Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.
Although this time we're adding some video and we're going to see how this works.
We'll try to put in video plus just some audio in the future.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall.
I am a little under the weather today.
Hopefully we'll get through this episode without an issue from being under the weather.
But the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast is brought to you by Educalc Learning.
At EducalcLearning.com we bring a variety of training resources online and in person
to educators.
We also have books, some other free resources on our website, EducalcLearning.com and an
expanding line of online math courses for students with Dyscalculia or other types
of neurodivergence.
You can also get information about Dyscalculia and neurodivergence at www.thedtri.org.
The Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute is a 501c3 dedicated to raising awareness
and changing the lived experience for people who have Dyscalculia.
So usually when I'm under the weather I like to take some time off, get some extra sleep,
make a lot of soup and get past it.
But right now I have a lot going on.
I have a lot of projects, a lot of deadlines to meet.
So I need to push through by meeting those deadlines even though I'm not feeling 100%
as the great Kenny Rogers once told us.
You got to know when to hold them but you also have to know when to fold them because
both things happen in life.
I want to use that as the basis for this podcast because speaking of knowing when to hold them,
knowing when to fold them, you've also got to know when you can get away with a falsehood
and when you cannot.
So I'd like to bring you a tale of two 504 meetings.
These are both true stories.
They both happened this month and they both happened in a fairly large city in a pretty
large Midwestern state.
I have a student I've worked with when I first met the student they were in fourth grade,
just got their Dyscalculia diagnosis, were two years behind in math, quickly got
them up to speed.
They are still doing grade level work now in ninth grade taking algebra one and physics.
They're on the honor roll and they like to stay there.
Most of our work at this time is the occasional, hey, there's a test coming up, a little confused
about this one part.
Can we have a 30 minute session?
Of course.
The regular part of our work is they're a military family.
Hey, we've got a new school, new teacher, new district, we've got a new 504 meeting.
Can you sit in and help us educate this new teacher, this new school, this new team?
Absolutely.
And this year's 504 meeting we knew was going to be pretty tough because we had already
gotten some comments from the math teacher about how accommodations might be fine during
classwork and homework, but why should they also be used during assessments?
So we knew we were going to have a lot of educating to do for this child team.
And we did.
It was kind of a, I don't want to say a rough 504 meeting, but it was a learning experience.
We had to really educate the team on what Dyscalculia is, how it shows up in the
classroom, why the accommodations are important and necessary at all times and what those
accommodations should be.
If you want to know more about what we said, we created a fact sheet and it's on either
one of the websites, Educate Learning or the DTRI.
You can grab that for free.
You can print it.
You can email it to your school, to your colleagues or your teachers and help get some information
out there.
So at the end of that 504 meeting, we did get the accommodations that we wanted.
We got everything written the way it needed to be.
And we had some, I thought, pretty good discussion about the history of Dyscalculia, what
it is, how it works and accommodations in general.
And we made sure that the 504 did not mention modifications.
Modifications are different and they are not appropriate for students with Dyscalculia
They don't need less work or fewer problems.
They don't need modifications.
That's a very specific term in education.
Please do not let anyone put that on your IEP or 504 plan unless you also have an MID
diagnosis, mild intellectual disability, which really doesn't happen with Dyscalculia
Very rare to have those two things overlap because they're entirely different.
So that's my first 504 meeting story.
The second 504 meeting I was not a part of.
I probably am going to start working with this family, but it's not a student I've worked
with before.
Same school, same grade level, same classes, same school-based team as far as the counselor
and the teachers are concerned.
This student has a similar diagnosis, dyslexia ADD.
Once you get that type of neurodivergence, you can pretty much assume there's going to
be a lot of Dyscalculia overlap.
When you look at the neuropsych evaluations, you can look to see did the person administering
the evaluation look at, sorry, did they look at math specifically?
Did they give any scores in math?
Were they looking for that kind of diagnosis?
What did they say about it?
Did they put Dyscalculia?
Did they put Math Learning Disability, MLD?
Did they say specific learning disorder in the area of math?
It's all different ways of saying water, agua, H2O.
It's all the same.
Even if not, if the person has some pretty decent math scores on that evaluation, there's
a lot of crossover in different types of neurodivergence.
So we can use similar accommodations even if the prevailing issue is not the math learning
disability.
Well, the family goes in to have the 504 meeting at the same school with the same team.
And that was after our meeting.
So they had all of this information.
The team told this family they couldn't really do anything, that the accommodations that
were appropriate for the math class were not going to be allowed during testing by the
district.
It wasn't something they could offer.
And the classroom testing and state standard testing was the best way to measure learning
anyway.
And really what the student needed to do is try harder in math class.
And that's all they could do.
Okay.
I've worked in a school.
Quite a few of them.
And if you're listening and you're in education, you've worked in a school, we all know that
parents talk and we know that parents at the same grade level are going to talk.
And if they have the same classes, they're going to talk.
And if a bunch of students need 504 meetings and 504 plans, they probably know each other
and they're going to talk.
So if you're going to refuse to have a decent conversation about accommodations, and if
you're going to refuse to offer the right kind of help to a student, and if you're going
to rely on a falsehood like, well, the district doesn't really say we can even do that.
So then you probably shouldn't have that conversation with a parent when just a couple
of weeks ago, you had an entirely different conversation and gave entirely different accommodations
for a different family.
You got to know when you can get away with saying a falsehood and when you really cannot.
Frankly, I was very surprised to hear about this and a little discouraged because I thought,
man, that first 504 meeting, they might have gone through that meeting with us and given
the family the accommodations they needed, but it doesn't sound like they really heard
or believed in what we were saying.
I'm not sure if they read any of the follow-up information and research articles that we sent,
which is discouraging.
It's also discouraging to know that so many students, not only in this state, I've got
them all over, so many students have to fight so hard to get the help that is federally
protected, the rights that they are supposed to be given as far as accommodations are concerned.
Just a lot of awareness we've got to do out there, a lot of educating teachers and schools
and admin teams about what's appropriate and what isn't.
I know there's a lot of confusion out there and I know there are still a lot of teachers
and school teams who don't know what Dyscalculia is and they're not even sure if it's
real.
It's new to you, but it's not new.
We've had Dyscalculia show up in research articles since the 1930s.
It's been a big part of neurology, a big part of psychology, and it is now a growing part
of education research.
The articles are out there.
Do a Google Scholar search.
Go to my website.
Go to any of the other websites for the other experts in the US and you can read them for
yourselves.
You don't have to take my word for it.
Go to your own research.
It's right there.
Read the published peer reviewed articles.
If you don't have time for that, you're looking for something a little faster, then you can
go to a trusted website like either of mine or Dr. Schroeder in Texas, Becky Lord.
There's quite a few of us who you can talk to across the country.
There's more experts outside of the US.
The UK has a lot more research and is farther down the road than we are.
So there are places where you can go get this information and find out what the right accommodations
are.
They're not hard.
Using the right support tools that depending on grade level could be a multiplication list
or a calculator, having a list of notes during assessments because we want the memory trigger
in Dyscalculia.
The parietal loses math information over time that includes basic facts.
It also includes steps and procedures and it can also include time, money, place, value,
which are always shaking.
And even an upper level math, it can include, okay, wait, which one's perimeter, which area,
that's when I, okay, look really quick at the notes.
Get that trigger.
That reminder, the student still has to then complete the work, apply those formulas in
the right setting and do the math.
But they just need to help some help getting past that initial barrier of not knowing for
sure what to do, which is super common with students who have different types of neurodivergence.
Extended time, not fewer problems, but extended time.
So being able to show math mastery should be on the person's time clock of when they
can get the work done.
If we don't give extended time, then we're really saying your work is only valid when
I choose to accept it.
And it's within these 20 minutes.
And that's all you get.
And if you can't do it when I want it done, then I guess you can't do it at all.
That's not actually true.
So let's give extended time because that's an appropriate accommodation.
And there are a few others that I usually recommend based on a student's visual spatial
skills or working memory capacity, processing speed.
That's when we're really getting into the rabbit hole of the details of a neuropsych
evaluation.
If you have questions, comments about any of that, please go to either one of the websites
that I've talked about, educalclearning.com or thedtri.org.
If you are looking for other resources, you just want to make sure that those websites
don't just say, hey, we work with students with learning disabilities.
No, I need for them to really prove that they know what they're doing.
And that means they're going to mention leading researchers.
That means they're going to have links to some other outside articles.
That means they're going to talk about the specific differences between dyscalculia,
dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, ADHD, high functioning autism, and that they can talk
about how those things are related, where we have either a dual diagnosis or at least
just overlap in the field of neurodivergence.
But the information is out there.
You can get it.
Tons of free stuff on both of those websites.
And you can always email me, honora@educalclearning.com or honora@thedtri.org.
You can find out more information in these podcast episodes.
I'm also on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
So anywhere we can get the information out, we try to.
We can have a support group, the teacher's dyscalculia support group page on Facebook.
And that is a public group you can join.
So to recap, if you're going to tell parents incorrect information, don't do it in the same
school where you just had a conversation with a different parent in the same grade level
and gave them different information because parents are going to talk.
The information is going to get out there.
And if you do get educated on dyscalculia, which we all have to be educated, none of
us are born knowing this information and there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, here's something
new.
I should probably get some professional development on it.
Then use that information for all of your students, not just for the families who are
fortunate enough to find some help.
These rights are federally protected for a reason.
They apply to everyone and they should be given in an equitable fashion.
Okay, that's the end of my soapbox for today.
I'm going to go have some chicken soup.
Dr. Honora Wall, thank you for listening to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.