Hello everyone, welcome to the newest episode of our podcast, What in the World is Dyscalculia?
Or Dyscalculia?
If you have a background in Latin or if you are an engineer, psychiatrist or psychologist,
that's where I usually hear people pronounce the word as Dyscalcoolia.
Most people, teachers, educators, many doctors, family members and people outside of the US,
I typically hear pronounced Dyscalculee-a.
Some people just fight their way through the word as best they can.
Tomato, tomato, as long as we're talking about this math learning disorder, I'm very happy
because we need more advocacy, awareness, promotion and support centered around the
math learning disorder that we call Dyscalculia.
This episode and the podcast What in the World is Dyscalculia is presented by Educalc Learning.
Educalc Learning is a for-profit company that is dedicated to helping educators, especially
classroom teachers, understand why their students are struggling in math and how to best support
them.
We also work directly with students through individual tutoring.
We are launching a comprehensive series of math courses designed specifically for students
who have Dyscalculia.
I'm very excited about that.
And of course we have our book, Teaching Students with Dyscalculia.
It's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, my website, educalclearning.com.
You can ask for it at your favorite local bookstore.
I'm always a fan of promoting and supporting local businesses.
That's a great option.
And if you have any questions about that or our other books, please contact me.
The first thing I want to announce in this podcast is something I'm very excited about
and that is the launch of the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute.
The DTRI is a 501C3 nonprofit organization housed in northeast Iowa but with outreach
across the country and we certainly hope to have outreach in other countries as well because
the math learning disorder is the same anywhere you go around the world.
If you are interested in what the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute is going to
focus on, please visit our website, www.thedtri.org.
The focus of the nonprofit is going to be awareness, outreach campaigns, getting fact
sheets and information to families and schools and school psychologists, and also to promote
research.
We desperately need more published scientific research centered around this math learning
disorder.
If you are listening and you are a researcher, if you're looking for topics for a master's
or doctoral research program, please contact me, Honora, at thedtri.org and I would be
thrilled to talk with you about research.
Now if you are not a researcher, maybe you are listening because you are a teacher or
a parent or a person who has Dyscalculia and you want to know more about this issue, that's
going to always be the main focus of our podcast, digging into this specific learning disorder.
There is information that is not quite so research driven on my for profit website,
educalclearning.com.
If you take a look at that website, that's where we are hosting our training for teachers,
that's where we are promoting our books.
Not only teaching students with Dyscalculia, but we have some others online and some others
in the pipeline that we are working on, including a Spanish version of teaching students with
Dyscalculia.
I am very excited about that, having a multicultural focus to the business and reaching as many
people as possible is near and dear to my heart.
So you can look for more announcements about those things coming up soon.
But as I have been working on opening the non-profit and expanding the reach of the for
profit, I thought what do I want the focus of this business to be, how are we going to
approach Dyscalculia.
And the main thing I have come up with that speaks very much to my heart and I bring it
up a lot in my speaking engagements and conversations with people is the amount of shame people
feel when they have a learning challenge.
That's horrible, we have got to change that part of the conversation.
First of all, there is nothing wrong with having a learning challenge.
We all have a challenge in some area of our lives and having a learning challenge, especially
when it's tied to neurodivergence, which simply means you have your own way of thinking,
interpreting, remembering, and recalling math.
That's nothing to be ashamed of.
However, in the classroom, in our families, and in the workplace, people feel very ashamed
about advocating for themselves, about explaining that they have this issue with numbers, that
it's triggering for them, that they've had so many negative experiences.
So every part of our conversations need to center around removing shame.
And as an educator, let me apologize to listeners who have many traumatic stories they can tell
about being in the classroom at any grade, any age, and feeling left out, feeling marginalized,
feeling embarrassed, we have to change that experience.
Outside of changing that experience, if you have that background and you know that math
has always been something that's been painful for you and you're trying to get help for
yourself, then I encourage you to start with understanding that there's nothing wrong with
you, there's nothing wrong with the way you understand interpret math, and there's nothing
wrong with not being able to remember basic math facts.
Understand that you have operated in a system that was not designed for you, and hopefully
we can change that experience so that future students don't have these same traumatic experiences.
Understand that as an adult, as an adult learner, as an adult going back to college, as an adult
in the workplace, or even just in your house worried about your family finances and being
involved in financial conversations, you have a place in all of those arenas.
And all of those arenas should be adaptive to your individual needs.
It's really not a big deal.
It is not difficult to support people who have a learning difference centered around
math.
It is not challenging, it's not going to put anyone out, it's not a big deal to be helpful.
That message really needs to get out to your spouses, your bosses, your professors, and
you need to hear it in your heart.
So I hope you take that into your heart.
I hope that we remove the shame and stigma that people feel when they have to say, you
know, actually, I've always struggled with math.
I don't really get it.
I think about it differently.
I have a hard time with memorization.
It's actually a learning difference.
Oh, there you go.
There's self-advocacy.
There's the conversation.
And when you as an educator or a parent or a boss, the employer, as the college professor,
when you hear people talk to you about their math experiences, listen to what they're saying.
Listen to those trigger points.
And have a conversation based around their strengths, not around their weaknesses.
Please stop saying that everyone needs to use math every single day because it's not
really true.
There are plenty of people who don't use math most days.
And it's all right if people don't enjoy math.
That's okay.
You can still be a successful person.
You can still be a successful student.
And you can still have a successful career.
So let's start having conversations where we address the learning difference.
We address the strengths.
We address finding the right support for areas of weakness.
And we stop making people feel ashamed that they're not a math genius.
Stop showing them the YouTube videos with the math tricks where you do something convoluted
that makes no sense to someone who's struggling with numeracy.
That's not going to help.
That's not the kind of support we're looking for.
There are lots of easy ways to support people.
And a lot of them include using a calculator, having reference sheets.
If you're in the workplace having an Excel set up with formulas ready to go.
And honestly in the workplace that's part of most onboarding programs.
Most workplaces already have systems that they're using.
And they're going to train employees how to use that system.
So it's not like you have to go into a modern job and bring your calculator or your abacus
with you and figure things by hand.
We don't live in that world anymore.
We live in a world of technology.
So let's learn how to use the technology properly.
This can back up into our K12 system using grade level appropriate support underneath
fourth or fifth grade.
I'm not sure I recommend a calculator in all situations.
Then I would recommend one to 100 charts, multiplication lists, not the multiplication
chart in the big rectangle for people with visual spatial issues, which is very common
in dyscalculia.
Those things can be a mess.
But using the multiplication lists.
That is really helpful for so many different operations.
Having worked examples, having a reference sheet during classwork homework quizzes and
tests.
That's how we help our students move forward.
Now once we get into fourth or fifth grade.
We are now focusing on vocabulary formulas and quantity of work.
I'm a teacher too.
Teachers like to assign a whole lot of math.
They like to see a lot of problems done.
So if you want that quantity finished in a reasonable amount of time, then support students
with these external tools.
Because students with dyscalculia do not have the same internal mental tools because of their
neurodivergence.
It's the same as letting students wear their glasses, wear their hearing aids.
Same as letting students listen to audiobooks.
Let's quit being afraid of technology.
And the college arena, so many colleges are moving into online math programs and that
can be really, really difficult for students with learning differences.
They're just as not the same understanding, working with the computer as there is working
with either pencil and paper or talking out topics with another human.
And navigating the computer programs can be a challenge in and of themselves for any student
for lots of different reasons.
That's a really large topic.
I'm not sure we're going to get it fixed today for sure or anytime soon.
But let's at least start having those conversations, how our college math classes supporting all
students, especially those who struggle.
So these are some of the focus areas that I want to have in our minds during these next
upcoming podcast episodes of the season.
Shifting our conversation, removing shame from the conversation of having a learning
challenge, analyzing appropriate support tools at different parts of the lifespan.
K-12 versus college and university versus the workforce versus at home.
And there's so much work to be done here that any arena you find yourself in, if you are
a student, a teacher, a parent, a doctor, an administrator at a school, a researcher,
there's a place for you in the world of dyscalculia awareness.
We need you in your help.
I hope you will join me on this journey.
If you have questions about the podcast or anything else we've talked about today, please
reach out to me.
You can find me at Honora, H-O-N-O-R-A at educalclearning.com.
Or if you're interested more in the research and awareness through the nonprofit, that's
Honora at thedti.org.
You can also find me on LinkedIn.
And I hope to hear from you soon.
I hope you are enjoying the podcast.
And I will see you next time on What in the World is Dyscalculia.