Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast. I'm Dr.
Honora Wall and the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast is sponsored by
Educalc Learning. You can find out more about the math learning disability at
educalclearning.com and you can also find out about
Dyscalculia at the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute which is www.thedtri.org
and I'm going to start talking about that today, that DTRI website. I want you to go
visit there because we got a grant recently to help increase awareness of
Dyscalculia and what this grant means for us is that we were able to create and
print and distribute some infographics with FAQs for teachers and for parents
and some brochures, a brochure for elementary, middle or high school students
with Dyscalculia and we were able to take those to some local schools and
put some posters up in the local library, things like that, with that small local
grant. We then took those products and put them on our website, the DTRI.org
and that's where you come in. You can go grab these for free and they're under
the FAQs page on the website down at the bottom it says get your free brochure
and infographic here and you can click which one you want. If you want you can
print them yourself and distribute them but you can also just grab that PDF and
email it to a colleague or a friend or your students teacher or someone in the
community who you think needs this information feel free to share them. This
information is free for anyone and getting to the root of the information is
free also if you don't want to grab our infographic you could make your own just
go to Google Scholar and start reading the published research on the math
learning disability and you'll see that that's where our information came from.
We went to the leading researchers and found out what they had to say and then
we compiled it. So it's a little more straightforward if you just grab stuff
off our website but I'm a big fan of people finding out for themselves you
shouldn't take my word or anyone else's word for anything you should do some
research on your own and make sure that whoever you're listening to they're
saying what the expert researchers are saying. Okay so grab that free information
and it can give you more knowledge and you can share it with people you know
and let's get that awareness out there. One of my driving passions is to make
dyscalculia as well known as dyslexia. We are compared to dyslexia all the time
but these two learning disorders are completely different and they really
need to be addressed properly and in their own way. The relationship between
dyslexia and dyscalculia also includes the relationship with dysgraphia and
dyspraxia and the relationship with ADHD and autism because these are all parts
of neurodivergent conditions. Different ways of thinking about things and
processing information. That's why all of our specific learning disorders are
grouped together dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia and dyspraxia.
Dysgraphia impacts the way we write so taking thoughts from our our mind and
putting them onto paper or organizing them into essays, into articles, into
homework assignments. It's hard to get that information out properly and
dyspraxia is moving within physical space so people that in the past have been
told they were horribly clumsy probably not could very well have been a neuro
atypical development but those two get even less coverage and have less
research than dyscalculia the math learning disorder. So we definitely have
work to do. You've heard me be on that soapbox many times but there is
information out there and we've got some for free at the dtri.org. The second
thing I want to talk about today is the fact that we know somewhere around 8%
of the population has dyscalculia whether or not they've been diagnosed. This is
just how the percentages run in the general population everywhere in the
world and that means that if you are part of a school, a college, an educational
agency, your students already have dyscalculia end of conversation they just
do. The question becomes how much of your staff is trained to properly help
these students? That is the real thing to talk about. We know students have
dyscalculia and those numbers that 8% of the population I think it's even a
little higher. I'm sure it's probably closer to 10% of the population and I
say that because we know we're not testing, we're not doing early screeners
and we're not even calling it what it truly is when we know there's a problem.
So we're definitely under reporting our numbers. So we're looking at somewhere
around 5 million K-12 students in the United States alone. That doesn't count
countries outside of the US. It does not count college, age, students, and adults
in the workforce. So in one individual school, it might be a very small number
of students who are having the math learning disorder. Probably a lot more
are having issues with low numeracy or a weak math foundation, all of which can be
helped with using the proper accommodations and strategies that
help dyscalculia. Although the reverse is not true, the things we do for low
numeracy or a weak math foundation never help people with dyscalculia. They just
continue to fail math all the way through and we have tons of evidence and
research about that as well. So dyscalculia accommodations and strategies,
that's a rising tide that lifts all ships but it doesn't work the same way. If
you're not doing the right stuff for dyscalculia, you're never going to help
students who have dyscalculia and that's why the training is so important. Now if
you've been listening to my stuff, you know that I have training. You can find it
on educalclearning.com and I'm here to tell you that there's some other
great people who have some training too and you should be looking into them and
seeing which company has what you need. For example, mine focus is a lot on
classroom Gen Ed teachers and how do we keep students in their local public
school if that's the right place for your family, some people home school or
go to private school for many different reasons so not discrediting that at all
but in that Gen Ed space, how do we keep students there and make sure they are
successful and I do a lot of work for older students to high school. We're
developing through the nonprofit arm some training and some support for
college-age students and people in the workforce but that's a little farther
down the line. There are other experts in the field who focus a lot on early
childhood, who focus on early elementary, who focus on small group
intervention work. There are also people who have manipulatives and programs you
can use in small groups or in the classroom or you can go to Google
Scholar. You can contact any of us with a doctorate who have done dissertations in
this area, myself included, and we'll send you our dissertations. You can see the
lit review and get the references that we used and read up on it yourself so you
can get some training from a company that specializes in it or you can do it
on your own but the main thing is you've got to get some training and get some
knowledge. Your students already have this condition. Are you prepared to
address it in the way they need you to? That is what I really want you to focus
on. There's a million ways to get that information so please spend some time
getting that together. You know I have some teachers who have taken training
because their state offers a sabbatical year which I think is brilliant and I
have not had that in the past in the states where I've taught so I think
it's a great idea and I hope that it becomes more popular in other places.
Before the teachers taking a sabbatical year they've had school districts or
their schools have used Title I funds to pay for some of their training and the
point of the year is that they do not lose their spot as a teacher. They do
not lose their pension and the retirement plan and the years of being
vested. They do not lose their seniority but they can take time and go do some
extra training to increase their skills and then the other part of it is they
come back at the end of the sabbatical year and make some kind of presentation
or somehow share that knowledge with their school or their district and pass
that along. So that's something to look into. I know that Washington State and I
believe New York State both have programs for that. It might be district
specific too. It's definitely worth having a conversation with your district
or with your principal and see if this is something that you can take advantage
of as well. And if you don't have that then it might be some training you need
to do over the summer or it might be something that you can do over a break.
For my courses and my training there are no deadlines and you can really have an
open-ended completion. So every place is going to be different. You want to see
what the requirements are for the training that you're getting. But the point
is there's lots of options. Whatever your personal situation is you can find some
training that's going to help and that's going to get you some more
information. It's very rewarding. It's important. I would say crucial for the
students who need teachers who have this training and also I'm going to tell you
it's really easy. So once you know how to support students with
dyscalculia you're going to see incredible growth on their end. That's a
really nice part for schools and administrators to be aware of. There's
so much growth hiding in your neuro atypical students. The people who think
differently. The people who process information in a unique way and who
aren't really succeeding in a traditional typical classroom mostly because of the
way we pace out our topics and the way we assess. That's really where we want to
look at making some changes. But these kids man once you get it right they are
taking off. They're going to improve in the classroom and they're going to
improve on their state testing. I've seen this as anecdotal evidence through
students I've worked with for years. It's always true. I always see some growth
on those external measures. And if you're trying to increase your annual
performance it's hiding in that bottom 30 percent of your students. The bottom
30 percent of academic achievement because in there you're going to find your
neurodivergent students either with dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia,
ADHD, high functioning autism. This is where your growth is hiding and you can
bring out that growth and make some real changes with some very easy approaches.
So get that training get the awareness get the free stuff that's out there and
share it with a colleague with your administration with your students teacher
shared at the nearby school or at the teacher education program at the local
college. Let's just start talking to each other. If you ask a person just even at
the grocery store oh hey have you heard of dyslexia nine times out of ten
they're going to say oh yeah I sure have. Then ask them have you heard of
dyscalculia and they're going to go what. So we've got to change that
narrative and the way we do it is by sharing information. So that was a lot
of pep talk today a call to action if you will to go find out everything you
can about dyscalculia and then go tell it to someone else. If you have
other questions or comments about the math learning disability please reach
out to me at any time. You can find me at Honora at
educalclearning.com or Honora at the DTRI.org. Check out both of those websites
we've got lots of free information on both of them. Email me directly and I'm
happy to answer some of your questions and give you some guidance and keep
checking out the social media reels listening to the podcast so we can get
this information out and expand our narrative. Thank you for listening to
the what in the world is dyscalculia podcast and I will see you again soon.