What else do I have to do to teach that child to read?

Well, and so throughout your time doing this, I mean, have you developed a teaching program that you use for, you know, your students with dyslexia?

I hadn't developed one until very recently, and I had to meet with another person, Russell Van Brocklin, and together— he did writing, I do a lot more reading— and together we've developed a program that now covers everything. And it covers not only decoding, but it covers the language components that children fail to understand. So I'm thrilled to have done that because I didn't think I would have been able to do that, but I can.

And how long has that been in the works? How long has it been since it's been out there?

Oh, we're really only launching it now. It's taken a long time to get right and to put it into a place that's acceptable for others to read and make it— we're making it so that We don't have to teach them, but a parent or a tutor can teach them. Oh, it's taken a long time for me to write and get it okay.

Okay. But I guess in that program, though, you're taking what you've learned through your experiences. That's the program.

That's the program. And, you know, this is the whole deal, isn't it? Because I grew up reading words and not comprehending and growing up dyslexic. The lack of practice that you get in school limits a whole lot of things. So you can read and not comprehend. You don't like reading. My writing was impacted. And then you get less practice at reading and less practice at writing. However, because I've specialised in teaching kids like my son Nicholas, I've ended up with this huge amount of knowledge. And it's now in the program. And there are things in my program that you won't find anywhere else. And I can say this because For me to write academically, I needed to connect with a professor who trusted me and thought I was okay. And I connected with Professor Tim Rasinski from Kent State University. And we've written a paper, an academic paper that is in publication now in The Reading Teacher that has been called a seminal paper in text cohesion that has not been touched on for 35 years.

Tell the listeners, what is The Reading Teacher?

The Reading Teacher is a teacher magazine put out by the International Literacy Association for teachers, and it takes the academic research or research and puts it into language that teachers can follow. And it's often not huge studies like in the academic papers like the Journal of Learning Disabilities or the Journal of Reading Research. That's really high-level studies that, you know, you really have to sit down and academic language. The Reading Teacher is a much more accessible journal magazine. So it's easy for teachers to read. So it's coming out in that.

And I'll just go ahead and say it for you because you probably wouldn't. I mean, so a seminal paper that deals with dyslexia that comes out in The Reading Teacher, that's kind of a big deal, isn't it?

It is a big deal. It's a huge deal for me. For someone who's dyslexic, who struggles with writing, you know, you name the list, and to come out with the paper that people say, This is fantastic. Moves me to tears. It's even one better than my book.

So Nicholas, we know he graduates from the university in Australia with 2 math degrees, and then he gets his PhD in mathematics from Oxford University. Pretty good for someone who struggled so much, correct?

Oh, incredible. Incredible.

But then you wrote a book about Nicholas and your journey called Reversed. A memoir. Tell us about that.

I followed my husband around the world, and I've been teaching in Texas and in Australia, and then we returned to upstate New York, and I can't teach. So what do I do? I do my master's degree in literacy here. That gets me in. Now what do I do? They don't like my qualifications up here, and they said, go back and do your teaching from the beginning. I'm late 50s. Sorry, I'm not doing that. So I thought, what would I like to do? I'd like to tell Nicholas's story because the expectations from Nicholas in first grade were so low. And so I sat down and wrote it. And it was unreadable because I'm not skilled at writing at the time. And I meet a young lady at a writing class who says, I'll help you, I'll coach you through it. And she turned the book around. She helped me write it in a way that was readable. That's accessible, that every person is a character. And, and the other component was no one expected anything of Nicholas. And here he was when I first started writing it, he's starting his PhD from Oxford. So his story, in my view, is just getting better and better and better.

What advice would you give to parents who have a dyslexic child? What do they need to do?

You've got to believe in the child first. Believe that they can learn. That's number one. 2 is advocate for them at schools. Now schools will offer A, B, C, D, and E. You have to go with that and that if it works you say, whew, they're doing it, they're doing really well in school and you will see it across the board. You'll see it in their schoolwork, you'll see it in their ability to read at home and that's the important part. Learning is measurable, it's also observable. So you should be able to see the changes at home. And if you're not, then you have to go back to school and say, this is not working. And that's where you have to keep advocating and keep searching for answers until your child does read effectively. There are very few children in this world that cannot learn to read and write effectively. And when they don't learn, we have to look at where the fault falls, and it falls within the teaching. And it's not a standardised reading program. It will be, can this person teach my child to read? And a lot of people get outside tutoring. If you can afford it, that's great. It's better if it comes from within the classroom and within the school. I struggle with so many things because if I'd sent Nicholas to school and then said, now after school we're going to do tutoring, Nicholas wouldn't have done it. He would have sat there, he would have put his head down and looked away because he was tired. He was physically exhausted from going to school and concentrating, and then to do another hour after school, he would have just not done it. And then I would— might have been upset with him. There are so many things that we as parents have to do and have to learn about dyslexia and learning disabilities. And the first is the child is trying really hard. Let's not blame them. Let's give them a safe place at home to accept them and let's put it back onto the schools to say, what else do we have to do? And it's a matter of working with the school and coordinating with them. You know, you don't want to get their backs up because schools get— fight and you don't want to get into a fight. No one gains. So we've got to work with them to say, what else do we have to do to teach this child to read?

Gotcha.

And I would say, buy my book, give it to the teachers because you have to turn the teaching upside down. We can change it in many more ways than people realize.

Right. And then what I'd like to do is let's broaden this question because, you know, the podcast Rocket Motivation, it's all about overcoming adversity. But based on what you've been through and based on what you've seen that Nicholas has been through, What advice do you give to the listeners just on, you know, dealing with and overcoming just adversity in general in your life?

They've got to stick with it. You stick with something when it's enjoyable than when it's a pain. So my mother-in-law's philosophy of making learning fun is far more scientific than we realize. And it was the fun, the enjoyment of learning that went alongside teaching decoding that was transformative. So that would be the first thing, make learning an enjoyable experience. And when you're doing that, you're also changing the brain. If you want some research on that, look at Dr. Mary Helen Immortanu Yang from, I think, California Institute on Emotions and Learning.

How would you broaden that out, you know, just to life in general? I mean, it sounds like to me that if you got to make learning fun to make it to where it's going to be successful. You kind of need to make life fun to be successful.

You're absolutely right. I think, you know, when we're in our 30s and 40s, you don't realize that, you know, life has got an end date and it actually comes up far more quickly than we realize. So just make the most of every day. And when children are there, just to enjoy them because they're actually very small for a very short period of time. And you end up with memories. So what sort of memories do we want to end up with? And how are we going to enhance our family life so that we can engage our children and have them, as we get older, want to talk to us? And that starts when our children are young. So every day, just enjoy your children. And today I was talking to Hilary Jacobs Hendel about learning and emotions. And her book and her work, It's Not Always Depression, is fantastic for helping people— parents connect with children and just to create families and homes that are far more supportive of children.

You know, and based on everything you've been through and, you know, with your family, and I mean, you know, just kind of stepping back from it, do you have a philosophy on life? What is your philosophy on life?

Make the most of every moment you've got. You know, my parents are 98 and 96 nearly. And it's surprising. And I talk to my mother just to hear her voice. I can't have a conversation anymore. But just to enjoy what we've got and value the people around you. You know, I look back on how I treated my children, how I wish I'd had done some things far more differently. And I wish I had more knowledge about how to treat them and talk to them. Rather than pushing them aside and thinking, I've got to do these other things that are far more important. But just to give the children time, to give them time and, and take that time with them when they're young.

Now, if someone wants to get in touch with you to learn about your course or how you teach, you know, children with dyslexia, how can they do it?

I've got a website. It's loislatchford.com. On my website, there's lots of little tabs coming up now. There's one called Resources. And I have a lot of the resources. I do a lot of hands-on resources, and a lot of things that you can download for free. And I created them myself, download them and use them with your children. So that's available.

Now, if somebody wants to buy your book, Reversed: A Memoir, how can they do it?

It's available on Amazon. It's an audio version that's available on my website and on Amazon. So get either, but also read it, write a review, please. I really appreciate reviews. And I say thank you very, very much. If you've got a child who's struggling, download my material and ask— come and ask me for some help. Ask for advice.

This is what I do with all my guests. I give them the parting shot. I may not have asked you something that's important, There may be something on your mind that you want to say, just, you know, in general. So, so now's the time. This is— the floor is yours. Give us some, some great wisdom to leave the show with.

When children struggle with learning to read, it's up to us to help them. It's not to blame the child. It's up to us. And we've got to get rid of the punishments and engage them in learning and put them at the center of learning. And so you have to go back to school and say, What else do we have to do to teach this child to read? As opposed to the child can't learn or what are they doing wrong? They've got behaviour issues, start looking at what's going on behind it. Believe in the child, believe they're capable of doing anything. And Nicholas was given dreadful labels, so instead of seeing a child who's been called learning disabled, let's see that child as a future rocket scientist. And it will change the way we teach them.

Well, Lois, I can't tell you how glad I am that we connected and you came on the show. It's just, it's been a, it's been a pleasure. I mean, not only has it been, been fun to listen to your story, but very informative too. And I'm hoping that, you know, that we can get this episode out to as many parents who are, you know, dealing with children who are dyslexic, because I think this will help them a lot. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you, Rod, and I look forward to reading your book. Okay.

All right. Well, Lois, thanks so much, and we'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.

Lois Letchford's story is amazing. She got in there when her son was struggling with reading. She rolled up her sleeves and she figured out how she was gonna help her son. In doing so, she developed a method of teaching other dyslexic students to read. It's just a great story. Next week's guest is Sherika Davis-Hunt. She's going to tell her story of growing up in Mobile, Alabama, moving away and experiencing what life has to offer, and then moving back to Mobile to make a difference in her community. It's going to be a great show. See you next week. Rocket Motivation partners with Gat Creek, one of America's premier wood furniture makers. Clean, timeless designs define the Gat Creek Their made-to-order furniture effortlessly connects with a range of styles from modern to traditional. Check out their full range of products at gatcreek.com. If you're interested in getting my book, Get Back Up, just go to Amazon and put in Get Back Up and my name, Rod Caden. It'll pop right up. I would love it if you would subscribe to the podcast and rate and review the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. I would really appreciate it if you'd share it with a friend. I would like as many people to hear my message as possible. Never give up and always get back up. And we'll see you next week.