[MUSIC] >>Welcome to A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity.

I'm Darryl Owens.

You've probably heard the slogan that reading is fundamental.

To put a finer point on it, literacy is a cornerstone of success, both in the classroom and beyond.

It's that realization that undergirds a national movement to change the way we teach readers.

The science of reading approach leans on systematic instruction, engaging the senses, phonics, comprehension, and more to address specific challenges that readers face.

Though not without its critics, the approach has caught fire and blazed a path around the United States.

At least 32 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented new policies that incorporate evidence-based reading instruction.

Supporters say the approach promises to unlock potential in every student, including those with learning and attention issues.

On this episode, we visit a New York day school that serves students with language-based learning disabilities, which through science and innovation, is helping students who learn differently, not just read, but thrive.

Next, our panel of national experts delves into the science of reading and the profound implications for neurodivergent students.

Later, you'll meet our latest difference maker for whom the misdiagnosis of her learning differences serves as a plumb line for her multifaceted career.

We begin at the Shefa School where the emphasis on bolstering different learners' reading skills is never up in the air unless students are engaged in skywriting or other techniques that reshape the approach to literacy education.

Chief Correspondent Cindy Peterson brings us the story.

[MUSIC] >>In the heart of New York City, The Shefa School is educating students facing language-based learning challenges.

Established in 2014 with just 24 students, this Jewish school has since grown exponentially, now serving in upwards of 210 students from grades one through eight.

The school has earned a reputation for its unique learning techniques that help students learn in ways that they can understand.

>>One of the great things about the work that we get to do is that when you watch children be put in the right environment, in a place where they're taught in the way in which they learn.

And no school is right for everybody, but for these kids, there's a very specific way in which they need to learn, and if you give them that, the sky's the limit.

The word "shefa," the name of our school, means abundance, and we really start with this sort of essential belief that children have abundant gifts and abundant blessings and our job is to build on their strengths, never to forget them, and also to fill in the places where they struggle.

>>Employing innovative methods such as skywriting and engaging in phonic activities, The Shefa School harnesses the power of science-based research to confront language challenges, such as dyslexia, with determination and precision.

>>The science of reading is a compilation of thousands of research studies taken from around the world done by neuropsychologists, psychologists, educators on how the brain learns to read and what approaches to reading work best.

A lot of our students have a hard time with this sound system, and so one of the most important aspects to work on is strengthening this phonological system through phonological awareness activities, specifically phonemic awareness activities, which is working out the smallest sound system.

>>The school employees a combination of Orton-Gillingham methods and the Heggerty Curriculum strategically emphasizing the fundamental importance of sounds as the cornerstone of their approach.

>>We start teaching our students from the very basic, the simplest units of sound.

So for example, with our younger students who are just learning how to read, we are gonna start by teaching them the sounds "cuh" "at."

Very simple unit, so you learn the short vowels, you learn all the the consonant sounds, then you progress to the more complicated sounds, long vowels, diphthongs, digraphs.

Along the way, we also teach syllable types and syllabification, so it's very systematic and it's very sequential.

We introduce a new sound, then we write that sound in isolation, then we write words with the sound, and then we actually write sentences that contain words that have the sound.

So you're actually strengthening the connections by writing it.

You might have seen the students skywriting.

So they skywrite.

Again, that is strengthening the connections.

That's multisensory.

You see it, you say it, and you write it.

That is strengthening the connections in the brain between this letter and the letter's sound.

>>We put our hands in the air and then the moras tell us a letter or a sound and we skywrite it and it helps me remember the words because usually in dictation we do it and it really helps me.

>>So I keep on doing it over and over again until my head says A-N-D. A-N-D spells "and," and I just write it off of what I know.

>>When we think of phonics, we think of the alphabetic code and teaching our students the letters and the sounds.

But what the Orton-Gillingham approach really does is teaches our students the structure of our language.

And so we are really teaching them the "why" behind how our language works so that they'll be able to read and spell any word that they ever encounter.

So we teach them syllable types, syllable division strategies, spelling rules and more complex spelling patterns.

At the higher levels, we'll teach them morphology.

So Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, suffixes to really help strengthen their vocabulary and their decoding skills.

And so it really goes beyond just the phonics, we really wanna give them the skills they need in order to be successful learners and readers as they progress through their life.

>>Armed with this newfound comprehension, children are cultivating a genuine appreciation for reading and in the process, bolstering their confidence in their capacity to acquire knowledge.

>>All of our students are broken up into homogeneous groups based on their levels.

There's usually between four and six students per class and it's really targeted to their needs in the group.

So we know that no two students are exactly alike in their needs and skills, but we're able to group students according to the level that they're on and also the pace at which they learn.

As students learn more skills, their motivation increases and their self-esteem improves.

And that's the goal of what we're doing here.

And so we know that there's really a connected relationship between the two.

And so students who are not motivated are unlikely to really apply themselves and learn.

>>With children, their development is on your side.

And it makes a huge difference if you put children in a happy, well-resourced good school with teachers who care about them, it can change their lives.

>>Rest assured that these young learners are in capable hands as they embark on their journey through the intricacies of a language-centered world.

For A World of Difference, I'm Cindy Peterson.

[MUSIC] >>Thanks, Cindy.

Next, let's meet our experts and dig into the latest research and implications of the science of reading for children with learning differences.

[MUSIC] Rose DeJarnett is the assistant department chair of General Education and Distance Learning and professor of reading and literacy at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida.

She created the Torch Lab Curriculum that helps Beacon students continue working on literacy through their general education coursework.

Dr. Benjamin Powers is the executive director of the Southport School, an independent day school for neurodiverse children in grades two through eight who have language-based learning differences and/or ADHD.

He's also the founder and executive director of the Southport CoLAB, director of the Global Literacy Hub at the Yale Child Study Center, a senior scientist with Haskin Laboratories and the president of the Dyslexia Foundation.

Alyson Young is a former teacher and reading specialist for Broward County Public Schools and stayed for 10 years and is now the owner of The Learning Lab, a Florida-based program that provides a tailored learning environment to help dyslexic readers and ADHD students close their learning gaps to help catapult them to success and confidence in educational settings and in life.

And we're gonna start our conversation with Rose.

Rose, can you tell us what are some of the essential components of reading instruction and how they are supported by the science of reading?

>>Well, we think of reading and the science of reading as components, but I like to call them pillars and think of them as almost like building a house.

So with these five pillars and with building in reading, we think of phonemic awareness and phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

With phonemic awareness, we think of kind of those words and those pieces that separate sounds and being able to hear, blend, segment, and manipulate those sounds.

With phonics, it's really about that relationship between letters and sounds.

Our vocabulary are the words that we are able to communicate effectively with.

Fluency is being able to read accurately and quickly with expression.

And comprehension is the whole purpose of our reading.

So being able to understand and make meaning when we read.

And so those five pillars are really those building blocks of our reading.

>>All right.

Thank you.

So Dr.

Powers, can you tell us how, in a Reader's Digest condensed version, how our brain processes language?

>>Sure.

So as Rose just highlighted, there are a lot of different elements to the reading process.

And so when we think about reading, sometimes we think about decoding and being able to sound out the individual words on the page and then on the way actually, what reading is supposed to be, the outcome is comprehension.

And so because of that, there are a number of areas of our brain that are associated with the reading process.

And so really, one of the big challenges in our brain as we're developing our reading skill is that reading is a not an innate process for us.

Something like speech, we are born with an innate, for most people, an innate ability around speech, whereas reading is something we have to develop within the brain.

And so there are certain parts of our brain that are associated with aspects of lifting the letters off the page and decoding them and then linking them with sounds and then there are other parts of our brain that then take those sounds that are turned into words and connect them to meaning.

And so there are parts of the brain that really map out very different aspects of the reading process.

And what's important is that these different parts of the brain are connected and these connections that are developed, as we become proficient readers, these white matter pathways.

And the white matter pathways, they're white because of this stuff called myelin that surrounds these nerve fibers and that myelin is like insulation.

And as we want, in our house in cold weather or warm weather, we want really good insulation.

And so for people who are well-developed with their reading brain, they have better myelination on these nerve fibers and they have better pathways between these different areas of the brain.

One really interesting and specific example of this is in something called the "visual word form area."

So the visual word form area is something that we, from an evolutionary perspective, our brain has developed to be able to do things like object recognition or seeing the profile of somebody's face and being able to kind of complete what that would look like.

And so because reading is not actually something we're born with the innate ability to do, we actually have to repurpose areas of our brain like the visual word form area.

And what happens is that visual word form area allows us to be able to take the objects on the page, the squiggly lines that we call letters, and understand them and then connect them to words and to sounds.

And so we have a lot of work to do in the brain as we are developing our reading skill, and although we know quite a bit about the brain and reading, we don't know everything and that's why we continue to do research.

>>All right.

So, Alyson, what are some of the common misconceptions about reading instruction and how can educators overcome these misconceptions to better support children who learn differently?

>>Absolutely.

So one of the most common misconceptions is that reading comes naturally.

So similar to what Ben said, it is not something that just happens.

And I think that the outdated mindset is that with exposure and love of literacy and reading together with your family and reading every night and just reading more, children are going to learn how to read.

So that's one of the common misconceptions I believe.

You know, understanding that we're just gonna read more and read often and and love to learn and love to read books and then magically, we'll learn how to read.

But unfortunately, that's not the case for most young readers and it really does have to be taught explicitly using a very explicit, systematic sequential and multisensory approach.

So starting with the phonemic awareness, building onto the phonics, which will develop accurate decoding and fluent reading, and when we have fluent reading, we have comprehension.

So kind of tying it all together, what everybody's sort of already said, but yes, I think it's really important that teachers understand that reading does not come naturally and it has to be taught explicitly.

>>All right.

So Rose, let's drill down a bit on phonics.

How important is that to literacy development, particularly for children with learning and attention issues?

>>So when we think about that systematic and explicit instruction that has been mentioned and we think about literacy, literacy is not just reading.

That systematic phonics instruction goes so much further.

When we think about that phonics instruction, it also goes towards writing, so that phonics instruction is essential towards reading.

But for instance, I see it even in college with writing because that phonics instruction is going to also influence the student's ability to encode, which is going to then impact their writing.

So that instruction that we give students is so essential because it's going to impact their reading, which then impacts their writing.

So when we talk about, you know, students who have learning disabilities, we see that at all levels and it's so essential that we get that systematic and that phonics instruction so that, you know, they're able to see that impact with their reading and also with that encoding 'cause it's going to influence their writing.

>>All right.

So Dr.

Powers, I wanted to go off our discussion a little bit and talk a little bit about the national movement that is happening around the signs of reading right now across the nation and how a number of states are now passing legislation to make sure that schools are adopting instructional practices that incorporate evidence-based research.

Is this the right way we should be going?

>>So, absolutely.

It's interesting, one of the reasons we know so much about how the reading brain develops is because of learning disabilities like dyslexia.

And so for the past three decades, there has been a tremendous amount of research being done around reading disabilities like dyslexia, and what we've come to learn through all of this incredible research is that we have this body of knowledge that we can really leverage as the science of reading.

And the incredible thing is that while it is critical to develop the reading brain for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia, the science of reading, what we've come to understand is that it actually benefits all learners.

And so this has been done through cognitive science, neuroscience, education research, and so it is absolutely the right direction to move in.

What we need to be careful of is one of the reasons that we've had poor outcomes with literacy over time is because we've adopted practices that aren't backed by science.

And so leveraging science in our instruction is really important.

But what's most important as part of that process is to make sure that we are backing the work that we're doing in classrooms with something that's based in evidence, an evidence-based approach to implementing curriculum in school.

So while the global notion of the science of reading is a huge step in the right direction, we want to be really careful that the architecture, the framework we build underneath that umbrella of the science of reading is actually built on programs that are developed and evidence-based on credible scientific knowledge and background.

>>Watch the full Ask The Expert segment on our website at AWODTV.org if you wanna learn more about this topic.

You can also watch or listen on Facebook, YouTube, or on your favorite podcasting platform.

[MUSIC] Next, let's meet our latest difference maker.

In a multitasking world where it's common for people to wear many hats, Alix Generous might do well investing in a hat store.

Generous is a researcher, writer, entrepreneur, a play and music therapist, consultant, artist, feminist, advocate, and a public speaker who has given a TED Talk and addressed the United Nations.

And she has served as a script consultant for the TV show Everything's Gonna Be Okay.

Yet there is one hat that dominates her life.

The one stamped "actually autistic."

Years of misdiagnosis led Generous to don another hat.

As an autism advocate, her TED Talk, "How I Learned to Communicate with My Inner Life with Asperger's" has racked up more than 2 million views and she's become a fierce champion of companies neurodiversifying the workforce, having consulted with companies such as the Spectrum Works, which works with corporations to hire autistic workers, efforts worthy of tipping our hats indeed.

Correspondent Bassey Arikpo brings us the rest of her story.

[MUSIC] >>Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the knowledge that comes with living the curious life is catnip for Alix Generous.

An accomplished author, TED Talk speaker, scientist, and neurodiversity advocate among many other talents, Generous has always been one to explore and passionately pursue what interests her.

This love of learning stems from her unique experiences and her autism diagnosis.

Her diagnosis has long been central to her identity.

>>I think being autistic is just essentially a part of who I am, and with that comes many interests.

I don't necessarily think I have these interests because I'm autistic, but I think the way that I think about these interests and how I pursue these interests might be different because I'm autistic.

The sort of passions I have in how I go about pursuing and implementing them is often dependent on different abilities and different ways that I view things.

And all of that is heavily influenced by being autistic.

>>From an early age, Generous excelled at parlaying her interests into new, breathtaking opportunities.

>>I was going to the College of Charleston at the time.

I held a radio show and my radio show was called Brains and Fluff: Making Science Sexy.

And there is this man that I brought on, but I spoke with him about hormones and neurotransmitters associated with infatuation and lust.

He introduced me to Dr. Arthur Ragle and I would do a lot of data collection, work on different scientific methods, working with different animal models and collecting data.

>>Generous enjoys traveling and experiencing new cultures as a way of gaining insight about the world.

And, as she often does, she parlayed her global experiences and findings into a piece that would change her life for the better.

>>I decided to travel abroad because I wanted to put myself in new situations.

I decided to go to Indonesia and I studied tropical ecology there.

We spent our days going on excursions, snorkeling, researching different environmental issues.

When I got back from the trip, I sat in bed and wrote up this paper just based off of different research ideas and I submitted it and ended up winning the competition.

I ended up traveling that fall to go present this paper at that United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

>>As she made her personal mark on the world, others came to see the value in her experiences.

Hollywood came calling, offering Generous a golden opportunity to represent herself and the autistic community in a scripted show meant to highlight extraordinary people like her.

>>I received an email from a producer named Stephanie Swedlove, and she said that her and Josh Thomas did some research on autistic people and came across my TED Talk and they invited me to audition for the main role.

I wasn't the right fit for the part, however, they invited me to be a script consultant shortly after.

A lot of it is analyzing their scripts and assessing how authentic the autistic character is.

I think if you're not autistic, there's only so much you can really emulate, and so it helps to have that outside opinion.

>>As an autistic person, Generous sees her responsibility to act as a sort of ambassador, serving as an emissary who can share her perspective with the mainstream world, allowing others to hear from the autistic community and learn how to communicate and engage with someone who thinks and experiences the world differently from themselves.

>>My role, in terms of my own personal journey and mission, is to share my life experiences to help others.

We live in a world where almost everybody knows somebody who has different needs and different abilities, and doing whatever I can to increase tolerance and increase acceptance of different kinds of people, that is my purpose because a lot of the pain that I experienced growing up was due to that rejection and lack of understanding and I think a better way can be modeled to help others.

>>Generous shares some advice that is the fruit of her limitless curiosity.

>>I think it's important knowing that, as an adult, you have to be proactive in accessing different help.

When you're an adult, it's up to you to decide which help you enlist and whether you get help to begin with.

And so it's important to be proactive in your own recovery and to work on yourself as much as possible.

And you're working on yourself, not for other people, but for yourself.

>>For A World of Difference, I'm Bassey Arikpo.

[MUSIC] >>Thanks, Bassey, And congratulations, Alix Generous for making a difference.

And that does it for this edition of A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity.

I'm Darryl Owens.

I'll see you back here next time.

You can watch episodes of A World of Difference on the Beacon College Facebook and YouTube channels, and on the show's website, AWODTV.org.

The website also provides tip sheets and other resources for your parenting journey.

You can watch the show from the PBS app available on your favorite streaming device, and you can listen on your favorite podcasting platform.

Thank you for watching and supporting A World of Difference.

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