Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We are so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone, and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to get help for our children and how to grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 19 of Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're really excited that you're listening.
We're going to start out, as we always do, with the concept of the week. So concept of the week is our opportunity to let all of our listeners into an intervention session and introduce topics that we would be teaching to our students. So this week's concept of the week is morphology.
Morphology is the study of morphemes in words. So as a reminder, a morpheme is a single unit of meaning in a word, and then morphology is the study of these word parts. So we teach morphemes and morphology to build vocabulary and increase comprehension. Part of that, too, is talking about, where do these word parts come from? So some of our word parts come from the Latin layer of language, some from Greek, some from French, and a lot of them from the Anglo Saxons.
So that's a whole big topic that we teach about. And I love it. It's my. It's my favorite thing to teach.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: It's one of the favorite things our students like to learn, too.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's so fun. I love when the light bulb goes off for a kid and they're like, wow, that's why that word means okay. I love it.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yes. And they love it, too.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fun.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: So our topic today is what all kids should know, what students need and skills to succeed in college, work, and the world.
Students with dyslexia need to have more time practicing these skills. So we thought for this episode it'd be fun to have a discussion.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Yes. So some background knowledge about the two of us. Nicole is a former college professor, and I am a former high school special education teacher. So it was really my job. Right. To send kids off to college. A lot of what we're going to talk about today is college related. We know that's not everybody's path. And that's okay. I think you still get a lot out of this conversation, even if you don't feel that you're launching a college student anytime soon.
It goes faster than we think students.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Should master before they even get to college.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. We're going to talk about when to start laying a lot of this groundwork today. So we're kind of wearing our former professional hats today. So Nicole's kind of putting on her college professor hat, I'm putting on my high school teacher hat, and we're going to talk about. Okay, what do I do before I send them off to you, Nicole?
So my first question to you. So as a college professor, what were some of the important skills that you really needed your students to have mastered before coming to college? So what is kind of your top?
This. Your students need to have this mastered before they come to you.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: I mean, I really think how to advocate for themselves is one of the top things they should know how to do.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: So, big word. What do you mean by advocate? So if I am down there in the dirt with these kids, what do I gotta get there with?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: So, I mean, even the basic things of how to ask a professor for help or letting a professor know at the beginning of a semester about accommodations instead of middle. And, you know, those type of things because, you know, when you get to college, it's on the student to come to the professor. And if they don't know how to do that, it doesn't really work out so well for anybody.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: So you're not chasing them down the hallway?
[00:04:57] Speaker B: No.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Letting them know that they have a missing assignment.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Okay. This will blow the minds of many people listening. I'm just letting you know. So as a former high school teacher. Right. I'm listening to Nicole's answer, and I'm going, oh, oh, boy. I've got some work to do. And I need to start laying that groundwork really early, as early as possible.
In order to advocate for themselves, a student first has to know about their own needs. I can't tell you how many students I've taught over the years that may be able to say I have ADHD or I have dyslexia, but that's it. They don't. They're not really able to articulate past a diagnosis, which good on them for at least being able to articulate that piece. But they're not really able to articulate what are the specific things specific to them that they're going to be struggling with.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: So because both those diagnoses wide range of things that can be impacted. And not everybody has the same. Same things impacted. So if they don't know what they don't know, it's very hard for somebody to help them.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. You know, was kind of mind blowing to me. These kids who have been sitting in their own IEPs maybe for the last couple of years still are not really aware of what accommodations are even available to them, even at the high school level.
So clearly explaining that to them was a big part of my job and remains a big part of my job even in my current role.
Right. For a student who struggles with this, we really have to start very small. A lot of my students at the high school level were really and truly afraid to approach teachers. They really did not either know how or were not forced to do it.
You know, this is where I would have to have some very.
I'm going to use the word tense, maybe conversations with some parents who I would say, listen, I need you to not rescue them out of every single thing because we have to let them try.
This is going to be different for every student.
You know, and I'm not trying to give parents lectures out there. I'm not. But we do have to allow them to experience that feeling of like, I really actually don't want to approach this teacher, but I have to.
I might have them start really small. A student with like those real true anxieties around that. I might have them start by placing a sticky note on their desk as a. As a symbol to the teacher. I would work with the teacher ahead of time and I would say, listen, if Mr.
Jones, right, puts a. Puts a sticky note on the corner of their desk, that means they have a question. Can you just. When you see that, approach them. We're going to start there and then we're going to back that off. Eventually I need that to be a raised hand. Eventually I need that to be practicing, asking for help.
When to approach a teacher in the middle of lecture, not the time right before or after class, when there is a free period, when, you know, this teacher has a free period practicing that too. I would have my students at the beginning of a semester at the high school level ask their teacher, when is your prep?
That is kind of a direct corollary to office hours in a college setting. You know, when is your prep hour? When can I come see you if I need help? When is a good time? How is a good time? Do you prefer an email? Do you prefer me to come in before or after school? Sometimes that is what that takes.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Some of these things sound like you could even do this with elementary students.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: The more practice they get, the better.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, these are the skills that when my students could do this, boy, we could. We could get a lot further. But when my students couldn't, that's where we are. I mean, even. Even with my little guy now, even with my first grader. Right. We're working through. Okay, he's having a little bit of trouble in one specific area in school. And we're working through, you know, and of course, right now I am communicating with that teacher. He's a first grader. I'm not unreasonable, I promise.
But I'm also working with him on, okay, when is a good time to go up to her? Because in the middle of the carpet is not the best time.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: And I guess just to add to that practice sending an email to a teacher, even if the parent is sending one too. Yeah.
Involve the student and maybe even model what a email supposed to look like.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Because if they're used to texting, that is not the same as an email. It is not. And it's very different when they have to ask for help in an email format that's professional or at least coherent because, you know, if they use a lot of the texting.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Texting, abbreviations. Not working.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: I'm not gonna know what that means.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Not working. You know, and not for nothing, sometimes they're not even using those correctly. So that's.
That's a whole. That's a whole nother rabbit hole.
And yeah, this, this does involve parents. Right? This does involve a team.
I would have parents say, you know, but I just. I need to email the teacher. Go ahead, C.C. your kid. You know, C.C. me. C.C. the kid. And then eventually that needs to come from the kid and they CC you. You make sure that they have followed through and gotten. Gotten that done.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: So another skill. So what is. What was a skill that you were maybe surprised by? So a skill that you expected your students to have, but they did not have it?
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Writing. Writing was a big skill that I was very surprised that a lot of our students didn't have. And granted, I was in graduate program teaching, so that means they were already through undergrad.
And so, like, not having some of these skills were very surprising.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Wow. So what are some examples of those missing writings? Like, that's so big.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: So what were the ones that you were like? Surely we have mastered this by now.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Organization of a paragraph was a big one.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Grammar was a big one. And the difference between formal and informal writing, like not using slang when you're doing formal professional writing, it's very. It's a very different type of writing.
And that was very surprising to me that that was not a skill that they automatically had. And we actually had to teach them.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Some of these things at the graduate level. So we had to take time out from the graduate level coursework to explicitly teach that we don't use slang in our professional writing. Okay, I'm just making sure I'm following.
This is very concerned. I believe you. I'm just very concerned.
And I can only imagine that this is actually a growing problem given the state of writing instruction.
Yikes. This is really concerning and unfortunately not altogether surprising to me. As a high school, former high school teacher, I really thought it was very important to lay the foundation for basic sentence structure.
Writing is such a complex skill that it really requires systematic and sequential teaching.
And I just, I. This one's so murky for me because I feel like this is a piece even in my own practice. What I do now. This is a piece that I know is so critical to the equation and there just are not nearly the resources out there that there are for the reading side of things, even though we know how important it is. And I think further complicating factor. Right. Is that for a long time we have really been turning to speech to text is just the answer to that somehow. But we're not teaching our students how to even use that technology.
We really do think that. Oh, speech to text. They could just talk into their computer and it will type it out nice for them. And all the while. Right. That does not even close to the address the situation of informal versus formal writing.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. That's more advanced.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, yikes.
What's another surprising thing that you found out as a college professor?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Really was really surprising to me that students got through both high school and undergrad without reading an entire book.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: What?
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
They would get expert like little pieces of the book or they were only assigned part of the book to discuss with their class. Or they told me that they just got the footnotes for the book and they would just read that.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Oh my God. Okay.
I wish listeners maybe could see my face right now. I'm probably. It's good that you can't see my face right now. This is extremely concerning. Being able to read a whole book and discuss the important details is such an incredibly important academic skill. And I would argue a life skill.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: That's applicable way past your college.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Right. Like I mean, even just reading a document and being able to know what is the important parts of the document, I mean, we have to do documents for all sorts of different things like mortgages and, you know, things for work and. Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: I mean.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Oh, you can't really skim those.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: And not to mention. Right. I mean, taking any kind of notes, if you don't. If you. If you have not read an entire book or an. Or a textbook in its entirety. Right. Like the entire chapter that is assigned, how do you even begin to discern what's the main idea versus what's a detail?
Not to mention note taking.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: How do they study?
[00:17:40] Speaker B: That's a good question.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: And just they're just plain old not getting all of the information.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Exactly. Because, I mean, you can't test on every single detail in there. But the reason it's assigned is because there's something related to their profession that's important in there.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And you never know what part of a book is just going to speak to you. Right. So maybe the professor has deemed that not important information for the test, but maybe you come across a passage that you're like, oh, that's pretty fascinating. I think I want to know more about that. And that's just a skill lost.
Oh, I'm still a little bit reeling from that. So all of high school, all of college, never an entire book.
Oh, scary. That's. Hmm.
That's sad.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: It is sad.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: That's. Oof.
Oh, okay. What about something else?
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Well, we are required to have office hours as professors, and I would say it was very rarely used unless we called a student in to talk about something.
But those are hours set aside for us to just be there to help, you know, with assignments, with studying, with tests. And that wasn't hardly ever used.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really. That's sad to me. I was a TA in college, so not a professor, but I was a teaching assistant for our anatomy and physiology classes, and then speech and hearing science, which were probably our toughest classes in our major. Those were.
You took them either your sophomore year, junior year, and they were hard. They were really hard classes. A lot of vocabulary, and you absolutely needed to know it. And there was no close. Right. Like you. You had to get it correct. There was no. Oh, that's close enough. It's okay that you don't know all those muscle groups. Like, nope, not okay. You have to know them. So those were really, really hard classes. And I even remember being kind of astounded as a TA that students were not coming to office hours being. We.
If you came to office hours, by and large, you did very well on the quizzes and the tests because it was just extra doses of practice. And you really came away with those, knowing what you did and didn't know.
And that is, you know, okay, so as a high school teacher. Right. So what do I. What do I do with that information?
And aside from really impressing that importance. Right. Reinforcing the. These are resources available to you that you absolutely should use.
You will do better, period, full stop, if you use these office hours.
And I think even beyond that, forming those relationships with those professors, that goes a long way. I mean, I was kind of all about office hours in undergraduate, for sure.
I was always in the nose of my professors. They probably thought I was a little annoying, but I did well. I don't know what to say, even forming those relationships. So that.
So that if I did find myself in a bind.
Right. I could lean a little bit on that relationship. I mean, I had a professor who was very blunt about the fact that if you were struggling with the final or preparation for the final, if you had not shown up to her office hours at least once in that semester, she was not inclined to help you.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: And that makes sense.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And she was. I had. Yeah. Kind of respect for that. She came out with it kind of right away and said, I'm really not inclined to help you because you have not laid the groundwork for yourself over the course of a semester. And I. I just wonder how much of that message is getting through to high schoolers, middle schoolers, you know, I mean, even when my kids are little, I will kind of often say to them, like, okay, you're freaking out about your last mitten. We're about to walk out the door.
I'm sorry, but the time to be upset about that was yesterday when I asked you to pack your backpack. Today, your current school is one minute. And I don't know what to tell you.
That's not fun as a mom.
Right. That's not fun, but I think pretty important.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: So what can parents do to help students with reading?
Well, I think obviously it's a bigger thing than just school.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, boy, read a book. Right?
Read a book, a whole book with your kids. Right. Discuss the information together. Oh, what is surprising. And you know, this doesn't have to be.
Obviously what Nicole was teaching. Right. Was dense medical text.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: We're not saying that that's what you have to be reading with your kids. But even what is a surprising thing that just happened in that story. What is, what do you think is going to happen next? Practicing those understanding main idea and details.
I have to imagine that some of your students struggled with summary.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: You know, so if I'm, if I'm a parent, which I am, I guess I might be taking away from here one. I really do owe it to my kid to lay some tracks for them in the way that leads them to an independent place.
And, you know, as far as the reading piece goes, modeling how to summarize thinking about main idea and details, I mean, what are some of the things that I have to imagine that coming from a college professor point of view. Right. And you have three kids.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: I have to imagine that has shaped you as a parent. Right. You. You have to have a lens of like, wow, these kids really need this skill. So what have, what are some of the things that you do with your kids that maybe the rest of us need to be on the bandwagon with?
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Well, we mean lots of books with our kids, obviously their books are not technical, but we'd also talk about who the main characters are, what they did, why they did what they did. Kind of a little bit more in depth of more critical thinking skills, kind of inferring some things because honestly, you're gonna need to do that. The higher reading, you go.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, something else I'm thinking about in terms of some of the differences between high school and college and grad school and work. Right. I mean, in high school, general rule of thumb is that 80% of the coursework is done physically in the classroom and 20% is done outside of the classroom. And that's largely flipped on the undergraduate level. Correct.
And then at the graduate level, that's even less. Right. I mean, yeah, you're not. You're covering very little of the required work during class classes.
It's probably more like 90 outside.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: You know, so how do we transition kids through that? How do we.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: And I really think main skills you need to start teaching young is how to study.
Picking up, even for like my sixth grader, what is the important information for the social studies information? And what are we going to use? Are we going to use no cards today? Are we going to flag it? What are we going to do so that you can come back and do it, you know, and how to organize that system not only in their studying, but also their homework. What homework builds up to that? The test, and how can they use it in a way to help them study later?
So the more Details they put in their homework, the easier it is to study. Right. Because that's part of it. Right. All that detail.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: And then honestly, writing is something that needs to be explicitly taught. Yeah.
I sit with my daughter all the time because organization for her is very difficult. So graphic organizers or however, whatever the topic is, depending on what the narrative or the type of essay or paper it is, using those tools to help them organize their thoughts is very important. Yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: I mean, something that surprised me even at the high school level. I can remember as a high school student, I had a teacher who was a fanatic about outlining.
And she was very, very picky about our outlines. And there, in her view, was a right and wrong way to do things. And I was very. And I loved this teacher, but I was very annoyed by this exercise in high school. I was of the opinion back then that, like, whatever, I can write the whole paragraph. So why would I sit here and do this outline first? That was very annoying. I found it very annoying as a high school student.
And then I wound up in graduate school facing down those long. Those long essays and going, oh, and being really thankful that I had the background of how to do an outline. And I worry about that skill not being taught.
I. I worried about that even in my high school teaching career that there was not a lot of emphasis on that ability to write an outline. And I. I worry about that.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you don't see that as much anymore. Even book reports. Yeah. Like, I've noticed my. My children don't write as many book reports as I did. I swear, we had one due every week, the entire grade school that I went to. But yeah, my kids maybe do one or two a year, and I feel like that's really good practice. That book report really gives you that summary and that outline and kind of some of those skills that you need.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: That you really need.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Get those details out of the reading.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, this has been, I think, a pretty enlightening conversation.
I think we could do several episodes like this, and I think we should. I think this needs to be an ongoing conversation. I got a lot out of this as a parent, and I hope everyone else who's listening, too. I hope that you got a lot out of this today, too.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yes. And we thought it would be fun to end this episode and share a story about something we didn't know when we went to college.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yes. So, I mean, I just have to say, right. I felt like I was a very prepared student.
I think I was well taught and well parented. And I thought I was game on gonna take on the world.
But something that I did not apparently know was how to set up my printer. When I went to college, I went to school about three and a half hours away from my home. And, I mean, I think I was actually genuinely surprised when my parents left.
I remember sitting in my dorm room going, oh, they left and they're gone. So I was actually feeling kind of sad already, that first. That first day.
And I was like, okay, I'm gonna. I'm going to set up my printer. And of course, the next day was freshman orientation, and we all had different schedules. So I was like, I'm gonna set up my printer and I'm gonna print out my schedule, and I am ready to go. This was a little bit back in the day. Not that old, but old enough to use back in the day where really we had, like, Ethernet cables. We did not have WI fi officially in the dorm. However, someone, somewhere, some dude did have a WI fi router. So I. Which I did not. I did not know that at all. And so I have my printer set up, and I go to print my document, and it doesn't print. And it doesn't print.
It doesn't print. And I get more and more and more frustrated, and I just get mad at it, and I just kind of give up. But after, I don't know, 20 test prints, at least, and then I walking out my door, dorm room, and some dude is coming down the hallway with, like, a stack of papers, and he looks right at me and he goes, are you Maggie in room 208? And I was standing by my door, which was 208, so I couldn't be like, nope.
And he's like, I have your whole schedule for tomorrow. And he was kind of mad about it, but I just. I just didn't know. I didn't know.
I was really embarrassed.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah, we had.
So when I moved to the dorm, I was placed in the oldest dorm on campus, which I thought was very pretty and was the best place ever. But we had these huge windows that didn't have screens.
And, you know, it's warm out because it's August when we move in, so the windows are open.
What I didn't know is. So there are black squirrels on campus. What I didn't know is that they knew that we had food in our dorm.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: So, boy, did I learn that fast that they can get into any food that they find and they can get in those windows when they're open. Oh, no.
So there was a lot of screaming in that dorm the first couple days because a lot of us had no idea. And it was all freshmen.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: And so, yeah, that was fun. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Oh, that brings me back now. I'm feeling lots of nostalgia for those days and proud of myself that that would no longer embarrass me. I'd be like, yeah, those are. Those are mine. Thank you very much.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: And, yeah, things come through open windows. Yeah.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah, screens are good.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: So thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: If you like our show, please follow us on social media. Reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic.
Please be sure to follow and rate our show on your favorite podcast player. This is how we reach more listeners. Thank you for listening.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Thank you.
