Students with dyslexia & ADHD in independent and public schools

Annie Murphy Paul's website where she publishes the Brilliant Report, a monthly newsletter that for me is a "must read"  is in a word -BRILIANT! In this transcript of a lecture she gave to college admissions counselors, she talks about 8 perspectives on what makes us "smart:" situations, beliefs, expertise, attention, emotions, technology, our bodies and finally, relationships. Move over Howard Gardner! --Lou

Excerpt:

".....Before I jump into my eight ways, a few words about that term I just used, 'the science of learning.' The science of learning is a relatively new discipline born of an agglomeration of fields: cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience. Its project is to apply the methods of science to human endeavors—teaching  and learning—that have for centuries been mostly treated as an art.
 
Although I am, very much, an advocate of the science of learning, I want to emphasize that—as with anything to do with our idiosyncratic and unpredictable species—there is still a lot of art involved in teaching and learning, and for that matter, in what you do as college admissions counselors. But I do think that the science of learning can offer some surprising and useful perspectives on how we guide and educate young people...."

Excerpt:

".....The symposium will begin on Sunday evening with a dinner honoring entertainer and social activist Harry Belafonte and notable British space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, both dyslexic, along with dyslexic celebrities, lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors and other professionals. "I look forward to being at Yale for this wonderful event. I have been an advocate for more research when it comes to Dyslexia and children since I have been a Member of Congress," said Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Yale 72'. "It is an honor to be in the presence of Mr. Belafonte and to be present with him discussing this important topic. Children with learning disabilities are as intelligent as the rest of the population. Their learning disability, however, creates a gap between ability and performance. Children with learning disabilities go to school with the same motivations as other children: to explore interests, broaden knowledge and understanding, satisfy curiosity, and prepare to contribute to the working world and to society. I am committed to insuring that all of my colleagues in Washington, DC are aware and engaged with the essential and important effort to broaden our awareness and advocacy...."

More on the implications of the Geaorgetown University Medical Canter's recent research.--Lou

Excerpt:

"...The researchers pointed out that these findings could have important implications for treatment. "Early identification and treatment of dyslexia should not revolve around these deficits in visual processing," said Olumide Olulade, Ph.D., the study's lead author and post-doctoral fellow at GUMC. "While our study showed that there is a strong correlation between people's reading ability and brain activity in the visual system, it does not mean that training the visual system will result in better reading. We think it is the other way around. Reading is a culturally imposed skill, and neuroscience research has shown that its acquisition results in a range of anatomical and functional changes in the brain."

While weakness of the brain's visual cortex is a hallmark of dyslexia, it is not the cause of the reading problems most dyslexics face. Secondly, the weaknesses in the visual cortex do not represent a symptom of dyslexia. They are not, as previous research assumed, an integral part of the way dyslexia alters people's ability to learn. Rather, it is a consequence of reading experience, or the lack of reading, itself...."

Read more at http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/16276/20130606/dyslexia-visual-processing-visual-cortex-reading-ability-reading-intervention.htm#P1UBcDXRDvdcVYC0.99

The consequences of over selling preliminary research data is that proven practice gets over looked. Brook's assertion that the brain is not the mind is important. Let's all shake some salt over images of  brain scans--and not allow colleagues to promote them to brain-scams.--Lou

Excerpt:

"..What Satel and Lilienfeld call “neurocentrism” is an effort to take the indeterminacy of life and reduce it to measurable, scientific categories.

Right now we are compelled to rely on different disciplines to try to understand behavior on multiple levels, with inherent tensions between them. Some people want to reduce that ambiguity by making one discipline all-explaining. They want to eliminate the confusing ambiguity of human freedom by reducing everything to material determinism.

But that is the form of intellectual utopianism that always leads to error. An important task these days is to harvest the exciting gains made by science and data while understanding the limits of science and data. .."

I was in a conversation today talking about the fact that the terms 'success' and 'failure' are impostors ( imposed by those outside ourselves) that confuse, distract and deflect us from finding our own paths and directions. How we define 'smart' for example in school is often confined to performance on linear linguistic tasks that place a high load on coding, language processing and memory skills. Later in life beyond school when we are not confined and restrained by our own and others judgements regarding what skills are important,  we can expand and grow using other skills and other tools not valued in school, but highly prized in the marketplace.--Lou

Excerpt:

"YOUR WEAKNESSES MIGHT BE LINKED TO YOUR STRENGTHS

In Ungifted, Kaufman discusses the “neurodiversity” movement--the notion that some labels, like autism and dyslexia, which are perceived as disabilities, might actually be an advantage in some ways. 

INSPIRE YOURSELF.

Inspired people are more open to new experiences and more driven, Kaufman asserts, but “inspiration is also important for making progress towards goals.” Most people aren’t going to wake up on a rainy Monday feeling like the most inspired soul on the planet, but Kaufman mentions a way to get yourself into an “inspired state of being," which can contribute greatly to your success: Call up an inspiring memory, role model, or story. For me, it would be rereading my favorite sports nonfiction, but yours might be remembering the actions of your mother or your mentor, or someone else dear to your heart.

ENCOURAGE AUTONOMY IN YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

Kaufman looked at studies that found that students learned better when they were “made to feel as if they had choice over their actions (for instance, using phrases such as ‘you can’ and ‘if you choose’ in the instructions) rather than being made to feel as though they were being controlled (using phrases such as ‘you must’ and ‘you have to’ in the instructions.” 

STOP THE NEGATIVE SELF-TALK.

When children are told they have the ability to do well on a task, they perform better than children who are told their ability is mediocre. Most of us struggle with our inner negative Nancy, telling us there are aspects of our jobs and our lives we’re just not that great at (my Achilles heel is my sense of direction). But when you hear the message--not just from others but also from yourself--that you aren’t good at something, Kaufman notes, you can slip into a “helpless-oriented mode of thought.”

Excerpt:"Our results do not discount the presence of this specific type of visual deficit," says senior author Guinevere Eden, PhD, director for the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and past-president of the International Dyslexia Association. "In fact our results confirm that differences do exist in the visual system of children with dyslexia, but these differences are the end-product of less reading, when compared with typical readers, and are not the cause of their struggles with reading."

The current study follows a report published by Eden and colleagues in the journal Nature in 1996, the first study of dyslexia to employ functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). As in that study, the new study also shows less activity in a portion of the visual system that processes moving visual information in the dyslexics compared with typical readers of the same age.

This time, however, the research team also studied younger children without dyslexia, matched to the dyslexics on their reading level. "This group looked similar to the dyslexics in terms of brain activity, providing the first clue that the observed difference in the dyslexics relative to their peers may have more to do with reading ability than dyslexia per se," Eden explains.