On Thursday, Oct 13, 2022, REEL hosted a panel of parents with kids who have attended both private and public schools as well as psychologist Dr. Lisa White of Summit Center, who advises families on schools for 2e learners. We did not record the session in order to protect the privacy of our panelists. This blog post captures the key takeaways. (Check out REEL’s Private Schools List for Bay Area schools (and some beyond) that may serve 2e learners.) We opened the session with a presentation from REEL on The Five Elements of a Successful Classroom Environment, which you can read about in a separate blog post. Next we heard from our parent panelists. They explained that their children initially attended their local public elementary schools. They chose to switch for a variety of reasons: One parent shared that while their son had friends and seemed happy, he was bored; when combined with his developmental immaturity, he was described as being “a pain for his teachers.” As a result, he was put on a behavior plan to keep him on task. Even so, the family had a good relationship with the school, were placed with good-fit teachers, and the Special Education team suggested services and accommodations. However, in 7th grade, he moved to a small private school, as his parents felt he might be better off in a small environment where the teachers could get to know him well. This parent recalled that her other child came home from kindergarten with a disappointing level of work. By first grade, her daughter was working hard to fit in, hiding the big books she liked to read, faking a lisp, and showing signs of low self esteem and risk aversion. Her parents thought resilience and bravery were more important to focus on, so they decided to switch to a small private school focused on social-emotional learning starting in 2nd grade. The second panelist shared that her neurotypical and high achieving older daughter was anxious and quiet in elementary school, so when it came time for middle school, they decided that she should try the small, supportive, private, all-girls school in their neighborhood with a focus on community, social learning and STEM. She thrived there, and while not formally evaluated for giftedness, continued on to the high school of one of the more established private gifted schools in the area. The second panelist’s other child was a high energy and very social preschooler who taught himself to read at age three, but reached other milestones later than expected, including refusing to write. Due to relatively high academic achievement in the elementary years and decent “social masking,” he was not offered accommodations or evaluations despite family requests. His 1st grade teacher did not believe he had learning differences and refused to conduct an evaluation when he had writing refusal. However, he had good support from some teachers and was able to mask his ADHD and writing struggles with the help of a gifted best friend with much better executive function, as well as many hours of private occupational therapy. Sadly, his 4th grade teacher bullied him and other students and the family ended up opting for private neuropsychiatric evaluation that revealed ADHD, dysgraphia and mood concerns for anxiety and depression. He did end up with some accommodations on a 504 which carried through to the local public middle school where he did fairly well except again had conflicts with a couple of teachers who saw his over-participation as arrogance. Given how well his older sibling did at her smaller private schools as well as the high stress/ competitive reputation of the local high school, the family began looking at a number of private options. He was deemed too high energy for some of the smaller gifted schools (where the family was upfront about his ADHD) and the the family decided to switch to a private, large all-boys Jesuit school in 9th grade for its many academic and extracurricular options . As outlined below, he has since transitioned to a local 1:1 school. Lisa noted that clients come to her either at natural transitions (kinder, 6th, 9th) or in a state of crisis, often having tried several schools and unable to find a good fit. She advised switching from schools where the child is always in trouble and feels out of place as well as environments that push against the child’s challenges all day. Several panelists pointed out that, when considering schools for 2e learners, one often has to “shoot for the least bad option because nothing is perfect.” Lisa pointed out each child has different needs. Often, it’s not a question of private versus public, but the decision depends on which school is best for each individual child. Consider your child’s needs today . 2e learners change over time and may need to change schools, so don’t worry about high school fit when looking at kindergarten options. Lisa suggested prioritizing emotional health over academic rigor. The panelists looked for various elements in their private school decisions: Project-based and engaging curriculum Less chaotic environment Small school with like-minded people Focus on developing strengths and opportunities to show strengths Social-Emotional learning woven into the day Emphasis on building confidence Atmosphere of acceptance STEM focus, allows for advanced math (for a STEM/math-focused child) Match for the child’s current mental well-being A place where can they be who they are Support/community for parents Most panelists were happy with the change to private school because they were able to fulfill the list above. Oftentimes, the accommodations from public school were no longer necessary in a smaller and more naturally accommodating environment. However there have been tradeoffs. Sometimes a long commute or financial stress might outweigh the benefits. Some project-based schools necessitate outside tutoring in core subjects for some kids. Some schools were a good fit academically and intellectually but not socially. A smaller environment also could mean fewer choices of extracurricular activities and potential friends. In one case, the transition to a large private school where he did not know any students during the pandemic and online learning created a lot of stress and caused the child to get behind academically. By the time the child returned to campus, he was too stressed to partake in all the fun clubs and activities that originally attracted the family to the school. He also hadn’t been able to make friends during virtual learning. Many factors combined to create mental health challenges despite efforts from the school to support academic challenges. In the end, the family opted to leave the large private school for a 1:1 school. The 1:1 school was able to tailor learning to the child’s interests. His love of learning returned and his stress dropped off immediately.. However the 1:1 environment hasn’t addressed executive functioning skills and there are fewer opportunities for socialization and extracurricular activities. Again, there is no perfect environment, so the parent advises others to determine what can most easily be addressed outside of school. The panelists shared some tips for truly understanding a school outside of open houses or tours. They suggested talking to multiple parents at the school to get varied perspectives and the inside scoop. In addition, they advised to visit schools when you can see the kids on campus, for example, during recess or shadow days. Ask about flexibility at the school: Can students start clubs? Does the school use UDL (universal design for learning, allowing choice and voice in assignments)? Does it emphasize strengths? Do the electives align with your child’s interests? In terms of the application process, panelists all advised being honest with the school about your child’s strengths and challenges/diagnoses. Schools hate a “bait and switch,” and, without honesty, it is difficult for the school or the family to know if the school can truly support the child’s learning needs However, Lisa pointed out that it’s important to not just write “ADHD”, but rather to explain how a learning difference presents itself uniquely in your child as well as what you as a family are doing to help your child learn and grow. In addition, Lisa advised to write about your child’s strengths equally descriptively as their challenges, and to go well beyond generic descriptions like “curious” and “loves learning.” Your goal is to make your child stand out with specifics such as, “Spent 3 hours researching otters and constructed a habitat.” Show the school the child is way more than their diagnosis. You may also want to share your child’s IEP with the school and ask if they can continue the needed elements. Q&A Are accommodations offered in private schools? Although private schools don’t have to honor IEP/504 plans, usually the smaller environment allows for accommodations more easily. However, many private schools don’t supply services unless it specializes in addressing certain challenges (i.e., schools for dyslexic students may provide intervention services, etc.). Parents often supplement with services (i.e., OT, SLP) outside of school. Of course, when thinking about staying in a public school setting in order to continue services, even if a child is able to qualify for an IEP/504, there can be high turnover in staff and you may face a new battle every year. Or, you may feel your child is getting pulled out of class too frequently. Parent/school partnerships tend to be less adversarial in a private setting. But, know that private schools can “counsel out” a family if they feel they can’t serve the student’s needs. How do we address school refusal? There is a reason for refusal. If it’s increasingly problematic, it’s time to consider a change. Sticking to a traumatic school experience can lead to disaster, in particular in terms of a student’s mental health. After a trauma, give the child a chance to “recover” through homeschooling, unschooling, or 1:1 school setting. In the public schools, after a child has refused school enough, the district eventually has to offer an alternative, which can be made either through a parent or doctor request. The alternatives that public schools have to offer are usually not advertised publicly, so parents have to do some digging. However, these independent study programs are often very structured and not a fit for 2e learners, so be sure to explore them with an eye towards what is a good fit for your unique child. Is Montessori a fit for 2e? These programs tend to be goal-directed, so consider whether your child will be interested in those goals. Also, a mixed age classroom can be good when you’re the young one and have the opportunity to stretch upward, but may be less engaging when the child is on the older edge of the group and may run out of new things to do. Some Montessori schools won’t let students move beyond the age-grouped material. How do you get a diagnosis for 2e? “2e” is not a recognized diagnosis in the DSM-V, but many neuropsychologists will evaluate for strengths and challenges, and may acknowledge it narratively in their reports. If you can afford it, get a private neuropsych evaluation. If you cannot afford a private evaluation, you can request an evaluation in writing through your public schools. Learn more about this process in this past REEL event on “Working the System.” How do parents choose a school? Start by making a pros/cons list of your current situation and potential new schools. Then, weigh the areas that are most important to you. Consider whether you can mitigate the cons in other ways; for instance, if the school has the psychological safety you’d like for your child but doesn’t offer classes in a specific area (language, computer science, art), can you afford to address those outside of school? What about leaving friends at their current school? You can keep friends from the old school, it just takes a little extra effort. For example, find activities they enjoy doing together. Plus, if you transition at a natural point such as the start of middle school or high school, it’s more likely that friends will already be going in different directions anyway. What if you have a teacher/child fit challenge in a school situation? Should you definitely switch schools? Not necessarily. Think about your options. Can you switch to a different classroom? Be sure to use ‘I statements’ when you speak with the school (rather than placing the blame on the other party), and then have heart to heart about the challenges. Work to uncover what’s concerning the teacher and collaborate to come up with plans. Keep in mind that middle school will probably be the hardest years. Be sure to preserve your relationship with your child, teach self advocacy skills, involve counselor / school psych, and discuss resiliency building. What if school cannot feed my child’s interests? This depends. If your child has esoteric interests, focus on giving them time outside of school to explore those options. In this case, you’d want to protect their free time to allow for exploring interests. Consider self paced learning or local club meetups. Less rigor at school gives more free time, and that is just one of the trade-offs you might want to consider as you think about the best school environment for your particular child. Final Thoughts Lisa encouraged everyone saying, “You’re all good parents, just for trying to find the best school situation for your child.” Keep in mind that there’s only so much you can do, so have compassion for yourself and your child. Your child can’t work on every skill and challenge at the same time. Keep the focus on your child’s strengths as much as possible. Let go of preconceived notions and change your parenting mindset. You are not in control, so just do the best you can in this moment. And, remember that your relationship with your kid should always be priority #1. For 1:1 school consultations, please contact services@reel2e.org or drlisawhite@summitcenter.us

Are you stressed about what the future looks like for your 2e child? Will your 2e kids be ready for college? What do they need to think about in high school to be ready for college? Will colleges support such unique learners? How do kids who are intellectually bright but struggling in school because of a learning disability going to present to colleges? Dr. Marci Schwartz joined us to talk about what colleges do to support kids with unique learning profiles, what the considerations are for parents and students as they move through the high school years, success stories, colleges that are open and supportive, and more. Hear her insights to help alleviate a lot of the fear and anxiety parents have about their 2e kids' futures as well as practical tools and tips for navigating the high school years with an eye on the future. Dr. Marci Schwartz started Thrive College Counseling where she works with students with unique learning profiles. She began Thrive College Counseling in order to offer students an opportunity to learn the skills necessary for independence, and provide support in locating the best college fit to meet their educational and social/emotional needs. . Read the Video Transcript here: "I'm Yael Valek, and I'm a co-founder of REEL, and I'm joined tonight by my co-founder, Callie Turk. For those of you who are new to REEL, welcome. For those of you who have been part of our journey, we're excited to be together again. At REEL, we work to build bridges between twice-exceptional learners, their educators, and their parents. In case you're not familiar with twice-exceptional or 2E, they are learners who experience both exceptional strengths as well as learning differences. Before I introduce our speaker, I just want to let you know how we're going to run the session. We're using the webinar function in Zoom, so everyone's video and audio are turned off. We gathered a lot of questions during the registration, so thank you everyone for submitting those. Most of those questions will be answered by Marcy's presentation, but feel free to use the Q&A button to submit any other questions. We'll monitor them and pose as many of them to Marcy throughout and after the presentation as we can. Also, feel free to use the chat feature to post comments, though we're not going to monitor that for questions. We are recording the session and we will be sending out the link and further instructions so you can watch it again later. If you have to jump off the call early but would like more information about REEL, please visit our website, which is www.reel2e.org . In past parent meetups, lots of our members have expressed interest in better understanding the transitions that our children will face. We've heard a lot of anxiety from our parents about what the future looks like for their 2E children. So we're very excited to welcome Dr. Marcy Schwartz, who will help us all better understand how to prepare for the transition from high school to college for 2e students as well as offer true-life stories from her work. Marcy founded Thrive College Counseling in order to support teens with learning differences make the difficult but important transition to adulthood. College Thrive Counseling works with students to discover their best college fit in order to ensure a successful transition to the college or program of their choice after high school. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and began her career as a therapist. Marcy uses her experience as a clinician to work with students to understand and develop the skills necessary to be confidently prepared to attend college or other post-high school programs. She is an adjunct clinical associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. We met Marcy through the Stanford Neurodiversity Project's K-12 work group and we knew right away that she'd be a great person to bring to our REEL family. So welcome, Marcy." Dr. Marcy Schwartz's Presentation "Thank you. It's great to be here and it was great working with you both on our committee. I'm sorry that it never happened because of coronavirus, but hopefully in the future. Whoops. Okay. So, I'm going to jump right in and I'm going to get started by talking about the differences between high school and college, and then I'm going to talk a bit about some of the main skills that are good to be aware of when you're working with your students and preparing them for that transition. And I will be taking questions as they come up and at the end. Differences Between High School and College for 2e Students "So, the first thing to start out with is understanding how high school is different than college because it is quite different. In high school, the goal of the experience of high school and educating your students is to help them to achieve success. So when you have an IEP or a 504 meeting, the adults are gathered around and they're figuring out, 'How can we help the student be successful? What could we modify? What can we change? What... you know, how can we make any differences in the curriculum to engage the student?' All of the conversations, the supports, and the discussion are around success for that child. In college, that is not the case. I mean, clearly, they want them to be successful—the college students—but their goal is different. The laws are different, and the goals are different. In college, the goal is to give the student access to resources. So if a student... if you look at a visually impaired student, the goal of the college is not to find that visually impaired student on campus and say, 'Let me help you and let me figure out all the things you need to be successful on campus.' The goal is for the student to go to the disability office  and say, 'I have a visual impairment. These are my needs. How can you give me access to the curriculum so I can learn at my best?' And then the school needs to do that. So the whole energy around getting services is just very different. The main goal of that for you, for families, to understand is that the student is going to need to advocate for what they need  in order to get access. Whereas, you see in K through 12, you might ask for those resources, but it's up to the school to meet with you and to make sure that that happens. The adults are really in charge of that. As you can see in the second bullet point here, the school has primary responsibility for arranging the accommodations. As I mentioned, in college, the student has the primary responsibility for that. I will say it's not just a one-stop-shopping thing where the student goes up to the disability office, advocates that one time, the disability office says, 'Yes, you're going to have extended time on tests. These are your list of your accommodations. Awesome.' And the student is done. That's so not true. The student needs to take those accommodations and bring it to the professor and say, 'Hey English professor, I need to take my test in a quiet room. I get these accommodations.' And that's how it happens. Then when that semester ends and they get a new set of teachers the next semester, they need to have that conversation and have it again. So, self-advocacy is an ongoing piece  of the college experience when it comes to the accommodations the student needs. In high school, the parents have access to the student's records and are really a part of all these meetings. In college, parents do not have access, and the disability offices in colleges are not... you know, they love it when parents come in initially just to kind of help, but then they want the parents to leave. This is really supposed to be a student-centered time in college, and the colleges are going to be pushing that. There are some waivers that students can sign to give parents access to the grades and to be able to speak with disability offices, and that's something that definitely happens for a variety of reasons, whether it's medical reasons or other things. So there are ways for parents to be able to have that access that's more similar to high school, but there are some hoops that one needs to jump through, and the student's going to have to be okay with it as well. In high school, teachers can modify the curriculum and say, 'Oh, I know that you really like reading these kinds of books. So in this class, we're reading this book, but you read this other book because I know you'll get through it, it'll be less anxiety-provoking,' or whatever. That's making a modification in the curriculum, and that's really not going to probably happen in college. It's just a different standard of what professors are willing to do around changing the curriculum. And also around tutoring: right now, your students might... you might be paying for tutoring or getting extra tutoring that's part of the IEP. It's actually better in college that there's tutoring for pretty much everything 24/7 in some schools, that you don't... it's available to everybody. So if a student wants tutoring, that's not a problem in college because it's not something that falls under the disability office. I could go into more detail because there are different levels of tutoring and types of tutoring as I'm sure many of you guys are aware of. So there's more specialized educational support that could be available, but just straight-up tutoring is just part of the college experience, which is nice. College Support Models "Colleges are going to offer different levels of support for students. The compliance model  is the basic one. The majority of colleges receive federal funding. Those who don't, that are more religious, are going to be different. If they're not receiving federal funding, they don't have to follow the ADA, and so it's a little bit different, but the majority of colleges are going to have to have a compliance model. This basically means that they're going to provide anything that's considered standard, which would be giving basic access. So, if it is a visually impaired student, in order to give access, they're going to have to make sure that whatever material the student needs to read will be an audiobook or Braille—whatever accommodations that school's students have agreed upon—then that needs to happen. And that's a basic giving access to that student to the education that they are paying tuition for. So, note-takers, extended time on tests, testing in a quiet room—those are some of the basic ones that you can expect to be able to get. Many schools will want a neuro-psych eval or an updated eval. It could be or just an IEP or a 504 or some documentation that the student received these types of supports in high school, and therefore many of the colleges will be able to offer that without too much difficulty in a college setting. When students are asking for things outside of something basic, then they're going to want to see more documentation. I was just listening this morning to a webinar from a disability office at a college, and they were talking a lot about how they get requests for housing. They want... they want access to their own room, and the student says, 'Well, I have anxiety,' and they have no documentation about it. 'But because I have anxiety, I want my own room, and I don't want to have a roommate.' So many colleges are not going to be awesome with that without any documentation. Some students might say, 'Well, I just met a therapist twice. My therapist, my new therapist, says that I need that.' It's really going to be a judgment call with the college to say the level of documentation they're going to need for requests like that. But for compliance, it's going to be some of the basic stuff. The moderate programs  are colleges that offer resources for students without an extra fee. They've just decided that they want to do more for students. So they might have executive functioning workshops. They will have peer mentors that if the student is having difficulty joining a club and they just need somebody to go with them, they feel comfortable, they have some social anxiety, then they might have that type of a program. They might have a tutoring club or just something that... you know, different things that they offer students to help them feel more connected. Some will have them start if you're part of the disability office, like you've registered, then they might have a couple of earlier days of orientation before the rest of the campus comes on. So there's a lot of different things that colleges are doing now to really increase the comfort of the students so that they can get their bearings. But they're not... but they're still there. They're basic services on steroids, but they're still basic. That would be the moderate. Now comprehensive , that's a whole other thing. For the comprehensive, it's almost like a giant resource room at the college that you pay an extra fee. They will... you show up there multiple times a week. The student just... he knows, he walks in, 'Hey Johnny, how was that test yesterday? It was fine. Open up your backpack, let's see what's going on. How is this professor?' Like you get a... your student is known. They know people to go to. If they say, 'I'm having trouble with my roommate,' 'Oh, let's figure out about that.' And they'll go and they'll walk with them. 'Where can we go and how can we get help?' And so that is more comprehensive. And within all of these, I can tell you school A has a comprehensive program and school B is a comprehensive program, but they're going to be different. But it definitely indicates that whatever the need of that student is, if that student has dyslexia and they need a comprehensive program, there are colleges that offer comprehensive programs for students with dyslexia. But that same college that we're saying, 'Oh, that's a great comprehensive program,' if you have a student with autism, it may not be great. So just because it's comprehensive doesn't mean it's right for everybody. It means that that's a great comprehensive program for that particular type of student. So it gets into the weeds a little bit, but you should just know as parents that there are those resources out there. Skills for College Readiness "Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about some of the skills that are good to be aware of as parents. Whether you have an elementary-age kid, a middle schooler, or a high schooler, these are things to be starting to address, developmentally appropriately, because these are the skills. Self-advocacy  is the first one. I'm going to tell you what I'm expecting of students when they are seniors in high school about to go off to college, which is right this very second. I just had a conversation with a family today. They're just on the cusp, they can't quite decide: do they go to a school with a comprehensive program—it's an awesome program, a great fit for the student—or do they take a gap year and go to... they would take college classes but they would live with people who are academically capable but need a little bit more time to build the self-advocacy and the independent living skills? Just today, I was having a conversation with a family, and I asked them this question: 'Do you feel that your son is capable of independently, without prompting, consistently and in a timely way, knowing that he needs help and being able to know who he has to go to and ask for help and actually articulate that he needs help?' And it was very... you know, the both parents are like, 'Oh no, not like that.' So when you say self-advocacy, I think it's easy to think, 'Yeah, well, I told my kid to ask the math teacher for, you know, help on his math and he did.' Well, that's awesome, but that's... that's... it's awesome on the developmental line, but if you're a senior about to go off to college and you're that... if you think about the prompting that needed to be able to go on that, then it's not so ready. So self-advocacy is something that you want to build over time  so that the student is able to do that more independently. Even if they can't, even if they're college-capable academically but they're not ready in this area, like, just for my example, there was another program that we had all set for this kid. So it's really just a question of, you know, he was accepted to both. We have many options. It's really now the parents' and the student's decision as to the fit. But from worrying about, 'Is there a place for my child based on their readiness?' there is. But you want to... the goal is, 'Let's build up these skills as much as possible while they're at home,' and then we'll figure out what their next step is after high school. So, I kind of went through that. So we're good. Oh, and the other thing with this is that it's not just academic, it's interpersonal. Like, 'If you're having trouble with your roommate, medical, does the student know when they're sick and say, 'I think I have a fever. I don't know what to do,' and at least call the parent and say, 'I think I have a fever. I don't know...' but at least they're doing something as opposed to just going to class and not feeling well. So that self-advocacy needs to happen in more than just the academic. Social skills  are another big piece. And I get a lot of questions or... you know, we have a lot, I have a lot of discussions with families where students tend to not... for all families, but there are certain situations where the student is around the same people for many years. There are some schools that they are in the same elementary through middle school, middle school through high school. And so there is such a comfort and such a familiarity, and their social network may not be that broad. And so there is a high comfort level, which is awesome because then you see the student feeling good about themselves, high self-esteem, very competent. But then when I ask a family in that situation, 'If there was a substitute teacher in that comfortable bubble, would that student talk to them and have a discussion and ask for help? Or if a new student joined the school, how would that go?' Then you can kind of get a sense about, 'Okay, so how good is...' you know, when I ask, 'How are the social skills?' and it's all through a lens of comfort. We need to look outside of that lens of comfort and make sure that the student is able to use those same social skills that they use when they're comfortable when they're not comfortable, or at least ask for help to figure out how to get comfortable with that other person. Because when students go off to college, everything is new . Roommates are new, classmates are new, professors are new, the dining hall is new—everything is new. So just be mindful of when you're thinking about your child's social skills. It's not just, 'How are they doing with familiar?' but be aware of the unfamiliar. But if you have like a fourth-grader, don't worry about that. It's like... this is like looking at more of a trajectory. In fourth grade, you're really building confidence and basic skills. But if you have a high schooler, this is something to really think about. So, just kind of... I know that there's a wide range of ages, so just... you know your children, and I'm talking about more of a range. Independent Living Skills "So, independent living skills , this covers a lot. Will the student do chores? Are you prompting them to brush their teeth? Shower is a big thing that's always an interesting question. 'Will your child shower independently?' If I ask it like that, 'Yes, they will shower independently after I've prompted them to shower,' meaning that yes, they know they will wash their hair, they know how to wash their hair once they're in the shower. But so this is a tricky question, and you have to ask it in many different ways to make sure that... obviously, this is not relevant to a fourth-grader. They can still, there still makes sense to be prompting. But for high schoolers, one would expect them to be able to say, 'I need a shower. I'm going to go shower,' pretty independently. A lot of the students that I work with, that doesn't happen. There's still the prompting to make that happen. When you're in college, you need to be able to do that because the roommate complaints can be pretty, you know, challenging for students, and they may not know what to do with a roommate complaining about, 'I don't think I smell,' and you know, meanwhile, they haven't showered and they're not... because those prompts weren't there. So those basic hygiene things are important. If your child is using medication, it's important to... you know, taking medication for ADHD or whatever it is that they need, to be able to understand why they're taking it, to have a plan to build their skills of remembering to take it. A lot of parents, it's on their... it's they have breakfast, their juice, their breakfast, and then their their morning medication is right there. And again, depending on the age or your unique situation, that could be fine. But if we're about to send them off to college and there's no plan for that transition, that's important as well. And so those are... (Callie) "Marcy, yeah, this is Callie. You're making me think, too, about refills. Like, how do you teach your child to get refills of medication? Where do they go? When do they..." (Marcy) "It's a very important question. It's something to discuss with the prescribing physician if it's a psychiatrist or the... because some, depending on where the student will go off to school, some will just come home and just kind of keep their regular routine. But if the student is going farther away, then there's typically a discussion about transfer of care to to the college, and it's being followed there. But regardless, the student is going to need to know how to refill their medication and when to do it. Of course, there's that like, 'Oh, but I finished my last pill yesterday, so I'm going to call tomorrow.' Depending on the medication, that may not be awesome. And so a lot of that will need to be practiced before the student goes. Other things that are really important around independent living skills, one of the biggest things that I get that gets discussed in my office is the internet use . Many families—so if this is you, you're in really good company—many of the families they just turn off the internet in the household at a certain time, so there are no arguments because nobody's using anything and it's managed by the family, and the student gets a good night's sleep and everything is fine because there is no access, and they don't take phones away or any of that. So that is something when I ask a family, 'Is the student able to independently manage their internet and go to bed at a reasonable...' because that's usually, those things go together: 'Students not managing their internet, they go to bed really late, they oversleep, they miss class.' Like, that's the fear. And then the families might say, 'Yes, we can... you know, internet is managed independently.' And then you dig deeper, kind of like with the shower, and you learn it's managed independently because they're turning it off because... so it feels independent to the student, right? Wouldn't it? Because they're doing it because they're not on it, but somebody else turned it off. And that kind of thing is really important to be mindful of. And again, it really depends on the age of your student. If you're a middle schooler, that's fine. Like, we're in tricky times, you know, I understand. But if you have a student who's ending high school and is not really aware of the importance of managing their internet and it's a difficult thing, then that's something to have a conversation about because nobody is turning off the internet in college. There's one school that I have visited recently where they, I think this is the best idea, they made the internet slower in the student's room and they made it faster in the common areas to encourage social contact so students wouldn't isolate themselves in their bedrooms playing games. It's much better to play the games because it needs faster internet in the common areas, and that was very interesting. But yeah, there's internet everywhere. So this is a question I'll ask families, 'Would this student be okay if their parents were out of town for a weekend or a week?' And I'll gauge the amount of time based on the family, and you know, you get all kinds of answers, and it's a good question for all of us to ask, you know, what would happen? Would the dog get watched? Would the fish survive? When would anybody eat? Would showering happen? You can always play around with it and say, 'So what if mom and dad left town but they left a big load of laundry and asked you to fold it? What do you think the chances are that the laundry would be folded before they got home?' And like, usually, families they kind of look at each other and laugh and be like, 'Yeah, well, maybe it would get folded.' And that's all fine, but it's just asking those kinds of questions and imagining, 'If you left your child alone, what would happen and what wouldn't happen?' And that's a good indicator to help you as a parent know what you should work on next because you're not going to get all of this stuff done at once, but it helps you to kind of prioritize and what's important to you and what skills do you want your child to learn. The other thing I'll do for high schoolers who are later on in high school, 11th or 12th grade, where we're really not sure about the student's ability to go off right away and head into college, first-semester freshman year in dorm living, is asking the parent to write down, keep track of just for a day or two, the amount of times, all of the times that they prompt their child. 'Honey, it's time for dinner.' 'How many times do you have to do that?' 'You got to get your homework.' 'We got to do this.' 'We got to do that.' 'I told you we need to.' And how many times, which of the things, which are the times of day, and how many times do you need to prompt? And then that is really helpful. You shouldn't tell your student you're doing it, but you just do it for a day even, and you look at that and you're going to get a sense of, 'Okay, we have, there are some areas, I see on prompting a lot.' And then, you know, trying to work with a therapist or yourselves figuring out strategies that you can build so that your student can be more independent and less dependent on you to prompt. So that's independent living skills. There's a lot to say about that, isn't there? Self-Determination "Okay, so I want to say a word or two about self-determination  because this is a concept that incorporates a lot, actually all of the things that I was just talking about, but I think it's worth describing a little bit in more detail because it's one of those intangible things that you see in some students when... and when you... I'll have a conversation with a student and like in my heart I'm feeling this... this child is ready for college. What are some of the things that a student might say or that how the conversation might go that makes me feel like that? And so usually, I'll ask the students to tell me some of the challenges that you have with school and what are your some of your strengths. And the student is able to say, 'I struggle with math, I have a math tutor for that. I'm in this other math class, but I'm really good at English and I do these other things.' So that's a student who can tell me their strengths and challenges. They can tell me the help that they're getting. That's some self-awareness. And then I can ask some questions about self-advocacy. 'So if you were having trouble with your math and your math tutor didn't come, what would you do?' And they can kind of answer that. And that there's a confidence in them. Like, 'Of course, my tutor didn't come. I needed my other tutor. Why wouldn't I need a tutor? Of course I knew that.' Like, there's... 'I know the student is expressing this idea that I know that I need these supports to be successful, and I know I'm going to be successful, and so I'm going to go get these supports because why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I have this tutor?' Like, there's this energy in the conversation that there's an independence. They're not looking at their mom and saying, 'Well, what would I do?' because they don't need to. It wouldn't occur to them because they know, 'I'm going to college. I'm going to be successful, and this is why.' And there's there's something in the way a student is able to talk about these kinds of issues: their self-advocacy, their ability to function independently, manage things, make an adjustment. 'If something didn't work one way, well, what do you do?' 'Well, I would go here, I would ask for help, I would do this.' Like, they would make an adjustment. And all of that gives a feeling to me that this student has enough resources and enough determination and like, inner sense of focus of where they want to go and what they want to do that their disability at that point really doesn't matter because they know how to get the help, they know what help that works for them, what help doesn't work for them. And as long as that help is in front of them and that they can access it, those students, I don't... I don't think twice about because they have that self-determination. And if they needed something, I know they'll email me and say, 'I'm having trouble with this. Can you help me figure out how to get that?' And we're all going to be great. And that's kind of what the goal is with college readiness is is having that sense of self-determination. And it's the kind of thing we're developing all the time, right? Like, I don't expect a high school senior, freshman in college, who have perfect self-determination, but you can kind of see the evolution in students of their integrating their strengths and challenges, being able to ask for help, and their awareness—all of that that kind of creates this sense. Disclosing a Diagnosis on a College Application "So, these are some questions that were asked, and then we'll go into some others, I think Callie will help us with those. So, what are important things to know about disclosing a diagnosis on a college application? Your student does not need to disclose a diagnosis. There's no... nobody's going to ask you for it. You have no... you don't have to tell anybody. The disability office is not connected to the admissions office. The only way a student would share that is because they wanted to, and they wanted to write an essay about it or something like that, and that's how they will know about it. And I will tell you, I would say about 80% of my students want to actively insist about writing about their disability. And my job is to help craft that essay so that it shows a trajectory of understanding their challenge, what did they do about it, and how did they grow from it so that the college people are really getting a sense of, it's not just about, 'Oh, look, I have these challenges,' but, 'This is who I am within, even though I have these challenges. Look at the person that I am.' As long as that comes through, that's fine. And I have not seen students... I've not gotten the feeling from a student's application process when you see where they get accepted to and don't get accepted to, that there was ever any student that I was like, 'Wow, that student should have gotten in there, but I don't think they got in because they shared the diagnosis.' Like, that has... it's actually been the opposite. And I've had to... I've read a couple of essays that I was like, 'Whoa, I'm really worried. Like, you are sharing like a lot.' And I emailed the parents, 'I'm like, wow, you know, you guys better... it's not my essay, it's not my choice, I can only advise it.' I'm like, 'This is a lot of sharing that not necessarily you need to go through.' And they're like, 'No, we're doing it,' and the student got in. Like, it did not... so even I was wanting to pull back and it didn't have an impact. So as long as you do it well, it doesn't... it doesn't impact. And actually, it's not allowed to impact. Like, they can't say, 'Uh, this student was otherwise acceptable, but because they have ADHD or whatever, we chose not to accept the student.' They can't do that. What are some examples of students I've worked with the application process?  Do you want me to go through that, Callie, or were there other questions do you think I should hit first? (Callie) "I think if you could just give a couple of examples, that would be great." (Marcy) "Okay. Okay, so let's talk. So again, I'm changing names and I'm going to do a compilation, but we'll call this first one Andy because my brother's name is Andy and his birthday's tomorrow, so we'll call him Andy. Student Andy. Okay, so I had known Andy for, I don't know, like seven years. I've known him off and on. I ran a camp, you know, well, just through different circumstances. And he was a late-diagnosis student. So, very bright. It's one of those students where because of the high IQ and the high capacity for doing schoolwork, he didn't really need to study. Why would he? He listened to the material, he regurgitated it right back. He, you know, didn't need to build study skills. And had good grades, and really wanted to be in computer science. And this was a great place to live. You know, Dad was a computer scientist, and he had that kind of... that was his world. But then, when it came to college and we're sitting there, and this is a kid who can really go far—he tests well, school comes easy. 'Let's take some community college classes,' I've decided with them, 'just to kind of challenge you and see how you do. And let's get you in a learning environment that's a little bit different to make sure that you're going to be able to handle that setting.' And so that was a very interesting process because all of a sudden, in a different setting, there were different expectations. The studying is different. The expectation is, 'You're just supposed to sit in class.' There's not a lot of class discussion where this student took his community college class. A lot of information was coming at him. It was hard for him to take it all in. He didn't feel like he needed to read the book because he never really had to, because in high school, he was able to just absorb the material in the way it was presented to him. And now it's being presented differently, and he really had no study skills. Like, why would he? He's never studied for a test before, never had to. And so that's a typical situation that I see with students is that they're so bright that they don't have those basic skills of sitting down and taking notes, close reading, all of that stuff. It doesn't come naturally to them. But now we have a situation where this is like, you know, 11th, 12th grader, and they've got it in their head that they've got this. They've got academics. They struggle in other areas, they might accept the fact that they have these other challenges, but academics they've got dialed in. And they're not happy confronting the fact that academics actually may be a problem in this one way, that they might have something to learn. And that conversation is tricky. And helping a student to be open enough to realize that in their area of strength that they need some additional support. And that kind of a situation is pretty common that I see in my work because I work with students who have... they're very bright but they have these other challenges. And that takes a team. So, depending on how open the student is to making some changes, you saw in my self-determination slide like there was the adjustment section and the self-evaluation. That is hard to come by even for adults. And so when we are asking the student to say, 'Hey, the way you saw yourself as, you know, 10 out of 10 in academics and now you're in a different setting and you're not, how can you adjust to that?' We all need to make changes, but when you struggle in other areas, that's hard. It's really hard to do. And that's why we want to make sure that we're letting our students know that this is expected. Like, the fact that you are struggling like this, why wouldn't you? There's no way that all of you have all of the skills that you're going to need academically by the time you're 16 or 17. Like, that's just not the way it rolls. But it's a hard thing for some students to adjust to. So, that particular student, yeah. (Callie) "So, how do you help a student adjust to that? How do you walk them through that?" (Marcy) "Well, with Andy, we... you know, he... I had to have a separate meeting with the parents. And Andy knew that I was doing that and kind of talked about this and I talked about it with him as well about the importance of being open to learning new ways of learning and and seeing things through a little bit of a different angle. And we really talked about a therapist that was more like, not so much a therapist like, 'Tell me how you're feeling,' but more of a therapist coach. So, sometimes they're like a little bit of a hybrid: an executive functioning coach and therapist to really have some concrete work going on but then also, 'So, why are you struggling with that? How can we change this up so you can be more open to that?' And looking at the disability office and what kinds of supports are there. And they'll walk the... some of the executive functioning coaches that I work with, they will walk the student to the disability office at the community college. They'll go through it with them about the supports that are available. So, the therapist slash and or executive functioning coach really helps working with the parents and really breaking down the college readiness thinking that the student needs to incorporate and then bringing that into the home. Sometimes it's about increasing dialogue about strengths and challenges. Parents maybe need to be more open about the things that they struggle with so that the student can feel like, 'This is not just about me.' 'I never realized that my mom is terrible and she's a terrible cook and who really knew and Dad has been covering for her terrible, you know, the fact that she's a terrible cook.' And help the students see people in a more three-dimensional way, because we all need help with things. But students, some students depending on their challenges, may have trouble seeing the different elements of the people around them and pointing that out. And then sometimes working together, if the parent says, 'You know, I need to build this skill, you need to go. Let's work on it together. You help me, I'll help you.' So, kind of coming beside the student and building the skill as opposed to saying, 'Listen, if you want to go off to college, Marcy says you need to have this skill so we need to get... let's get...' That's not... that's like not coming beside. It's the opposite. So, for many of the students that I work with, it's figuring out where they're at, what they're going to be able to be okay with, and then coming beside them and slowly moving them in that direction. (Callie) "You know, I love that. I love that concept of coming beside the students and helping... helping move with them. I think that's important to remember that even as our kids are becoming young adults, that they're not adults. They're still teenagers. They still need us there beside them. Sometimes they don't want it, but yeah. Related to this example, we got a question from Helen who wanted to know, in this example specifically, is a student able to get into a four-year program and then defer and take one or more community college classes? Like, is that sometimes how you help families gauge if their child is really ready or not?" (Marcy) "So, in the student Andy, he took a community college class while still in high school. So, he took that over the summer. And that's a good way to kind of play around with practicing these skills. But with some students, they will take a gap year and build those skills if... if looking at going right into a four-year college may be too much for them. But it's my feeling that we want to practice these skills as much as possible while they're at home and just pushing them a little bit. And so seeing how far we can push the students because one of the things that I want to avoid with students is those secondary diagnoses that can happen of anxiety, of depression when they're off in college because they got pushed too far. It was too tricky, and they didn't have those their typical supports and they didn't have the ability to create these new supports because they didn't realize how hard it was going to be. And then you see students, they can get depressed, they can get anxious, they stop going to class and they feel worse. And we want to really, like, that is... that scenario is what I want to throw my body in front of. Like, I do not want... if there's anything I could do to prevent that, that's what I would do. And that's why I like to play around with the opportunities in high school so that we know, 'Oh, yeah, this class in community college of the summer was too hard. He got really anxious.' And I'm thinking, 'I'm so glad we figured that out now and we could do something about it.' And then, so I'm kind of relieved, actually, because then when we can get the help as opposed to not having found that out and waiting. Does that answer your question?" (Callie) "I don't know. I think that's a great answer. I think there's some good ideas there for how we can use the last few years of high school to play around, right? And figure things out, not wait until it's too late. So, Marcy, I want to thank you for taking the time to put together this thoughtful and informative presentation. And you did address many of the questions that people pre-submitted. We did have a few additional questions, and I have one also coming in, a couple coming in from the audience. So just as a reminder to everyone, we'll get to as many of your questions as we can. Hopefully, we'll be able to get to all of them, but we are going to keep an eye on the time. And we will work with Marcy to send a follow-up email to any questions we may not be able to get to tonight. So, you've gone through a lot of great information about how to think about what different colleges offer. Are there any really good resources that you would recommend to find listings or the information about colleges that support the different learning needs? So you kind of went through comprehensive and compliance and moderate. Like, how would you actually find a listing to understand what those options are other than you of course, which we know you are a great resource." (Marcy) "So, I know that people use... there's... it's called the K&W Guide , like the letter K. (Callie) "Can you say that again?" (Marcy) "It's the letter I can send it to you, but it's the K like letter K and W, the letter W. It's a book that covers a lot, like, colleges and the disability supports that they have. Honestly, I actually don't own that. I know that that's the book that people will suggest. But I'll tell you why. You know, so if you if you just went right now and googled 'best colleges for students with disabilities,' you're going to get a range, and it's a good place to start. But what you'll find out is that they each have their own little area of specialty. And the main thing to look at first is to know what the student needs . So for example, I was just at American University. They have a great program for students with dyslexia, those reading and writing challenges. They... it's comprehensive. They... you actually have to... you have to get accepted to American. That's true for all the schools. And then you have to get accepted as a student, but then you have to fill out a separate application, and then they interview you, and they... they don't take everybody. Like, they're going to... they're going to make sure that you are a fit for what they offer. And so maybe they take, I don't know, a half, three-quarters of the people, but not everybody with dyslexia is getting in there. And then they just... then it's very specific, and that program is for you. So, if you were that kid that went across the country, you happen to have this challenge that, you know, fits in this mold, then that's an awesome program. But that's going to be listed. But part of your Googling of colleges with great support programs that could be on there. And so if you have a student that really needs more eyes on them, needs more of a... I was describing earlier that there's that giant resource room one. Like, that's a totally... American isn't like that, but it would still be listed under your comprehensive. So as tempting as it is to look for a list, my suggestion is that you start with the major that your student is interested in , like, bigger schools and smaller schools, the type of learning environment. There are so many different things around an educational environment. There's different seminar styles where there's a lot of discussion or there's very hands-on programs. There's colleges that have an upside-down model where the first two years are more like your typical junior-senior year where you're like doing and experiencing and then your last two years are more the foundational fundamentals of it. And so a bunch of my students love that because they're ready to dive right into the hands-on learning, and so an upside-down model is the best thing for them. So if you take a student like that and then you find this great school with an upside-down model and it has their major and then we... and we're like, 'Wow, that's a great fit for the student,' and then we start to look at the challenges. 'What does the student need to be successful there?' 'Well, he needs extended time on tests.' 'Well, you're going to get that anywhere.' 'Okay, what else does he need?' 'Well, he needs an executive functioning tutor five days a week.' 'Okay, what's available in the community? Let's contact the disability office. Who did they refer to for executive functioning?' And all of a sudden, you've put together an amazing college experience for this student. And so it's not as straightforward as, 'Where's the list?' It's more complex. And then you add other variables, I haven't even mentioned like the finances or the weather. I mean, the weather is such a big issue for many of the students I work with. Some are like, 'I hate cold. I will not be anywhere near cold.' And I'm like looking in Florida. And then others are like, 'Oh my god, I hate the heat. The heat's terrible. I will melt. I can't go anywhere near the heat.' And those are deal-breakers for students. So if I look at the K&W Guide, I'm like, 'Yes, this is the best school for my kid,' but it's in Florida, and they like... I was a waste of my time. So I kind of go in the other direction and see what I can work out with with accommodations. There are some schools that are just not going to work out. I mean, with some students, like you can fall in love with Columbia University. 'I love the major. I have to have this one.' 'That's so I want Columbia.' 'Like, this is the school for me.' 'It has these things, it's the perfect weather for me.' But then, academically, or like the... that's a competitive school. There's a competitive edge there. It's not warm and cooperative. It's a great school but not for everybody. And then, 'Oh, like that you got to take that off the list.' Like, that, you know, that's a recipe for disaster because one variable threw five good variables off. So it's like a bit of a puzzle that you have to spend looking at who the student is and what the pieces are as opposed to a list. (Callie) "Right, right. I like that idea, too, that you could find the school that has just what they want to learn and if they don't have all the supports at the school, how you can work in the community to make it work for your child. Too, is that... that's a great creative angle. So a lot of people, we have, you know, when we surveyed the attendees, we have everyone from elementary through high school. In fact, the attendees were about split between elementary and high school, middle or high school. And so one person had asked, you know, some people who have elementary school students when they're thinking long-term about what's best for their children, they want to know how important it is to think through their middle and high school selection. So one of the questions was, how helpful do you think a specialized school such as a school that's focused on dyslexia would be compared to a public school, or is there any value in staying in the public school system and having an IEP versus going to a more specialized school for elementary, for middle, and high school?" (Marcy) "So my feeling is just in general, obviously, I don't know the specific families, but my feeling in general is to meet the student's needs at the moment  because the self-esteem of the student, are they able to make friends, are they able to learn because the educational environment is meeting their needs? Are they in an environment where they can understand what it means to be a student and be a successful student as independently as possible? And if that is the case, it does... you know, that it doesn't matter the school. Like, there's a lot of specialized schools around here and kids get into colleges, like some of them, like, I'm like, 'Oh, wow, I'm thinking, wow, that's a pretty high-profile school and look at the school.' Like, I know you're at this very tiny specialized school. When students apply to college, this school sends a school report and it tells everything about that school. It tells the classes that are offered, it tells or they don't offer AP, it tells about free lunches, so like the socioeconomic... like, it tells so whoever's reading this transcript and looking at the student application, they have a context for where this student was educated. So those colleges know where the student is coming from. And it is amazing, students get into college. Like, I have not seen, 'Wow, you are a great candidate but I don't think you got in because you came from this specialized place.' That has not happened. So, I think that it's the opposite effect. Sometimes they're like, 'Wow, look at this student. He came when he was getting all this... what's... look at him. He's thriving. He's got this, he's got that.' But don't... so don't go to a specialized school because I just said that. Like, go with where the student, where is going to be able to build all of these independent living skills, social skills, academic confidence that... but in the moment. And if you need to make a change, then to go up or down or this way or that way, then that's fine. But I would not necessarily make a decision about today thinking about college. College will be there. It's building that foundation for the child because that's what will really set them up to thrive in the long run. (Callie) "Right. And remember when I said about that self-determination slide? Like, you had... you know, was a student getting a lot of their needs met and learning how to be a student and advocate and feel good about themselves? He's going to be one of those students I'm going to sit in front of and be like, 'You've got this,' like, and you're going to... 'You'll figure this out because I see that you have that ability.' And so that's really... and then I'll ask that same kid, like, 'Okay, so do you have prompting to shower?' Like, 'If your parents left you,' they'd be like, 'No, my parents leave me all the time.' Like, that's what we want. And that's the kid we want to send off to college and and we'll feel good about it. And that is nothing to do with grades. Grades are going to come, but that other piece... like, what I... I don't see students that have high self-determination and but more academic challenges, they do fine. They find their academic spot and they figure it out. The people who struggle are the high academic but low independent living skills, and they think that they're fine, and then they go off and they realize that they're fine and they don't have the tools to deal with it. That's the struggle. (Callie) "Well, this is... other question we got in our pre-submitted questions was very specific. They... you know, some of our twice-exceptional kids really struggle with the foreign language requirements both that you need to graduate from high school and that many colleges expect. So what are the options for college if you don't want to take a foreign language in high school?" (Marcy) "So a lot of it is going to depend on the documentation of the disability that's making language... I put like a second language tricky. So if it's, 'I feel like the second language stresses my child out,' but there's no documentation around that, that's going to be a challenge. But if there's... but there is if there is a disability, then in high school, it's working it out with the high school about any modifications that they need to make around their... their high school graduation requirements. But that usually is fine. But then there are next two questions, are what do the colleges expect regarding a second language for acceptance into that college? But then you have the other issue of you have to graduate. You have to graduate from that college and do they have a language requirement to graduate from college? And so those are school-by-school questions. And so that happens a decent amount in my world. And so I'll call a couple of the colleges for the family and just get some information. And then I'll put the student on that as well to make some of those phone calls. But basically, you're teaching by modeling for the student, 'Okay, this is my disability. I, you know, I'm can... if I don't have, I only have one year of a foreign language, but I meet all the other requirements and I... I have this disability, can I still apply? Will you still look at my application?' Typically, it's 'yes.' There's some schools that are just going to say 'no,' but many times it's 'yes.' And then the follow-up question is asking about the graduation requirements. Do they waive that? And usually, colleges will say, 'We need you to take... we'll waive the foreign language requirement, but you need to instead take a culture class.' So they might have to take two semesters of whatever culture and then that... then everybody is happy. But those are very individual questions to ask the colleges. (Callie) "Great. So this is the big question. I'm sure it's on everyone's mind, which is how do we think about all of this now with the coronavirus situation and how are colleges going to handle all of this?" (Marcy) "So they're... they're figuring out as they go right now. So they're modifying. So if you... if there's any current juniors about to be rising seniors, they might have heard that there's many of the colleges are waiving they need to take the SAT or the ACT. Not all of them, but certainly the UCs and the CSUs and a lot of schools like that. And so what that means is that if you've taken it already and you can take it, then you can submit it if you want, but they're not going to just... they're not going to disqualify you if you didn't take it. So the whole landscape is changing because now a question that we don't know: 'How are how are the UCs going to be looking at an applicant differently if they don't submit a score?' So they... I don't even think the UCs know that yet. And it's going to be a bit of a tricky time coming up, but they're going to figure it out. So this coming up year, it's going to be interesting. But going forward after that, some schools might remain test optional, but I'm sure many of the others are going to go back to the way that they were. And be mindful of the fact that test optional means that you don't have to send it in, but they'll still look at it. There's other schools that, some schools that are test blind, that if you could send it in, they're not looking at it. But so we're not talking about that. So if your student tests well and they want to send it in, you can figure out how to get a test and then if you don't have one already and get that in. So that's one piece of the change. The other is, you know, is it safe to go off to college? What should we... you know, how far away should we go? So there's... colleges are being very flexible for the most part. I was reading about one college in particular that just sent a letter out to students from the president, basically saying, 'We're planning on being live, like on campus, if we're not in in the fall. And if we're not, we will charge less for online. If you want to defer for a year, that's going to be fine with us. If you want to withdraw, we'll give you your money back.' Like, they understand and they're like, 'This is... we get it, and we're going to work with you.' 'If you want to come, come.' And so they're trying their best. Some schools are going to be more rigid because financially they can't do that. But it's going to be a tricky time for many people, but it's going to it's going to play itself out. But either maybe they're going to have their first semester online and then they'll show up in campus second semester. But it's going to be different. It is sad that probably going to be, I mean, you know, when I was in college, walking around with people with masks on, it would never occur to me, and that's probably what's going to be happening. And probably, you can't hang around the dining hall with masses of people and sporting events. Probably take out food that you go and you eat in your dorm because, you know, limiting connecting. But so nobody really knows what it's going to be like. But as far as, you know, figuring out from your end of just continue, I think just to press on and people will guide you. Does that answer that?" (Callie) "Well, and I think it gets back to a lot of your just readiness skills and your, you know, your self-regulation, your advocacy, your ability. You know, these are going to be changing times, and preparing our children as best we can to take care of themselves and regulate and be mindful and ride the wave, which is important. Important skill at any time, but they're even more important probably for the foreseeable future. Yeah. So, a lot of great questions are coming in. We're going to shift to those. If you all would please use the Q&A rather than the chat just so I don't miss your question. I can see there are some questions in the chat and I am really hoping to get to them, but it's easier for me to track them in the Q&A. So, Allison and Nancy, I see your questions so you don't have to retype them. But just a reminder for everyone else, if you could use the Q&A, that'd be awesome. So, one of the questions that came in on the Q&A was whether community colleges support students better than four-year colleges and whether we should use a community college path to work on those independent skills and then transfer to a four-year college. It sounded before like you were saying you like to experiment with that some when the kids are in high school, but that may not be possible for everyone. So, just curious if you think this is a feasible or an advisable path." (Marcy) "So, it is very student specific. Like everything is. But I'll kind of go through some of the areas to think about. So, first of all, the community college option is an awesome one. When you go for two years, you can have... they have these tag programs where there's guaranteed admission to some, but not all of the UCs or other schools or CSUs. And, you know, the price of paying two years of community college and then transferring to UC Santa Cruz, and then you graduate from UC Santa Cruz and nobody will ever know that you just did two years there, but you did it for half the cost, and you got that extra time to prepare and be ready for college is an awesome option for some students. So, there's... having said that, some of the downsides that I see with it, and again, it's based on the student, is that I have seen many of the students that I work with when they're working on some of those independent living skills where there's a lot of prompting that you end up having the two years of community college being two years of like extended high school because the student still comes home, they have dinner, the mom's like, 'You got to get dinner,' and I can... and there's still like it's hard to step up into independence when you're still at home. And it's, I mean, I don't know, like, even when I was like in my 30s and I would come home to my parents, my mom, my feet are up, and I'm not like if there's something about it that you just, you know, like you just kind of, 'My mom will do that.' Like, that's... that's... that's the relationship. And but meanwhile, I'm out there, I, you know, my whole life, and I'm totally independent. So, for... I get why that's a struggle. So if it's a student that's really struggling with stepping up in their independence or a parent is having trouble pulling back, then then that in and of itself is tricky. The other part of community college that's hard is it's... there's not much of a community. There's various ages there. There's not that campus social life. There are clubs, but it's not the same as when you're living in a dorm and you're all just kind of eating in the cafeteria for you, seeing each other at breakfast. Like, it's just a different energy. And if the student is really looking to make friends, that that's harder because they're just... they go to school and then they come home. And but for some students, it could be fine. But other students, it's not. If they're... they don't make the progress with the independent living skills and then that becomes more of a struggle. There are programs that you can go to where you, your student is in community college, they don't have to deal with the intensity of a four-year college, but they are living somewhere else where there's others that are working on their independent living skills. And that's kind of a good middle ground depending on the student. Does that answer that?" (Callie) "Great. Definitely. It made me think of that TV show, Community . So, Ari, someone else asked, 'Are you familiar with the CIP program for building independent skills? And if you are, what do you think about that program?'" (Marcy) "I am familiar with it. They're in line with others. So there's College Internship Program is the CIP. There's also the CLE, the College Living Experience. They're... these are all over the country. Like, they're... yeah, they're pretty much all over the country. I was actually just at one in Maryland. So, yeah, they are... they're definitely some advantages to them. They have people, they're working on their independent living skills. They could be taking classes. They could... they have tutors that are associated with them. And I think that they're worth a visit if you're... if you're looking for that. One of the issues that I have with it is that the students are living in apartments, like full-on apartments that I was not living in until much later. And these are also adults, now we're talking about, so we're talking about 18 year or above who are living in their own apartment and they're part of this program. So, for some students, it's awesome. For other students, they recognize that they can say, 'No, thank you,' when the tutor comes by or when the independent living skills person comes by and said, 'We're going to go doing some food shopping,' or 'Want to come join this group?' And so they have all this great stuff, but if it's not a student who's going to really take advantage of it, the setup is not great because, in my opinion, because it's their apartment. Like, there are not... there are other programs, it's more like a house. And so it's harder to avoid the people that are helping you. But these are apartments, and so for some students, it's awesome, but for other students, it's not. So again, like everything else, that's so student-dependent. I mean, if it works for the student, it's really a great option because they provide so many resources and supports to build those independent living skills. Just make sure it's not someone who says 'no' a lot. (Callie) "Earlier, it sounded like you might have suggested there are gap-year programs specifically designed to help kids. And maybe these are related, I don't know if these are different or similar. But are there... are there programs like gap-year programs that do help kids who need a little bit of extra help getting ready for college? And can you tell us a little more about those programs? And maybe these are the same thing, but I don't know, maybe there's something different." (Marcy) "So, there's it's it's a little bit of a language issue because gap  so the gap year implies that you're taking a gap, you know, in between high school and college. And so that's one thing of it. But then there's this idea of like a gap year program where you go and you travel and you build houses in South Africa or you do an internship. And they're they're structured year-long programs. So of those, I've had students who, that they graduated from high school, the parents realized, 'We're not ready for college. Let's apply to college, defer a year. Let's go to South... we'll send him to South Africa, he'll build houses, he'll mature, he'll come back, we'll go to college.' The problem with that... that I mean, not that it can't ever work. With the ones that end up in my office where it didn't work, is because there was no skill-building. Like the student... the reason why the student didn't go off to college is that they were getting prompted and they were doing all these things. But then when you do this other thing where you're like around other people and everybody is getting up to go build houses or whatever it is they're doing, and they're not teaching them how to be students. They're not teaching them, you know, these skills about working independently. Because when you're in college, like, nobody else has your schedule. You have to get up when you need to get up. You need to... when you need to eat. And those skills were not built in that particular program that the student spent during their gap year. So I just wanted to make that point of it. And so when we say gap years, then I guess the idea obviously is you're taking a year, but what's important to me is what are you doing in that year?  And what you need to do in that year is should be based on what skills you need to be able to go off to college. And so finding a gap year program that will build those skills. So, some... sometimes that skill is going off to Africa, you know, and building out, you know, things. But most of the students that I work with, it's not that. And there are programs where the students take community college classes, they work on their independent living skills, they work on living without their parents and starting to live that life of a student. But there are eyes on them. There's people guiding them. Everybody there is to learn these... is there to learn these skills. And so they're they make friends and it's so that's to me that's a gap year, but it's a program as opposed to the typical... (Callie) "And that's not the CIP or CLE. Like, is there... can you say like what are some of those programs or where do you find them?" (Marcy) "So a CLE or a CIP, I don't know that they build themselves as a gap year. You can use it as a gap year, but I don't think that they actually... I have no idea what they would say because they might want more than one year of your time as a student. So, what is the question? Like, what... what is the... so if it's... if if it's not one of those, then what are what are those programs and how do you find them? Like, if you are looking specifically for that kind of skill-building gap-year experience where you could take classes and work on living skills and there are eyes on you but it's not as much prompting as you might get at home, where do you find those kind of experiences?" (Marcy) "So, you can email me. I can get you some because, honestly, I know a lot of the folks and they're very different. And so somebody with ADHD with these issues versus autism, they're all like they... they create a community. And so just email me and this is some of my things and, you know, where do you suggest I look and I can just email some resources for it. But, you know, I can be great. I can give you a couple examples if that would be helpful. So, one of them would be, I would say, College Excel  which is up in Bend, Oregon. And another one is Mansfield Hall . You can look at those two. There's others, but you have to be mindful of the fact that there are a range of kids out there and there's a range of programs. And so, some don't have any therapists on and you need to go and if you're a student would benefit from the therapist, not that they can't have it, but it's it's outside of the program and they make sure you get there. But then there's other programs that there's therapists there. And so, there's so many... there's a lot of options depending on what would be right for the student. So, those are two to just kind of look at and think about, but families can just email me and learn more. (Callie) "And Marcy, can you go to the next slide so that people can see your website because that's probably the best way for people to find your email and your phone number if they want to be in touch with you." (Marcy) "Correct. There it is. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, email is the best. Yeah. (Callie) "Okay. So, we have a couple of questions that came in on the chat and the first one is, is there a resource or a place that can help your child or student find out what he's good at? So, like, someone a teacher or a therapist or a program that really can help dig into the areas that interest the child and help them see if college is actually the best place for him or what if it turns out that college isn't the best place, how do you figure out what his options are? Like it can't... like there's got to be something besides college or sitting on the couch. So, how do you know what else is out there besides college?" (Marcy) "So, do you think there's a lot in that one question. Do you think it's going for more like figuring out like careers and majors and like a resource for that? Does that seem like...?" (Callie) "I would say like based on even my own personal experience and and in this question is like, 'How do you how do you know what your child is good at? How do you help them understand their strengths and their interests?' Like, is there a way to help a child start to think about themselves in that way and assess themselves in that way? And then as you go through that, what if you decide college isn't the best choice? Then what do you do?" (Marcy) "Right. So, it depends really, depends on the age of the child. So if we're dealing with somebody younger and you're just trying to help them figure out what are they good at, the answer is really just a lot of different exposure. A lot, you know, some of the things that to think about is that if you're watching a movie with your child and somebody's in the Museum of Natural History, 'Hey, what do you think about dinosaurs? Do you like dinosaurs?' On a scale of one to ten, 'How much?' And you just kind of take notes and, you know, like so you watch movies and you ask questions based on that, based on your knowledge of your child and what do they like and then you can then start to explore that a little bit. Take a class or, you know, just try to dig into it a little bit is just to at least get... they don't have to that doesn't have to be their life's work, but it's nice for us all to figure out what we like to do. Pull out a jigsaw puzzle today. Like that, like in those kinds of things. Reading time and just so the student like all of those examples I was giving, none of them do I think that the student is going to be like a jigsaw puzzle major. But what I'm suggesting is that when students feel like they know what they like, like if I walked up to somebody and said, 'What game do you like to play with your mom the best?' And they said, 'Jigsaws.' Like, there's a sense of pride in that and that's what you want to go for. And then you're like, 'Wow, you must really like jigsaw puzzles.' And and then, 'What else is similar? Oh, if you like jigsaw puzzles, then you must be really good with your, you know, this.' Like, 'I wonder about that.' And like, one thing will lead to the next, but it has to feel organic. And so it's easiest when parents can kind of on those very basic things can help draw out the student to figure out where their areas of interest lie or the athletic. And so that would be I don't know if that really answers that question, but that's for the younger ones. (Callie) "Yeah. What about more of a high school age child and now you're..." (Marcy) "Yeah, it's different. Now you're thinking a little more intentionally. Yeah, right. But still building on that hopefully, but there's a program that I use called YouScience  which is Y-O-U-S-C-I-E-N-C-E and I use it in my practice, but you can do it on your own. And the student is a test for like it's like all online for like an hour and maybe an hour and a half, but it's a little bit like the Myers-Briggs. And what it does is that it tells the student all the different things like, 'Oh, you're really good at this and that.' Like, just, you know, word finding and things like that. But what I love about it is that it matches the student with careers. So it could show up there and said, 'You'd be a great therapist,' or 'a recreation therapist,' or 'this,' or 'that.' And and then you click on that and it tells you the amount of schooling you need to do that. And then you can kind of see a trend. There are students that really college is not their thing. They hate to be in class. They love to work with their hands. Like, and I think exposing students to apprentice programs and really learning about opportunities and that's all in YouScience. And it'll tell you the day in the life of a plumber and what is it like and what's the training, what should you be good at? And and so that that's a really good resource because when I read through it, some of them and I'll be like, 'I would hate that job,' because they need to stand up all day or they're outside all day and I'd have to wear a hat. I would hate it. And somebody else be like, 'Oh, that sounds great. I don't want to be in indoors, I want to be outside.' So it pulls to the unique. And that could be a good resource. (Callie) "So in thinking about that, that next step, like other than YouScience, are there other programs that you could look at to know what might be better for your child than college? I think YouScience is a great one, but when you say programs, do you mean like schools, programs, or do you mean like a program like I suggest like at YouScience?" (Marcy) "I think YouScience is great. I'm wondering if they're like, I'm thinking about is there anything like EvoLibri or anything else like that that can really help kids kind of figure this out if if college is the right thing for them or not, or maybe college is the right thing for them right now? Because you mentioned like apprentice programs and I'm like, 'How do you find out about apprentice programs?' Like, 'How would you even know where to start with that?'" (Marcy) "But it would pretty much go for what the student wanted. So, is it a student that's very hands-on and then they like to build things? Like I had a student, like his main thing was taking apart computers. He would go through the trash of throwing away computers, put them back together and then and then donate them to people. Like, love love love that. That's a great example of a student who could go totally apprentice work with his hands or go to college and also thrive. Thrive in both ways. And that's like, where do I go? And what do I do? And and then it really depends on the student's interest. Like some students cannot wait to get out of a learning environment that's like structured in class and they don't want to have that, you know, they don't want anything that it involves. So, I guess the only way that I know how to answer that question is a conversation with the student like to figure out like what interests them. And and I find that some students they're just not exposed. Like they don't realize, 'Well, if you go to college, then you could do this.' 'I didn't know I could do that.' And what's really interesting in my work is that when I take it, sit next to a student and I open up a website for a particular college and I'm like, 'Look at that major,' and then they're like, 'Brains are blown.' They're like, 'I did not know.' 'How do you...?' We've got a college-going kid, but I could have done that with an apprentice thing too. Like, but so much has been... (Callie) "Exposure. Yeah. Well, makes me wish I could go back and do it all over again. Sounds like very exciting. So, one person wanted to know if you could talk a little bit more about clients on the spectrum and how they either adjusted or didn't to going to college far from home because they said this is a big question for them and their current sophomore, like whether they would keep him close to home for college because he's nervous about going far away but there aren't as many choices close by which is true." (Marcy) "So, what we end up doing because it's a very common scenario in my office, we... so we're going to just only look at schools close by. That's it. And so we'll do that initially. And then while I'm meeting with the family, I'm going to get a sense about why is it so important to stay close by. So we're staying close by but, you know, just really starting to get to know the student a little bit and then whose issue is this, because sometimes it's the parents who really don't want the student to go far away and sometimes it's the student and sometimes it's both. A scenario that often happens is that it turns out there's family members in other states and that will open up a state for me. And then I can offer schools there. But what I find happens is that when I educate students and parents about the different colleges that might be a fit for them in different states, and they start to see the importance of fit and how I can have a school that's closer but it's still like it's just an extra hour, but except you're on a plane here versus that. And then this parent starts to see between 10th grade and 12th grade the huge amount of growth that students go through. And so we always keep those close-to-home schools on the list. Those are always a priority, but then we have these other schools that we're interested in. And then by the time, like right now, May 1st, of figuring out where is that student going to go, we have these options to play with. So, I never push the issue. I mean, sometimes I'll have to say, sometimes I'm so excited about a college for student that's far that I have to tell the family, 'I am so sorry. I am so excited. You just have to accept the fact that I'm excited about this school. But at the same time, I accept the fact that you're going to say no, but I'm still going to show it to you.' And then we can all process this together because there's sometimes there's schools out there that are not close and then it's okay if they don't go. You go with where you're supposed to go on May 1st, is that... (Callie) "I thought it was... it's very encouraging to hear you say there's huge growth from 10th to 12th grades because I think a lot of us have younger kids and or, you know, kids who we we aren't seeing that light yet that that's going to happen. So when you talk about what they need to be ready to do to go to college, it seems a little intimidating. And just knowing that there's growth on the horizon is hugely encouraging. So we're getting very close to 8:30 and I just want to check in with you, Ellen. See if you had any last questions. I have three questions in the queue still that I think we're not going to get answered tonight. We will follow up with Marcy and get answers to those questions and send those out along with the link to the recording. But yeah, before I close everything up, did you have any last questions or thoughts or comments?" (Ellen) "Well, I... I think I just personally, you know, of course, we're all the parents on this call probably nervous about their kids. So I would just love to hear when people come to you, I personally have, you know, have kids on the spectrum. I know everyone has different challenges they're working with. Does everyone that comes to you find a fit? Find a place? Find something in the end? Should we be as nervous as we are? Will it work out? And I'd love to hear just a couple, I don't know if you have an example of a, you know, good fit that worked out." (Marcy) "Yeah. I mean, it does seem to work out. The students find their way, and they end up stepping into where they need to go because when, you know, I'm working with students, particularly students on the spectrum, and I'm going to I'm very honest and I'm saying to them, 'Look, your parents have to write the check for this for the school that you're so excited to go to. And our goal is that they write the check for that school without their hand shaking, that they are confident that this is going to work out.' And so, 'What skills do you, student, need to have in order that your mom doesn't have to write that check with a shaking hand?' And so we start to talk about it, 'We need these skills to happen.' And then that's kind of that self-determination part. Like you kind of start to see, 'My parents have to write a check. I got to get into the school, but I really want to go to the school.' And then they have me saying, 'Well, this is what you need to do to get to that school.' And then that's when the maturity starts. Like the wheels start turning. They're like, 'Okay, I've got this.' And then they start to make those strides. And then usually we're looking at programs with still supports, but it's the degree of supports. And so there's a range and then we see where how much growth they were able to make and where do they fit in with our range of supports that we have and then they go. So it ends up... the setup of it is made so that they're going to be successful when they go because that's just how it's plotted out. But if we didn't do that and we just applied to all UCs and CSUs without great support necessarily and then head out there, then that then that's more of a gamble. But I think that we... the setup is cushioned so that it will involve a successful fit. Does that make sense? It's tricky. It's hard. It's scary. And, you know, I have two seniors and in high school, and so they're... I've just seen the whole, you know, growth and readiness thing and the process and then the fear of the coronavirus and where they're getting on, all of that stuff. And it's, you know, it's still like with my kids I was... I was anxious because I did not know where they should go. Like, I didn't know where their fit was. And what happened was that they ended up figuring it out and they needed to bring me along, be like, 'No, no, you don't understand, this is my school.' And I they had to explain it to me. So they kind of figured it out. And as the parent, we worry, 'Are these... does it have everything?' But then once you take a step back and look at the maturity and where your your child is, chances are they're going to be picking the right fit for them. They're just going to know if they've gotten, you know, all of that information all along, they're going to know where they need to go to to be successful. We have confidence." (Callie) "That's great. And I I I wish your kids just the best of luck as as they move move on as a fellow twin parent. I know that's a lot to go through in a year. So it is just right after 8:30 and we're going to close tonight by thanking Marcy again for sharing your wisdom and insights with us. And I wish we could hear everybody clapping for you, Marcy. Thank you. Anyone out there, if you yeah, if you'd like to connect directly with Marcy, you can check out her website that's on the screen. And we'd love to see you at any of our future real events that we'll be hosting. And we invite you if you haven't already to join our community. The best way to connect with us is through our website where you can keep up to date on what we're doing and also join our email list. And on our email list, we share resources, advice, and events that are of interest to Silicon Valley parents of twice-exceptional children. So please reach out to us with any ideas or feedback. And I wish you all a good night and many well wishes. Thanks so much." (Ellen) "No, we're getting a lot of thank you, great programs in our chat. Oh, good, that's nice. Glad to hear that. All right. Take care, everybody. Bye. Thanks. Bye."

Gil Gershoni of Dyslexic Thinking and Gershoni Creative discusses strengths of the dyslexic mind. See the transcript here: I am a volunteer here with REEL and I'd like to introduce our speaker. His name is Gil Gershoni — he is the founder of Gershoni Creative, a creative agency based in San Francisco. For more than 30 years, Gil has transformed big ideas into impactful designs, campaigns and activations for brands such as Google, Apple, Spotify and Nike. Amazing! In 2017, launch dyslexic design thinking — it's an initiative that teaches intellectually curious people how to create, collaborate and problem solve using the dyslexic mindset, which I'm going to guess you can talk about today. Dyslexic design thinking encompasses a podcast called Dyslexic Design Thinking, a postcard project Dear Dyslexia, which when you're done listening to here you can go look at what he did in the exhibitor hall, an art exhibit called The Dyslexic Dictionary, which I missed and I'm really bummed out about in San Francisco, and a thought leadership with Gil. Gil regularly speaking on the topics of dyslexia and design to audiences. Welcome! Gil Gershoni: Thank you very much. Hi everybody, I'm so happy to be here today. I don't know how many of you heard Sam earlier, and I felt that it was like his sort of definition of the dyslexia gift is really a foundation to my talk, so I thought it's kind of worked perfectly. You know, maybe the first thing I'm going to do today is start with a classic icebreaker. You know, I would love for you to turn to somebody you don't know, introduce yourself by your first name, and listen carefully, I want you to tell them one thing that you're not good at. I'm going to give you two minutes to do it. Go ahead, turn to each other and introduce yourself. "Do you know each other?" "So you know what he's not good at?" "Right on." All right, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So how was that for everybody? Have you guys ever introduced yourself to a stranger with the first thing that you're not good at? Was it inspiring? Would you like to do it again? Well, I'm Gil. I'm dyslexic and reading and writing is not my strength. I have a design and branding agency in San Francisco, and for the last 30 years I've been working with organizations, schools, individual nonprofits to help them tell their story, okay? And today I'm going to talk about how to reframe, rebrand our neuro-individuality, and primarily for me, my dyslexia, okay? When I start to work with organizations about how to rebrand or tell their story or tell their identity, the first thing I do is I look into assumptions. So I figured today is probably good to start with what is dyslexia defined by the dictionary? It's a learning of disability processing language that has to do with reading, writing and spelling. It's important to know that dyslexia, like everything else, is a spectrum. There's many different types of dyslexics. I'm not as good an actor as them, I'm never going to sing as good a Cher, and I'm not the founder of a billion dollar organization like Richard Branson, but my strengths come from my dyslexia. My strengths remain possible because of my dyslexia. It's important to know that one out of five are dyslexic. 66 million Americans are dyslexic. Just think about the amount of dyslexic and neuro-individuality in our community. It's also important to know that 35% of American entrepreneur are dyslexic learning disability — one out of five, 35% of thinkers in the entrepreneurial space are dyslexic. Traditionally we define dyslexia with what we cannot do, you know, rather than what we can do. Today I would love to talk about how to reframe my dyslexia, your neuro-individuality, and see the strength that comes from that perspective. It's important to know that I'm dyslexic through and through — I'm a whole person, you know? As we start today, we can talk about what I'm not good at, but what does it have to do with my whole person, you know? And why do we focus most of our time with things that are giving us the challenges versus the giving us the strength of being our best selves? It's a lot easier for me to to work through my differences when I start from my strength-based model, when I'm seen through my community, my parents, my partners, my collaborators, my client with what I can do. In my podcast, I interview a lot of different individuals that are dyslexic and there individuals in different industries. Just recently I had I had an opportunity to sit up with Nicole. Nicole works an intersection of neuroscience and mindfulness. I love the combination of both the neurosciences and how the mind works, but also being present, being in the mind, being you know, being your best self, being present. She was mentioning this two two different ideas that really stuck me: one is that we're all neuroindividuals. I love that term because it means like we all individuals and we all have different brains. Just like our fingerprints are unique, our brains are also unique. None of our brains are the same, so when we're talking about the curve where we are with it, it's a misnomer because we are individuals and we see the world around us in a different way. You don't have to be dyslexic to be different. So what is dyslexia really? Dyslexia is a hyper ability, and as a dyslexic I can make up words you would never find that words in a dictionary. I can spell them anywhere I want because I'm creative — just like Shakespeare. It was an interesting fact that Shakespeare never really spelled the same word twice and made up words because he was talking about creativity, language, humanity, stories. We gave him the freedom to do so. So hyper ability is the way we look into insights, the way we think, create and relate to one another. My disabilities made me really good at what I do. It took me a long time to get to this perspective, to realize that my disability is actually my strength. Hyper ability is born from taking perceived weaknesses and developing a relationship with it to be able to reveal the extraordinary capability that it offers. Often we try to stay away from our disabilities, from our differences, and what happens when we do that? They get louder, they get bigger, they chase us. But when we surrender to them, when we have a relationship with them, they become our friends and often they become our strengths. So let's look at what the disability looks like first. C-A-T — the word "cat." For you most non-dyslexic, these are non-negotiable symbols or letters, and when when you look at the word "cat," probably in the first thing in your mind's eye you seeing the cat on your right. I wanted to create an infographic so you guys can kind of see how the subject and the objects compute each other, create an invisible relationship and understand what's going on in the blink of an eye. When I see the word "cat," I see it kind of like that. My mind sees through the letters, below the letters, above the letters. I see a "t," "c," two "t"s upside down, 3D, and no matter which way my brain computes it, I I don't see a cat. What I have to do in order to see a cat is I have to suspend my gift of dyslexia. I have to hold so tightly to the letter "c." If I'm lucky to make it to "a" without seeing four or five triangles, I can hold it in my mind, and then I can jump to "t," and if I can hear it in my back of my mind as I'm speaking to myself, I see a cat. But at that moment, my dyslexia goes on hyperdrive and I see more than a cat. I see a patterns, I see fashion, I see nature, I see friendship, I see community, I see my favorite cat, I see the story behind the words — more than just apparent to the eye. You take the same disability with the letters and you take my cat hat and you stick it in the bag, and for you out there that are not dyslexic, I make sure that the tail sticks a little bit further so you know it's a cat. And I use the same disorientation as I do with letters. I see above, below, through, all at the same time in a blink of an eye, and I can tell you 100% there's a cat in the bag. What I'm doing is I'm using my disability, I'm leaning into it, I'm using this — the gift of dyslexia — in order to see the the invisible solutions out there. So I guess the cat is out of the bag. So let's talk about dyslexia and how we think differently, you know? As a dyslexic, I've been working with my team around the world, around working with different neuro-individuals about how do we bring our gift, different gift, different neurodiversity to the work we do. And today I'm going to talk about three things that I do that consider to be my disability, how I lean into it and to make it my hyper ability, and I work with other neuro-individuals to mind-meld our differences so together we can reach better outcomes. These are three tools that really stands out when we're looking at how I see letters. So the first one is turning disorientation into orientation. When I look at letters, it's disorienting and I have to work so hard, and I'm sure you individual, your children, have to spend their gift of seeing through objects, leaping through ideas in order to be able to just come up, you know, with a single idea or the single word that's written down. So I'm going to talk about how I lean into disorientation to reorient. Seeing everything is negotiable. I never see the same word the same way twice. I never read it twice. I never think of ideas the same way twice. They're always new because my mind leaps around ideas and thoughts. And the last one is brain — embracing the beginner's mind. Turning disorientation into orientation. We all experience disorientation. You don't have to be dyslexic to experience disorientation, you know? Maybe you were driving here and you got lost — that's probably felt a bit disorienting. Maybe you met a new person or came into a room and emotionally something triggered you and you feel disoriented, or you're speaking to a room of folks that you never met and you're trying to sort of share and maybe that's disoriented. Disorientation is not a bad thing. It's how you regulate your disorientation that makes all the difference. This is an art piece that we created for the Dyslexia Dictionary when I was trying to express how my mind works and how I always get stimulated through different ideas, color, textures and words. Disorientation without a relationship is this order, but I disorient by choice. I create environments in our studios where I immerse everybody on the team into the way I see the world, you know? I remember meeting with some of our designers and strategists and project managers. I asked everybody to print their research, to print their ideas, to print their words or graphics and print them on the wall. And in the beginning it's like "why are we doing this? It's under computer, we don't need to do this." But I asked everybody to do it. Then they have to cut all the piece of paper and they glued it around and they put points on it and they took strings and start to connect things. And before you realized it, you were inside of the idea. You feeling the thought, you're feeling the different neuro-individuality and the way we're solving problems. It became so addicting that now every time I say "well I don't know if we need to do it," everybody wants to do it because you kind of get inside of this three-dimensional world and you start exploring the different way we see each other, you know? The writers move some graphics, the the graphic designer moves some words, and together we start to formulate what is the problem and how we going to solve it. Turning this orientation into orientation has to do with how we see the world around us. When you guys look at your watch, you see time, but when I look at the watch, I can see all the parts of it. I can see the gears, the springs, the screws. I can suspend time, I can slow down and see through, above and all at the same time, and I can tell you where there's a discord, where there's a disability, where there's something in this mechanic that is just a tiny bit off. And it can be as small as a the smallest tinker of a of a screw that's sort of puts the clock back into time and you can see it again. So when we're trying to solve a problem, we're trying to slow down to see all the pieces and immerse ourselves in the environment around us. So how do we do that? First and foremost, ask yourself where are you and what are you doing — not what you think you're doing and not what you assume you are, but what is the environment around you? Be present, get grounded, use your whole body to sense the world around you. Look around and sit in it — sit in the discomfort of not knowing because that's where the relationship begins. I love this metaphor of how a pilot flies a plane. The pilot knows where they take off and they know where they need to land, and as they take off, all they're doing is looking at the instruments, looking at the weather, looking at the conditions, and they adjust every moment of the flight not only to land the plane on time but it's the most efficient way to get there because they're not finding the — they're not fighting the environments, they're embracing the condition and creating a relationship with it. Turning this orientation into orientation has to do with slowing down. My brain processed so fast that I used to think that when I have to slow down, you know, I have to sort of meet, meet you, meet a different individual with different neurodiversity in order to relate to them. But what I realize by slowing down, I'm able to see a lot more. I'm able to embrace my environment. This is an art installation that we did for Deloitte, and they were interesting for us to create a visual exploring what it is to be in the cutting edge of innovation, what it is to sit in discomfort of something new. Because what we're talking about embracing our differences, embracing our disability is you have to sit with something that maybe doesn't feel as comfortable as things that gives you that joy. So we illustrated this beautiful young girl on a swing 30,000 ft under the air, and this piece is massive. So when you come to it, you literally feel the vertigo of being on the cutting edge. Mind you that the cutting edge of anything is how you get to to innovation. That's how you invent new thing, how you look at the world around you and try to find new solution for old problems. Dyslexic are really good at that. I interviewed Sally Gardner — she's an author from the UK. I don't know if you know her, she's phenomenal, and podcast with her was super inspiring. And there's a few things she said that really stuck out to me. The first thing is that she really embraced this orientation — she loves to sit in it because it calms her down. She's able to regulate her dyslexia, she's able to sit in her disorientation and listen to the character she's writing. One of her technique to understand the story arc of her character is she would take their characters to lunch. And I was like "what do you mean literally?" She's like "yeah, yeah, I go to the cafe. I'm writing about a p — a persona or a character — and I would sit there and just in my mind's eye I would talk to the character and ask that character 'is this the right story? Is this the right clothes? Is this the right shoes?'" And she's often — these characters disagree with me, but she's listening. She's listening to what the story is and not trying to force it. And she's like "the characters are always right, you know? If I'm trying to write something that's wrong, they would yell at me, you know?" And one could say like "well she's maybe a little, you know, crazy," but in the best possible ways, you know? I've done the Dyslexia Dictionary with Sally. We've done a bunch of different global art project together, and she wrote this amazing poem for the Dyslexia Dictionary where we end up printing it again as as as as large as this wall. And the one sentence in that poem that really stuck with me is "not how you spell the word that matters — is what do you have to say that counts." And every time I think about that, it makes me think about myself as a little boy, my son, my community, you know? Can we teach them to think differently no matter how they spell it so they feel their strength and confident and inner light? Few years ago, we were invited to redesign the Charles Schwab Learning Center that helps students with dyslexia and learning differences, both for Stanford students as well as some of the surrounding high school and such. I was so impressed with their methodology — it's really looking at learning through based strength-based models, you know? And I met the the the team and the teachers and some of the students and walked around the space. If you guys don't know, Charles Schwab is dyslexic and he's also a Stanford graduate, so him supporting the community this way really meant a lot to me and the community at large, you know? As we start to talk about it, we start to realize that even the words "Learning Center" emphasize that maybe something is different, something is wrong, something needs to be fixed. But what we were — what was taught to the students is how to be their best selves. So we start think "why not create an environment that stimulate your dyslexia, that celebrates your differences, that allows us to be not a place to be fixed but a place to learn how to be a better dyslexic, a place that allows you to then sit with other fellow dyslexic and neuro-individuals and learn how to be your best self?" Almost like an innovation lab for dyslexic, you know? And it made so so much sense to me because when we're thinking about Stanford and the garage and HP and Apple and all the other or, you know, innovation and company, why not create a space that we can take the next generation of entrepreneurs and thinkers and empower them to be their best self, to celebrate their differences? If you haven't seen the center, you should definitely check it out, you know? Some of the walls showing you how we see letters and how they you know, metamorphosize into shapes, which the way I see graphics — they're all negotiable. So, you know, instead of looking at the way it's spelled, what can we do with those letters, you know? On the windows of the space, you know, we wrote some messaging that was all fragmented, but as soon as the sun hits it, the light on the ground spells it correctly. So you're able to feel how dyslexics see the fragmentation of letters and celebrate how they come together and fall apart it's just perception, you know? And likewise we color when I look at color, I see a spectrum. I see a a a range of possibility they never end because my mind always leap through new ideas, always find new ways around it. I wish this center was available when I was a kid, you know, because I think that would have been a little easier, although with my mom, she was so creative. She said to me, you know, "as long as you try, you never fail. At least you know what you're good at and what you're not." So I learned to fail, you know? Because if you don't fail, you don't try, and if you don't try, you don't know, and if you don't know, then how is that working out? So for me, failure was always the idea that "I now I know more than I did, and what do I do with it?" Sam, Sam was talking about it earlier, you know? Find a way to be comfortable with trying, you know? The worst going to happen? "I'm not that good as a pianist," you know, "but I'm good in other things." So it's not about negotiability, you know? The second the second tool that I want to talk about today is seeing everything is negotiable. It's not about good negotiability it's about seeing everything is negotiable, trying to find almost what is your inner resistance, what do you assume that's not negotiable that you are using as a framework to see the world around you? Somebody codified it, somebody thought "we can do it quicker, faster, run faster, make it to the moon, invent a phone with no buttons, invent an automobile" by the way, all dyslexics — because they felt it that they can be negotiable, they can find another way through, they can find a different solution and suspend, you know, the laws or the ideas that are holding us back. This is an art installation that we did for the Dyslexia Dictionary, and I was really interested to find a way to show non-dyslexics how do dyslexic see the world around them. So I started with a very simple premise: is the cup half full or half empty? And as you look at the water in the glass and you look at the text behind it, you kind of start to see how I see the world around me. It doesn't have to be just copy or text or words it's everything, you know? Because my dyslexia is is driven by curiosity, and when I feed my dyslexia, I want more of it. It's addicting, you know? "What if, what if, what if, what if it goes there, what if it goes here?" So as we sort of visualized it and we saw multiple of these lenders and these glasses, we start to realize that it's neither half empty or half full. Those are the boundaries, those are the non-negotiable constructs that we all come to. For dyslexic, it's both. For dyslexic, it's not how empty or full — it's through the glass, through the lens that the world transformed the possibilities, and that's where for me the negotiability begins, you know? Whenever I think that it's not doable, stop why? Who said so? I'm going to show you we're going to reinvent, we're going to think about it differently, you know? I was trying to think for myself: when I was a little boy, when did the first time I learned this? Because I didn't find that to be like a common thing as a young boy, boy sort of going like "everything is negotiable," you know? And I was like — so I remember my grandfather, you know? I was probably 6 years old, first grade or so, and I always love to hang out with him. And he would even say "go play with the kids." I was like "no grandpa, you know, I want to go with you. I want to learn how you do business." He was back in the day he was well these days we call entrepreneur, he was just an a hustler, you know? He just love people, love relationship and love to make make deals, you know? So I would always stick around and go with them, and at the time time we went on the way to the office, we stopped at the farmers market, and there was an organic farmers there with all these great apples, and we were going to buy a few apples. And my grandfather started to talk to the merchant and asking about his family, the weather, the soil "is this a good season? Did you get enough rain?" And then he start to negotiate the price of an apple. Now I was 6 years old, but I was pulling on his sleeve like "Grandpa, it's an apple, you know? Pay the gentleman the price." And he pulls me aside, he's like "no, no, I'm not negotiating the price it's about the value of the relationship." Now I know this man, I know what he puts the effort toward it, you know? He only bought Apple from this farmer, and every so often he would get a free apple. But it was never the point — he created a relationship, understood the other person first, he learned to negotiate and listen first before he had his assumptions about this person's life and what he's doing. My grandfather has this kind of relationship throughout his life, and it always inspired me to first find out "how is it going for you? What's your world looks like? Where can we help? How can we flow when there's a lack of discord that we need to shift?" I'm always looking "what my assumptions are," right? Creating the boundaries what are non-negotiable? How do I look at the way I look at letters through, above, below, all at the same time and apply it not as a disability but as a hyper ability, you know? When I look at the world around me, I'm trying to suspend it. I'm trying to find out where there's lack of flow for myself and for my environment. I do everything I can not to solve the problem, and you can imagine as a creative director with a branding agency when my client comes to me and says "we needed to solve a problem" and the first thing I say is "I'm going to do everything I cannot to solve it," you know? They don't fully understand what I'm talking about because "wait a second, aren't we paying you to solve the problem?" I says "yes you are, but you're paying me to solve the right problem. If you knew what the problem was, you wouldn't need me, you know?" What the indicator that's not working for you — maybe not flowing, maybe doesn't create an opportunity for your business, your community, your nonprofit — but that's just an indicator, it's a symptom. Let's follow the symptom down and find out where is the discord, because when we find the problem, then we can solve it in half the time, you know? The goal is to find our truth. The goal is to find the source. The goal is not to run away from the obstacles, the problems, the discord, the disorientation or the disability you have to embrace it, you know? I'm a whole person, my disability is my strength. I disorient by choice. I try to be more dyslexic everywhere I can. I try to feed my dyslexia because it gives me the strength with the mind I have to see the world around me differently. I interviewed Dr. James Kinross he's a a surgeon out of UK and first and foremost I was like "a doctor, a surgeon, dyslexic? How did you ever get through school? How did you overcome and you worked so hard just to try to get through it," you know? He will be the first one to tell you that he's not only a great surgeon, but he's also an amazing artist, you know? And what he does because he has, you know, his his dyslexia — is both the right and left side of his brain, he uses them both. So pre-surgery, what he would do is he would draw the illustrate the surgery not as a not as a scientist or is a doctor but is an artist. He would spend time and render it and color it, and then he would put music to it, you know? Surgery as pre-doing million at the end, so he would coordinate with all of his senses how he's going to make this dance happen. And then he brings the rest of his team some dyslexic, some not, all neuro-individuals — and then they sit together in the room, they all meditate, close their eyes, they look at the illustration, they listen to the music, and they get aligned, they mind-meld, they bring their differences together in order to be a stronger group to go through the dance of the surgery. I would invite you to listen to him he was so inspiring and such a generous man, but just blew me away with how he does it and I haven't met anybody else that does it his way due to his dyslexia, you know? So my last tool for today: embracing the beginner's mind, you know? For me, I can look at those letters and I never see it the same way twice, and it can be super frustrating, you know? It can be the kind of thing that "you know, why can't I do it?" I remember when I was a little boy, I was writing a little say I was maybe third, fourth grade — and in the same paragraph I spelled the same word three different ways. And my mom was like "whoa, that was so creative!" like she's like "how can you think of three ways to spell the same word," you know? She's like "is there any other way to spell the same word?" And we just went and I just wrote it in 10 I mean 10 different ways to spell it. We celebrate the fact that I saw the possibility that it was new again, you know? Because it didn't matter now I learned that there's one way to spell it that everybody else agrees, but the way I spelled originally was probably a little bit better. It was more authentic, it was creative, you know? And made my mom need to do what I do is to say it out loud and decode it: "oh I I understand what you're trying to say." My wife does it all the time. I combine words that don't exist. She's like "whoa, that's even a better outcome than what I knew it was," you know? And then sometimes I still feel a little embarrassed. I was like "well not sure how to spell that, but it sound right to me, it felt right to me." But instead of trying to run away from it, I'm embracing it, I'm sharing it, you know? Now, you know, with my team Zilia here and others I inspire them to say "how would you do it differently," you know? "How do we look at the problem in a different way," you know? "I know we just almost solved the project," you know? "What? Forget it, let's do it again." Some of them get very frustrated when we do that, but for me it's like "can we see it in another way? Can we get underneath the story to get to that essence? Can we celebrate that?" And you know what happened when you do it as a team and we work my with our clients is they fall in love with that process, you know? Because they feel that we're coming from a very authentic place, a genuine place. We all have our strength and differences, and we're embracing them as well, you know? We promote failure, we promote trying and not succeeding because it's the only way to discover, so becomes a safe place, you know? You know, in order to be creative commercially, you know, people come to us and says "I need a campaign by the end of the week," you know? "We're launching a Spotify brand globally, can you do it?" And when I was younger, I would be so stressed out. I like "oh my God, we got to get with the best idea." But what I've learned is that if I just relax, my dyslexia naturally empties my creativity, you know? If you to be creative — like the half full, half empty glass — you have to make room for it because creativity is about expansion. And if you're saturated, if you have creative block, that means you have no more room for expending. So what are the practices and routine you do individually, you know, teach your children to do it, that they can ground themselves, self-regulate, you know, to make more room for their and their individuality? This is a mural that we did for the Schwab Learning Center, and when you come to it, it's again, it's a massive wall, and right in the middle of that mural there's a door, you know? And the idea here was that whenever you come to the center, leave you as some ions at the door because that's a first step to to create discord, to fight with who we are. But if we can put that baggage down and start again, the opportunity is endless, you know? We did it so when you wear the 3D glasses, it's 3D, but I want to again to play with the idea that this is all negotiable, that, you know, when you see it and you're not dyslexic, you're like "oh, the colors," but you put the glasses on, the whole thing pops 3D. It's all perception — what are we going to do with it, you know? Another part of looking at the world from the beginner's mind is the like child wonder, you know? It's very important that we're not looking at the child-like mind from a rudimentary perspective, okay? We all are trying to get back to the moment we were little kids — nobody judged us, we played in the world, we saw things that moved us, and we were content. As we get older, as we go to school, as we get judged, as we take tests, we start to be afraid to be ourselves because "what's the — how are you going to make a living by playing with cards in the sand," you know? But if you embrace the play, the brain relaxes, you move toward what gives you joy, and if you do that, you attract more of it. And when you do that, it's easier than to find more of it. One of the things we do at our agency is we invite play. Some of our more traditional thinkers find it very stressful because there is an hour to finish the deadline, and I said "everybody stop" — from accounting to account management to copyrighting to strategist and designers and everybody in between and through all of the floors at the agency — "we do one minute dance party." I don't know if you guys ever done that, you know? Put a song, one minute on the clock, everybody dance. And they get so in the beginning it was so overwhelming like "there's an hour to the presentation, we don't have the time." But as soon as you dance for one minute, you come back to your spreadsheets, you you see the problem, you come to the solution, you feel the outcome because you relax your brain. You let go of tightening up against what doesn't work and he said "what if, what if I saw it for the first time? What if I embrace my beginner's mind?" This is an image of me and one of our executive producers in Chicago. We were designing a space, and after the space was starting to be design, I said "let's go outside and let me lift you up to look through the window." By the way, he's not dyslexic, and he's like like "you got to be kidding me, like why are we doing this?" I was like "trust me." And I sh in and he looked through it, and and I was like "can I bring it out?" Like "no, no, no, keep me out there for a little longer," you know? Because he was able to see the same space from an angle that you would never seen it otherwise. And after he came down, we went back to the space and everything we thought we knew it was new again, and we changed our perspective to make it more even more encompassing for learning differences, you know? Did you ever try to look at 2D object with 3D glasses, you know, or look at the world from a different angles, you know? Get on the same levels as your children and look at what they're saying, you know? It changes your perceptions. Sometimes I take a hike in the park and I try to sit on the bench. If I look at a bird, I try to almost meditate to be the bird, you know? I want to see how that bird feels, embodied in that bird's reality again, just to play, to change your percept, to change your boundaries. Embracing beginner's mind I'm looking to be pleasantly surprised. You can be pleasantly surprised if you don't take a risk, if you don't embrace something you don't know. So being pleasantly surprised for me is trying to look at ordinary things in extraordinary ways. I remember walking in a park with my son G, there was a little flower and a little gray butterfly on it, and he leaned down in his little body and he held the flower so gently and look at the Spotify — and my first reaction is like "that's an ugly butterfly." But then when I look at it and I move to his level and I look through his eyes, he was so astonished, he was so blown away with the reality that through his eyes I was able to see again that flower in the B for the first time again. I was able to be pleasantly surprised with an ordinary life around me, and I've learned through him: if I do it every day and I collect it, you see more of it, you find more of these moments that otherwise you just passed through it. Therese Fitzgerald is for over a decade she was the vice president of a brand creative for the Sesame Workshop. She was the one responsible creating all the Sesame Workshop worldwide lessons, characters, everything that we grew up our children are growing up she was at the helm for over a decade as a creator. I was like "what an amazing job to look at language, to look at object, to look at letters as a dyslexic and teach our children how to look at that around them, how to regulate their emotions, how to understand how they feel and give them words around it." And I ask her "you've done it for over a decade, does it ever get old?" And she looked at me with a smile, she says "every time I do another lesson, I look at it through the six years old mind it's always new, it's always inspiring," you know? And I love the way she talks about her curiosity and how this the dyslexia mind is a curious mind, and she feeds it everywhere she goes. She just feeds her dyslexia. So dyslexic dear dyslexia, the postcard project this is a global art project that I have at exhibition there as well, and I invite you and your children to participate and check it out online as well, you know? How did I know that it was time to rebrand dyslexia? I asked I asked over 2,000 children of all ages, as little as six or three or four, all the way as 86 and I asked them "what does dyslexia mean to you," you know? And you would expect "learning disability, hard, challenging, depressing, sad," but that was the smallest part of the community because when we talked about our identity, "what else gives you joy? What do you love to do?" That's also your dyslexia because my brain is a dyslexic brain, so the fact that I can look through objects and I can fly and leap through characters — that's also my dyslexia. So as I start to get these sports cards back, I was just blown away with the individual identity story stories but the collective, you know, how people start to sort of see the world around them and embrace and reframe their whole self. So I think maybe it's time for us to sort of reframe a little bit, you know? What I would love for you to do is I would love for you to turn turn to a stranger, introduce yourself with your first name, but this time I want you to tell him something you're really good at. But wait, wait I'm not talking about your degrees, your accolades, your books, your successes. I'm talking about what gives you joy. I'll start: my name is Gil, I'm dyslexic, and I'm really good at doing the dishes. I love it because it's not a chore it's a ritual, it's a habit. I love putting my hands into warm water, I love using a lot of soap, I love taking the time with every dish just to get it beautifully back to its, you know, its cleanliness. But the most important thing that I love about it more is when that dish is clean and I dry it and I look at it, I see my best self in the reflection, and that feeds my dyslexia, regulates myself, makes me present, make me see for the first time again and allow me to celebrate my gift and my diversity. So turn to a stranger, introduce yourself and tell him one thing you're really good at that has nothing to do with your career. Go ahead. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So I just want to leave you this, you know: look at your strengths, look at your differences, celebrate your whole person, and whatever you do, dyslexify your life, you know? We have a few more minutes — I want to open up for some questions or comments or thoughts from everybody else, but thank you so much for being here everybody, really appreciate it. Question: "I want ask you — you mention and thank you for this inspiring talk about how this lecture can be used as an advantage, but I still wonder is there any value of helping people dyslexia meaning trying to fix it, trying to tell them, teach them how to read and so on?" Gil Gershoni: Of course, so that's a great question. First of all, I wouldn't use the word "fix" because I'm not broken, so I think that that's just a language, but, you know, what we are, what we say and what we put out, it's what we attract, right? So so there's nothing to be fixed by me, but with that said, reading is very important because that's how you create, get knowledge, right? So yeah, I struggle to read and I read very well right now, but these days, like when I was a boy, you know, there was no mediums, there's no technology, there's no text audio or vice versa. So it's really more important to teach our children to be curious and to be curious to learn in their own way. Of course we have to struggle with reading and writing — it's an important thing to do, so don't get me wrong — but I'm much more interested to teach my son how to be curious and to be interested in learning and finding the way that he or she learns the best because then I'm giving him a gift for life, you know? What tends to happen often when we try to fix our children is we remind them that they're broken, and here's the thing: is when we erode their spirits and confidence, it can take a lifetime to get it back. I much rather that my son doesn't read or spell the best he can, but his spirits and his confidence is high because he can do anything else. But that's a great question for sure, absolutely. Any other questions, comments, thoughts? "Yes," "yes, you know, I love that you said that because and I think Sam in beginning — I know who was here for his talk was talking about all the various type of different types of smarts, right? Different types of way to see intelligence and see how we look at the world. It's very challenging when you go to the traditional school school system and we only look at one way of measuring intelligence. Dyslexic — because reading and writing is difficult for me — I develop a photographic memory, I develop an emotional body that all I do can do is see you and I can sense and feel empathy for you or for what you're trying to say — like street smart, like seeing the world around you. So developing that in our children as part of their whole persons is a gift for life again, you know? And I love that because I think that I remember when my son was young, we were living in a city, you know? I had to teach him how to know when people are predictable or not predictable, you know? And those are the words we use: "is this situation predictable? And if it is, you can move toward, and if it's not predictable, then move away from it." And it's a life lesson it doesn't have to be, it's just how you feel, how you see the world around you. But street smart just allows them to be present, aware and be able to make their own choices for sure. Question: "Yeah. I came late, so apologies if you hit this at the beginning, but I'm guessing a lot of the other people here like me are the parents of someone who has something, yeah, right? There's a lot of different things alphabet in our kids, so a lot of what you're saying is advice to the people, but what about the parents of the people, yeah? If you have advice for us?" Gil Gershoni: Yeah, so you know, when I so so when I look at my son, I'll talk to my personal experience, you know? My responsibility is to see his best self before he can see it, you know? It's part of guiding, right? They're gonna — they're going to grow on their own, we're just guiding them, right? We're helping them, you know, find the right way to make decisions, you know? So for me is when I look at those differences is I always try to find the strength in it, you know, so they can see through my eyes that I I believe in them, that I love them unconditionally, that I support them no matter what they do, you know? So for me as a parent is to be able to sort of be part of it — let them lead, ask them what feels good, you know? Let them find the things that so to give them joy and feed it, you know? I was giving a talk in Florida just a few months ago, and a mother came to me and she was very moved. She wanted to give me a hug "oh my God, that was so meaningful to me and all this. My daughter's upstairs, she wouldn't come down, she's a teenager, she hate this, but she's dyslexic and I don't know what she loves to do." And I said "well, what does she do when you're not looking?" And she says "well she's always in the backyard with the dogs." She like "go and how did the dog feel?" "Oh the dogs I mean she can go to the park and 15 dogs come to her. I mean she just has this thing with the dog." So I like "what are you missing? What are you missing about what she loves to do?" And she she looked at me like she it was almost like a paradigm shift because she's like "I kind of knew it, but I thought that what she'd like to do had to amount up to a career." But if she loves dog and she can relate to animal, are we questioning what career she's going to go to, you know? Maybe a veterinarian, may — so what should she do next? Volunteer, get another dog, go work for the ASPCA, you know? Found a mentor that's like works in the sciences with animals. Feed their dyslexia, feed their differences, find a way for make them more than make them less, you know? And it's a practice, you know? For me, I sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong, and I tell my son "you are a teenager for the first time, I'm a dad for the first time, so you going to succeed, I'm going to fail, but we're going to do it together." And I'm allowing him to tell me that "that was really didn't work out, you were not — you were wrong," and I need to own it because I want to show him what it is to fail, you if I can fail in front of my son with confidence, then he's more confident failing too because he knows that it's not the end of the world we'll do something different, we'll try differently, right? So by by action, by behavior, by letting them lead you, creating an agency and supporting their spirit, you know? I'm sure we can talk about how to parent forever, but I don't know if I answered your question, but that's some of the things that comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, any other thoughts, questions? Question: "I have a question about this — a one about self — dyslexia. My daughter was diagnosed with that and I wasn't sure that she aided reader unless you ask to out loud, I just didn't know it. I don't — I mean —" Gil Gershoni: Like I said earlier in the talk is the dyslexia has a spectrum like everything else, and it's really important to know that our children as unique as they are, and my dyslexia is different than your daughters and probably everybody else in the room, you know? What I do know from my own dyslexia is that my brain works differently, and interviewing, you know, hundreds of folks on my podcast over the years from different industry, different cultures and backgrounds, you know, there is some commonalities, but again, what the what the surgeon can do I can't do, or, you know, I'm never going to be able to act or be a singer like some other dyslexics. But a lot of the similarity — the way my brain works and how I jump around different things — tend to be some of the commonalities, you know? "Yeah, any other thoughts, questions, concern? We figured it out, we're all good?" All right, well thank you everybody.

In this recording from the 2025 REEL Strengths Fair, Sam Young discusses ways to help your student plan and organize. Link to resource at the end: https://youngscholarsacademy.org/courses/self-paced/demo-optin See the transcript here: Hold on, this always turns off. It's — wait, when it pops up down here we'll be good. Wait for it. Yep, okay, okay. Clap your hands one time if you can hear me. Clap your hands two times if you can hear me. Clap your hand three times if you're excited to be here. Yeah! Please welcome the amazing Mr. Sam Young, founder and mentor at Young Scholars Academy. Thank you Emmy, you didn't plan that by the way. I was nervous — you did a great job. Thank you Emmy. Let's give it up for Emmy. Okay so everyone, welcome, thank you so much for being here. Now the first thing is you might be seeing this like wait, AI? I've added that but we don't have to go AI if you don't want to, so don't be — don't be alarmed. My name is Mr. Sam. We're going to be exploring how we can build task management systems for our bright kiddos who are struggling to get things done. Now raise your hand if you are a parent or a kiddo who struggles to get things done. Raise your hand if you are a parent and you have a kiddo who struggles to get things done. All right, so that's a lot of us. Okay, excellent. Well I'm happy to have you all here. We are going to be exploring this from from a variety of different lenses and we're going to go on a journey. One secondy, let me get back to you. Okay, first we're going to explore executive function skills. We're going to be talking about what are these things, and many of you are here so you might know. Number two, we're going to talk about how can we make a system. And then number three, I'm going to share a way that you can implement this system and help your child and help yourself go and thrive and get things done that you hope to do. And then I have a little bonus for those of you who stay till the end, which is a class and resource demo so you can see how to build this thing and have me help you out. Did you have a quick question? Yes, I pretty sure I learned most of this in Young and in also ading and it was very helpful so — okay Emmy says it's helpful so you should listen to me. Okay so we're going to begin here. Executive function skills are something — it's a very attractive buzzword. It's thrown around a great deal, right? Also AI as well, so I thought why not combine these two things. The thing is this: a lot of our students don't understand that executive function skills exist and they spend most of their lives feeling like they're stupid or that there's something wrong with them or that they can't get things done. And the big focus of the day — do you feel the energy shift right there because it resonates with you? — we're going to spend the day separating intelligence and executive function skills and figure out how we can support the intelligence area and build the executive function skills around that. So most people don't trip and fall into this field by accident. We don't wake up and say I'm gonna make up tons of money and go into education, but we're here because we care and we're here because it's deeply personal. I know for Gil, for everyone here, myself included, we're here because we have these differently wired brains and we were seeking answers and community and trying to help others along the way, right? So this is very personal for me. I at a young age was diagnosed with ADHD and spent most of my life really struggling. And it wasn't until I got to grad school that I learned about executive function skills and realized that I could be bright and not turn my work in and that those two can coexist. And it gave me this great freeing sensation of "I'm okay and I'm just not good at these skills" versus "I'm not okay," right? And that's really my big takeaway that I want to start with today so we can enter that conversation on the same page. Having a debate background, I have to always start with definition. Number 10 is not accurate actually — there's maybe 13 executive function skills, people will disagree, but I just like the picture. But if you think of executive function skills, this is the — put your hands on the front of your head right here — this is your prefrontal cortex. You've heard this before. This is the essentially like the air traffic controller of your brain, right? It tells you what to do in what order, when to do it, and when not to do it. And we know our brains develop back to front, right? So for our young kiddos actually don't have much executive function skills at at all. We're going to talk about that in a moment. This is things like working memory, right? Holding multiple numbers and things in our head or tasks. And we compensate for this, right? You might have a kid who maybe — or you — walk back to a place where you had a thought to try to remember it, right? Or you like try to go back into the shower and you're like "what was that thing?" right? This is an example of like trying to like hack your working memory. Time management, perseverance — so Emmy I'm gonna have to few questions a little bit later, I'm sorry, but I will call on you when I have a good moment, okay? I promise you that. So again, our brain back to friend development — here's the thing, and maybe heard it before: when does this part of our brain, this prefrontal cortex, develop? Roughly 25, 26? Yeah, it's around 27 or so. For neurodivergent people it's maybe 30% delayed. So I say this to say we're kind of bananas, right? Because we're like, we know this yet we ask kids to do things that are not realistic, right? You say you K up to their room, they're like "hey do me a favor, go make your bed, come downstairs," and they go up into the room and they're like "Legos" and they're like "this amazing world I was building," right? Or all these things. There's so much happening in here and it is very difficult. So I just — I want to start with this because again, this human brain, this frontal brain is not developed in your kids. And when you look at your kids' time blindness, it is very real. I mean the kids at the age of like 10 or so can only see minutes into the future. So when we're like "why aren't you thinking about the consequences of this action in one month from now?" it's like they cannot do that. So but we're kind of bananas. Sticking with the aviation metaphor: where's the cockpit on the sucker? It's this little thing here, right? And what's a control the whole thing? Right here, right? And that's your prefrontal cortex, right? This is your frontal part of your brain. It's a tiny little piece that controls the whole entire vessel, right? And that's why this stuff is so fascinating, interesting and important. So I want to kind of start from this headspace today. You've maybe heard the Dr. Ross Greene quote before: "our kids do well when they can." We're here today to learn about systems and assume the best, right? We're assuming that our kids are doing well when they can, and if they cannot it's because they cannot, not because they choose not to or they want to defy you or you know they're mad at you so they're going to, right? It's because they cannot. So we're going to be building systems from this place and from this vantage point. I also want to challenge you to open up your senses because the same kid who's "lazy" and doesn't turn in their work is playing a video game dying a thousand times and then put persevering and beating the boss. And if you remember, perseverance was one of these, right? So it's where you look. The same kid who doesn't turn in homework is trying a you know a kick flip a thousand times and bleeding from the shins until they get it. They have perseverance, they have stick-with-it-ness, they have obsession. It's just not in the seat in the classroom where we're looking, right? So when we talk about executive function skills, I want you to also approach it from a place of curiosity and openness because guess what? A lot of the times they just don't care. The skills might be there and guess what else? It's way more fun to develop them when they do care. I'm never read a book until I started a virtual school, not all the way through. I have dyslexia and ADHD and it was very hard for me. And then I was like "I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to start a school. I don't know how to do that. Books will tell me the answer," so I read, right? Obviously this is an oversimplification, but what what changed? Not me, I just got interested and it became relevant and it became authentic. So if you have a kid who wants to start a podcast or a a streaming channel or whatever, that's where you find the executive function skill growth and then we translate it. Don't throw an agenda book at them — whatever you do — and say "don't forget your math homework," right? I know this is what we've done and I get it, but we're gonna talk about a better way. So task management specifically — you've seen that executive function is is a wide umbrella. This includes things like emotional regulation. This is why executive function skills have become such a buzz word, but it's also dangerous. They just talk broadly about them because working memory and emotional regulation could not be further apart. So today we're going to go into a very specific journey talking about the three steps to task management because this is really the core of probably what brought you here: you have a bright kid, they're not getting things done. There are three levels: Number one, we're going to talk about quick capturing. Number two, we're going to talk about planning our week or our month, which is ultimately prioritizing. And then number three, we're going to talk about you know the tires meet the road, right? The the doing, the daily planning, okay? And I'm going to give you some concrete examples and some resources along the way. So my goal is a Frankenstein system. Any Mel Brooks fans here? No? Come on. Young Frankenstein — that usually kills. Let me go back. You guys just laugh so — oh you guys. Mel Brooks, am I right? Young Franken — the Frankenstein example is this: it's letting go of the how, okay? The way that you make a color-coded calendar on a whiteboard on your refrigerator might not gel with what your kid needs. And guess what? Not everybody's going to do well with an agenda book, okay? So again, it's letting go of the how and focusing on what are the skills. And it's a Frankenstein system — it's different for everyone. I want to enter this conversation with learning styles. We all have different brains. This is overused and misused but it is a good point to start because it gets our kids reflecting on their learning — meta cognition, thinking about thinking. The agenda book kills the conversation, but asking your kid how they prefer to write down a thought they have in the middle of the night? That's a good one, right? So get them to think: are they verbal? Are they visual? Do they need to track things? Emmy here has built an amazing task management system and it has gone through different phases, and Emmy's a very visual thinker, so Emmy's needed to create a system that is very visual. It's very different from someone who's more linear, right? So it's different for everyone, and that's so very important. Number one, again, is we start with the quick capture, okay? And we need to show our kids how — and again, it's not "right your math work or down because you got to do it," right? It's something they care about: "Hey, you know that podcast you want to create? What if you had an amazing idea in the shower or what if you have an incredible idea when we're at the grocery store? How are you going to remember that?" right? It all of a sudden it's authentic, it's relevant, and they're going to want to think of a way. "God, that's a real problem, I haven't thought about that," right? They have to solve for it. So we have to have ways to capture and it can be very flexible. Any Harry Potter fans here? Okay, you know what this thing is. What's this thing? What's it called? The Pensieve. This is the Pensieve, right? It's Latin for "think." JK Rowling created this idea for Dumbledore to have this basically like a cauldron, kind of like a almost to pull thoughts out of his head and put them in an external hard drive, right? That's the idea. Our kids need to see this. They don't understand an agenda book — that's something they're being told to do, right? That's that's a demand. But having a place to capture your thoughts? Well that might help me do what I want to do, right? And everybody needs one, and creative people have them. Sorry, I just touched the microphone. So giving examples like this, even silly ones, can go a great distance because we need external hard drives. We need places to capture because guess what? The busy minds are also the most susceptible to dopamine peaks and troughs, right? Really big idea, it feels urgent, kind of leap frog logic. We forget where we were going. If we can have a space to write it down and create a system, we can always capture these things, we can make sense of them later, and that's where we begin. I think it's really important to make it flexible, and this is where I also make it very fun. I share really awkward, uncomfortable things. Like I'm like "guys, I have a remember" — my example for a quick C — I want to put you on the spot. What do I have in my shower? "Have a like whiteboard thing in the shower." See, kids remember that stuff. Thank you Emmy. I have a whiteboard in my shower because — raise your hand — you have great ideas in the shower and then you forget when you get out? That happen? I'm not alone. There's psychological — okay, when you're in the shower there is a sensation, a strong stimulus — warm water — it gets your brain flowing. When it stops, those thoughts often stop and they code switch: there's a next task — get my towel, I have a I have a meeting soon, breakfast, right? So it's important that we have systems and overshare with students about different things we do, like having a whiteboard in your shower because guess what? They might have really good thoughts there too. Or having a sticky note with a little light above it next to your bed so you can write thoughts in the middle of the night. Raise your hand if you have great thoughts in the middle of the night? I have tons of great thoughts in the middle of the night, right? And having a place to capture those and then not have them keep you up, right? The difference between having a system where you can just say "write it down and then go back to bed" versus like spiraling about "what if I forget" and so forth. It gives you grace. Having a system that is anchored is so very important too, and I I challenge students all the time. I'm like "I'm going to give you $5 later, you just need to write this down and you need to remind me on Friday so I don't forget to pay you," right? It's it's a challenge, it's fun. Send me a meme at a certain time, right? We want to see if they can do something that they care about. It has to be anchored. It can't be on like the back of a bill or a random sticky note that gets thrown away. It has to all come together. So when we quick capture, we're telling kids they can have different systems for different settings and then it needs to come together. It needs to be anchored. Additionally, it's going to be different for different learning situations. If you are homeschooled like Emmy — you do not necessarily need a system that travels very well — go to YSA too. If you go to school in person, you need a flexible travel system, right? So we want to think about our needs. I tell students all the time, "I had this really elaborate cool system during COVID, also didn't go out," right? So things change, our systems do too. The next step after we have a quick capture system — this by the way can be getting your kid to reflect on their needs: maybe they voice record thoughts or they speak into an AI model or they have a whiteboard or sticky notes — then we have to prioritize and plan. And this is really where the higher order thinking comes in. And by the way, I make this reference all the time, but kids actually don't know what this is anymore — we've gotten that old — but we don't want to play whack-a-mole, right? We want to be — I have to then explain whack-a-mole is. I know you know what it is now because I had to tell you, but the idea is that most of us, especially again dopamine chasers, ADHDers, ADHDers, dyslexics, we're chasing dopamine a lot of times and we're chasing urgency. We live in a very urgent world, right? Slack, emails, text messages, social media, right? It's always "now, now, now" and it totally makes you forget what you were doing. And if you're neurodivergent, you're extremely susceptible to these dopamine pumps. Everything feels really urgent and it's way more fun or rewarding subconsciously than deep work, which is maybe the most important work. So we need to have a way to focus ourselves and to involve our kids in the process because a lot of times they're not. And this is as simple as if you're homeschooling and you're planning the week, involve your kid in the process and explain why you chose certain tasks earlier in the week and what do they think about the order, right? What are the outcomes? What are the inputs? It's like programming. We want to have ways for our kids to have novelty, to have excitement, and but most importantly to do really cool stuff. I think of like clickbait here, you know? Like when you're talking to young people about it, it's like "five college secrets that schools don't want you to know about," you know? It's like really edgy stuff, but it's true. Like Emmy and the other kids in our program are learning graduate level systems and it's fun and it feels forbidden. But guess what? It should not be. You should not have to struggle for 20-some years and then learn what a Kanban is. "Oh, this is helpful," right? You should learn that when you're five. So the first thing that we do is we help our students understand the entirety. They capture completely and they have to understand what are all the pieces. There's a lot of text on a couple slides — I'm sorry, this is a 90-minute talk that I got down to like 45, so bear with me. Catch the recording after if you're watching the recording — hi! So number one is we have to break it down and make sure we understand it completely. Many of our kids come home and they have like no resources that they need — they needed a poster, they needed a book, they didn't — there wasn't foresight put into it, and that's because they don't have that. So we need to have systems to help our kids check in: what do you need for this assignment? What will this require from you, okay? I laugh — I did this talk like a month ago or so and this woman said "every picture I took is like a the screen in your head do blur." I just saw a bunch of people taking a photo because I walk — the idea is that you're getting all the the pieces, you're getting a full picture, you're putting all of that information together, and we're we're walking through our students. Here's an example: a lot of us are taught just to write "a assignment." It's so ethereal and abstract it doesn't get done. It's depressing — you have to write a paper. You can work on it every day and it's still "you have to write a paper," right? It doesn't get done. But if we can help break down projects into milestones, if we can start to introduce this language — this is what we do. I mean we're in Silicon Valley, right? This is like lean manufacturing, Kanban bonds, like work sprints and stuff like that. Anybody who who lives locally you — what are those little things called when you like agile results, right? What are you doing? You're taking big projects and breaking them down into actionable steps. It sounds silly but we assume our kids can do this and don't explain it, right? That's as simple as saying "hey, when you're going to write a paper, there's actually going to be several milestones. You're going to need to research, outline, write, and and revise. Each one of those you could have the this on your to-do list for ages and not get it done. Each one of those has small tasks. You can get these done all day and guess what? Body's in motion stay in motion — it's physics 101. Get your kid moving. This is so daunting — this is like a big colossal cliff hanging over and you're living in the shadow looking up like "God help me." This is easy: "I have to have a meeting? Oh I did it, okay." Momentum, keep going, it feels good, right? And there's a difference. So if we can help our kids understand this language — projects, milestones, tasks — and then we can get them going, get some momentum. The next thing that we do is ranking. This is not intuitive. We write things down and then we just kind of go. And I know some of you were saying like — raise your hand if you've tried this before and hasn't worked out with your child — ranking tasks: "like we have five things to do, we're going to do this, this, this," okay? If this has not worked out for you, I recommend flipping the script. It's a heck of a lot easier to determine what's least important than it is what's most important, right? If there's five things on your list, choosing one might cause analysis paralysis, but identifying five is probably pretty easy, and then we might as well pick four, three, two, and then one, right? You see the difference? We're just approaching from another side. So our idea is to break down the tasks into smaller pieces and then we rank them in order, and we get our kids thinking about kind of bigger picture stuff. Interesting: why do you put that as a three or a four? What are the different criteria? And we can introduce things like what's the outcome, right? Are you familiar with the Pareto principle? Vilfredo Pareto, this Italian thinker in the 18th century, had this thought that 20% of the plants were creating 80% of the vegetables in the garden, or 20% of the inputs at work create 80% of the outcomes, right? So getting our kids to even think about that: "Hey, I know that you put like that math book reading as your number one, but I also know that there's this big math project that's worth like 40% of your grade and that's number five. What's going on? If we did that one thing tonight, that might be a major win. It might move the needle more than all the other stuff," right? So having these kinds of involvement. This is another one. This is a famous quote from Mark Twain. I think Mark Twain's one of those people who gets like kind of like a Confucius or someone — we probably give them too many quotes like they probably didn't say all these things. Well like I don't know who said it — Twain, Confucius? "Yes Emmy, I remember when we did the eating live frogs. What is the eating live frogs method?" "Well it's when you kind of start with like the worst things work like say somebody really really really doesn't want to write an essay, then they write their essay first so that it's not like 'and they like oh to write this essay' and then they can just kind of done with it and then everything else feels a lot easier." So this is proof this stuff works. Emmy took this class over a year ago — go! — and it works. These things stay with kids and and there's an understanding. You're not just blindly working. So many of the times we just get a checklist and we go down it, but if you involve your kids in that process, they're going to learn so much more. The the next thing is then we get very specific, okay? We create deadlines. Now there are going to be two different groups here: some kids are going to be overwhelmed and triggered by deadlines and time pressure and that will not work for them — that's important to know. There will be other kids who like — raise their hand — maybe they're a bit competitive and they enjoy urgency. I do time boxing every day. I love it because if something happens — I get a Slack message or whatever — and then I look back and I'm like "oh I was working on this from this hour to this hour and I better get it done because I only have 15 minutes," right? My dopamine kicks in, I get laser focused. So sometimes scheduling work blocks, having deadlines, right? Breaking these things up — we're familiar with this, but we don't explain it to our kids. It sounds silly but we assume they get it and they don't. We need to make it ever so obvious and connect it to their interests, okay? And then once we know this stuff, once we have this macro overview, then the Frankenstein part comes in. We introduce all the bits and pieces of the system and we let them try it on and see what fits, and we say it's just trying. So things like an Eisenhower Matrix where we're looking at urgency versus importance — looks like this, right? High — this is high level stuff and it's authentic. I'm like "you guys know President Eisenhower, you know, was a general who led the west through World War II? Yeah, this system was good for him, so it's it's good enough for me," right? That's authenticity. This isn't just an agenda book with your school's mission statement on it. This is a system that a president used to lead the country, right? And it's very visual and it can be tactile. Your kids can move sticky notes around on it or use an app or something like that, right? Not everybody even knows this exists. There's also things like this. This is the Moscow method where you have must, should, could, want, okay? And it can look like this. Again, for visual people, tactile people, this is way easier. Maybe making a one through 10 to-do list is really overwhelming, but if I can gamify it, I can try to like get this stuff done — "I'm gonna get my must done, then I'm gonna be free this weekend" — like that feels really good. We inevitably love games, right? Humans love to play. We know play-based learning is one of the best kinds of learning, and we know that learning is very natural because we love to play. The same can happen with task management. There's no reason that it can't, and I know you're thinking that I'm maybe a bit nuts, but it's actually really fun when you let it be. Anybody here play Duolingo? Okay, okay, case in point, right? What is that? Gamified learning. How many of you log on because you're like "my streak," right? My wife has like a meltdown if she doesn't do a New York Times crossword puzzle. It's like 2 AM and she's like "I got to get it done before bed. I've got 392 days." I'm like "proof," okay? We love getting things done, we love games, we love gamified learning. Make it happen for task management at home. It can happen for chores, it can happen for school work, it can happen for your real work. You get rewards, streaks, trophies, stuff like that. Ian, I'm going to come back to you, but I have to go a little bit faster. And then the last one: high level, other considerations, right? Help your kids understand this is very real life, okay? You know that you're live frog — you need to do that big English paper — but you also know that you're in the car waiting for a doctor's appointment for 40 minutes? Not going to happen. So where are you and what can you do? How much time do you really have? Like this is again, it's higher order thinking because we have to have this kind of moment where we reconcile what we ought to do, what we must do, what we should do versus what we can do. And then your try is contextually prioritizing, which is pretty impressive if I may say. And then number three: the daily plan, okay? This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we've put a lot of time into thinking. Now let me speak to this for a moment because so far we've done a lot of work without actually working, and there's this famous AB Lincoln quote that I love — I should put it in here, by the way, need to quick capture that — AB Lincoln said "if you want me to chop down a tree and I have seven hours, I'll spend six sharpening my axe." It's the same thing, right? Don't just work — be dynamic with your time. Spend time thinking about what we must do, what we ought to do, what is going to give us the highest leverage output, and start teaching kids as young as five, seven, 10 to think like this, right? Because if we do this, we're then going to have more deliberate and dynamic work. Another example of using history: this is Ben Franklin. We know Ben Franklin's family own a printing press. You can actually see his daily journal. He he time boxed and he was so — any type A folks here? All right, look at this. You can't see the whole thing. Ben Franklin was so type A he put "things in their place," "supper," "music or diversion." This man planned his distractions and he's like "you have one hour for diversions," right? Look at — I mean he made a goal for the day. He'd work from 8 to 11: there's urgency there. Two-hour lunch break, read, overlook, dine, work more, sleep, okay? Very dynamic. If again, if you're racing the clock, I love this stuff. My ADHD loves this. I have this much time to do this thing. Raise your hand if you're really bad at time estimates? Like I — that is my greatest weakness as an executive function skill. So I am unrealistic about what I can do every day, and here is how you can solve for that. And by the way, I don't have this perfected, so please don't think I'm like some expert — I'm certainly not. There's something called a fudge ratio, which you track — you're my data-driven people — you track, you look at what you thought things were going to take timewise for a week and then what they actually took, and then you reconcile the two. So if I thought something was going to take me 30 minutes, right, and it took me an hour, I would divide 30 by 60 and my fudge ratio would be two, right? So every time I think something's going to happen, I multiply times that. Does that make sense? So helping our kids — it's it's kind of like I'm really bad at golf and instead of investing in time getting better, I just compensate. I'm like "I always shank it to this way so I'm gonna turn my body a little bit," right? That's kind of what a fudge ratio is like. I could try to like fix my time blindness or I could just plan for it, right? I would do this with my wife. I have to lie to her. She's like "is this a Katie 1:30 or a real 1:30?" because I have to give her like a 30-minute lie to kind of like get her places on time, and it's just like a compensation. I'm going to give you this at the end, but essentially I have a resource that can help you build a task management — it's what Emmy did — and there's also a like a little course and some other courses that I'll give you, and one of them is me walking your kiddo through that. Here are some student examples — I didn't get your example on here, I should have now that I think about that — but here are some student examples. Here are some systems. Again, you're introducing kids to really high level stuff and you're letting them build it, and it's really fun because they check in each week or so and they show you what they've done. So here's an example of a Kanban: to do, doing, done. And you're working through a flow. The goal is to win, right? Get to the done column. That's different from just crossing things off or — again, an Eisenhower Matrix. The digital calendar — this is a kid who is incredibly dyslexic and never did any work until he took this class. You can tell there's tons of typos, but he liked to code and I said "what if you made doing work like coding?" and he — I said "explain coding to me and you're understanding." He said "well there's inputs and there's outputs and certain things happen if then." I said "can't isn't work like that?" So we read a passage of the book Getting Things Done, which is a fantastic book if you've never heard of it. It's like the book on — like is that in the title? He said redundantly, "it's the book on getting things done." You input information: is it urgent, yes or no? If it's urgent, call 911. If it's not that kind of urgent, make it happen. It's really cute and he had a lot of fun with it, and we put a piece — we printed this out and we put a a piece from the game Sorry on it, and he just moved it around for each thing that came in. I'm going to show you this real quick. This is another student. Raise your hand if you have a child who would spend or you are a child who would spend more time building something to avoid doing work than actually just doing the work? Anybody? I'm like that too, right? I'm totally guilty of that. You give me something that would take 30 minutes but I don't want to do it, so I'll spend four hours building something that will help me. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, right? This student coded an app. Let see — hold on, hold on, hold on, all my quotes — here, here we go. So this student coded an app. It's a it's a visual — oh of course it's not gonna work, sorry. Oh there it go, it's just really slow internet. So there's two things you can do on this: you can send me a meme or you can make a pie. And then within that there's subtasks. So he made this little app to get things done, and it was a way for him to put off decision-making — you rank each thing when it comes in and it automatically, you know, you can go home. It's really cool and again, this is like applied authentic learning. This kid built a task management system and actually didn't do the actual work for it, but but he will, okay? It's like a "teach a man how to fish" kind of thing. I'm just trusting that he's going keep fishing. Hold on, hold on — this is what happens I take I take a risk here. I go go off script for a sec. Oh boy, one sec, you guys. The the big picture is this: if we can let go of the how again and we can help our kids build flexible systems, they might very well build things that actually matter and actually help them and let go of the one-size-fits-all this that a lot of us suffer from and our kids especially. So sorry. The other thing that I want to show you is again fun challenges. This same kid I mentioned that like I would have kids send me a meme or something like that — it's fun, it's a fun way to get your child to do what? To quick capture, to put something in a calendar, to take action in the future, right? So I said "send me a meme on Friday at 3." This kid made a meme and then got his whole family and all the kids in the class to spam email me at the same time, and I was — he was like "got you, Mr. Sam," and I was like "actually, I got you because you just LED people to do something two weeks out and you planned and you followed up" — like that's it, right? Again, it's authentic, it's fun, it's silly, but they're learning the skills. And then, you know, that thing that you did with the meme, should we do that with math, right? Leading there. All right, now the other part about this is AI. What about all this AI business? I think that — this is controversial — I think that AI could be a great equalizer for neurodivergent people, a lot of people who really struggle with certain executive function skills. Of course it's controversial, there's mixed feelings. I'm happy to talk through it. However, at the end of the day, I think this could be a great equalizer, a great moment for equity in our space. And one thing that I wanted to do with you is show you a way in which you might use AI to help. Now there's obviously a great many ways, there are a lot of tools. It seems like everybody has that little lightning bolt thing on their apps and sites and so forth for AI, but there's really basic ways — you don't have to spend any money. I'm going to do a little demo just using ChatGPT right now and show you how this can be done. But the key is this: I see AI like a calculator. Our kids need to understand the math that they're doing and then they can use the tool. The same is true with this. I want them to understand and guide — they must understand what it is to have an Eisenhower Matrix or a Kanban system or what prioritization looks like, and then they can use a really cool tool to help them get there, right? A bunch of different ways that this can be a great equalizer as well for speech to text, formatting emails, spell checking things. But for when it comes specifically to task management, I'm going to show you a little example here. Now the internet's pretty slow here, so I don't know how well this will work. Bear with me — got to take risks. The other — you guys, okay, let's see if this works. Now I personally use — I don't use the talk to feature as much because I don't think it's kind of slow and it doesn't always transcribe, but for funsies we're going to try. "ChatGBT, can you hear me?" "Yes, I can hear you. How can I help you today?" "So I'm doing a presentation in front of a bunch of people right now. Can you say hi?" "Hello everyone, thanks for having me. Hope you all enjoy the present—" "Okay, I'm going to interrupt you, sorry. So we have a lot going on, we're talking about executive function systems and task management, and I'm telling everyone that we can use you to create a system. Could you help me with that?" "Absolutely, I'd be happy to help you create a system." "Okay, so here's what we're going to do: I'm going to upload my to-do list for today and I want you to use a must, should, want system to help me get focused on what I need to do today, and if you have any questions about things, please let me know." "Got it. Once you upload your to-do list, I'll help you sort tasks into what you must, should, and want to do." Okay, so what we're going to do now — oh man, oh, I had to quit out of hers, she didn't didn't work — but what what I would typically do there is I would upload my my to-do list — my mouse is died — I would upload my to-do list in there and then I will ask it — the key is saying, first of all, you notice I asked a bunch of yes or no questions. Do you want me to try again? Is it worth it? How how we doing on time? Oh we're good, oh we're good. This is okay, let me try this. While setting that up quickly, please go — I'm almost done, I'm almost done, okay, every — thank you. So here's my C list for the day. I'm just going to copy and paste it over from my list. I'm going to put it in here. Normally I would go back and forth and I would emphasize that it does a bunch of clarification questions. Don't just tell it to do something because it doesn't have the whole picture. Most of us write down tiny little bits and we don't have context, so you need to ask it like "when are these things due? What is the importance?" and I will have a conversation with it. But just for funsies, now we're going to see what it comes up with and then we'll let it put it together. So she's not asking me questions right now, but see, I had to get ready for today, I practice. I can even ask it to zero in and do things like "I'll say I'm still overwhelmed by that list" or "I don't agree this is really important because of this," and I will clarify. And again, the the AI is actually more of a conversation partner than it is actually thinking for me because if your child is struggling with making decisions, there's no better way than being polarized, right? If someone disagrees, they're probably going to correct it and then therefore arrive at the proper conclusion. So whether or not the vehicle is the AI or it's the conversation, the outcome will more or less be the same, right? And you can try different models: "I want you to use the Eisenhower Matrix," "I want you to use the Getting Things Done Matrix," right? Whatever it might be. The goal is the same — it's that interfacing with this. I'm sorry my demo didn't work very well — this is what happens, but it's okay, we persevere, okay? Oh goodness, you guys, we're going to get there together. The big thing that I want to end on is because I want to leave time for you to go and check everything out — the big thing that I want to end on is this: it's that like everything, it's important that we are flexible, it's important that we are letting go of how things come to pass, and it's important that we are helping our students understand the difference between knowing and doing. Because that difference can save lives. Understanding that one can be smart and not get things done is a heck of a lot different than being smart and lazy or not motivated, right? And so many of our kids, they're smart enough — and if your kid's in here, you're smart enough — to know the difference, and it feels kind of lousy when you're like "I know this stuff, why can't I just turn in the paper?" right? That is a really difficult place to be. And when you have that level of awareness and intelligence and you're still not getting the work done, that's when we can start to kind of tailspin and spiral a bit, right? And so it's so very important that we intervene, that we share this language. They shouldn't have to wait till graduate school to learn this stuff, right? If we can intervene now, we can help our kids — they can save face, they can enjoy the process and gamify it, they can get things done and they can feel good about it. And guess what? You could start involving them more in the parenting decisions that you're making. How many things do you do every day where you're just thinking for your child? What if you just involve them? You know, "we have to do these things. I'm thinking make sense for us to go to CVS first because this why, or should we do the other way around?" right? And just put it on them and see if they agree. Little things that you're doing all the time — you are outsourcing your prefrontal cortex to them. You might as well involve them in the computing. The Silicon Valley are hitting right now — it's so good, okay? We're there. So three things: Number one, we talked about our executive function skills. Number two, we investigated how it all works, right? And number three, we looked at different ways that you can help your kid build a task management system. So I'm going to end with this — this is a little QR code that you can scan. There's like 12 or 13 different like demo classes, but one of them is an executive function class that you can check out, and it's like a 40-minute demo where they they basically get like a Google doc and they can build — or you can use this as a parent too — basically build a task manager. So it's just a teaser of like the class that Demi took, that Emmy took. I am going to wrap up here and I'll be in the main room. I know we have to wrap so — oh, okay, I know people maybe want to go. Let's do this: I'm gonna go in that room because a lot of you want to go there, and then if you want — if you have any specific questions, you can come talk to me at my table. And I just want you to to leave thinking — again, it's not about a one-size-fits-all, it's not about agenda books, it's about separating the knowing and the doing and helping your kids let go of the how and being flexible. Thank you very much. Thank you Emmy, I'm sweaty. Thank you.

Sam Young of Young Scholars Academy talks about focusing on the strengths of the child to develop positive learning outcomes. See the transcript here: Neurodivergent and strong—we're going to be talking about how we can overcome, as you just heard, the deficit-based system and lead into our strengths. So, as a global culture, we're very much obsessed with—I would say the box offices suggest so—superheroes. Growing up, my favorite was Wolverine. Any superhero fans here by the way? Yes? A few? Okay, okay. I always loved Wolverine. He's kind of edgy and not as clean-cut as Clark Kent and some of the others. But no matter who your hero of choice was, all these heroes have three things in common, right? Number one, they obviously have superpowers, which is why we like them, right? Let’s come right on and say that. Number two, they are average people who have become above-average somehow. Whether it's a spider that bit them, they're from another planet, or they had a freak accident with weather—like Storm—they develop these powers. And number three—it seems like an interesting one—they actually have a flaw, right? Seems kind of grim, but that makes them relatable. How attractive would a Superman without a Kryptonite allergy be? Right? He comes in, saves the day again—there's no friction in that story. But the key here is that it's part of their story, and it's not their whole one. The sad truth, however, is that in our lives, the whole narrative ends up being about the cracks and the flaws. Right? How many of us here—myself included—could have 99 things right and one thing wrong, and we train—and society trains, schools train—attention on that one thing? Right? And it's tragic, right? Because for heroes, it's only a part of their narrative. So, my goal for you today is to make this transformation: We can recognize our strength, recognize our struggles, and choose to develop our superpowers while dealing with our Kryptonite allergies and things on the side. Okay? So, we're going to jump right in here. I want to offer you a better path, and that path is this: We're going to do three things. Number one, we are going to explore neurodiversity. We’ll talk about our superpowers—you're all here, so we'll be quick because this is a neurodivergent-affirming and understanding group. Number two, we're going to talk about the obstacle that stands in our way. And number three, we'll talk about a solution. And I'll give you a little thing at the end which I think will help you—hopefully—do what we're talking about. So, number one, let us first talk about understanding neurodiversity. I use the word "neurodivergent," "neurodiversity." I think that many of us are familiar with this idea that our brains exist on a continuum, right? There are many different definitions, but historically, we think of this idea that our brains have different functions, and our brains diverge out. Historically, we tend to think that our brain would be on one side or the other of the standard deviation—just like biodiversity. Neurodiversity often brings to mind thoughts that some kind of are towards the center and some sort of go out to the side. And we're going to actually talk about a little definition today that challenges that a bit. Raise your hand if you're already familiar with "twice exceptional" this term. Okay, so then that's good. I assume that would be the case here, but always have to check. As a big believer, I always believe that we must start with definitions. So here's a great one—there are no perfect ones, but this one is from my mentor, Dr. Susan Bal. Has anybody heard of Sue before? Sue? Okay. Sue is fantastic—if you haven't, you should check her out. Dr. Bal said: "Twice-exceptional individuals evidence exceptional ability and disability, which include—excuse me—which results in a unique set of circumstances. They're exceptional—oh, my little does my laser work? Not on here. Their exceptional ability may dominate, hiding their disability or difference. Their difference or disability may dominate, hiding their ability. And they both might—and this is the most difficult of all—they both might reverberate around the same frequency and be hard to detect." Right? And this is what makes twice-exceptionality fundamentally so complex. You have someone who might appear at times gifted, at times learning different, and at times neither. You also have individuals who only appear learning different, who only appear gifted, or who only appear neither. Right? It's complex. So, we're going to be talking about this a lot. To give some faces, we have, of course, you know—Simone Biles, Alan Turing, Greta Thunberg, Richard Branson—right? These folks who have these exceptional strengths—high highs—and exceptional struggles—low lows—right? Autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia—while at the same time being a world-class gymnast, mathematician, advocate, etc. I think of it like this—for my visual people—we've got a foot firmly planted on both sides of the bell curve. Right? And Dr. Bal, in her famous book—this is before there was a term "twice exceptional"—in a book—how to be—no, was it called "Being Gifted and Learning Disabled"? Is that right? Yeah, "To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled"—created this visual, which I think is incredibly helpful. On the one hand, we have these yellow strengths. On the other, we have these blue struggles. And in the middle, we have our green cells. And the key is—if you remember nothing else from this part—the key is that we are always green. Twice-exceptional individuals are always green. Right? What changes? What changes if the person always has—yeah—yellow, green? Well, you're always both, actually. You're always green. You always have yellow, and you always have blue. You're actually always green. I—I think—is that why the YSA logo is blue and then the yellow and then inside the square is—yes? Thank you. Thanks for ruining my next slide, Emmy. Just kidding. I'm gonna have you explain that. But why? What—what is this? Why always green? Oh, I think your hand was up first. Yeah. Um, I think that what changes is the shade of—so sometimes you can have more yellow and have more blue. What causes that? Do you think it depends on like where you're struggling and your environment? Like—environment is the word I was looking for—the environment, right? The environment changes. The person often does not. You'll see the different shades in certain environments, but the person is more or less the same. Now, obviously, we're humans—we're complex, we have emotions and so forth. But Emmy, you just talked about this—um, want—what's the—what's this? Well, it's like the round hole with the square peg thing, and then it's got the blue and the yellow, but inside—like the biggest color I see is the green. So, it's kind of showing that like there can be also the blue and also the yellow and still, you know, have the green as like—there can be, you know, different parts of it. Thank you very much. You read my mind. So essentially, the idea here is that our kids are often depicted as square pegs and round holes, right? And that it is our yellow—it is our distinguishing strengths that stick out. And I think fundamentally, I'm going to ask you to not worry about rounding out today but to actually sharpen our edges. That's what we're going to be talking about. So if we talk about environment being such a big deal—and we know that maybe "gifted" then might have to have a different definition—right? Perhaps we have to ask ourselves: What does it mean to be gifted? Because if we have these kids who can be both, that poses a big question. And historically, we've always thought being gifted was a sort of narrow range of skills that were demonstrated in the classroom—right? Kind of like this: I talk, you sit and get, and then you pitch it back to me. And if you do a good job, you're schoolhouse gifted—right? You do well in academia perhaps. And of course, it's far more complex than that. And historically, you know, we've measured giftedness by intelligence quotient—by IQ—which is complex and has a sort of dark history we're not going to talk about today. But—um—it is complex. All of these things are. I'm going to ask you to use Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences as we go forward. Has anybody familiar with this? Maybe you are now. Most people are familiar with the baseline level, but there's actually a lot more. Gardner said that there are eight or nine intelligences—right? He's kind of pushing away from this singular cognitive intelligence—right? That it's just thinking in school. There might be visual-spatial, musical, interpersonal, naturalistic, logical, and so forth. But what a lot of people miss—and this is interesting—there it's also overused. Come up front—don't be shy. Thank you. There—this is overused, I think, and misused at times. But I think it serves as a great springboard because intelligence is much more broad than perhaps we once thought. And one other thing that is interesting—and this is my big takeaway for you—is that Gardner argued that intelligence is not fixed. That it actually can be cultivated over a lifetime. And how can we do that—right? That's kind of why we're here. So I want to ask you: Of these intelligences, how many do you think are used in a typical academic environment? Would you say—you can just yell a number—hold up fingers—how many? Four? We have visual-spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic—what do we think? Two? Three? Eight? Someone's saying all eight. Two? Three? Five? Five? Okay—usually we get around four or so—right? Um—you could make a case I think for a strong three, but the answer is less relevant than the fact that I would argue that it's not all of them. But you could make a case that there are now. The big takeaway is that it's not fixed, and environment is everything—right? And if it is not fixed and environment is everything, then how can we give our kids these environments? Because guess what—when you're talking about twice-exceptional kids and adults, this means that they are disproportionately, dually vulnerable to their environment—right? The ceiling and the floor—right? The top and the bottom—the strengths and the struggles. They're dually susceptible. And that could be bright lights—that could be sounds—that could be reading emotions on me that affect the empaths in the room—right? It could be a great many things—maybe a sound that I can't even hear. So there are so much—and that means that we have to pay very careful attention to our environments—right? We're talking about superheroes, and they have to have just the right elements. So when you think about a Simone Biles—I don't know her, I wish I did, that'd be cool—but I imagine someone with this incredible kinesthetic intelligence probably struggled maybe to pay attention in math class—right? She has ADHD—I don't know—but it was probably hard for her to sit still. Obviously, in the gym, the gold speaks for itself. What changes? The environment—right? So I think it's just really important that we think about that—that Superman in a room full of Kryptonite—not so hot. But Superman meeting someone's needs who is desperately facing adversity—the thing is this: A lot of the time, our students are being trained to be well-rounded—right? And we talked about this before. And I want you to think today about your child, your student, or you. It's a big aha here—but apples and trees—right? Many parents here have quirky, clever kiddos—another conversation—but um—that there's a—there's something to be said for—you know—what's the environment that we thrive in? What's the environment that our kids thrive in? And so forth. Okay—so this is going to bring us into the conversation about where are they not thriving perhaps. And I'm going to lead with this and say—sorry, my laptop's acting up—that the—sorry—the environment that we typically think of for talent development and for learning is school. And I'm going to go into a critique of education, but I want to say something very clearly—which is that there are a lot of fantastic educators out there. It's really easy to—you know—point the finger at education. And I'm systemically critiquing education but not talking about individuals. Come on in—hello—come on in. Thank you—thank you. Okay—so our education system goes back to the turn of the century—a system that was really getting ready in the industrial revolution into the progressive era called Taylorism. Not this kind of Taylor—although I will say I have become a Swifty—my wife went to the Eras tour and then I saw the movie and I am an undercover Swifty—you all know that now—we're in a circle of trust. This kind of Taylorism—okay—Taylorism was the scientific management system—the idea that we would help kids get ready for what came next—which was the factories—right? Think about it—bell schedules, rotating lunch pail, dunce cap if you're in trouble—right? And what was the goal? Obedience—right? Being an obedient worker who would punch the clock and go do the thing. And that worked incredibly well—it was science. So that's progressivism. Ultimately, there's positives and negatives. In society today, I would make the case that we are not in an industrial era in this country as much anymore—we're in more of an intellectual one. And actually, when I was practicing this last night, my wife Katie was like: "Actually, we're in a quandary era." And I was like: "What?" And she said—come on in—she—well, think about it—we have AI—right? So we're actually—it's not really about what you know—it's about how you can interface with and ask the correct questions. Oh—interesting. I have to change my—my slides. So the point is this—this environment punishes getting things wrong. And we should not—right? When we talk about talent development and being super people and creating superpowers, one of the most important things that we can do is help our kids fail early and often. I don't know about you—I'll speak personally—one of the best ways to get better at things and learn things is to make mistakes—right? And unfortunately, a lot of times grades punish that. A—conformity, speed—right? I feel like now more than ever there's pressure on—you know—your kids are in pre-K and you're like: "Uh—is—is this pre-K going to get us into an Ivy League school?" Um—there's a lot of pressure—Eric, I know you know—there's a lot of pressure. And having our kids in these failure-friendly environments is so very important. So I think about historical examples—right? There's a big lack of alignment here. We celebrate—as you know, as Americans—we love talking about like these—you know—founding figures and these entrepreneurs that would risk it all. And I think about people like the—you know—the Wright brothers—right? They would like crash their plane five times before dinner—right? It was like they had a quote like: "Oh, we can scratch off the T mark—we can go have dinner." And what did they do? Well, they—they—they mastered the skies—right? But education is kind of punishing—it's kind of more—um—more convergent. And I think it's the same stick-to-itiveness we want to cultivate in our kids. So I have a question for you—speaking of fear of risk-taking: What do we think is the most dangerous phrase in the English language? What do you think, Emmy? That someone fails? Okay—saying something about someone failing? Can't—I can't—that's a good one. Yes? Perfect—perfect. Oh—okay—don't worry—don't worry? Yes. Oh—okay—that's a physical danger—that's a very serious danger. Yeah—also "it's not that bad"—when something is "that bad," it's not that bad that we do anything. Okay—yeah—that can kind of belittle our feelings. The one that I chose—and these are great, many ones—is that: "This is the way things have always been done"—right? And the—some of these are arguably better than mine—but I think "this is the way that things have always been done" kind of crushes any kind of divergent thinking and problem-solving and so forth. And our kids again benefit from freedom, openness—right? And—and again, as a society, this is another contradiction where we love people who like—what was the famous—we're in Silicon Valley right now—I was thinking Steve Jobs—what was the famous Apple saying? Remember—"Think Different"—right? But what do we want in school? Same—right? If you think different, it's wrong. So I think that's really interesting. I love this quote by the late Nelson Mandela: "I never lose—I win or learn." And I think this should be one of our goals when we talk about developing superpowers. If—if you read comics, you know it's a rocky road—right? We need to have space to fail, to mess up, and to not have there be consequences. We want to encourage mistakes early and often so that our kids can reflect and learn rather than stay inside the shell—right? I'm going to share a quick video from a mom at our program who talks about the importance of not saying no to her child. Um—I don't know if it's going to work—they do something that you do in an improv game—they do "yes, and." So anytime Luka has something to contribute, he's always hearing back "yes, and." And that is such a big thing because he's never hearing no or "that's not right"—he's never getting negative feedback. Even if it isn't exactly the right track, as long as he's hearing "yes, and," he's willing to open to hear what they have to say. So the last part's really important because she says—your friends—she—she says: "As long as he doesn't hear no, he's willing to hear what they have to say"—right? Again—no—a lot of the times crushes our desire. And I want you to think about it—if you have a kiddo—if you're a parent—or if you're a kid and you've asked for something before—like you want to get a toy or something—if we say no, that just cuts off the thinking—right? Imagine if I came to you and I was like: "I want to get this new Transformers toy." And you're like: "How are you going to get it?" Right? Wow—my cognition is on—right? I have to think—I have to problem-solve: How am I going to get enough money to buy this toy that I really want? Right? This is like authentic problem-solving. So again, when we talk about—you know—developing powers, it might look different. And it might be different from what you expect your kid to be doing or think what they should be doing. And the point is to allow space for that to happen. Now—this work is deeply personal for me—as it is for anybody in this field. Um—I at a young age was diagnosed with ADHD and—and—Gil's going to be talking more about SLD later on—but like many people, much of my life—much of my attention and the attention from the system was sort of trained on my deficits. And it's unfortunate because when this happens to you at an early age, you don't grow as much as you could or should—right? When you have 99 things right and one thing wrong, it becomes incredibly difficult to develop your superpowers because you're trying to fix yourself a lot of the times—right? And I don't say this to say like—go feel bad for me—because I have hundreds of people in our program just like me—unfortunately. But the goal is that if we can get in and find the things that are right with people, that is where talent development and strength-based living and strength-based learning really lie. So I like to think—well—okay—if you know—I can stand here and make a critique about the system—but can't we just make it work? Can we just engineer the system so that all these people—we like to think of as—you know—exceptions to the rule—can't we just make the rule work in favor of these bright, differently-wired folks? And I think—yeah. So this is the third part here—where I'm going to give you some frameworks through which you can operate. And I hope these are helpful for you. For my Type A people who want to take notes—this is a good time. And I just want to say like—we're going to start resetting our goal. I see you note-takers in the front—I saw that moment between you—you're like: "Take the—" The goal here is more than getting out of the maze—get right—and the goal is actually more than just developing powers for the sake of developing powers—right? We're going to talk about—I think—a new goal—which is a term called "eudaimonia." Any philosophy folks here? Okay—you know this—you talked about that word in debate on Monday because I was doing this talk and I was thinking about it. So eudaimonia is a—a Greek—uh—term from—from Aristotle originally in Nicomachean Ethics—which was published in 350 BCE. And the idea is essentially happiness or reason for being that comes through hard work—which nobody wants someone to say when you're talking about happiness—right? We think a lot of the times—as a Western society—we think of like joy as happiness—right? Like—no work today—right? That's joy. But Aristotle said that our flourishing—our highest good—our highest value or ethic is this happiness through working hard. It's busting your rear end to get ready for something. It's that feeling of staying up late and getting up early because you're doing something that is aligned with your beliefs, your values, and your interests. Yes, Emmy? Is that what you feel? That—why I say that is what I feel—and I think that's what you feel too—because Emmy's in debate class. So if you haven't figured it out already, Emmy goes to Young Scholars Academy. Um—Emmy, do you want to say hi to everybody? You want to stand? Emmy's debate class—uh—this past week—and on Monday—if you're interested in coming—they're going to do a demo—just had a—a debate. And I was explaining eudaimonia to the students—saying that that feeling of being stressed, being anxious, staying up late researching, trying to anticipate every argument that your opponent might make—that is happiness in a eudaimonistic perspective. And you can never see it in the moment—because you feel really stressed and all the things—but it's actually—does anybody ever felt like a low after a big project? Like there's a part of you and you're like: "Why do I crave like going back to that? That was really tough"—right? But it's that reason for being that you get—that purpose—that deep fulfillment. This is the—the—uh—Aristotle's idea of happiness. And I think that we all want to find opportunities for our kids—not just to learn the right information and be able to spit it out on a test—but to be able to have opportunities to go deep, to go long, to—to ask big questions, and to think differently. In other words, I think that we want to slow the journey down—because that's where a lot of happiness lies. And then we want to help our kids with their powers to go out and serve the world and actually do something authentic. We're going to talk about that. I like to think this is a great goal—a mosaic—right? Why? Because it's collectively beautiful but it maintains its individuality. This isn't like mixing paints—right? Everything stays unique. At the same time, it comes together. And I think—in the context of our talk—an even better one is this—right? X-Men—right? A bunch of people who come together and have unique powers and team up—and—and they—they have values to bind them. They have a force—a movement to be a part of—right? And they're going out doing super stuff and supporting each other all along the way. So—put even better than my great examples—uh—Dr. Joseph Renzulli—one of my favorite educational psychologists—I quoted Susan Bal before—she mentored him—so he's like my—I don't know—mentor once removed—my grand mentor—um—he said: "Gifted behaviors occur at certain times, in certain people, and under certain circumstances." Let me repeat that: "Gifted behaviors"—he's not saying giftedness—"occur at certain times, in certain people, and under certain circumstances." This is a big deal for a number of reasons. Just like—excuse me—just like Gardner was redefining intelligence for us, Renzulli's redefining giftedness for us—because he's not saying it's an "it"—it's behaviors—right? You are not just gifted—you exhibit gifted behaviors. And where do you do these? Right here—now. Historically, we think of giftedness as this above-average ability—you think of someone who's gifted—maybe they're really good at school or something like that. This is above-average ability. But Renzulli takes it further—he says giftedness is actually a three-ring model—and that gifted behaviors occur at certain times, in certain people, under certain circumstances. And we have to bring these things together. This is what I'm obsessed with. Okay—oh—did I do that? If I—um—he says that task management—excuse me—task commitment is one of the things that we must find—right? Create spaces for our kids to go deep—to bury their heads—to get to lose track of time. And we must create opportunities for creativity. And if you've seen the famous—uh—the late Ken Robinson's TED Talk or read his book, you know the critique is that schools are killing creativity. We need to create more opportunities for creativity—because ultimately, this is what we as a society really value—right? So I think it's—it's a value of—it's a—it's a—it's a really question of perspective—right? Where can we find more of what our kids are doing? And how can we help them go deeper? I think you might think: "Okay, this is really cool—I like that these two are especially interested in creativity and task commitment—but how can I find space for my—my child to go there? Or how can I go there as an adult?" Well, I think those things plus—let me go back again so you can see them all—above-average ability, creativity, task commitment—plus these two—which I call the X and the Y axis—are supremely important. And I think you'll agree with me. Number one—the X-axis: Our kids. The research is so clear—if you want to have a bright kiddo who goes and develops their talents and strengths, they have to find their people. Easier said than done—right? Where do bright, quirky kids hang out? It's complex. Okay—we have a girl at Young Scholars Academy who was 179 IQ. That's when you go: "Wow—let's—" Again—we have a girl at Young Scholars Academy who has a 179 IQ. I know—right? Does anybody know Einstein's—what is it? With the confidence—be wrong—be wrong. Emmy knows—Emmy just said it—some other people—160-something. So I—there was never an IQ test—Em, you said it right—it was believed to be 165 to 180 or so. Well done. Okay—so this girl—this 12-year-old body at Young Scholars Academy—has this Einsteinian brain. That's complex. She's not going to hang out with graduate-level students because that's inappropriate. She's not going to also hang out with other 12-year-olds because they're on different planets—okay? What do you do? And guess what—a lot of our kids don't. And they struggle—they're isolated—they have interests that are far beyond their— This girl stays up late because she's like obsessed with—with—um—with climate change. She's so worried about it—right? And other kids are like: "I don't know—finger painting—I don't know what they do." But—but it's not important—it's not important—right?—to her. And it's complex. Our kids need each other—okay? So what—the other thing they need is adults like them they can look up to. They need to be able to look at someone—and parents, I'm sorry—it's not you. I know I wish it was—but you know—you can say it till you're blue in the face—it's got to be someone else. But someone who they respect—right? They want to be a YouTuber or a poet or a graphic designer—someone who is a grown-up version of them in a field where they're interested. You can say it a million times—and they say it once—and your kid comes home—they're like: "Mom—Amy said something today that blew my mind." And you're like: "I've said that forever—I have gray—I have gray hair because of you." Um—but it's these things—right? It's these three circles plus these two parts—community, mentors—right? And with these combined, I think we can have our hero kind of set out on the journey. Are you all familiar with Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces"? The idea is—fill in the blank—Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc.—goes out on an adventure. They meet a mentor—the mentor—you know—Gandalf, Yoda, Obi-Wan—helps them cross the threshold. Ever—they go out—they grow—and then they become a different person. Then they go back—right? It's every story—Lord of the Rings—fill in the blank—the Bible—you name it. The idea is that we are—you are here—you are here—adults—sorry—that's not you—you have a side quest—you're here—right? And it's our job—thank you for laughing at that—I appreciate you. It's—it's our job—remember who you are—to help your hero cross the threshold—right? And to find those people—and to have—for creativity—and to explore their talents and interests—and to think differently—and to not be told no all the time—because that kills creativity. Okay—I know this sounds like a big deal. You're like: "God—this is a lot—the Sisyphean feat—right?—pushing this boulder up only to have it roll down again." But I promise you—I'm going to give you some concrete ways to do this. I promise you that there are some very special ways that we can do this—right? One of them is this—this is a framework that I'd like to give you. So again—I promise—my Type A peeps—this is a great read. Um—it's a book by an author—Gay Hendricks—it's called "The Big Leap." And in the book, Hendricks lays out this framework. Essentially, the big takeaway is that if you are struggling—or if your child is struggling—it's an alignment issue. It's not a "them" issue. And we talked about this before—exceptional talents, wrong environment—it doesn't work—right? So I'm going to walk you through each of these steps. The third one can be a doozy. The first one is the zone of competence. For me, it's spreadsheets—it's just things you don't belong doing—right? There's no point—uh—you're not good at them. Yes—there's value in developing certain proficiencies—but ultimately, you're bad at the stuff—and that's okay—right? Most of our lives—I'm gonna speak seriously for a moment—most of our lives is spent trying to fix this thing. And it's a huge waste of time, talent, and treasure—if I can be candid with you. I spent much of my life trying to fix my ADHD and just focus better. That doesn't work very well. Instead, I just get really interested in stuff—and I do better. So our job is to get out of here—and for our kids especially—because remember—they're incredibly sensitive to the environment—it's to ensure that they're not living in this space for extended periods of time. Now—again—I'm not saying that there isn't value in like—you know—adversity and overcoming difficulty and working on things just because we don't like—you know—vegetables—that's a whole other conversation. But then we have the other one—zone of confidence. This is where you're so-so—you're mediocre at best—right? You're good—you can get by—but it's not filling up your cup or anyone else's. We need to also get out of this space—right? That you're not thriving here. Our goal is to go to the top half of the matrix—okay? Then we have our zone of excellence. This is where—I said the third one's a doozy—last time I did this talk, I had someone cry—and I was like: "Wow—this is really resonating with some folks." Um—and—and the reason is this—this is where you stay because you're good—and you fill up other people's cups—but it doesn't fill yours up. You get what I'm saying? The parents—this one usually hits home for you. Maybe this is your profession—right? See—I'm with you—I'm here for you too if you need to cry—right? So this is like: "I am really good at this thing—and other people—corporations, communities, small businesses—get value from that. But I am dying—right?" And a lot of people get stuck here. And Gay Hendricks—in the book—argues that we must get out of this space and find our zone of genius. This is where that term—you've probably heard the term before even if you haven't read the book—right? The idea is—this is your flow state. And here's the thing—you all have kids who lose track of time—right? And we see that as a—that's an issue. But actually, when we talk about like athletes—that's what we look for—that—right? They—"I'm in the flow"—or like a director—right? I always say like—I can tell a good movie because I just get lost in it—right? I'm like in the zone—I'm in someone else's flow—right? Well—this is a good thing. If you have a kid who's losing track of time because they're so obsessed with something—how can we get more of that—right? I know that might not be what you agree with—but that's where I'm trying to get you to go. So the—the idea behind the zone of genius is that we're—we're becoming detectives as parents, as professionals—we're finding out where our kids are strong—and giving them more of it—even if we don't think it's a great place. And this is judgment-free. Your kids online a lot? Maybe they're really important there. Maybe they've created like a server—they're gaming a lot—maybe they're a leader or blogging—I don't know. So instead of like judging—I want you to be a detective and be curious. Again—here's your framework. The idea is to make our big leap. Going back to Joseph Renzulli—how am I doing on time? Okay—going back to Joseph Renzulli—he famously said this—and this quote made me quit my job: "No one cares about Picasso's ability to do complex math or Einstein's ability to paint." It's so freaking obvious—right? Nobody cares about Einstein's ability to paint or Picasso's ability to do math. And he went on to say: "So why are we obsessed with kids being good at everything?" Right? Wow—it just made so much sense to me. Like I just had this thought when I read this—I was like: "Why don't we just put kids who are like five in college? Why don't we just have them like get really good at something and develop their talents and interests?" I think that's so very important—because when you're really good at something, no one cares what you're bad at—right? It's okay that I don't know how to do plumbing—someone else does that—and they're really good at it—right? And that's okay—right? It makes so much sense in the adult world—why do we do that to our kids? I don't know. So you're thinking: "Cool—but how do we develop this stuff and live in this space?" I've got an answer for you now. Malcolm Gladwell—years ago—put out this book. And before I lose you—I know this is controversial—and some of it's been debunked—but he called it a rule—and I want to call it like a headspace. And Malcolm Gladwell wrote this book called "Outliers"—and the idea was—um—you know—you get your 10,000 hours—right? This is talent development 101—you have to get your reps in. And in the book, he talked about The Beatles and Bill Gates and others. And I want—I'm going to do the Bill Gates example. So Bill Gates was born in the 1950s—and he went to this school called Lakeside—not far from here. And I picked the Bill Gates example because I was talking here—I live in Los Angeles—I was like: "This is pretty cool." So Bill Gates—I was thinking about him when I was like driving here—I was like: "Is that Lakeside over there—you know—is that where it all started?" But Bill Gates goes to the school—they're like the third school in the country to have a computer lab. But some parent donates $3,000—and they're in elementary school. So Bill Gates goes in and starts programming and learns—he's got a mentor there who's a volunteer parent—and he's coding—and he loves it. And then he leaves elementary school and goes on to middle school. He finds a university that has a computer lab that's open from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.—graveyard shift—nobody wants to go. And he starts going—his mom lets him take the bus—and he goes and programs all throughout the night and starts skipping school. Guess what—when computers hit the scene—he's got his reps in—right? He is ready. My uncle John—I have this like prophetic uncle who always figures it out—I'm like: "John—how did you—" He studied computers in the '60s too—I'm like: "How did you know?" And he's like: "I was born in 1947, Sam." And then he walked away—and I was like: "Well—tell me more." And he's like: "You see—I'm the first wave of the baby boomers—so if I had an idea, I knew 64 million people behind me would too." And I was like: "My God, man—you know?" But it's the same kind of thinking. Your kids are switched on to things that you may not understand—what people in 20 years will be doing—and your kid was early. So how can you help them get their reps in? How can you help them get their 10,000 hours—right? And a lot of the times, people say: "But my kid doesn't know what they want to do." And to that I say: "Are you doing what you thought you were going to do?" Probably not—right? Even Bill Gates didn't totally know what he was doing. But the point is that we just figure it out—we just do something until we find—like who here—raise your hand if you were doing exactly what you thought you were going to do when you were very young—right? You're probably doing the intersection of all the things—right? And there's a framework for that I'm going to share with you. So the point is this—you may not—like—your kid might be wanting to like—I don't know—live stream Minecraft—and you're like: "No—you need to—I don't know—write an essay." It's like—maybe—but maybe not—I don't know. I know kids who like dropped out and are making way more money than me in crypto—um—like I shouldn't have told him not to do it—you know—I should have listened. Actually, one of my students—my first year—was like: "Mr. Sam—I'm actually going to move to Arizona and make a crypto farm. I think there's something to this—I'll do it renewable—people are going to care about that." And I was like: "Okay"—and now he's like totally crushing it. Get your reps in—um—okay. Again—we may not know what we want to do—that's okay—right? We just do it—we let go of the judgment. Here's the framework that I mentioned—has anybody ever heard of this before? I might mispronounce it—"Ikigai"—or "Ikigai"? I'm not sure. "Ikigai"—thank you very much. This is a Japanese four-way diagram—and the concept is essentially the pathway to reason for being—kind of revisiting that eudaimonia idea. And it's this—you find the intersection of what you're good at, what you love, what you can be paid for—because we do have to make a living—and what the world needs . And again—these things change over time. When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher because it was all I knew—and then eventually I found out there were other options I could do with those same skills. One of my neighbors—have you heard of the VCA—the Animal Hospital? Yeah—yes—thank you—he's the founder of the VCA—which is a big deal. I went to lunch with him one day—and I said: "How did you go from being a teacher in New York in like the 1970s?" And he's like: "Sam—everything is teaching." Oh—he's like: "I lead the board—I lead the business like I did a classroom—adults are kids." I was like: "Oh—interesting—okay." Art—um—don't quote me by the way—I don't know if I have permission to say that—but Art Anton—I'm like: "Don't quote me." And then I give you his last name—um—Art said that—and it really blew my mind. Again—not doing what he thought he was going to do—but using the same skills that he developed—getting his reps in—right? That is our kids—that is the pathway. So this is the idea—it's this intersection. We have places that we can't judge these yet—we don't know what's going to be—we just encourage our kids to develop. Okay—and here's the big point—it is exponential. Parents—I opened telling you a little bit about my struggles and my journey—I know you have bright kids—you're here because you care. Time matters—it is important that you get your kids in these spaces now. Again—the Bill Gates example—right? Fill in the blank—get the reps in. Encourage your kid to do what they love. Do not judge—be curious—be curious—ask questions—find opportunities for them. You have kids who are bright—and you're like: "Oh—but they're not pursuing it." They may not have the executive function abilities to do so—okay? They might want it—and you have to be their prefrontal lobe. Come back for my talk at 3:00 if you don't know what I'm talking about. The point is this—it's exponential—it's not linear. Intervene now—help your kid have one hour a day at minimum doing what they love—and they will grow into the superheroes that you know them to be—right? They will go from this to that—right? Being with their people—feeling super—and being their authentic selves. So we're coming to the end here. I want to go back to where I began. If any of my X-Men fans will know what this is—Professor Xavier—appreciate you nerds. Professor Xavier in the X-Men series has a school—by the way, it's called Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters—which is a great name—right? It's not like I took this like giant leap when I had this thought—okay? Stan Lee kind of gave it to me here—thanks, Stanley. The idea is this—the school existed for two reasons. Professor Xavier wanted: To protect the mutants from judgment and the outside world—fill in the blank—these are like our twice-exceptional kids. He wanted to give them mentors who are grown-up versions of them so they could develop talents. People are like: "What inspired you to start Young Scholars Academy?" And I'm like: "X-Men—really—this is a great idea—yeah—I read in a comic." But in all truth—that's it. It makes so much sense—right? Protection and role-modeling and talent development. So if you remember nothing else—I want to encourage you again: Encourage your kiddos to sharpen their edges—don't round them out. The things that stick out—that make them so unique—are the things that are going to serve them well and are going to have that beautiful mosaic effect and serve our collective society ever so well. Okay—so I know this is a lot—and I went quickly. This is usually like a 75-minute presentation—so we're on a sprint right now. I'm going to bring it to a close—and I'm going to give you the thing I said—and I'll stop. We did a lot: We explored neurodiversity—right? We talked about twice-exceptionality specifically. We talked about this obstacle—which again—it's easy to blame the system—but there are a lot of great-intended people inside that system. And I think it's important to just say our goal is to find the solution—which is talent development opportunities for our kids to go deep, to find their people, to lean unapologetically into the things they're curious about without judgment. Because what they're thinking of for the future might be closer to the actual future than what you all are thinking—no offense. We're not riding our banana-seat bikes anymore to the cul-de-sac to go play baseball—right? It's a different world out there. And what your kids are doing—in wherever they are—the crypto space or wherever—is probably closer to the future than your understanding of the future—right? I read sci-fi—I know. I'm going to end on this quote—um—in 2014, Jim Carrey—like him, love him or don't—I love him—went to this university and gave a commencement speech—Maharishi University of Management or something like that in Iowa. Jim Carrey tells his story about his father—and in the story, he says: "My father wanted to be a comedian—it was his dying wish to be a comedian. But he chose a safe route as a banker—only to be let go of his job six years later. And when he had nothing, I realized that even the thing that's safe is not—so we might as well take a risk on the thing that isn't." And I think that's such a beautiful moment—right? Encourage your kid to jump off the cliff—to take flight—to develop their powers. They're going to figure it out—they're going to find their people. And the more opportunities we can create for them—the earlier, the better. Thank you. I have a little resource—I made a resource—um—when I read "The Big Leap," I was so touched by it—I made a resource. Um—if you're interested, you can scan that and get it—full disclosure—it adds you to our email list. I always want to be transparent about that—um—but it will email you. There's like one for middle school and one for high school and college-age kids—and it's just a bunch of questions to kind of find that—what your zone is.

Teachers understand that students do well when they can (Dr. Ross Greene). When a twice-exceptional or neurodivergent student is struggling, the behavior we see is often a signal—an attempt to communicate something they may not yet have the skills or language to express. These guiding questions are designed to help you look beyond the behavior and uncover what might be getting in the way of the student’s success. By approaching these moments with curiosity and empathy, we can better support each learner’s needs, strengths, and potential. Understanding the Student’s Perspective What might the student be trying to express through this behavior? Does the student have the words or skills to express their needs differently? How does the student typically respond to frustration, disappointment, or unexpected changes? What emotions might the student be experiencing right now? For example, are they: Frustrated by lacking needed skills to accomplish the task? Bored by work that is too easy? Anxious or embarrassed about academic performance or presenting in front of the class? Identifying Triggers and Patterns Are there specific times, locations, transitions, or activities when this behavior tends to happen? Have any recent changes in the student’s environment, routine, or relationships occurred? Has the student been exposed to ongoing stressors (e.g., social conflicts, academic challenges, sensory overload)?  What did I observe right before the behavior occurred? What other factors may have been impacting the student when they entered the classroom?  For example: Was there a stressful interaction in a previous setting such as recess or another class? Was there an unexpected or overstimulating event such as a fire alarm, substitute teacher, or change in schedule? Exploring Unmet Needs Does the student have any unmet physical needs (hunger, thirst, tiredness, discomfort, toileting, need to move, need for quiet)? Is the student feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or overstimulated? Is the student spending time each in an area of strength or interest? How can I incorporate those into their day? Could the student be seeking connection or reassurance from an adult or peer? Could something about the current context be exceeding the student's capability to meet expectations? For example: Is the work too difficult and requires scaffolding? Are they doing work on skills they’ve already mastered? Are they having trouble getting started due to executive function challenges? Are they having difficulty navigating the social interactions in group work? Reflecting on Adult Responses and Environment How do I typically respond when this behavior occurs? Are my expectations clear and developmentally appropriate for the student? Am I considering neurodivergent norms for communication and interaction (e.g. reduced eye contact, direct communication, literal interpretation, etc.)? Am I considering cultural / linguistic factors? Have I built a trusting and supportive relationship with the student? For example: Have I taken the time to connect about their strengths and interests? Have I tried to understand their concerns and problem solve together? Are there adjustments I can make to better support the student’s needs and communication? Finding Solutions and Supports Have I asked the student what they need? What strategies have worked in the past (or in other situations/environments) to help the student self-regulate? What additional supports or accommodations might help prevent this behavior in the future? How can I collaborate with the student to develop alternative ways of expressing their needs and what is the best way for me to communicate with them? Who else (teachers, family members, counselors) can provide insights into what might be going on and what helps? For more information, see the DEAR REEL Model: Kirigin, A., Joseph, K., Valek, Y., Wischnia, S., & Turk, C. (2024). The DEAR REEL model: Classroom strategies for twice-exceptional student success. REEL2e.         https://www.reel2e.org/dearmodel

➡️ TIP! To use, click the button above, then go to File > Make a Copy  to create a personal, editable copy of this spreadsheet. The Reframing Behaviors strategy grid is designed to help educators brainstorm classroom and school-level supports for students with a wide range of behavioral needs. The grid is inspired by the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), but it can be used in any school, regardless of whether the school uses MTSS. In this framework, there are three levels of support, ranging from supports for all students (level 1) to targeted support for a group of students (level 2) to intensive individual supports (level 3).* The grid applies the strategies recommended in REEL’s   DEAR REEL model  and expands them to consider how they might be implemented for students with varying support needs. It’s important to note that students may require more support in one area than in another, and that neurodivergent students may have   highly asynchronous profiles , where they are significantly behind their peers in certain skills, yet significantly ahead in others. This grid is designed to be a working document that teachers can add to and make notes on.  * While generally aligned with MTSS, the focus of the grid is on varied levels of support and does not necessarily imply small group settings at level 2. ➡️ TIP! To use, click the button above, then go to File > Make a Copy  to create a personal, editable copy of this spreadsheet.

Having a kiddo with lagging executive function skills (regulating behavior, setting and achieving goals, and adapting to new situations) can make parents feel especially powerless and panicked. But we parents are uniquely well-positioned to help build executive functioning (EF) skills. We are there during the more unstructured times when our kid is not in school or organized activities, and home life involves a thousand tasks that require EF skills. In the face of increasing demands on parenting, it can be hard to try to fit in “one more thing”, but improved EF can help our kid become more independent and reduce stress on the whole family. How to get your kid onboard Say you are on board with helping your kid develop EF skills, what if your kid is not? Every kid likely has something they’d like to achieve, and those are great places to start: Reach the next level in a game Post a YouTube video Make a special treat Meet up with friends Go on an outing to favorite place Earn money for a purchase How you approach your role as coach matters too. I try to come at it as “I am your executive assistant here to help you make your vision a reality” (who wouldn’t want one of those!) rather than “This is something you are bad at and I’m going to make you better at it”. I am also a big fan of Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)  model that creates a problem-solving, collaborative partnership between adults and kids, and that engages kids in solving the problems that affect their lives. How to get started Our kids have their individual smarts, so we need to help focus their smarts on acquiring EF skills, and greasing the wheels of the learning process. Find one problem they’d like to solve, and help them experiment to find what works for them: Recognizing and articulating the problem Brainstorm strategies together Prompt them to try their chosen strategies And most importantly, shine a light on outcomes so they can use that information to adjust as needed (e.g. celebrate a week of homework-before-screens resulting in no catch-up work on the weekend, notice that putting Post-Its in the folder did not work because the folder does not get opened until class time) Alternatively, ask them what their goals are, be it pilot or ice cream truck driver (my kids’ picks), and tie EF skills to the needs of that goal. Initially, check-ins may need to be frequent, but should only take a few minutes a couple of times a day - perhaps in the morning, right as they get home, and towards the end of the evening. Strategies that have worked for us Many EF programs fail because they are rigid and cannot flex to accommodate our kids’ rainforest minds, so I am not going to tell you this is how you/your kid should do it, but these practices have been life-changing for my kid: Electronic devices are our friends Learning to use calendar apps and task/reminder/to-do apps in a way that works for their workflow For older kids, an email management process Set up accounts so you can view the content (e.g. shared logins or auto-forwarded emails), so you can provide timely scaffolding Physical reminders are our friends Checklists for morning, after school, evening routines posted at highly visible places Schedules posted on bulletin boards (we have those on bedroom doors as well as common area of house) Checklist for homework, chores, sports/activities, going out the door–whatever you collaboratively chose as goals or problems to solve Clocks in every room, clocks visible from every seat, clocks that chime every 15 minutes Modeling is our friend I’ve cultivated the eccentric habit of speaking my thoughts out loud to teach EF skills in a non-threatening way. E.g. “Okay, I have to go to back-to-school night at 7, and you are not back from soccer until 6, what are we going to do about dinner?” My kid will often jump in with very helpful advice! I make lots and lots of oopses all day long, these have been great opportunities to model flexibility and incremental improvement. E.g. “Oh shoot! I forgot to bring sunscreen! I’ll ask to borrow someone else’s, and make a note now  so I remember to put a bottle in the car later  so I never  forget again.” Data is our friend It’s not possible to evaluate how things are working without data to create a feedback loop, so look for easy ways to capture data (e.g. medication counter to log how often they are remembering to take their pills, step counter to see if planning to walk after dinner resulted in more steps, task tracker to see how many tasks got checked off) Call their attention to the results of their efforts in a completely non-judgemental way, like a scientist checking the results of last night’s experiment The book “ Smart but Scattered ” has a big collection of strategies organized by specific EF skills. Even if you don’t have time to read it cover-to-cover, flipping to the relevant chapter can give you lots of ideas. My favorite find recently is this gold mine of ADHD pro-tips  posted by folks with ADHD on Reddit. Closing thoughts Education experts have shown that learning happens in the zone between what learners can do on their own and what they cannot do–where they can do it with support and scaffolding. We need to let go of what our kids’ classmates/cousins/neighbors can do, and focus on where they are at. The corollary is to let them do it themselves once they can, even if it is easier and faster if we do it. Some say the goal of parenting is to work ourselves out of a job.

Every other month, we host a free Parent Support Group for families of twice-exceptional (2e) children in partnership with Parents Helping Parents (PHP). In our latest session, we had the pleasure of welcoming Lital, a longtime member of our private REEL 2e Google group. As a fellow parent, Lital shared her invaluable insights on prioritizing the next steps after receiving a new diagnosis or reevaluating recommendations for your child. It’s common to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of recommendations for services, therapies, and appointments that come with a new diagnosis or evaluation. Everything can feel urgent as if it all “needs” to be done immediately. But Lital reminded us that trying to tackle everything at once isn’t always the answer. Instead, it’s an excellent time to sit down and ask some thoughtful questions about your family’s priorities and needs. This approach worked for her family and aligns with recent research published in JAMA Pediatrics  (June 2024), which found that increasing the intensity of interventions didn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes for children. Practical Ways to Approach New Recommendations Lital encouraged parents to slow down and ask thoughtful questions when deciding which services and therapies are truly the best fit for their child and family. To make the decision-making process a little easier, she categorized some important considerations that can help families think about “what’s next” from different perspectives. Valid Reasons for Saying “No” or “Not Now” You don’t have time (due to your job, family needs, or multiple kids) You don’t have the financial resources for all of it Your child isn’t interested or willing You don’t believe it will help, or you don’t agree with the goal or approach Bigger Picture Questions What are my family’s priorities right now? What are my own priorities right now? Which therapy is most urgent for my child at this moment? Am I addressing a short-term issue or planning for long-term development? Where do I envision my child and family in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years? What are the top five actions I can take that will likely have the most significant impact on my child’s progress? (These may or may not involve therapy) Questions to Ask Before Starting an Intervention What specific outcomes do I hope to achieve from this intervention? Is my child on board? Will they enjoy or tolerate it? Do I agree with the philosophy behind this therapy? Is it affirming to neurodiversity? How much time will it take, and will it require additional effort at home (exercises, reinforcement, etc.)? Is that realistic for us? Is it evidence-based? (For example, play therapy and vision therapy are not evidence-based for ADHD or autism.) Is there a clear treatment plan, and how will I evaluate progress? Is it covered by insurance? Are providers currently available, and how long am I willing to wait? For a deeper dive, explore Lital’s full slide presentation , where she provides additional questions to help guide your decision-making. Remember, our 2e Parent Support Groups are a great place to connect with others who understand the unique challenges and joys of raising 2e children in today’s world. Visit our Events  page to explore our upcoming speaker series and to register for the next 2e Parent Support Group, hosted by REEL 2e in partnership with PHP. We would love to see you there

A heartfelt thank you  to everyone who joined us for our inaugural K-12 Strengths Fair  on Sunday, March 9! The event was a huge success, with hundreds of attendees  exploring a variety of exhibitors, kids diving into hands-on projects, and parents connecting with one another while hearing from our incredible speakers. The energy in the room was unforgettable —families found a space to be themselves, celebrate their children’s strengths and interests, and engage with valuable resources. Exhibitors told us this was the most positive and engaged  audience they had ever encountered, and we loved seeing so many meaningful connections formed. But our favorite part?  Finally meeting so many of you in person  instead of through a small Zoom box! Hearing how REEL has touched your lives truly touched our hearts. What Attendees Had to Say: “Sam Young’s square peg in a round hole analogy was thought provoking, especially with the idea that you should sharpen your edges instead of sanding them down . I like the strengths-based approach to neurodiversity .” “Watching Gil's talk about dyslexia helped me ‘step into a dyslexic mind’ in a way that I have never been able to do before.  The way he celebrates and encourages his dyslexia inspires  me to see my students and children differently and for the better.” “Great event overall. Both kids had a wonderful time making connections and learning about programs they want to attend . What an amazing event and priceless connections we made. Thank you!” “It was such a pleasure to meet the REEL team and see so many other people I recognize from the online classes I have taken. The support and guidance I have received from REEL means so much to me and through me, to my family.  I am grateful for all you do.” Watch Our Keynotes Our keynote speakers got RAVE reviews! Check out the recordings for their insights and inspiration. Sam Young, " Neurodivergent & Strong, Developing our Superpowers " Gil Gershoni, " Neurodiversity Unleashed: Turning Dyslexic Traits into Tools for Success " Sam Young, " Supercharge Your Student’s Executive Function Skills: Practical Strategies for Success " Explore the Fair’s Strength-based Resources Browse our strength-based exhibitors  to find schools, camps, providers, and enrichment programs for your K-12 student. REEL Resources to Get You Started on the Strengths-based Path Use our strengths topic tool  to find past event recordings of our expert speakers and online articles all about supporting your child’s strengths. 8 Strengths Based Activities to Kick Off the School Year Parenting Your Neurodivergent Child - Seven Strategies for Success The DEAR REEL Model - Classroom Strategies for Twice Exceptional Student Success Maximizing Student Success - A Strength Based Pyramid Strengths Instruments to Help Identify Strengths We curated a list of strengths tools to help you identify children’s strengths and interests. Check them out here.  Montgomery Schools Neurodiversity Strengths Checklist Renzulli Grades K-5 Interest-A-Lyzer Renzulli Grades 5+ Interest-A-Lyzer Common Strengths of Gifted & Twice Exceptional Kids & Teens Strength-based Neurodiversity Books Here’s a list of our favorite books centered on the importance of centering strengths and interests in the lives of neurodivergent learners.  Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength Based Strategies Stand Out 2.0: Assess Your Strengths The Dyslexic Advantage Raising Twice Exceptional Children Divergent Mind Your Hidden Genius Schoolwide Enrichment Model: A How-to Guide for Talent Development To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled: Strength-Based Strategies Moving Forward The Strengths Fair was designed to connect families with resources that support a strengths-based approach to education. As we plan future events, we look forward to continuing these conversations and expanding access to tools that empower neurodivergent learners. Thank you again to all who participated, and we look forward to future opportunities to connect.

REEL recently hosted a private school panel featuring three parents, Abby Kirigin, Carmen O’Shea, and Callie Turk, who shared their journeys to find a good educational fit for their twice-exceptional (2e) children and families. The event also featured new resources from REEL on private schools in Silicon Valley. We present below the second of three blog posts that summarize the key takeaways from the session. The first blog post offered advice on key considerations when thinking about private schools for your 2e learner. ************************************************************ Essays. Recommendations. Tests. Shadow Days. Interviews. Projects. The Silicon Valley private school admissions process can be daunting. REEL’s private school parent panelists have applied to many schools over the years and offer these key pieces of advice. Talk to multiple people. Don’t rely on just one person’s experience or perspective to make your decisions. Conduct thorough due diligence because every child and family will have different needs. The information people share about their experiences with schools is personal. Plus, schools change over time, and it’s important to get up to date information. If you read online reviews, keep in mind that it is usually the most vocal and unhappy parents who post and, again, complaints from several years back may have been addressed—ask the admissions officer and parents currently at the school about past issues and how they’ve been resolved. Trust your gut. You are the expert in your child, your family and what will work for you. If your current situation isn’t a good fit, trust your instincts to look for a better solution for your child. Although Callie’s daughter started elementary school at a lovely, neighborhood school in the respected Palo Alto Unified School District, it was obvious by the end of second grade that her daughter wasn’t thriving. Most of Callie’s friends didn’t understand why they would consider leaving the school. But, as Callie shared, “We had to consider our options; our daughter was picking at her skin out of anxiety and was late to school at least 40 days in third grade—she just didn’t have an interest in going.” After exploring private school options, her daughter was offered a spot at a small private school with a mission to serve gifted and creative children. The school had smaller classroom sizes, opportunities to accelerate in areas where her daughter had strengths, and a more flexible and engaging curriculum; Callie and her husband knew it would be a better environment for their daughter, despite the tug to keep her at the local school with her siblings. Don’t wait to get evaluations. If you feel that your child is having challenges with learning, the panelists recommended having your child evaluated. Callie observed, “The more you know about your child, the better it is in terms of being able to understand what their true needs are.” If your local public school drags its feet and you can afford a private evaluation, the panelists encouraged moving forward, because the information from a comprehensive evaluation can reveal your child’s strengths, weaknesses, and needs—and may also be requested as part of a school application process. To disclose or not to disclose. Attendees asked if they should disclose their children’s learning differences as part of the admissions process. The panelists concur on the answer: “Yes.” As Carmen noted, “Disclosure is tricky. And I will definitely say we have been burned. But, I have always felt that the best way to go was to be pretty open about disclosing all aspects of our kids, their learning styles, abilities, and challenges. I have always disclosed my son’s ADHD diagnosis because I felt that it’s important for the school to understand. I’d rather they turn down our application than accept him and then ask him to leave a few months later because they say it’s not a good fit.” Abby echoed this same view: “Be upfront about your child and what their strengths are, but also all the other issues, so that both sides can evaluate appropriately whether this is going to be a good fit.” Ask if a school has openings—any time. Most schools in the Bay Area follow a standard admissions cycle, with applications due in early January and decisions posted by mid-March. However, schools can have openings outside of this cycle, and there is no harm in asking if you decide in April or May that you’d like to make a change for the coming school year. This has been even more true during the pandemic, when families have made last minute decisions to move or pull their children from private schools, leaving open spots for schools to fill. And even though the two most common “entry points” for private school once your child is past the elementary years are the sixth grade and ninth grades, schools often accept children at other grade levels. It never hurts to ask. Learn about financial aid. Many parents won’t pursue private school options because of the expense, but most private schools offer financial aid packages to families in need. It often is a core part of their mission and also required by their accrediting agencies. Callie observed, “if that’s your only barrier, it’s worth asking.” Inquire about flexible options . Panelists noted that some private schools are flexible about addressing a child’s discrepant strengths and weaknesses. For example, some will accelerate a child in math or let a child complete math elsewhere, such as a one-on-one school. Don’t hesitate to ask schools about the options for this type of flexibility. While the typical private school application process follows a few core steps—open house, shadow day, testing, recommendations, essays, and interviews—several changes are on tap this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Plus, some schools follow a different path or require additional submission materials. The best advice is for parents to check the individual websites of the schools to learn more about their admissions processes. Most Bay Area schools also use an online system called Ravenna ( www.ravenna-hub.com ) to manage the admissions process. Each school may alter their “normal” admissions process this year, including making tests (such as the ISEE) optional and requiring recommendations from your child’s teachers from last year as well as this year. One parent who attended asked about ways to manage the stress and confusion of the application process for her child. Abby advised that it is stressful, but that it helps to “Involve them, let them know that they have agency in the decisions, and that you are not going to make a decision without them. They’ll have the chance, even at the younger grades, to shadow and try schools out and then let you know what they think of them. We use a lot of calendars and spreadsheets, especially when they’re older, to keep them on track with where we are with each school, what’s coming next. If your child is feeling especially overwhelmed by the process, a good option might be to set a specific time during the week, say on Sundays, when you’ll talk about applications, and avoid talking about it the rest of the week.” Callie observed “So much of this is based on your child’s temperament. If you have a child who is more anxious, then maybe think about what the process is that you’re asking them to go through, because that’s a reflection of the school. We opted out of any school that had testing, high pressure interviews, or things that were going to spike my daughter’s anxiety.” Even in a test-optional year such as this one, consider how having standardized testing requirements in “normal” times is a reflection of the school and its culture. When thinking about the best school fit for your child, Carmen summarized: “It’s been a little bit exhausting and challenging at times. But on the other hand, I’m very grateful for the places we've gone to that have been able to work with our kids in positive ways. And I would say all of them have had their good sides and their downsides. It’s really about talking to the school, talking to parents, looking at multiple perspectives, and really using that information to make your decisions about schools.” Learn about specific private schools in Silicon Valley and beyond in our third post .

REEL recently hosted a private school panel featuring three parents, Abby Kirigin, Carmen O’Shea, and Callie Turk, who shared their journeys to find a strong educational fit for their twice-exceptional (2e) children and families. The event also featured new resources from REEL on private schools in Silicon Valley. We present below the first of three blog posts that summarize the key takeaways from the session. (See our 2e Fact Sheet for more info on what 2e/twice-exceptionality is all about.) ************************************************************ In a traditional year, the private school admissions process starts in the early fall; despite the daily disruption that the pandemic has wrought, fall 2020 is like any other—the private school exploration begins. In a year when many children have spent the majority of “school” learning from home, parents have observed and noticed more about their children than ever before. Many have wondered for the first time whether a private school might be a better choice for their 2e learners. To help parents navigate their options, REEL gathered a panel of three parents—Abby, Carmen, and Callie—with twice-exceptional and neurotypical children who have attended a range of private and public schools in Silicon Valley. All three families researched and switched schools when they realized that their current schools couldn’t address their children’s learning needs. In Abby’s case, a dyslexia diagnosis prompted her to look for schools that could better address her son’s challenges while also encouraging his gifts and strengths. Carmen searched for schools that kept her son engaged and active in learning, with more flexibility from teachers. Callie sought schools that gave her 2e, autistic daughter a greater sense of purpose in learning while also providing flexibility to help her manage her anxiety, which had started to present itself through skin-picking and school refusal. The speakers launched the panel with three key pieces of advice to help parents navigate whether a school—public or private—provides a supportive learning environment: 1. Fit. No one school will work for every child; it’s all about finding a school that is a good fit for your child and your family. Carmen shared, “At the beginning of all of this, we said, ‘Oh, we'll put the kids in the same school.’ We learned that wasn’t necessarily something that was going to work for our family. We really had to meet each child where they were and figure out what the best fit environment would be for them.” Callie, who has three children, including twin daughters, highlighted that when her girls were 8th graders looking at high school options, her 2e daughter initially felt like she should go to the same school as her brother and sister; however, “It just was not the right place for her. She even said to us, ‘Don’t you think I should go there? Wouldn’t that be easier for you all?’ And I said, ‘It won’t be easier for me if you’re not happy. It will be harder for me if you’re unhappy.’” Abby raised another consideration: “Commuting was definitely a factor. Does a school stand out enough to justify an extreme commute? How will you integrate commute time into your family?” 2. Flex. What works for your child this year may not be what works in the long-term; it’s okay to keep exploring to find what works for different stages of your child’s life. Abby switched her son to a new school that could offer more comprehensive support after his dyslexia diagnosis. Carmen moved her son several times to address teacher inflexibility. Callie told the story of realizing halfway through 7th grade that the school her 2e daughter attended might not be the best place for 8th grade. After looking at other options, the family decided to stick with their current school, which ended up working out because “The teacher that she had had so much trouble with really did change. She opened her heart to who Katie is as a person and a learner. And the year went much better. But we were glad we knew our options in case we needed to make a switch midyear.” 3. Fluid. Some of the schools that serve 2e children well are relatively new; others were founded just in the last five to ten years. School cultures change over time as they grow and mature. It can seem risky to join a school if you’re uncertain about its long-term funding and leadership. Every parent on the panel looked at start up schools and their children attended some of these smaller schools; their views on the risks of small schools changed over time. Carmen’s family did have to change schools a couple of times due to either teacher turnover or school closure. Reflecting back on start-up schools that Abby’s family didn’t consider initially, she remarked, “Knowing everything I know and having three children through so many schools, I would be comfortable with those environments now. But at the time, with a four-year old and no private school experience, we just felt those were too untested for us.” In addition, because young, small schools evolve, the perspectives shared by any one parent that has been part of the school’s community may not be representative of the school’s current situation. Talk to as many parents, staff, and faculty as you can to get a broad perspective on where the school has been, is, and may be going. All in all, the parents on the panel found that school culture and teaching approach have been the most important factors for supporting their 2e children. Teacher “fit.” Individual teacher interactions made a huge difference to the panelists’ kids year to year. Kind, patient, enthusiastic, and accepting teachers are the key to success—honoring the children as full people is critical. And this echoes back to the challenge of fit, flexibility, and fluidity—even within a school, the fit between the student and the teacher from year to year impacts the child’s ability to learn and grow. Carmen shared that her son attended a school with a Reggio Emilia approach that was more flexible in the earlier grades, “But started to get a little bit trickier as things got much more structured and traditional. He had a teacher who just wasn’t able to meet the needs of kids who were different. Our son’s self esteem plummeted rapidly.” After landing at two other private schools with teachers who varied in their abilities to flex with her son, the family had a positive experience at their local public school (see below). School culture and flexibility. Small classes, a close-knit community, access to teachers, and a whole child orientation are other key factors that panelists found helpful for their children and families. The panelists appreciated schools that have a culture of openness with easy access to communicate with teachers. Also, it’s important to look at schools that really honor children and who they are as people and learners. Look at how the school feels about the kids: Are the kids there to be molded and made? Pushed and driven? Or are the kids seen as people and as learners and as worth investing in? Ability to address specific needs. Panelists valued schools where the learning supports are built in, part of the culture and not something parents fight for. For instance, dyslexia requires specific approaches and should be well matched to the child’s particular needs. When Abby learned her 2e son is dyslexic, she explored several schools in the area that address the needs of dyslexic learners and was able to find one that could focus both on the remediation he needed as well as allow him to explore his strengths and interests. Carmen commented “My ADHD son needs a different kind of environment, more inclusive and accepting of his differences where he can talk and there are opportunities for collaboration.” The best schools for 2e learners also have flexibility built into their cultures, so that children can accelerate in areas of strength and receive support in more challenging areas. When public school works. It’s possible to find a good fit with teachers in public school as well. Sometimes, the public school really is the right place for a child; they are required to support kids with their learning differences. As Carmen noted, after a string of up and down experiences with teachers in private schools, her son switched to public school for part of third and all of fourth grades. Her son’s fourth grade teacher “blew away my stereotypes about public school not necessarily being a fit for a kid like this.” However, while the public school was better able to address her son’s ADHD challenges, “They weren’t as well-equipped to differentiate. With private schools, the differentiation potential is generally better.” One attendee mentioned that “even though there are plenty of stories about negative experiences in public schools, positive experiences are possible, you just may not be hearing about them. People who are in this field do care; they may be constrained by the resources available, but most do genuinely want to serve the kids.” With so many things to consider, Abby summed up the panelists’ shared experience: “Smaller schools often make more sense for 2e learners, or at least a school where you’ve got a strong community. Whether you choose public or private, it’s important to find a school that emphasizes kindness and empathy as their core values.” Learn about the panelists’ advice regarding the admissions process in the second blog post .