By Understood
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We all know that an amazing teacher can have a huge impact on our kids. But is that impact even greater when the teacher learns and thinks differently, too? In this episode, hosts Amanda Morin and Gretchen Vierstra talk with Kara Ball, a teacher who’s “in it.” Kara shares what school was like for her as a student with dyslexia and dyscalculia, and how those experiences shape how — and why — she teaches.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
0:00
[Music]
0:04
hi i’m amanda morin i’m the director of
0:06
thought leadership for understood.org
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and i’m also a parent to kids who learn
0:10
differently and this is in it
0:13
init is a podcast from the understood
0:15
podcast network on the show we talk to
0:17
parents caregivers teachers experts and
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sometimes even kids we’re going to offer
0:22
perspective advice stories for from and
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by people who have challenges with
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reading focus and other learning
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differences
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and i am so excited to be joined by my
0:32
co-host gretchen veerstra gretchen want
0:34
to introduce yourself sure hi everyone
0:38
i’m gretchen and i work at understood
0:39
with amanda as an editor and i’m a
0:41
former classroom teacher and gosh when i
0:44
was teaching i wish i had known
0:46
everything i know now from understood
0:48
i’m also a mom of two and amanda and i
0:51
talk about our kids all the time so i’m
0:53
happy to be doing this podcast with you
0:55
amanda
0:56
i’m so excited you’re doing this with me
0:58
gretchen and i’m really excited about
0:59
this first episode of the season
1:02
amanda and i have been thinking a lot
1:03
about what a big transition this is
1:05
right now for so many kids and parents
1:08
heading back to school like a real
1:11
physical building after a year or more
1:13
of being remote
1:15
i mean on the one hand let’s be real
1:16
many of us are so excited to get our
1:19
kids out of the house but on the other
1:21
hand over the past months we may have
1:23
learned things we didn’t know about our
1:25
kids as students
1:26
and maybe a little worried that our kids
1:28
teachers aren’t going to get them that’s
1:30
why we wanted to talk to kara ball
1:32
kara is an elementary school teacher in
1:34
maryland she’s a science and stem
1:36
education specialist and in 2018 she was
1:39
a national teacher of the year finalist
1:42
we wanted to talk to kara not only
1:43
because she’s a great teacher but also
1:45
because she’s someone who learns and
1:47
thinks differently she has both dyslexia
1:49
and dyscalculia which can make number
1:51
related tasks difficult and she brings
1:54
that perspective into the classroom in
1:56
such a beautiful way we started by
1:58
asking her why she wanted to become a
2:00
teacher
2:01
yeah so i am one of the few people that
2:04
has always known that they’ve wanted to
2:05
be a teacher um the first recollection i
2:07
have of that is in the basement of my
2:09
childhood home my grandmother who was a
2:12
teacher gave me one of those classroom
2:14
and a kit boxes where it would come with
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the chalkboard and the stickers and a
2:19
red pen uh basically everything you
2:21
needed to be a teacher and i would spend
2:23
every summer in the basement of my child
2:25
at home
2:26
hoarding all of the handouts and
2:27
worksheets that my teachers would give
2:29
us to use in my classroom where my
2:32
students a class of three
2:34
my baby sister baby brother and my
2:37
father who was by far the most
2:38
challenging student i’ve ever had as a
2:40
teacher
2:41
would learn all about the things i
2:43
learned in school uh and i absolutely
2:47
loved that classroom
2:49
but had a very difficult time being a
2:51
student in the classrooms and the
2:52
schools i attended i wasn’t diagnosed
2:54
until third grade with dyslexia and i
2:58
made it all the way to sixth grade
2:59
before i was identified as having
3:01
dyscalculia so
3:03
reading was really challenging math was
3:05
really challenging
3:06
school and as a whole just seemed
3:09
impossible um and when i was growing up
3:12
special education services were very
3:14
much something
3:15
you did in the like the classroom in the
3:18
back of the building out of sight out of
3:19
mind and my dad who’s also dyslexic
3:23
did not want me to experience that type
3:25
of education
3:26
and i am lucky enough to have a
3:28
grandmother who was a teacher a dad who
3:31
also identified like myself as someone
3:33
being dyslexic who advocated on my
3:35
behalf to be able to have
3:37
an inclusion model of education in which
3:39
i received the services in the classroom
3:41
but were pulled out to
3:43
be able to get the supports that i
3:45
needed which was kind of unheard of at
3:46
the time i mean this was the late 80s
3:48
early 90s that i was in school but even
3:51
with those advocates
3:53
it didn’t change that i went through the
3:54
day-to-day um the school day trying to
3:59
remember choral reading where you would
4:00
get a book and you would have to like
4:02
read out loud of a certain passage i
4:04
would spend my entire like period not
4:07
listening or comprehending everything
4:09
else was being read
4:11
trying to
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figure out how to read my little
4:13
paragraph before they got to me because
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i knew that i was going to stumble i was
4:18
going to make a mistake and it was so
4:20
stress inducing that i would i was the
4:23
kid that asked for a bathroom pass any
4:24
time we had to read anything out light i
4:26
was like i i like i just had to get out
4:28
because i didn’t want anybody to know
4:31
how difficult it was for me just to keep
4:32
up
4:34
kara
4:34
first of all the story is incredible um
4:37
going all the way back to when you were
4:39
in the basement with that little red kit
4:40
um i know that red kit my kids play with
4:42
that red kid i think
4:44
at least they used to not anymore can
4:46
you tell us a little bit about how you
4:48
got diagnosed and when that happened how
4:50
that felt for you
4:52
yeah so it’s miss liddy um
4:54
i have a photographic memory
4:57
so i pretty much was able to
5:00
memorize all of the books that we had in
5:02
our classroom library so no one caught
5:04
it up until third grade that i couldn’t
5:06
read my parents read to me we had books
5:08
at home we went to the public library
5:11
it was just that it was twice as hard
5:13
for me to learn how to read to hold on
5:15
to words and she was the first teacher
5:17
that started doing those small guided
5:19
reading groups with me
5:21
and bringing in books that i didn’t have
5:23
access to in the classroom library that
5:25
i couldn’t listen to peer read to me and
5:27
then memorize it before i was assessed
5:29
on it so your cover was blown right
5:32
exactly my cover was blown and she was
5:35
like hey uh this might be why you know
5:37
her writing and her print and this might
5:40
be why she inverses you know her speech
5:42
sometimes like she knew
5:44
[Music]
5:50
those moments where a teacher intervenes
5:52
are so important and it takes someone
5:54
like miss liddy who’s really paying
5:56
attention who’s picking up cues and not
5:58
making assumptions about why a student
6:00
is or isn’t performing well
6:02
you know and it reminds me of when
6:05
benjamin my son had a chance to talk to
6:07
kara about this on a webinar they did
6:09
he talked to her about his fourth grade
6:11
teacher mr slotman who realized that
6:13
benjamin actually paid attention better
6:15
when he was doodling at the same time as
6:17
listening and then what benjamin thought
6:19
was so cool is that mr slopeman made
6:21
sure all the other teachers knew too so
6:23
that they could get a better
6:24
understanding of benjamin i love hearing
6:26
stories like that i love it when a
6:28
teacher really notices something about a
6:30
student and pivots and makes that
6:32
difference and in fact that happened for
6:34
kara a lot she had some great teachers
6:37
who really impacted her learning in a
6:38
positive way
6:40
but there were also some cases where she
6:41
had some negative interactions
6:43
for most of my you know k-12 years i
6:46
felt like i was the
6:48
dumbest person ever as you know bad as
6:50
that word is that was the word that i
6:52
would have chose because it’s what i
6:54
heard
6:54
um it’s what people said to me or about
6:57
me
6:57
even teachers who you know thought i
7:00
couldn’t hear what they were saying
7:01
because they were you know two feet that
7:03
way
7:04
uh would talk about me in terms of all
7:07
the things that i couldn’t do rather
7:09
than what i could do um
7:11
when i hit ninth grade i encountered a
7:14
science teacher who
7:16
would ultimately be the reason i became
7:18
a stem education teacher and mr dalton
7:20
was somebody who for whatever reason
7:22
looked at me as a less than c average
7:24
student
7:25
with an iep and said let’s give her a
7:27
shot and he enrolled in my first ever
7:30
honors science class and
7:32
like i still talked to mr dalton today
7:34
he was the second person i told when i
7:36
was named state teacher of the year
7:38
because up until that moment in time i
7:40
thought that i wasn’t a good student um
7:43
it was really interesting because in
7:44
high school
7:46
i managed to have this amazing
7:47
experience with mr dalton who got me
7:49
into science
7:50
while simultaneously had my 10th grade
7:53
math teacher tell me in front of the
7:55
class that i was stupid and never going
7:57
to amount to anything
7:58
oh like that still hurts my heart today
8:01
when i think of how i felt in that
8:02
moment i left the classic i was never a
8:05
rule breaker i never walked out i walked
8:08
out of that classroom but i walked out
8:10
of that classroom and i walked to mr
8:11
dalton’s classroom because i had a safe
8:13
space i had a teacher who knew
8:16
knew of me beyond what i showed on paper
8:20
and if i didn’t have the mr dawn if i
8:22
didn’t have my grandma if i didn’t have
8:23
my parents
8:25
that could have been the day i dropped
8:26
out
8:26
i was a 10th grade student like didn’t
8:28
have great grades didn’t think i was
8:30
going to go to college and had this
8:32
basement dream of becoming a teacher but
8:34
everybody else but one person was saying
8:36
it wasn’t possible
8:37
and i didn’t i didn’t drop out
8:40
[Music]
8:56
[Music]
8:59
cara when you were diagnosed then um
9:02
did that change your perspective on
9:04
learning so it didn’t like i i knew the
9:07
label i never really saw the iep
9:09
paperwork as a child i wasn’t really in
9:11
those meetings i just kind of either had
9:13
a calculator didn’t have a calculator i
9:15
either got to go in a private room or
9:16
didn’t go in a private room
9:18
and that’s one of the things i work with
9:19
my students as understanding why they
9:22
have these resources and
9:24
how to be an advocate for themselves
9:27
because a lot of people aren’t going to
9:28
just do it for you you really have to
9:31
know
9:31
how to do it for yourself and it’s that
9:33
conversation that shifted me to being
9:35
more willing to talk about it because
9:37
one of the biggest problems i have is
9:39
that
9:41
i know my students that have ieps i know
9:44
my students have learning and thinking
9:45
differences but i don’t hear about them
9:47
as adults because they don’t disappear
9:49
like i’m not magically not dyslexic
9:51
because i’m 19 and aged out of public
9:53
school what happens to you when you’re
9:56
an adult and being able to show that you
9:58
can have an iep
10:00
you can be a successful accomplished
10:02
adult you can go to college
10:04
is something that’s not talked about and
10:07
i i’m honest with my students especially
10:08
my older ones that you know it’s not
10:10
always going to go over well some
10:12
conversations are going to have pushback
10:14
like i’ve had employers where i’ve had
10:16
to be like don’t make me call a lawyer
10:18
in type of conversation like i am
10:20
entitled i know my rights
10:22
but it’s taken years of practice to get
10:25
to that point to stand up and be able to
10:26
be an advocate for myself because like i
10:29
don’t have my parents in the car i mean
10:30
i could i could call my mom at any
10:32
moment and she’d be like i’m coming
10:33
let me get the binder i got years of
10:35
documentation but like i needed to be
10:38
able to do that on my own and it’s
10:40
because of the support systems that i
10:42
had
10:43
and i’m hoping that i’m doing that for
10:44
my students now speaking of families and
10:47
parents which by the way i want to meet
10:49
your mother in this binder this sounds
10:50
amazing um
10:53
i’m wondering
10:54
what advice do you have for families who
10:57
are you know
10:58
they’re coming across this with their
11:00
child for the first time how can they
11:02
talk to their teachers how can they talk
11:04
to their own child about this so my
11:06
advice to parents always usually starts
11:09
with educating themselves that’s that’s
11:11
the first thing is know your rights
11:14
i would love to say that all school
11:16
systems are gonna follow the laws but
11:19
that’s not always the case so it really
11:22
needs to be on them to know their rights
11:24
and what they’re entitled to and you get
11:26
the little document at your first like
11:28
initial iep meeting hold on to that read
11:31
it
11:32
do the research then go to understood to
11:34
look at it because it’s broken down
11:36
better and understood the document that
11:38
they give you is totally overwhelming
11:40
and really it is like you’re in law
11:44
school and are supposed to understand
11:46
all of this totally inadvertent plug
11:48
there it was just a matter of me
11:49
thinking like what that document looks
11:51
like and thinking how overwhelming it is
11:52
to me
11:53
i have a degree in education i’m a
11:55
trained special education advocate and
11:57
i’m still panicking when they hand me
11:59
that piece of paper and then i would
12:01
always say to approach any conversation
12:03
you had with your child uh through the
12:05
lens of empathy and compassion because
12:08
you might not understand like now there
12:10
are lots of groups on the internet you
12:12
could connect with um find other people
12:14
who might be having similar experiences
12:16
it’s nice to be able to have a platform
12:18
where you can share
12:20
your frustrations but at the same time
12:22
get help and support and something that
12:24
is unique to you and your family
12:29
[Music]
12:35
i’m just curious why stem education
12:38
because you know for me for example in
12:41
growing up in school math was not my
12:43
strong suit or science so i became an
12:46
english teacher
12:47
so what drove you to stem
12:50
so i have always been that
12:53
you know curious kid i want to know
12:54
everything about everything and if i
12:56
don’t know i need to look it up right
12:57
away
12:58
uh my dad has a degree in biology and
13:01
when he saw the things that i was having
13:03
a hard time with rather than you know
13:05
telling me to come and sit down and
13:06
let’s work through this textbook we went
13:08
out and we did it so when i didn’t
13:10
understand geometry we built a two-story
13:12
treehouse when i wasn’t understanding
13:14
force in motion we went out and we made
13:16
model rockets we made pinewood derby
13:19
cars i was the first female participant
13:22
in my brother’s hindwood derby for the
13:25
boy scouts troupe and i won
13:27
nice but i do a fifth grade pinewood
13:31
derby unit with my students i do a
13:33
fourth grade model rocket unit with my
13:36
students we design bridges we do
13:38
computer science we do robotics it’s
13:41
living through the learning is the thing
13:43
that i really liked and i also valued
13:46
and appreciated that failure was
13:48
celebrated and recognized as a natural
13:51
part of the learning process where in
13:53
other practices and academic areas with
13:55
the exception of writing we don’t see
13:57
that in writing you go through edits and
14:00
drafts and stem you go through
14:01
iterations and revisions but in math you
14:04
just have to fix it i hear what you’re
14:06
saying right the engineering like the
14:08
design engineering process lends itself
14:10
to this inquisitive
14:12
trying out things
14:13
seeing if there’s a new angle to do it
14:15
not always having to stick to the same
14:16
way of doing something and learning from
14:18
mistakes yeah the resiliency and
14:20
perseverance that you have to learn
14:23
through stem education is something that
14:25
i have always found my students to learn
14:27
and think differently are better at than
14:29
my students who have things that come
14:31
pretty naturally and easy to them they
14:34
have the ability and the willingness to
14:35
persist and to struggle and to
14:37
productively struggle through things
14:39
more so than some other other peers and
14:41
it in all of a sudden things that would
14:44
seem so negative become a positive
14:46
they’re like oh yeah i can do this like
14:48
let’s go let’s try it again try it again
14:49
try it again
14:51
[Music]
14:56
you know kara made a really important
14:58
point back there about how sometimes we
15:01
forget that kids with learning
15:02
differences grow up to be adults with
15:05
learning differences
15:07
right they don’t just disappear although
15:09
hopefully we help those kids develop the
15:11
skills they need so they know how to
15:13
navigate those differences when they
15:14
grow up cara told us a great story about
15:17
what it’s like being a grown-up with
15:19
dyslexia and discalculia
15:21
i had a really unique interaction a
15:23
couple years ago at a yard sale which
15:25
was a fully teachable moment but i think
15:28
one of the hard things is that my
15:30
learning and thinking differences aren’t
15:32
visible to many people and they make a
15:33
lot of assumptions even as an
15:36
as an adult
15:37
i was at a yard sale and somebody was
15:38
buying something from my mom’s table and
15:41
i was making change for them
15:43
but i used my calculator because i
15:45
wanted to make sure that i gave the
15:46
right amount back and they just
15:48
passively said oh you know they don’t
15:50
teach math to these kids every day first
15:51
off i was older than they were
15:54
second off i was like first let me tell
15:56
you a little bit about myself so i have
15:58
just calcula i can’t hold on to numbers
16:00
or digits i can’t make change in my head
16:02
i still use my fingers to count if i
16:05
don’t have a piece of paper to solve it
16:06
out i have to put this in there because
16:08
i just can’t do it it’s not that i don’t
16:10
understand the sequence the steps the
16:12
process or
16:14
the actual like
16:15
you know how to do the math problem i
16:18
just physically can’t hold on to digits
16:20
in my head
16:21
and they were actually very receptive to
16:22
that conversation they had never heard
16:24
about that and they had never taken it
16:25
into consideration but that is something
16:28
i never would have done as a child
16:29
growing up
16:30
um
16:31
i never talked to people publicly about
16:34
it unless i had to in order to get 88
16:36
accommodations if i had to because i was
16:38
going to enroll into a class and i
16:40
needed my professor to know but it was a
16:42
private behind closed doors i didn’t
16:45
want to stand out or be seen as
16:47
being any different than the rest of my
16:49
peers um when i was name state teacher
16:52
of the year i had to discuss it with the
16:54
people that i was working with and they
16:56
were like why don’t you talk about this
16:58
like this is really important and i talk
17:00
to my students about it
17:02
but i never talk to other adults about
17:04
it because there’s still that stigma of
17:06
shame and embarrassment and not really
17:08
understanding
17:10
how to talk to people about it
17:12
what do you say to your students
17:14
so i usually tell them i say oh you know
17:16
it’s really hard for me to learn how to
17:18
pronounce words or uh it’s not that i’m
17:21
bad at math that sometimes math is hard
17:23
for me but here is what i do
17:25
um so like i got switched from fourth
17:28
grade to fifth grade one year and they
17:29
were doing partial quotient and i needed
17:32
to learn how to do that and rather than
17:34
learning like after hours or during my
17:36
planning i told the students that i
17:37
don’t know how to do this
17:39
i want to learn with you
17:41
so i got myself a textbook and i learned
17:44
right alongside my students we went
17:46
through the problems i had a couple
17:47
students that were more proficient at it
17:49
than i was and i said this floor is
17:51
yours like you tell us how we should do
17:53
this
17:54
i have one last question for you
17:56
i’m gonna ask you the tricky one what
17:58
would you say to the math teacher whose
18:00
class you walked out of what would you
18:02
say to him today so i actually got the
18:04
opportunity to sit down with him
18:06
uh it’s that i wanted to be the student
18:08
that he wanted me to be i don’t want to
18:10
have these problems i don’t want to have
18:11
to work twice as hard i was in your
18:14
remedial math class in after-school
18:17
tutoring like i’m not here because this
18:20
is fun
18:22
and i just wish that he knew that i
18:24
really wanted to be the student that he
18:25
wanted me to be
18:27
but here we are here we are and
18:30
you amounted to a lot and we are so glad
18:33
that you came and
18:34
spoke with us and thank you for all of
18:36
your honesty kara and just for sharing
18:39
your story in a fun way that other folks
18:41
can relate to thank you so much anytime
18:44
thank you so much for having me
18:46
[Music]
18:54
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episode that’s the letter u as in
19:24
understood.org
19:26
init
19:27
as a nonprofit and social impact
19:29
organization understood relies on the
19:31
help of listeners like you to create
19:33
podcasts like this one to reach and
19:36
support more people in more places we
19:38
have an ambitious mission to shape the
19:40
world for difference and we welcome you
19:42
to join us in achieving our goals learn
19:45
more at understood.org
19:48
mission
19:48
init is produced by julie supreme justin
19:51
wright mixes the show mike erico wrote
19:54
our theme music laura key is our
19:55
editorial directorate understood scott
19:58
cochere is our creative director and
20:00
seth melnick and brianna berry are
20:02
production directors thanks for
20:04
listening everyone and thanks for always
20:06
being in it with us
20:17
[Music]
20:33
you
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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