Hello and welcome to this episode of What in the World is Dyscal-COOL-ia or
Dyscalc-you-lia depending on where you put the accent. However you say it as long as
you're talking about it, I'm happy. I'm Dr. Honora Wall. I'm the host of this
podcast which is put on and sponsored by Educalc Learning. You can visit
EducalcLearning.com for more information about Dyscalculia or about the
trainings, online math courses for students and our books and other resources
for supporting people with Dyscalculia. You can also visit theDTRI.org and
find out more from our nonprofit website which does awareness and
information for people who want to know more about the math learning disability.
In this episode I want to talk a little bit about what is by far the most
frustrating part of working with people who have Dyscalculia. Never ends, never
goes away, absolute frustration every single time it occurs and it just
occurred yesterday but it occurs every week on a very regular basis. One day it
will not but for today it is just a constant irritation. So by far the
biggest frustration for working with people who have Dyscalculia is helping
them fight for their legally protected accommodations. The support that is
supposed to be given to people who have Dyscalculia in the K-12 system in higher
education, don't even get me started, in the workplace where it's completely
non-existent, it's just so frustrating. The amount of time that we spend
working on understanding rights, understanding the responsibilities of
the school or of providers or of the employer, understanding how to self-
advocate and I'm a big fan of self-advocating. We all need to know how to
speak clearly and describe our needs and describe our circumstances. No one is a
mind reader so we can't assume other people understand where and how and why
we're struggling. We have to make that clear. Big fan of self-advocacy, not a
problem at all, but having to self-advocate beyond explaining, hey I
happen to have a math learning disability and with this specific learning
disorder there are some accommodations that really will help me succeed.
Anything beyond that statement I think is is unnecessary. That's a problem on the
part of the listener, not the part of the speaker. Now if you are one of those
listeners, if you are a teacher or a tutor or an administrator or a college
professor or college admissions advisor or an employer and you don't know much
about dyscalculia I have good news for you. There's tons of information,
well maybe not tons, but there is information out there and a lot of it is
on my websites that I already mentioned, educalclearning.com and
www.thedtri.org. You can reach out to me and there's a few other specialists
here in the US, there's plenty more in the UK, a few in Canada, so wherever you
are you can find some information and you can become knowledgeable and then you
will know how to best support people and they won't have to beg
and I won't have to spend so much time letting people know that they have a
wiring difference in their brain. They have a different way of thinking about
learning and remembering math and they have a weaker mental number line so
adding, subtracting, remembering the multiplication facts, those are big
stumbling blocks. Okay plenty of jobs in the world where you don't need to do
that, plenty of higher level math where you're required to use a calculator and
you're doing visual recognition and pattern recognition. So having to deal
with time, money, place, value, adding, decimals, multiplying and dividing
decimals, dealing with fractions, that one that goes away just about at the end
of elementary school beginning of middle school depending on which program
your particular school is following. So those early barriers are going to remove
themselves. For students who have dyscalculia by the time they get to
those barriers leaving on their own they're so disgruntled and beaten down
and sure that they're not ever going to be able to do math and they're sick and
tired of asking for help when the help doesn't actually make a difference that
they're not getting access to the higher level math courses they're perfectly
capable of succeeding in. That's a problem because now they don't have access to the
kind of colleges or any college or completing college and they really
should. That leads to limited work options. So we know from research that you
can tie future career earnings to early math experiences. That's a proven fact
and if you have a math learning disability you are much more likely to
have lower future earnings. We know that from research and if you talk to anyone
who has a dyscalculia or other math struggles then this is a very common
story. Now if there were a reason why a person could not have a certain job or
could not follow in a certain career or could not have a certain college major
and be successful. Okay that would be the reality and we would then deal with
the reality. But the reality is the biggest problem is usually the external
barrier put in by someone else who just doesn't understand the disorder. So get
knowledgeable. If you are in the education field you need to be knowledgeable
about your field. You need to keep up. You need to be listening to podcasts not
only mine but follow other people too. You need to be in support groups on
Facebook or through different organizations. You need to go to some conferences. You
at least need to be in some Facebook groups or follow people on other social
media sites so that you are keeping up with what's going on. We love to talk
about research-based best practices. Well a lot of us don't have time to go to
Google Scholar and find out that information. Totally get it. So go find
out who is disseminating that information. When I talk on the podcast or on a
blog post or even on TikTok I back up what I'm saying with peer reviewed
empirical research and I've been putting a lot of those links on theDTRI.org
or you can email me. I'm happy to send them to you or I give the names of the
researchers. You can go to Google Scholar and look them up that way as well.
There's a way to get the information and I really need more people to be actively
trying to get the information and share it. If you're listening to this podcast
and this is resonating with you forward it to someone. Send it to a teacher. Send
it to your principal. Send it to the guidance office. Send it to the
tutoring agency. Share it with the college admissions people or the student
services office. Share other resources as well. It does not all have to be me.
That would be exhausting. So let's all find resources and share them because
there's plenty of work to be done if you are a person who has dyscalculia. There's
a lot to learn about yourself as a learner. Your own strengths and weaknesses.
How you can get around the wiring issues. The weaker approximate numbers system in
your head. The weaker number sense that you might have. Setting up systems to
deal with elapsed time which can be problematic. And the extra work you're
already doing to study. I know that people with dyscalculia are working harder
than typically developing students because I work with both. So I see it and
I've been talking with families for both. Typically developing and neuro atypical
development. And there's a lot more work being done. Students with dyscalculia are
putting in lots of extra hours. Lots of extra time. Lots of extra tears. So let's
not make it worse. By the way we design our assessments. The way we allow or
don't allow accommodations. The way we tell people whether or not their learning
disorder is real. Based on whether or not we've heard of it before.
Dyscalculia has been listed in the research since 1930s. It's not brand new.
It's not fake. It's not a made up thing. If it's brand new to you that's fine. We
don't know what we don't know but we can find out. And when you know better you
can do better. So get out there and learn what there is to know. The more
educators parents schools and the educational system remove these barriers
and start supporting people with dyscalculia the right way. The more we're
going to see a lot of success for this group of people. Not only students but
also adults. I'm going to be adding in more conversations about the adult
experience because that is a place where we are seriously lacking in research and
awareness. And dyscalculia is a lifelong condition. It's just a different way of
thinking. That's not going to change. And it doesn't need to change. Just needs to
be understood and addressed properly. The accommodations in elementary one to
one hundreds chart number lines multiplication lists at all times. Having a
reference sheet or vocabulary guide to keep track of things like area and
perimeter and volume and maybe graph paper to line up your problems vertically.
Extended time and teaching students how to use the extended time by the time we
get into late elementary and middle school instruction on how to use a
calculator and then being allowed to use the calculator at all times so that it
frees up mental energy to keep up with the rest of the lesson. Having worked
examples or some kind of guided notes during assessments to act as a memory
trigger and then the student can do the work on their own but given that memory
trigger at the very least begin the class by saying all right everybody
quick recap on what we did yesterday vocab steps vocab steps vocab steps
now let's get a little deeper. There you go now you've triggered the memory and
you've brought it back up for people. That's a great accommodation and it will
make a huge difference for your students. Moving into high school keeping
students doing grade level work with the understanding that they might have
foundation gaps we're going to address that they're going to need those
accommodations for all assessments including quizzes and tests that's what
I mean by assessments. If you're going to give an accommodation Monday through
Thursday and then not give it on Friday during the test the student is going to
have a problem based on your choices not on their
abilities. A lot of times our assessments end up
proving that there's a learning disorder but I'll save the assessment soapbox
for another day. I will say again let's get some awareness get some
understanding and get the right accommodations in place higher ed that's
a whole nother conversation because while student services
might know about dyscalculia or other specific learning disorders and
neurodiversity the math professors don't or they don't give accommodations in
their class they shuttle it off to student services
the professors in the science department might not.
So all of these other questions when you're looking at colleges
look at what kind of services they are willing to give and why they do it do
they understand the learning differences and what kind of
accommodations are right and important and then later having that
conversation in the workplace that'll be a big one.
So I guess one thing at a time for the new year you can only
do what you can do but if we all do our part and do a little bit
then this incredibly frustrating piece will get better
for all of us. Thank you for listening to this podcast.
Please feel free to share it with someone who needs to hear about it.
If you are the person with dyscalculia please understand you are working
within a system that is growing and changing but needs a little more
knowledge about the situation and you do have some
rights and you can get support you just have to
keep asking and keep working on it. If you have any questions about what
I've said today or about dyscalculia in general please feel free to reach out.
You can find me on all sorts of social media platforms.
You can also email me honora at educalclearning.com
that's H-O-N-O-R-A or hanora at the D-T-R-I dot org that stands for the
dyscalculia training and research institute. Visit the websites
get out there and talk to more people look up some research on your own
or start having more conversations. Let's get some
information out there. It's going to be a great year of change for people
with dyscalculia. Things are changing they're improving
this is a very exciting field to be in even though
I do have this frustration but I believe it will not continue to be
consistent. We're going to make changes for the better.
Thank you for being part of the journey. I'm Dr. Wall this is what in the world
is dyscalculia and I'll see you next time.