Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast. I'm Dr.
Honora Wall and I'm your host for the podcast which is sponsored by Educalc
Learning. You can learn more about Dyscalculia and how to help students who
have Dyscalculia at educalclearning.com. I would also ask you to go to our
non-profit organization the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute. That's
at www.thedtri.org and get lots more free information. We're always putting out
new things and with this podcast episode we're deep in the heart of season 3.
We're kicking off 2025. Happy New Year to everyone and one of the goals for
25 is to be more consistent with the podcast, with the social media outreach.
You can join our teachers Facebook support group for Dyscalculia. That's a
public group. You can find us of course on all sorts of social media platforms
LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky, and possibly we'll continue TikTok. We'll see how
this all shakes out with that social media platform. But every way we can
possibly get information to teachers, administrators, families, and students with
the math learning disability. That's our goal. We're always trying to increase the
free resources we have available for you. And I want to start this podcast and
kind of kick off the year. It was something I was thinking about a lot
over the break and that was for me personally what is my goal? What is my
focus area? Why am I doing all this stuff? And it really comes down to the
student. My teaching philosophy is very much based in Dewey's pragmatism and
Vygotsky's more knowledgeable other. Connecting with students directly and
really changing their life trajectory as they maneuver our K-16 education system
and having a math learning disability. And I think this is interesting but maybe
it's just me but I do want to make it clear that I'm really not here for the
math. Math is the setting and the students are the characters. But for me
math is not the theme. The theme for me is triumph. It's taking down a system that
puts up barriers that are unnecessary. It's helping people find their true sense
of power and overcome their struggles. That is my theme. That's why I'm doing
this work. And I think that's important for people to know as they listen to my
podcast, look at my information and check out the materials that we develop.
It's designed for people who have a learning disability or some other issue.
Could be trauma, could be anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, other
types of neurodivergence. Something that's keeping them from reaching their
full potential. Especially in math because that impacts so many other areas of
life. We know the qualitative research on people with dyscalculia leads to not
completing high school sometimes, not completing their college degree quite a
lot of the times, which is horrible, not being able to get into the careers they
want, earning less money over time, not being part of the family finance
conversation, and not having that self-confidence maneuvering the world
with a strong sense of numeracy. And there's no reason for that. So I want to
change that for people and that's the goal of all of the work that comes out
of eduCalc Learning and out of the DTRI. If that's also your interest area, this
is going to be a really great place for you and we're going to be able to
partner really well. If that's not your focus, then you're probably not going to
agree with a lot of what I have to say and I'd like you to know it now so you
can find the best resources for you. There's lots of different lenses to look
at this through. And another theme for me is that I don't like bullies. I don't
like it when people are bullied. I don't like people who are toxic to other
people and sadly we have too many people in education and in families who are
very toxic and bully people with dyscalculia or other learning challenges
and that really makes me mad. And the more I can call it out and get people to
change that behavior, I'm going to take that opportunity every time it comes up.
I also find our K16 education system here in the US has some inherent systemic
bullying involved and there's a lot of barriers that are designed for I don't
even know what some crazy definition of rigor that no one can really define
rather than letting rigor be defined by the student and the user. Some crazy
system of state mandated testing which is not designed for neurodivergent
students in any way shape or form so I guess we can thank those state mandated
tests for pointing out that disabilities do exist and that learning
disabilities can be impacted by test presentation and format and question
design and if we compare that to classroom performance we can really see
the difference. However in the classroom a couple things I'm going to be talking
about this year that I really need teachers to hear me on we have got to get
the grading figured out and by that I mean quit putting zeros in the gradebook.
If you're putting in zeros as a grade that shows me you have your own problems
with numeracy and I need you to fix that. You can give a student an F? Absolutely.
If that's what they've earned then that's what they get but an F is also a 50 even
a 45. These are failing grades. You can absolutely put them in your gradebook
but they are a grade that someone can overcome simply by working with the
averages. Trying to overcome a zero is near impossible. Trying to overcome a 50
that is possible through hard work concerted effort and putting in the time
but if you're putting zeros in the gradebook you're creating an extra
barrier that the student cannot overcome no matter how hard they're working or
what kind of effort they're putting in. That's unnecessary so just knock it off.
Another place I want you to really contemplate your grading is what kind of
activities do you grade. We know that having oral assessments is a perfectly
valid tool. It's an alternative assessment design. It's part of universal design for
learning giving students different methods of giving you the information they
know. If they can explain the steps to solve a problem if they can walk you
through the work they're doing to get a math answer and if their explanation is
correct that is equally valid to the student who can write down and quietly
show you their knowledge with paper and pencil or by clicking through a
computer-based assessment. I know many of you are giving oral assessments which
is great. If you're not you really should. You need to be discussing things with
your students and you need to hear how they explain their thought processes but
not enough of us are putting those oral assessments into the gradebook or I know
of a few schools where teachers will use the oral assessment and then average
that score with the paper and pencil assessment. What? Please don't do that. Use
them as two different assessments if you need to or just use them as data
collection to show where the student has strengths and weaknesses. Guess what if
they have dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder,
nonverbal learning disabilities, extreme anxiety. They're probably going to be
able to explain and show you their work through a discussion and they're
probably gonna have a really hard time writing it down on a piece of paper. So
don't grade in areas where they're weak and make that your only grade. Don't
dilute their strengths by averaging those oral assessments with a paper and
pencil assessment or by not putting them in the gradebook. Your alternative
assessments are valid so the more you dig into UDL, that universal design for
learning and alternative assessments which are appropriate accommodations for
students with learning disabilities, make sure the grades reflect that. Another
piece I want to put in about grading, if you are weighing your classwork and
homework in a very small amount, counts for 20 or 30 percent of the grade and the
classroom tests count for 70 percent of the grade, you are using a system that is
going to inhibit your students performance, especially if they have
learning disabilities. Then we're not really testing their knowledge at that
point. We're not really recording their knowledge at that point. We're testing
and recording their ability to take a test. If the standard was test taking
performance, then I would say great. But if the standard is this particular math
topic, then let's use a valid equally weighed grade to show whether or not the
student has mastery of that topic. There are some research articles about
everything that I'm saying. I'll be bringing those to you throughout the
year and putting those up on the websites so you can dig into the research
behind the things that I'm saying. But you'll also see it in your own classroom.
Talk with your colleagues too about their testing and their grade book and
bring this to administration. See if you can do some kind of, doesn't even have to
be a whole PD session. It could even be posters you put up at the around the
school or an email that you send out to the team discussing how we grade and how
we measure student performance. There's a lot systemically that we can do to even
the playing field for students with learning disabilities. And I want us to
really focus on that for this last half of season three of the podcast. Okay,
that's enough of my soapbox for today. But that gives you a lens of where we're
going to be going with the podcast. It's going to be student focused. We're going
to look at systemically how do we either support or inhibit student academic
achievement. And we're going to look specifically at what students with
dyscalculia need to show the knowledge that they have so that they can succeed
and get those quality of life markers increased. That's really our goal. If you
have specific topics that you would like us to talk about in the podcast or if you
want to tell me that you agree or disagree with what I'm saying, please
reach out. I love to hear your comments. You can find me at Honora H-O-N-O-R-A at
educalclearning.com or Honora at the D-T-R-I dot org. I find that a lot of
individuals, families, parents, and classroom teachers like to go with the
educalclearning.com because they're looking for something on a small level
very specific to their needs. And I find that districts, regional education
agencies, and state departments of ed prefer to go through the nonprofit so
that they're having that conversation not with a vendor necessarily but with
just a nonprofit organization. Happy to help you in either way. And I'm happy to
bring some of your questions to future podcast episodes and answer those
questions for you. Thank you very much for listening to What in the World is
Dyscalculia. We'll be bringing you lots more consistent programming with research
with researchers you can look up on your own and with information about
conferences where you can either hear me speak or hear other people talk about
dyscalculia and neurodivergence. This is the What in the World is
Dyscalculia podcast. Thanks for listening.