The Dyslexia Breakthrough with Russell Van Brocklen

Wendy & Rich 0:01
Coming to you, from the Freedom Federal Credit Union Studios, Hartford County Living presents Conversations with Rich Bennett. 

[All laugh] We've got a lot going on here today. It's kind of a few seconds of ours. Please don't, please don't. No, no, no. It's not good. Truth is. 

Rich Bennett 0:27
What if one of the biggest struggles of child faces in school could actually become the foundation for their greatest strength? For millions of students, dyslexia can feel like a life sentence of frustration. Hours of tutoring, expensive programs, and still feeling like they're falling behind. But today's guest believes the problem isn't to child. It's the way we're teaching them. Russell Van Bruyckmann is a dyslexia researcher whose work was funded by the New York State Senate and developed through the Research Foundation of the State University of New York. His research program achieved something remarkable. Highly motivated, high school students of dyslexia went from writing a middle school level to performing at the level of the average graduate student on the GRE Analytical Writing Assessment, all within a single school year. Russell has spent more than a decade helping hundreds of dyslexic learners turn frustration into confidence and his approach flips traditional instruction on its head, focusing on word analysis, building small wins, and using a student's personal interest as fuel for learning. The result? Students not only catch up. They often surpass expectations. And let me tell you something, everybody listening? You are going to be blown away. When you hear Russell speak because he... 

I'm not going to give it away. I'll let him give it away because we were talking to the green room and he told me something I was like, "What?" "No way." It was hard. He said, "Russell, how's it going, then?" 

Russell Van Brocklen 2:16
"Thanks for having me. It's going great." 

Rich Bennett 2:18
"Oh, my honor. How in the world did you get into this?" 

Russell Van Brocklen 2:24
Well, this is the last thing I was ever supposed to do with my life. I was supposed to be a bureaucrat in the New York State Government. What happened was it was the late 90s of Finishing Up College and I wanted to know how laws work. Not some class I wanted to know. So I had this insanely ridiculous idea of applying from the New York State Assembly internship program and I was accepted. And people ask me, "Well, what's insane about that? You're finishing up college. It's one of the natural ways of finishing." I said, "Well, I showed up at the beginning of the session." And I said, "Here's my neuro-psychological evaluation." I have a first grade reading and writing level. 

Rich Bennett 3:02
What? 

Russell Van Brocklen 3:03
Yeah, I had a first grade reading and writing level. And the director freaked because at that time how it worked is for most of the time you had the assembly member, the electric official, the chief of staff who was probably an intern a year or two before and then the intern. And that's all you had to run the office for most of the session. I was supposed to answer phones, take down notes, file things. Yeah, would it be that dyslectic? Not going to happen. So the director goes up to the speaker's office and they said you're not going to get rid of this kid because he's dyslectic. Figure it out. So they got a committee together, they're senior people, and they came up with a radical solution. They literally pulled me out of the majority leaders program, they literally pulled me out of the legislative office building and placed me in the capital in the majority, in the majority leaders program accounts, as always, that ran the assembly day to day. So I was away from my peers for almost the entire time, which was a big part of the internship. I walked in and I see why they did it. They had three administrative assistants that could help you with my horrendous writing. So that went great. And then for the academic portion I gave a hours long presentation and Q&A session instead of a paper, which was a 

Rich Bennett 4:18
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 4:18
very standard accommodation. Yeah, well, so at the end of this, they recommended a minus for 15 credits. But you have to remember where I came from. I wasn't going coming from some Joe Shmo minor elected official. I was in the place that ran the assembly day to day. I was with these people nights, weekends, what I wanted, not what they asked me to do. So I was offered to be a lobbyist. I was offered good govern positions because of the recommendation I got from this office. And the people that I know, I could just pick up the phone and talk to people that ran the place. Well, when it goes back to the New York State, uh, so to, to the political science department of the State University of New York Center of Buffalo, they looked at these massive accommodations and they said, we don't like these. So, she, they don't like what the state come up with, came up with. So they decided to lower my grade from any minus from 15 credits. Guess what they lowered it to? 

Rich Bennett 5:18
Don't even, tell me a D or a D. 

Russell Van Brocklen 5:21
No, they flunked me. 

Rich Bennett 5:23
What, what? 

Russell Van Brocklen 5:24
They flunked me for 15 credits. 

Rich Bennett 5:28
Are you serious? 

Russell Van Brocklen 5:29
Yes, 

Rich Bennett 5:31
why? Because 

Russell Van Brocklen 5:32
they didn't like the accommodations the state government came up with. 

Rich Bennett 5:36
That's bullshit. Sorry, but it is. 

Russell Van Brocklen 5:39
Well, that's what I thought. So, so this took me away from my chosen path of being a bureaucrat and I went to my professors and I said never again. Where can I go and graduate school? So I can go ahead and teach, learn to read and write so I can teach other dyslectics. And they said, well, if you like politics, and you want to learn to read and write in grad school, it's obvious. Law school. So, 

Rich Bennett 6:04
okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 6:05
So I went and I ordered it to law school classes. And the second day of contracts, I walk in and I'm called on. Now, how it works in law school is if you don't know what the, I mean, nobody knows the answer. So the professor asked you questions. You don't know the answer to embarrass you publicly until you adapt. It's called the secratic method. But that didn't happen to me. I 

Rich Bennett 6:30
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 6:31
didn't respond as the professor is a student that was cowering. I responded as the professor's equal. No, no, no, no, understand what I'm saying. This professor was teaching longer than I'd been alive at that point. 

Rich Bennett 6:46
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 6:46
All right. And I responded as his equal for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. We're going back and forth. I know exactly where he's going. He knows exactly where I'm going. First time in my life, everything organized. At the end of 15 minutes, he threw up his arms. He said, "Russell, you can't be any more correct. I have to move on to the next case. The next case in the interest of time." 

Rich Bennett 7:10
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 7:11
Yeah. That was my defining moment. I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. Then I went back to the New York State Senate and I said, "I want you to fund my dyslexia research project. Which they don't do." 

Rich Bennett 7:26
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 7:26
So they said "Go over the state education department. You need their support or you're going nowhere." So I walk over there like, "I'm coming from the the majority leaders office." From the Senate. They have to take me seriously. So they're like, "How do we get rid of this guy? That's just the impression I got." So they said, "Where is this research out of?" I said, "Buffaloid." And they said, "Okay. We want a SUNY Distinguished Professor in Psychology to evaluate it. If they don't recommend it, you're going nowhere because that's their highest rank in psychology." I said, "Okay. It can't be that hard. We got the largest the largest university center, psychology is the biggest one in both, and I went and I found out why the Education Department of Fisher was so smug. There were two distinguished professors in psychology. That's it. And I had to get one of them to endorse what I wanted to do. And just so happened that the person that did the neuropsych that I handed into the assembly was one of those two. 

Rich Bennett 8:31
Okay. Her 

Russell Van Brocklen 8:31
name was Dr. Hallitchka. And she said, "Yes, I will do the evaluation." So the state paid for it. They're surprised I got one of the two to agree. 20 hours of testing over three days from the smartest woman I ever met. It's time to make absolutely sure what's going on. She said, as she found previously, that I had a reading and writing skill of a first grade or a six-year-old. But when I turn brain on, I am writing at a well above average of undergrad students. Then it goes back down again. And she wrote up, "Here's five pages explaining what's going on." And she recommended that the state continue looking into this. Seriously. Well that gave my bamboos. Oh, then they're like, "Okay, how do we get rid of this kid? Ah, we need to have and connect this to current research." And there was only one person in New York that that was really, could be it, his name is Professor James Collins. He had a million half dollar grant from the U. S. Education Department. And he wrote a book to strategies for struggling writers. So I had to get his approval. People told me you would be so lucky if you get it in years if he even looks at you, which he probably won't. So I walked in. We came to an agreement. I got his approval in less 

Rich Bennett 9:51
than two weeks. Wow. I bet all those people were just shocked. 

Russell Van Brocklen 9:55
Yes. And then was even more shocked is I got funding from the University for $15, 000. 

Rich Bennett 10:02
Oh wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 10:02
Now the education department had to take it seriously, because I'm learning how to play the game. I'm dealing with traditional Republicans, which they want a recommendation from the school. They're bottom-up. Democrats are top-down. They start with the bill. Republicans start with schools. So I went back to my old high school and I said, "Let's work with your..." I went everybody to know. I worked with the most motivated, the most intelligent students, because that's what I was. I wanted to see what I could do with students like me first. And the first student, her name was Michaela. She was an 11th grade student, reading and writing at the eighth grade level. We gave her the test for going into graduate school, and she got a 0% tile. After we got done working with her, she was at the 50th percent tile. Yes. The spelling and grammar increased tremendous, like, fine, at the grad level of horrendousness from before. So we worked with another student that we went inside the New York State Public School to send it, sent the funding right to the school district. I never saw a dime with it. And what they did is, for a couple of years, we ran the student, but we ran it for several years. The students started out with their all-heid middle school writing skills. At the end, one class period of day for the school year, at the end of that, they were reading and write, I'm sorry, they're writing, at the average range of entering graduate students. They all went on to college. They all graduated. GPAs are 2.5 to 3.6. Closed to New York State Tax Pairs were under $900 a kid, compared to the best de-selectic college at the time. Landmark College, which was a transfer college. We were three times more successful with less than 1% of the cost. And that's how I got started. 

Rich Bennett 11:57
And no medication involved. 

Russell Van Brocklen 11:59
No medication I got rid of medication years 

Rich Bennett 12:02
ago. Okay, this is just mind-boggling. But one thing you did mention, and I want to want you to explain this, because you said when you were doing your first grade level, then you turned your brain on. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:16
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 12:17
Explain that. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:18
Okay. This is the finest book on dyslexia in the field. From Yale, it's overcoming dyslexia second edition by Professor Sally Cheywood's medical doctor from Yale. 

Rich Bennett 12:31
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:34
Okay. That's dyslexia. 

Okay, do you see how the back part of your brain has this massive neuroactivity? 

Rich Bennett 12:42
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:43
Back part of mine has essentially next to nothing. 

Rich Bennett 12:46
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:47
But the front part of my brain's about two and a half times overactive. 

Rich Bennett 12:52
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:52
So I turned this part of my brain on. 

Rich Bennett 12:57
But how do you do that? 

Russell Van Brocklen 12:59
Oh, that's the conversation that'll take two weeks 

Rich Bennett 13:03
It's 

Russell Van Brocklen 13:03
full. 

complicated. Anybody wants to know I have the New York State funded neuropsych from Dr. Holiquette. It's five pages that explains things. The important thing was I needed when I took this research and I presented it in New York City at the New York City branch of the International Dislexia Association in 2006. I went in there cocky, I thought I solved dyslexia. Man was I put in my place. First, I had the senior professors come to me and they said, Russell, you had two students in the last year of the study who went from the middle school level to scoring in the 70th percentile approximately of entering grad students. We don't care. We want the craft of research. And I was like the craft of what? They said the craft of research. It's a book that came out in 1999 by the University of Chicago and it was designed to teach PhD students how to write their doctoral dissertations. It's context getting everybody on the same page, a policy's problem statement that unique that you can solve, and then a solution that is original that matters. And I was like, you want me to teach that book to deselect the high school kids when no private school in New York City goes nearer because it's too advanced. They said yes, is it okay? And then I walked into the teachers and they said, amazing, does this work for normal kids? And I said no, they said come back when it does. So I had to, so I literally had to show the kids how to do something so much more evolved with normal kids, with a fraction of the motivation. And I had to figure all that out. So I came back eight years later, 

Rich Bennett 14:59
damn. 

Russell Van Brocklen 15:01
Yes, and if you want to know what happened, it's simple. Take me eight years. The part of the brain here, according to Yale, deals with articulation followed by word analysis. That's what the original -- that's what an original document is. So I started off with articulation. I didn't care about word analysis. But then when I had to deal with normal kids, the secret was I had to swap that around. It was word analysis followed by articulation. Took me eight years to figure out that one sentence. 

Rich Bennett 15:35
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 15:36
Okay, so, 

Rich Bennett 15:37
stop. 

Russell Van Brocklen 15:37
Oh no, so what I'm about to do is no show you and your audience how you can take care of the biggest problem parents come to me with. It's an elementary school kid who comes to me writing randomly placed misspelled words, and nobody knows what to do. The specialist are clueless. All right, I can tell you what the solution is. You want to use the traditional method. You can go up to me. I'm just going to give you an example of the winward school in the upper east side of Manhattan, probably about the wealthiest part of America. All right, they have a phenomenal school there called the winward school and they have a 98% success rate. 

Rich Bennett 16:17
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 16:17
You send your kid there and in four to five years, they will send the kid back as educated as the best private schools on the planet. They are truly exceptional. problem is they're $75, 000 a year for 

Rich Bennett 16:35
Only can 

Russell Van Brocklen 16:35
four to five years. And that's just tuition. 

Rich Bennett 16:40
Just tuition. 

Russell Van Brocklen 16:41
Yes. So unless you have a half million bucks sitting around that you don't need. Ye. So how do we do this affordably? we have to do is move from the back part of the brain, we're dyslectic, got nothing going on practically, 

Rich Bennett 16:58
What 

Russell Van Brocklen 16:58
to the front part we have two and a half times in neuro activity. Now, here's my question. Do you know any dyslectic kids ever in elementary school that were writing, "Rann and we place Miss Dougwards or not really?" 

Rich Bennett 17:11
From when I was in elementary school? 

Russell Van Brocklen 17:12
No, like anytime. 

Rich Bennett 17:15
Not right off hand. 

Russell Van Brocklen 17:17
Okay. 

Rich Bennett 17:17
Sure they were, yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 17:18
Okay, so I'm going to give you an example of Sarah, who I use in 

Rich Bennett 17:21
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 17:21
these situations. And I'm going to teach you how to solve a problem that would take months at a private school in the next 10 minutes. Are you ready? 

Rich Bennett 17:29
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 17:30
First thing, just so you know about Sarah, she's 10 years old at the time. She's reading and writing at the second grade level and she is writing essentially "Rann and we place Miss Bell Words." Her favorite thing in the world is swimming. She gets, she's on the swim team, she gets to the pool every chance she can get. Now, here's how you would help Sarah. You would first open up a laptop computer with a real keyboard. Not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. And you're going to type out hero plus sign "What are we talking about and Sarah's going to copy it?" And I can tell you, I can hear your audience right now saying "But we can't have them copy, it's not allowed." Professor James Collins strategies for struggling writers default strategy of copying. It's fine. 

Rich Bennett 18:24
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 18:25
So then what we're going to do is we're going to swap out hero for Sarah's name. So we got instead of hero plus sign "What are we talking about? It's Sarah plus sign. What are we talking about?" Then we're going to go to a list of 10 things that Sarah really, really likes. And then 10 things she really, really, really dislikes. And we're going to go to the top of that list of what she likes. The first thing is swimming. So we got Sarah plus sign swimming. So we got Sarah plus sign "What are we talking about?" And we're going to swap that out for Sarah plus sign swimming. See how we got there? 

Rich Bennett 18:59
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 19:00
Now I'm going to try to fool you with two of the simplest questions you will ever be asked. If you follow them exactly, this will work. If it doesn't, if you don't follow it exactly, you're going to have an epiphany on what this Lexioreally is. These are the simplest questions you will ever be asked. Do you think I can fool you? 

Rich Bennett 19:24
I think you can, yes. 

Russell Van Brocklen 19:27
So let's go ahead and give it a shot. So we got Sarah plus sign swimming. We need to replace the plus sign with a word. Here's my question. This Sarah like, or dislike swimming. 

Excellent. You're one of the very few people that got that correct. Now are you ready for the hard 

Rich Bennett 19:49
part? Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 19:50
I need you to put that word into the sentence and give me the three word sentence. 

Rich Bennett 19:56
Sarah like swimming. 

Russell Van Brocklen 19:58
What would you say again? 

Rich Bennett 20:00
Sarah likes swimming. 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:01
But that's not what I asked. 

Rich Bennett 20:03
What did you ask? 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:06
Let's go back to the beginning. I said, "Does Sarah like or dislike swimming? What's the answer? 

Rich Bennett 20:11
She likes it." 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:13
But that's not what I asked. 

Do I have you confused now? 

Rich Bennett 20:19
Yes, you do. 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:20
Okay. Initially, I asked Sarah like or dislike swimming. You said like. Which is correct. 

okay? 

Rich Bennett 20:37
Yes. 

okay 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:44
So let's look at the science again. You are processing this back here where you have this massive brain 

Rich Bennett 20:52
activity. Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 20:53
Sarah's processing this here. Nothing's going on. So. What we need to do is bring it from back here to up here and we're going to use do that by word analysis followed by articulation because that's what this does from part of the brain. So what we do is how to say a do you like or dislike swimming. And she'll say like. I'll be like okay now Sarah put it that into the sentence where we have Sarah like swimming. Like okay Sarah. Read that out loud. Does that sound generally correct? And she'll say no. Okay Sarah fix it Sarah likes swimming. Do you see how that is a very simple form of 

Rich Bennett 21:36
analysis. 

Russell Van Brocklen 21:36
word 

Rich Bennett 21:36
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 21:38
Okay now we're going to go because reason one tell me a reason why a 10 year old girl would like swimming. 

Rich Bennett 21:48
I think all kids written. Well no not all kids do but it's just a way to get out. It's good. Well why a 10 year old girl would like it. Okay see this is you're throwing me a trick question again 

Russell Van Brocklen 22:00
No. 

Rich Bennett 22:00
aren't you. 

Russell Van Brocklen 22:01
Just why would a 10 year old girl like swimming. 

Rich Bennett 22:04
It's just something. I mean something about being in the water. You just feel so. I want to say almost alive or better. Yes. You may feel like she's a mermaid. 

Russell Van Brocklen 22:15
Sarah likes swimming because she feels like she's a mermaid. Okay now do you see how the reasons are a very simple form of articulation. 

Rich Bennett 22:25
Yeah. Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 22:26
Good now we're up here but now first thing we have to do is the teachers have problems with these horrendous grammar mistakes. How do we fix that? We tell Sarah to read what she wrote out loud. And if does it sound correct if not keep fixing it until it does now and we don't care about spelling on this love at that point. 

Rich Bennett 22:44
Okay 

Russell Van Brocklen 22:45
and what happens is now we got rid of that nasty stuff we got a lot of the medium stuff some of the little stuff we got some little stuff when we got some medium problems left teachers can deal with that. We now made that workable but now we got all these misspelled words so what we do is we tell Sarah what she needs to do is every time she types it out out if there's any misspelled words she has to retype the entire thing. And she says I'm not going to make that mistake after she makes and she keeps making it for between three and 13 times typically each time she's thinking harder and harder not to make that mistake until she eventually gets it correct. She's concentrating so hard that that's where the magic happens up here. So we get that right then we do that for all 19 for the rest of the 19 reasons then we do the same thing all 20 for 10 likes and 10 dislikes for reason 1 and reason 2 for the all 20 10 likes and dislikes for reason 1 reason 2 and reason 3. Now we've taken Sarah from randomly placed misspelled words to writing a decent grammar correct spelling. Three reasons sentence here's another little thing who reading has improved because if you can write it 

Rich Bennett 24:01
you can read it. 

Russell Van Brocklen 24:02
If you can write it you can read it okay but this is step 3 of the model word analysis file by articulation by far the most important. Is the first one which is when you're working with these kids you need to be within their speciality their area of extreme interest and ability. Okay so when you do that well I mean this is so important I'm going to give you an example of my most motivated kid I've ever worked with I want everybody to know I never had ever saw this before Casey I will never see this again this is a one off edge case. Casey was 10 years old reading and writing at the second grade level and she wanted to choose very interesting theater rose about. So I assigned her this little book the rise of theater rose about all 900 pages of it. 

Rich Bennett 25:03
Wow 

Russell Van Brocklen 25:04
Casey was reading at the second grade level this is for 10th grade to first grade college level defending who you ask. and people like why did you do that because I'm like I just go for my motivated kids I just go right for the end product just get on where we're going 

Rich Bennett 25:19
Right 

Russell Van Brocklen 25:19
some kids. So we'll start off with Harry Potter then go to an intermediate book and then go to the big book for the motivated kids I just go right for the big book. So Casey insisted on doing reading first so it said okay Casey here's the process. She went up to a room shut the door and spent three hours a night for the next six months doing that simple process most of the days during the summertime at the end, you could flip. Just some random page, step, some random word, and she would tell you the dictionary definition verbatim. She jumped eight 

Rich Bennett 25:54
wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 25:54
grade, yeah, eight grade levels in six months, and I worked with her for 15 minutes a week. 

Here's this Walt Disney, the triumph of the American imagination, all 1,000 pages of it. 

I, anybody can find the first of the two universal themes that creates the Disney magic in the, in Disneyland or Disney World. Takes them usually one to three years to find the second one. I've never had a parent find it. I had to tell them where the kid had to tell them. Hasey found in three months, okay. Now, here's the point. Why am I spending so much time on this? Because I said, I asked Hasey when we move from a book you love to when you hated what happened your motivation. She said a drop for five, about 50%, most motivated kid ever worked with. Most kids will drop 75 to 90%. 

Rich Bennett 27:04
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 27:05
Yeah, that's why your interventions don't work. 

Okay, so during your intervention period until they're a grade level or above, you have to focus on their speciality. Get them an audiobook, get them a book they're very interested in. It's number one, number two, if you ask an ADD or ADHD, or a dyslectic, because the treatments, the treatments the same for all three. If you ask them in their speciality, do they have ideas flying around their head at light speed, but with little to no organization they're going to say yes. So then what the secret is, is we have to force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. Let me say it again. We have to force the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So let's take an example of what is really going on with this. I want you to imagine a very standard thing I could tell you, imagine your back in high school, sorry to the cringe your audience, but imagine your back in high school. And you were given this essay. What effect did Martin Luther King's famous, I have a dream speech, have on the Americans 19, the American 1960 civil rights movement. You know exactly. Generally, how to go and start that research and write it up. Right. 

Rich Bennett 28:29
Right 

Russell Van Brocklen 28:30
now who are dyslectic, it's like grabbing fuck. There's nothing to grab on to. So we have to start off at a very specific point and go outward. Not big picture. And eventually get to the detail. We need to start with the detail and then go out. 

Rich Bennett 28:48
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 28:49
So we need to ask what personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech and we go to his biography, we find the answer that answer gives us a question, which gives us an answer, which gives us a question, which gives us an answer that forces the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. That forces the dyslectic brain organize itself by by forcing the dyslectic brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So what's the model during the intervention period. We start off at the, at the kid's speciality, their area of extreme interest and ability. We find a good book, an audio book that they're invested in that they can grow into number two. We teaching from the specific to the general, then word analysis, followed by articulation. That's the model. That's the solution to dyslexia. 

Rich Bennett 29:45
Wow. Now with the writing part, because in the beginning, you said to have them use a keyboard. You 

Russell Van Brocklen 29:55
Right. 

Rich Bennett 29:55
know, computer is the reason for that is because this way, they see the letters, whereas if you're using a pen, you don't see the letters. 

Russell Van Brocklen 30:06
You're in the military, right? 

Rich Bennett 30:08
Yes. 

Russell Van Brocklen 30:08
Okay. I want to give you a common thing you did back then. Remember cleaning your weapon? 

Rich Bennett 30:14
Yeah, all yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 30:15
Remember that if you had to pick it up even right now, you would do it almost unconsciously. 

Rich Bennett 30:21
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 30:22
Okay. When you, we tried this experiment back with my original research, we would 

Rich Bennett 30:28
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 30:28
take the most, took one of the most motivated kids, scored in the 70th percentile. The prompt he was given was so hard for him. So I gave him a prompt that he knew, something he was an expert in, and I said handwrite it, and I had it regraded. And I was told that it should have been around the 6 percentile, not the 70th because the right, all the work we did just went to hell. Here's the reason why. The physical demands of writing the letter W instead of just hitting the key took so much working memory, it crashed the whole system. Yeah. So when parents asked me about this, they said, 'Well, how successful was this?' Well, I'm just about finishing a book on this called 'Writing to Read'. And in my part, it's about an example as Kimberly. I met Kimberly in December 27th of 2024. 

It reads for brothers and sisters to read properly, exceptionally well! Much better than your typical genetic school kid. Using traditional methods. But read, she failed miserably and she felt shamed, she very shamed about it. Very worried for her son. Read was 10 years old, halfway through 5th grade, and just a few weeks ago she paid, from this she paid to have the state of Ohio 700 bucks to test her kids. Read was reading at the 11th percentile, writing at the 4th percentile. So then I worked with Kimberly for half an hour a week for the rest of the school year. She worked with read on average of 3 half-hour sessions a week about an hour and a half. Most parents do 10 to 15-minute sessions so you can figure out how long this would take, 

Rich Bennett 32:22
on. 

Russell Van Brocklen 32:22
generally based 

Rich Bennett 32:23
Yeah! 

Russell Van Brocklen 32:23
At the end of the school year, he had an increase, which I'm not telling you about, because over the summer, Read's friends came to him and said, "Read, we want you in public school. To be with us socially in class, in lunch, everything." Now, if he had the similar numbers as he did in December, he would be placed in special ed, away from his friends on happy kid. But, he was retested in the first task of August of 2025, call it 8 1/2 months later. In a public school, mom's miles away, much better data. He had an increase. His reading went from the 11th percentile to the 64th. His writing went from the 4th percentile to the 65th. His grammar went to the 97th percentile. I asked his mom a couple of weeks ago in February, how's he doing? And she said he's getting mostly A's and B's. They had a tragic family event. So, he hasn't turned in a lot of his English work. He currently has a C++. Once he turns it in, it'll be a B minus or probably might be a B. Even if he was getting all of C's, that would still be a major improvement because he's in Jennid classes with his friends. This is something that the whenward school would take four to five years to do. She did it in less than nine months. This is what every parent dreams about. That's how powerful this is. 

Rich Bennett 33:54
So this is something that is basically going to be the parents that are going to have to do this because the schools aren't doing it correct. 

Russell Van Brocklen 34:04
Yeah. My class while for Evelyn, White Bay, she was on one of the two or three teachers on the New York State to select you task force to redo elementary school. When she did this, now she's a master teacher. She was dealing with a high school kid or eighth-ninth grader or something on those lines and he jumped 6.6 grade levels in a shorter time frame. 

Rich Bennett 34:25
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 34:26
Yeah, Evelyn's a master teacher. So it's hard. It's just easier for the parents to do it. I'm just going to tell you it's just easier for you to take care of this because by the time you fight the school, you could have just solved the darn problem. 

Rich Bennett 34:39
You said she's on the New York State, this Lexia task force. 

Russell Van Brocklen 34:45
My co-author Evelyn White Bay. Yes. So what that was, this is I am not giving anything away here. This is public knowledge. This was really the result of New York State Senator Brad Hoylemann's Segal. He's a Rhodes scholar. He's a Harvard Law School grad. And his daughter Sylvia, he found out was dyslectic and fourth grade. Now they told him if her school bothered to contact Yale when she was in kindergarten. Yale, this is just Google, Yale and dyslexia. If the kids in kindergarten all they have to do is say, "Yay, how do we test her dyslexia?" Like 50 bucks a kid or something like that. The teacher can do it. It's not hard, it's not expensive. Once you find out the kids dyslectic, then all you have to do is go back to Yale. And how do we train these kids to read by the end of third grade? That's the key thing. Because kindergarten through third grade we learn to read fourth and above we read to learn. And they would say, "Well, we have all of these federally funded programs to teach you how to teach the kid to read. Pick what you want and just do it if they did that." Then by the end of third grade the kid would be passing that statewide test and reading, writing, or there be close to it. If they don't do any of this and you wait until your fourth grade and above, now you're told what Senator, uh, with the Senator was told. He was told that your daughter Sylvia now has to go to one of these private schools like the Windward School. 

So, uh, so the Senator is a very liberal guy. He's under the belief that because New York State is spending more money than anybody on education, which is about $32, 000 a year. Sorry California, we're higher tax than you are. He believed that would make more sense to do the kindergarten thing and take care of this by the end of fifth grade because we're talking about literally wasting billions of dollars here. 

Rich Bennett 37:11
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 37:12
The average passage rate for a lot of these English language arts tests, 33th grade, Gen Ed, call it 50% giveer, giveer take sums, special eds around 10% giveer take sum. It's about five times higher. He wanted to just solve the problem. So he got a statewide task force together, 49 of the best people on dyslexia. Evelyn was one of the two with three teachers. Because she was recruited because her special ed kids were scoring higher than the district's Gen Ed kids. That's so good she is. 

Rich Bennett 37:45
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 37:45
So they came up with all of this and they wrote up a report. Anybody can find it. Just go to New York State to select you task force New York State Education Department. You can read the report then. 2025 they want to try to get funding for it. Remember we spend more on education, that per student than anybody in the country. California is not even close. Okay, and when they found out they couldn't afford 

Rich Bennett 38:15
it. What? 

Russell Van Brocklen 38:17
Well, to train the teachers. Remember that private school, I was telling you 

Rich Bennett 38:22
Yeah, 

Russell Van Brocklen 38:22
about. yeah. No, it takes 11,000 dollars and two years to get trained in that approach. Then the student to teach your ratio is four to one to five to one. And their teachers get paid horrible compared to public school teachers. Okay, so they can't afford it. So here I am with Evelyn. And not only can we go and train an entire school to do this, we can do it in a day. 

Rich Bennett 38:51
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 38:51
Yeah. So that's kind of how powerful this, but then what normally happens is people come to me on the outside. Yeah, that's great for elementary school. What about, you know, middle and high school. So I said, okay, I just showed you a simple form of articulation. Remember I told you about the craft of research, context, I'm sorry, context. Problem statement and solution, I just gave you some version of context. Here's an advanced version. I want you to imagine the best way I find to explain this is to discuss it as a movie review, because I use universal themes. Okay, just trust me. I've done this 200 times on podcast. This is this is the best way to explain it. This is for how to do advanced body paragraph that a professor will might think is college level. So I want you to think about a movie that everybody has seen that you think is one of the best of all time that you know. Intently and you can go back decades if you want 

Rich Bennett 39:59
that everybody see, I'm sorry, my favorite movie is always full metal jacket. 

Russell Van Brocklen 40:05
Okay, full metal jacket. You know what a lot of people have seen full metal jacket. 

Rich Bennett 40:09
Yes. 

Russell Van Brocklen 40:10
Okay, now I'm going to ask you a really hard question. 

Rich Bennett 40:14
Okay, 

Russell Van Brocklen 40:14
I need you to reduce full metal jacket to a one word universal theme that best represents the movie one word 

marines. Okay, give me something besides marines 

hardcore hardcore. Okay, now I want you to think about how you'd write up if you look back at the movie reviews at the time. Probably by some Ivy League educated person will tell you this happened, then this happen, then this and this happened, then ruin the movie. 

Okay, here's how we write movie review as an adult and not a fifth grader. All right. First of all, we take the universal theme of hardcore and then we would look at the actors who are the important actors. How do each one of them do with that universal thing? How do the director do? How do the screenwriter do? And then you take all of that, you write it up into a review and you polish it up and you there you go. Now anybody reading that can say based on this review, I want to see the movie, I don't want to see it. And if I want to see it, now I know what it's about. And you didn't ruin it for me because you wrote about it as a grown up now. 

Rich Bennett 41:32
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 41:34
Here's the problem. If you use the universal theme of hardcore, you can't laser focus. It's too broad. You can 

Rich Bennett 41:42
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 41:42
only paint it in broad brushes. Okay? So now we have to kind of fix that before we do paragraphs. Now what I'm about to do is traumatize your audience because I have to take you back to high school in English class and Shakespeare. Okay? Now 

Rich Bennett 42:00
good in English but I like Shakespeare. 

Russell Van Brocklen 42:03
Well, yeah, because Shakespeare was just in the English language was the apex of be able to communicate any idea. 

Rich Bennett 42:12
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 42:13
So through his stories, I'm just going to go bring you back to what they basically were. You'd have a hero. Hero would want to do something based on one or more universal themes. And then what the hero would do was then find that there's an ultimate villain. A person, a concept or a combination there too, who would be in a best position to prevent the hero from accomplishing the hero's goals. Their conflict would start in act one. It would escalate and act two and then resolve an act three. Sound familiar? 

Rich Bennett 42:46
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 42:47
To simplify that to do an advanced paragraph. So we're going to start off with the hero. Let's start off with full metal jacket. All right. I'm going. So what we do is then say, what did you pick out the hero full metal jacket. And then say, what did this person want to do? And then you write about it for paragraphs for each of those sentences you pick out the most important word. 

And this is where because we take the most important words and the list of them and then you decide which one of those is the best most important word. That's going to be based your base universal thing. But do you remember back when we were discussing the movie and you said hardcore remember how broad it was? That's the problem here. The universal the base universal theme is going to be too broad. So what we need to do is then go to the resource and put it in and look for synonyms. Okay. But here's the key thing for the kids. 

Going back to the signs. See that overactive front part of the brain being two and a half times overactive. 

Rich Bennett 44:08
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 44:08
That deals with word analysis followed by articulation. Here's my question and it's incredibly serious. How do you use word analysis? If you don't know what the heck the word means exactly. 

Yes, there's the problem. Here's how we solve that problem and we're doing a base to get these kids to learn hundreds of evolved words. And this is what sky rocks. It's their reading. What we do is we have them type out the word so the base universal thing. What can your case, it's hardcore. All right. We would type that we'd look up that definition and Marion Webster's online dictionary. You're going to type out the word and type out the definition. The kids are going to pick a definition and type it out. And I can hear the parents screaming now, but my kid won't do it. If you're outside their speciality, you're darn right. They 

Rich Bennett 45:07
it. 

Russell Van Brocklen 45:07
won't do 

Rich Bennett 45:08
Right. 

Russell Van Brocklen 45:09
But if you're inside and they understand why they will do it. And if they won't, I have a very good torture mechanism for you. Remember when we came up with a list of 10 likes 

Rich Bennett 45:24
and 10 dislikes. Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 45:25
The first thing the kid really dislikes, that's the sure you make them do if they don't do the work. 

Let me give you an example of that. Kimberly with breed, what we didn't like doing was cleaning out the radicages. If we didn't do is didn't want to clean out the radicages, what we would do is he would just stop doing his work. And I would say, okay, Reed, this is going to be fun. Your mom already told me she stopped cleaning out the radicages to get them extra funky. 

Rich Bennett 46:00
All 

Russell Van Brocklen 46:01
right. And she's going to take a video of you cleaning them out because you won't do the work. Now I said, ten years from now, that your mom's going to pull out that video and everybody's going to be laughing and you're going to say, that's no funny. Everybody else will then laugh even more. So I said, please, don't do your work. I want you to clean out the radicages and have your mom videotape for me. He started doing his work. 

Okay. 

Or one of the better ones, I had a kid who was very old CD-ish. I don't see you, but very much like that. He was the eldest and he hated being bossed around by his younger sister. So what did I do? uh, I would, uh, he wouldn't do his work. So, uh, his parents went up and they videotaped this, they had his little sister mess up his room and then, uh, order him around to clean it up. And then, once he was done, hours later, they had her mess it up again and do the same thing. And then I got, I said, 'Are we going to do this for a third time?' Because your parents said they can do this all weekend. Look through my work. 

Rich Bennett 47:17
No, you got me thinking. I wonder if my parents made my sister do that though. 

Russell Van Brocklen 47:22
Well, I'm just giving an example of, of how happy kids, so now that you got a good laugh, so what we do is we go back, we have the kid type out the word in the definition.Because  at some point, I don't know if it's 5 times 10 times 15 who knows, they're gonna know that word and that definition. S then what you're gonna do is you're gonna go up and you're gonna look at the synonyms. You're gonna look at five, the top five, the top 10, the whole level, multiple levels, whatever you, you're the teacher and the student, go beyond. Let's see, you're gonna do the top five. You're gonna then type that, have them type out the word, look up the dictionary definition, and they're gonna type it out, not copy and paste. Don't copy and paste. It's worthless. It makes it get worse. You have to watch kid. So then after a while, they're gonna pick out a word that much better matches what's in in their head. You want the best match you can, you find a better word, they try to find a better one within that limit. Then now you have something that is much more relevant that you can now laser focus on to find the ultimate villain. Because now we have, because now we're gonna look through that universal thing to find the ultimate villain as a lens. Once you find, I usually start off with a person, eventually you can go to a concept, start off with a person. Now we have our hero, our universal theme in our villain. And we separate those by plus signs, which is the default writing strategy of visualization that suggests you may be need to add word, subtract word to move a word around. And we say just read it out loud, does that sound generally correct? If not, no, fix it. Now we have a basic sentence. Do you see how that's an evolved form of word 

Rich Bennett 49:04
now? 

Russell Van Brocklen 49:05
Now let's do an evolved form of articulation. We're gonna say because can come up with three really good reasons. Not just any reasons, the best reasons you can. 

Rich Bennett 49:15
For 

Russell Van Brocklen 49:15
each reason, we're gonna reduce that reason to a simple universal thing. And then for full metal jacket, we're gonna go to that script and with that universal theme, we're gonna find one sentence that deals directly with that at the beginning of the movie, and then one at the end. We're gonna take those two quotes and put them together. From those two quotes, we are now going to form our topic sentence. 

Okay? Now, do you remember back in school? You'd have your topic sentence and your data. The data can be quotes, whatever. Have you ever noticed going from the topic sentence to the data it never flowed as good as it should have? 

Rich Bennett 50:05
Right, yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:06
So, we're going to apply a warrant to connect this. Have you ever thought of applying a warrant to a body paragraph? 

Rich Bennett 50:17
A warrant? 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:19
A warrant. 

Rich Bennett 50:20
What? I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about there. When you say warrant, I'm thinking the police are coming for 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:27
you. Exactly. As you know, 

Rich Bennett 50:30
this is what you're talking about. Okay? 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:33
In America, in English, a word can mean so many different things, 

Rich Bennett 50:37
a 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:38
warrant, anybody outside of a PhD candidate. So nobody with a master's gris, any idea what this is. So back to the craft of research, a warrant is a central part, but this is for doctoral students, remember. A warrant is connecting your topic sentence with your data by answering a how and why question. 

Rich Bennett 50:58
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 50:59
Now, because we're dealing with, we're dealing with the same universal theme we can do one warrant. So we answer a how and why question. So we have our topic sentence, our warrant, and our two quotes. Now, when a university professor saw this and compared a seventh grade dyslectic who was doing this, his body paragraph, he thought that this kid was writing a technically more advanced program than his brother who was an AP English senior. 

Rich Bennett 51:34
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 51:35
Okay. Now APC English senior wrote a much better paragraph as far as flowiness, word choice, but because the middle school dyslectic used a warrant, the professor thought he was at the college level. And this is the punchline. 

'When the a. p. english senior found out that his de-selectic younger brother was writing technically more evolved paragraphs than he was. He flipped out.' So, 'I'm this a. p. english senior! He's, he's my de-selectic kid brother!'' 'What do you mean writing technically more advanced paragraphs than me?'' and the younger brother de-selectic just stood there and smiled and I said, 'Isn't that beautiful?' 

That was his coming-out party. Because he beat his brother in, again, technically more evolved. So that's the more advanced version of that and people ask, 'How far do you go?' 'What are the clients that I'm working with is not de-selectic at all, no learning concerns whatsoever, his name is Grayson?'' Grayson wants to get his PhD and work for NASA to terraform Mars.' 

Rich Bennett 52:55
Wow! 

Russell Van Brocklen 52:55
Yeah, so we're taking- so his dad is teaching him in this process, he's flying through it. Grayson, for him I found a journal that deals exactly what they're looking for and they deal with junior researchers. Their idea of a junior researcher is a PhD candidate. And we're gonna show Grayson how to go through the folk context problem solution. So he's working on that now. Guess how old Grayson is. 

Rich Bennett 53:25
I- I have a funny feeling you're gonna surprise me and tell me he's like in his fifties or 

Russell Van Brocklen 53:29
something. No, Grayson's 10. 

Rich Bennett 53:32
What? 

Russell Van Brocklen 53:33
Yeah, he's 10. 

Rich Bennett 53:37
No way. 

Russell Van Brocklen 53:38
Yeah, he's 10. I had to- when I had to create his custom content, I create- I only use peer review resources to create the history of Mars. I had to put it at the ninth grade level for reading and the material comprehension was at the twelfth grade level. And he's 10th and fifth grade right 

Rich Bennett 53:57
now. 

Russell Van Brocklen 53:57
Yeah, so he's flying through that context stuff I told you, then we'll do the problem statement and then the solution and then we'll show him how to write this up into a basic journal article. I think he'll be ready to do that in three or four years, so when he's 13 or 14. At that point we're gonna- we'll submit the journal article, it will be rejected, they always are for new researchers. And then we're going to connect him to a senior professor in that area and he's gonna go in and say here's my journal article I submitted and got rejected for these reasons, can you help me with this so I can get this published and watch the professor's mouth drop? Because he'll be about a decade too young for this. If it takes another five years, who cares, once he's published, he just has to do it a few more times and by the time he's finished with his doctorate, and then he'll be an excellent candidate for NASA. 

Rich Bennett 54:54
10 years 

Russell Van Brocklen 54:55
old. Yeah, he's 10 years old. 

Rich Bennett 54:58
Unreal. 

Russell Van Brocklen 55:00
Yeah, and he's not dyslexic in the least. Nothing, he's in the 99th percentile for math and science. 

Rich Bennett 55:07
Wow. 

Russell Van Brocklen 55:09
Yeah, the kids are freaking genius. So what I will do is to see how far I can push these kids. 

Rich Bennett 55:16
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 55:16
Start generating ideas. I will ask them what they want to do and then I'll ask a why or sometimes a how question. And we'll see how long they can go until they just let her out and start coming up in nonsense. Every time Grayson had to stop, it was because the problem that needed to be solved, humanity won't be able to do that for thousands or tens of thousands of years. It's like, how do we travel to the next star? 

Rich Bennett 55:43
Yeah. 

Russell Van Brocklen 55:43
Okay. So that gives you a kind of overview of what we do. 

Rich Bennett 55:50
Okay. The whole time we've been talking about working with kids, but what about adults that are dyslexic too? Can you work with them as well? 

Russell Van Brocklen 56:00
Oh, yeah. My first program is what I used for adults. Most advanced once I had, giving an example, the gentleman was dyslexic. He had a Master's in Business Administration from Columbia, Ivy League. 

Rich Bennett 56:15
What? 

Russell Van Brocklen 56:15
Did very well. So what we would do is, I'd ask, we'd start off with what's the general, we'd give them a prompt, which is about a paragraph and would say, "What's the primary argument that they want you to do?" To your local high school, to your ninth grade advanced placement English, 14-year-old kids, and asked them the same question, "E would take no more than two seconds to tell me." He took almost a minute. After he practiced it over 50 times, he got really quick at it. That program is sheer repetition. It is the definition of not fine, but it's a rocket ship. Adults learned it real fast. 

Rich Bennett 56:58
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 57:00
So that's an example, or the older the kid is, the quicker they pick it up, or we can take them through pretty much anything. The thing is how we operate, because you know how expensive tutoring is. We teach the parents to teach the kids. Now, when people sign up, we had to look at pricing this. We run a learning platform called school, S-K-O-O-L. So for most parents, I'm looking at my competition. It's 500 to $1, 000 a month. And nobody can afford that unless you got a couple of BMWs sitting in the driveway. So. Yeah. Well, 500 bucks a month, 

Rich Bennett 57:38
90 

Russell Van Brocklen 57:39
minutes. That's that to vision. 

Rich Bennett 57:40
That's lunch there. 

Russell Van Brocklen 57:42
Yeah, so what I did is one of the people I met on a podcast, her name is Angela. She's a certified elementary school teacher from the state of Texas, masters degrees, 11 years of experience. She quit when her daughter was born to become a homeschooling mom. Her son read. She's walked through this process. So she's going to be the one who teaches her course. She's there every week, for 60 to 90 minutes, to answer questions. We asked parents to submit them a couple of days ahead of time because a lot of parents asked the same thing, very similar. And that's the only and for live support, we cut the price back from 500 a month to a thousand a month 247. Yeah. 

And you stay with us for as long as you like as I said for read. I'm sorry for for Grayson, you know, we're taking them all the way through a dissertation. You know, submitting an idea of I'm sorry, for a general article. See stay with us as long as you'd like. If people want somebody that is more evolved. We have Evelyn and Evelyn's 497 a month. And that's just because she's she's on the task force. 

Rich Bennett 58:51
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 58:52
Okay, from here. She's just the best at what she does. So if anybody's interested, that's I gave you the overview today, but that's. Uh, we fill it all in. We just work with you through every detail. 

Rich Bennett 59:06
And how can they find you again? 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:07
The thing to do is go to dyslexia classes dot com. That's with an S dyslexia classes dot com. Click on the button that says download free guide. Fill out three questions. And set up a time to speak with me. It's a half an hour. It doesn't cost anything. 

Rich Bennett 59:21
Wow. All right. So Russell, before I get to my last, I'm just blown away by all this. Yeah. And you are amazing. And the people you're teaching are even more amazing. Um, you got to start a podcast and have these kids 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:38
Oh, 

Rich Bennett 59:38
come. 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:39
no, 

Rich Bennett 59:39
no. 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:40
Too much work. I'm dyslexic. Just so everybody knows this is my 200th and six podcast. I've been on the leader. I've been the number one person on the leader board three months out of the last seven out of 4800 guests on pod match. No, 

Rich Bennett 59:55
you don't want to 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:56
up. 

Rich Bennett 59:56
head 

Russell Van Brocklen 59:56
You do the word. 

Rich Bennett 59:57
Yeah, I was going to say, you know what the headaches. I said, before I get to my last questions, there anything you would like to add. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:05
No, I think we pretty much covered everything. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:09
This was great, because this is like sitting in class. And I love that. That's one of reasons I started this was the learned stuff. Um, all right. So I need you to pick a number between one and five. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:19
Okay. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:20
Well, you got to tell me the number of course. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:22
Oh, fourth. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:23
Four. All right. So now picking number between 61 and 80. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:28
Okay. 72. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:30
All right. So here's the last question. And a lot of times, these have been aligned with what we've been talking about. Well, maybe not this time. If you can witness any historical event first hand, which one would it be 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:48
the surrender of the British at the end of the sub of the end of the revolutionary worth. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:54
Oh, why 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:55
is that? I was there. I was in the room where 

Rich Bennett 1:00:57
it. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:00:57
they negotiated 

Rich Bennett 1:01:00
All right. Raimi Russell, you're younger than me, man. Come on. 

That would be awesome. The witness. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:07
Yes. I was at the spot where, uh, Alexander Hamilton literally told his, uh, his soldiers not to load their weapons just being in that's in rush. One of the readouts they had to take. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 1:01:19
Oh, okay. I see. I thought you were messing with us saying when you were there, I mean, you were there back in the day. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:24
Oh, no, not 

Rich Bennett 1:01:25
The 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:25
that. 

Rich Bennett 1:01:26
one that you're not saying you're younger than me. Come on now. Russell, I want to thank you so much. It's been an honor. Oh, my God. And you say you have it. You're working on a book. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:39
Yeah, it's called writing to read. You'll be out in the next couple of months. Final edit. That's what every but a famous last words of any author 

Rich Bennett 1:01:47
and people can just go to the same website and find that once it 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:49
Yep, 

Rich Bennett 1:01:49
comes. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:50
and we'll be on Amazon, because that's what we're publishing. Give 

Rich Bennett 1:01:53
Okay. 

Russell Van Brocklen 1:01:53
you little hint. They sell 80% of every book sold in the United States. We're just. 

Rich Bennett 1:01:56
Oh, no, make sense. Make sense. Russell, thanks a lot. 

Oh, this conversation really makes you stop and rethink everything you thought you knew about learning. Because what Russell shared today isn't just about dyslexia. It's about potential. It's about how many people out there, especially kids, are being told in one way or another that they're struggling. When in reality, they just haven't been taught in a way that works for them. And I think that's the big takeaway here. We're not talking about lowering standards. We're talking about unlocking something that's already there. Russell went from having a first grade reading and writing level to developing a system that's helping students jump multiple grade levels in a matter of months. That doesn't happen by accident. That happens because someone refused to accept the way things were and decided to figure out a better way. And what really stood out to me is how practical this is. This isn't something that only works in a lab or some elite school. Parents can apply this. Educators can apply this. Even adults who've struggled with reading or writing their entire lives can start to see things differently. So if you're listening right now and this hit home, maybe for your child, maybe for someone you know, or maybe for you, don't just let this be another episode you listen to and move on from. Take a step. Learn more. Ask questions. Try something different. And if you want to connect with Russell, get his free guide or just learn more about what he's doing. Head over to dyslexiaclasses.com. And I'll have the link in the share news. And as always, I want to thank you for listening. And if this episode made you think if it opened your eyes even just a little bit, do me a favor, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Because conversations like this they can change lives. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and most importantly, keep the conversation going.