STAR Point Transcript - Jim Bauer On Dyslexia
Guest: Jim Bauer
Host: Earle Harrison
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Transcript begins here:
EH: Hello, and welcome to STAR Point. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for joining us today. Our guest in the studio is Jim Bauer, author of two books, "The Runway Learning Machine: Growing Up Dyslexic," and "Too Much Time on Sycamore Street," a handbook for people with dyslexia. So when did you discover you were dyslexic?
JB: Well, I wasn't diagnosed dyslexic until I was 20, but I knew I was having this collision with the educational system since the first day of first grade. And somehow we learned the alphabet, and one day the teacher had these words on the board and we were expected to memorize those. In retrospect, I think she was teaching sight reading rather than in phonics, and then we were expected to be placed in our three reading groups and expected to read. The Bluebirds, of course, were the -- the lowest reading group, and there was the -- the Squirrels and the Bunnies were the higher ones, and I was originally placed in the second group, and the children -- I was in the middle, and the children began to read their Ellis and Jerry readers. You may remember the Ellis and Jerry readers. And each one of the children began to read, and they did a pretty good job. And I couldn't figure out what their magic was, but I'm sure the magic would happen when it came to me, and it never happened.
It got to me, and I didn't know a single word on that page, except for one, and that was Jerry, and that was my uncle's name. Finally, when I was done, the teacher began to berate me and wanted to know what was wrong with me, what, didn't I want to learn to read, and how come I wasn't reading, and which set the atmosphere for the next 12 years, or even beyond high school. And I learned that not being able to read, essentially at all, was not a cool place to be and set you up for a lot of ridicule and shame and teasing, and so I began to hide my inability to read.
EH: But how long were you able to disguise the fact that you were having difficulty in reading?
JB: Until I decided to go public with it, essentially. I was a good hider. As a matter of fact, I made it all the way through high school reading, writing and spelling at less than a third-grade level, which is essentially a non-reader, and made it through a technical program in health occupations. And I probably still would be hiding this at my -- at age 51 if it wasn't for going through tutoring and being -- to actually face it and do something about it.
EH: What are some of the techniques you used to hide?
JB: I became a very skillful listener. I could go to a class, and if it was lecture, I could probably ace the test afterwards, because I'm a very good listener. In early school, I would pretend like I was reading and didn't know how come the other children could read. I just knew I couldn't read, and I would sit there and I'd pretend like I was reading and watch out of the corner of my eye. They'd turn their page, I'd turn my page. If it was a written essay, I would fail, but if it was from a lecture or a test that was given verbally, I would do quite well. And so I was able to hide this all the way through even technical school. And the teachers in technical school -- it's a health occupations program -- couldn't figure out why I was flunking out of medical terminology, why I couldn't spell the simplest word, the medical terminology. But I finally I convinced them if I could tell them what the words meant, that I would pass with a D.
Well, the other programs were all lecture or demonstration and demonstration return. In testing, I was acing -- getting B's in those, but I still couldn't figure out how come I couldn't spell the simplest word in medical terminology. And they wanted to know what was wrong with me, and I had no answer for them. Which brings up an interesting point, and I think this extends to all persons with disabilities in that, if you don't understand the nature of your disability, you cannot advocate for yourself. That means if you don't know what's going on with you, you can't stick up for yourself, and that's where I was at.
I was 19 or 20 years old, really didn't know that I was dyslexic, and so I couldn't defend myself or stick up for myself, and I developed a personal philosophy or thought that I was really retarded and I fooled everybody for all this time. And there's a lot of people -- adults -- that have gone through life as non-readers, non-spellers and kind of feel like they fooled everybody for all this time. And since I've gone public, it's amazing the people that I've met throughout the country that have -- you know, graduates from technical schools, colleges, Ph.D.'s, master's degrees in very high-level positions that have contacted me and confided in me that they can't read and no one knows this.
EH: Wow! And you yourself have achieved a pretty high level of education, have you not?
JB: Right, I have a -- I graduated from Anoka-Hennepin Technical College, Metropolitan State University, with a bachelor's degree, and Saint Mary's was my master's degree in human development in Minneapolis/Winona.
EH: You're also an occupational therapist.
JB: Right, I have a private practice in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.
EH: Oh, outstanding.
JB: And I'm also a musician. I -- I went to -- following a whole group of failures, I -- I was kicked out of swimming class, got kicked out of --
EH: You got --
JB: -- alter boys, and I got kicked out of gun safety, and then I thought, "Well, I'll take guitar lessons." I got kicked out of guitar class --
EH: Naw.
JB: -- and finally went home and taught myself to play guitar at age 17, and I've been playing ever since.
EH: Our listeners may or may not realize the fact that I am blind, and when I was reading your book, I saw so many parallels, including some of the techniques you used to try to fool people. I recall sitting back in the coat room with a large print book that was almost as tall as I was and squinting with my face up to the book and counting the number of chairs I was going to be sitting down, so when the teacher came around to me I would be on the right page, but it never worked out that way for me (laughing).
JB: I had a funny experience that kind of reminded me of what we're talking about now. A few months ago we were in Ottawa, Canada, at the Canadian Dyslexic Association. I was on a panel, and two-thirds of the people were speaking in French, and I don't understand or speak French. And I was sitting there on the panel and nodding, going, "Yeah," you know, I mean, as if I understood what they were saying, and that kind of reminded me of what I used to do. But also, you know, I could pick up a lot on, you know, the tone of their voice and their -- you know, their look on their face or whatever, how intense they were, if people liked what they were saying or didn't like what they were saying. But, yeah, those are some of the -- the tricks that, you know, many people with disabilities use that some people would describe as, "You're cheating."
EH: Right.
JB: You're surviving. You're not cheating, you're surviving in a system that doesn't necessarily understand the nature of your disability, and sometimes a person with a disability doesn't understand.
EH: Uh-huh.
JB: Yeah. And, like you, I failed music classes as well, but yet I -- I went on to have a fairly successful career as a professional musician too.
EH: Let's talk about your music. Do you still play?
JB: Yeah, I do. I still play. As a matter of fact, I'll be -- I'll be playing -- my wife harmonizes with me. We'll be playing at the {Winnego Folk Festival. It's an annual folk festival in Anoka, and I hit some of the coffee houses in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, do my 12-string guitar, and Molly harmonizes with me, and it's a nice outlet. And I can't read a note, but I write some stuff, and if I can -- if I can hear it, I can probably play it. So I -- I taught myself, and if someone said, you know, "That's an E flat," I'd have to say, "Well, what's an E flat? I have no idea."
(Laughing.)
JB: It's all by ear.
EH: Okay. Yes, that's interesting too, because I was actually told when I was in ninth grade that I couldn't even go into the band room because I couldn't sight read well because I couldn't see, but when I went into tenth grade, a wonderful man by the name of Jimmy Hamilton, a very accomplished pianist who's played with the likes of Oscar Peterson and Ray Charles, he would actually lock me in the band room so -- but as a professional musician and also during my career in college going through physics and chemistry stats and all this type of thing, I had the luxury of being able to fool people into the idea that I actually knew what I was doing in Braille at the time. I actually made up my own Braille notation for algebraic equations and the like, and I'm wondering, did you have any -- did you devise your own notation to get you through school, found some techniques that would work for you but never, ever for anybody else?
JB: Oh, yeah. And, actually, I still do that today. I organize myself in my own way. And, for instance, my garage and my office, that if someone had to find something, good luck. But I know right where it is, and it's my own system. I remember I used to love it when the teacher would read out loud to us, and I remember, you know, following along in the book, and I would have to go back and she'd say, "Write about this." I could go back and find that word in that text and copy it and spell it correctly. Little tricks that sound crazy to other people worked for me.
And I remember ninth grade. We were supposed to read a couple books for English class -- and this sounds like cheating. Perhaps it was -- that I went to the library and I found the books that the teacher read out loud to us in the eighth grade, took them out, pretended like I was reading them, and then gave the teacher a book report on those books. And then I also realized -- this really sounds like cheating too. Perhaps this is too -- that, you know, the chances of me picking out a book in the library and the teacher actually reading that book too and knowing what that book's about, I discovered one day she didn't read this book. So if I have an idea what it's about, I could make up --
EH: (Laughing.)
JB: -- something about this book report and give it to her and she wouldn't be the wiser.
EH: It's true. And did you ever ace any of those types of --
JB: I think I got a B one time in English.
EH: I don't know, that's kind of -- that's kind of on the line between cheating and surviving (laughing).
JB: Yes. I'll tell you what. She didn't read the book, so I -- you know, I aced out on that.
EH: There you go.
JB: You know, but it forced me to become a very good listener, and so I could, you know, take a class and probably get an A in the class if it was by lecture and it was a verbal test. And that extends, I think, into -- in my life today. I've become a very good listener, which works to my advantage.
EH: Uh-huh. If you are just joining us, you're tuned to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. My guest is Jim Bauer, author of "The Runaway Learning Machine: Growing Up Dyslexic," and "Too Much Time on Sycamore Street," a self-help book for persons with dyslexia. We're going to take a short break, and when we return we'll continue our discussion with Jim.
Musical Break.
EH: Welcome back. My name is Earle Harrison and you're tuned to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program. My guest is Jim Bauer, author of "The Runaway Learning Machine" and "Too Much Time on Sycamore Street." Why too much time on Sycamore Street?
JB: Well, that's the -- that's the fifth chapter, and it's based upon a story.
EH: What type of story?
JB: It happened right here in the Twin Cities, of all places. The 911 operator got a call one night, and this voice said, "There's a dead body in the backyard." And the operator says, "Well, okay. And what's your name?" And the guy says, "Well, my name is Frederick Jones," and she says, "Will you please spell your last name?"
"J-O-N-E-S."
"And where's the dead body?" and he says, "364 Sycamore Street." And the operator says, "Please spell Sycamore," and the voice goes, "C -- no, S-Y -- please wait." And the operator waits and waits and the voice goes back and says, "I dragged that dead body down to Oak Street, O-A-K."
EH: (Laughing.)
JB: And I use that story a lot when I give lectures.
EH: This did not really happen, did it?
JB: No, this is a story I made up.
EH: Oh (laughing).
JB: I tell that story, first of all, because I like to tell funny stories. I'm kind of a humorous person, I think. But to make a point in that those of us with brain disabilities will spend a lot of energy and a lot of time to go way around a situation where we might be asked to read, write or spell, because being discovered or being asked to read and not being able to perform is such a source of emotional pain and shame for many of us that we will hide that very, very close to our hearts. And I've known couples that have been married that have never shared with a spouse that they can't read. And whenever you have a secret -- and a secret can be a learning disability or sexual abuse or chemical abuse -- that you tend to hold relationships a bit at a distance, because you don't want anybody to come into that particular circle where you'll be discovered. And so some of these learning disabilities can be a very lonely place to live.
And I finally went public. I -- my wife and I were dating at that time and she discovered that I was going to tutoring, and it was probably about when I was starting my fifth year of tutoring, and I finally decided I was going to go public with this. And this took some courage, because this was prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects reading disabilities under the law. And when I went public with it, I discovered that, first, no one died. I didn't lose my job, and I know some cases when people have, and this was prior to the law, and a lot of people went, "Oh. That's why you spell that way. That's why we can't read your spelling." And so -- and I was age 25 and I've been public with that ever since, and I've been talking about that ever since, and haven't shut up since.
But there hasn't been -- and one of the reasons why I do this is that there hasn't been a lot of mentoring in this area, that I think the school systems are finally coming where they're discovering learning disabilities. We're taking action against them, but there's been very little mentoring of people coming forward and saying, "Yeah, I'm -- I'm learning disabled. I'm dyslexic and I've made it, and so can you." And our history is peppered with a lot of people that are dyslexic and never came forward with it, like Thomas Edison and Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, Walt Disney, Henry Winkler, that were dyslexic. But imagine if those people would have come forward years ago. I think we might be in a little bit different place with this.
EH: For example, you told me earlier about Walt Disney.
JB: Yeah, Walt Disney. I use Walt Disney as an example when I speak, particularly to groups of people that are dyslexic or learning disabled, that Walt Disney once lost a job to a New York newspaper because he was told he had no talent. And I find that hard to believe. But, you know, wouldn't you have liked to have been a fly in the corner and watching that conversation go on?
EH: Uh-huh (laughing).
JB: And, "Mr. Disney, let's see your cartoon for this Sunday's paper," you know, a mouse with a big head, little spindly arms, that talks. You know, "You're out of here, Mr. Disney. You have no talent." Well, my point with bringing him up and using him as an example is that, imagine if Walt Disney would have believed that person --
EH: Uh-huh.
JB: -- and said, "Well, he's right. I have no talent," you know, "I might as well just throw in the towel now." If he would have done that, my life would have been different, and I imagine just about all the listeners' lives would be different. And -- but I use that as an example to say, you know, you -- you know, you can't believe everything that everyone else is going to tell you, and you need to believe in yourself first.
EH: This is true.
JB: Yes.
EH: You're tuned to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program, an on-demand Internet radio resource for people who want to find out more about assistive technology and accessibility issues and anything else that's disabilities-related as well. Our guest is Jim Bauer, author of "Too Much Time on Sycamore Street," a self-help book or handbook for people with dyslexia and -- or for people like myself who can barely pronounce dyslexia, and "The Runaway Learning Machine: Growing Up Dyslexic."
What are some of the things that educators of children should look for today in people who are trying to -- what are the telltale signs? I mean, you were good at it. You think that had you been less good at hiding your disability, that somebody would have said, "Hey, you need," you know, "to see somebody about this"?
JB: I think that if someone would have understood the nature of my disability and not jumped up and pointed at it, because it is -- you know, it is for many people a source of shame and pain, that would have, say, taken me underneath their wing and said, "I think you're having issues with this" -- I was in reading class all the way through school. They just -- they thought I needed help in this area, but it was a class that was people with learning disabilities and immigrants as well as students that were mentally challenged, and their approach was to group your reading by having you read. And if you have a learning disability and the letters keep moving around or you've never learned what sounds the letters make, you can pretend to read all you want, but if no one ever takes you back to the basics or evaluates that you can't see the letters because they're moving around and you need some sort of intervention, you can have someone try to read all they want and it's really not going to help. You have to find out what's really going on with that person.
You know, people are hiding this type of disability not because they don't want to read, but it's because many of them are scared and have had bad experiences already, and some of those experiences have come from teachers. And so people start developing attitudes towards teachers as well as authority figures, and these things very often extend into life. For example, I heard a statistic once that two-thirds of the prison population has issues around reading, writing and spelling and could have benefited from intervention at some time in their life. Now, that's not saying that everyone that can't read is going to wind up in prison, but what is our cost when we don't address that early on --
EH: Uh-huh.
JB: -- when we -- are we going to pay $35,000 a year in a prison system or a few hundred dollars a year in a school system to prevent this from happening? Because people will survive. People will find where they can scratch out a living even if it's on the -- the other side of our society.
EH: In your opinion, has -- has this changed with the -- with recent legislation and the requirement to provide children with a fair and appropriate education, public education.
JB: I think there's been some great strides, because I've -- I've seen it. For instance, I've been invited to speak at many of the high schools and some of the special needs classes. I see that, you know, these things are being identified and there is greater intervention and concern and understanding, but there's still people falling between the cracks. It almost depends on what school system you go to, and I've heard some incredible horror stories about teachers telling parents that there's nothing they can do, that their classroom is too large, and also there's still that population that are adults that are still hurting or smarting from that experience, that really aren't living their lives to their full potential because of this one thing holding them back.
EH: And what is your advice to those folks?
JB: Those people is that you need to -- to confided probably at least in one person that you have issues with this. You don't have to go public with that. And that one person might be the librarian, that you need to be evaluated to see if this is so. A good resource for that is Learning Disabilities of Minnesota, and to get a good evaluation, and part of a good evaluation tells you how you learn best. And then if you decide to go ahead, there are opportunities in the community to get tutoring in a group or even one to one. And some adults will say, "Well, they couldn't teach me to read in 12 years. What makes them think that they can teach me to read at age 35," or 55, or whatever.
Well, we know for some reason, perhaps motivation has a lot to do with it, but someone that can sit down with you and teach you to your particular learning style, an adult can move in a year's time of tutoring a year, two years, three years in grade level if a person teaches you to your particular learning style and takes an interest in you. And so a person can learn to read at any age despite their experience in the past.
EH: So let's go ahead and talk about some of the research that you've done in this field.
JB: I did a couple research projects when I was at Saint Mary's, and one in particular, I think, is very significant, where I studied a group of learning-disabled individuals in depth. And one of the reasons was that I wanted to meet more people like myself and kind of wanted to know what made us tick. It seems like these people fell into three different groups. The first group I call the professional group, the second group I call the student group, and the third group I call the ambiguous group. The professional group were a really fun group of people to talk to. These people were -- some of them were professionals, Ph.D.-type levels, and many of these people not only were successful in their careers but were leaders in their career, and they were successful in what I -- I either define success -- I define success as being successful not only in your career but in your own personal life, that you report being satisfied with your personal life and your leisure time as well as your career. And these people all defined themselves as being successful, and they were fun to talk to. And some of those people -- one person was actually a physician. These were people that are quite successful. Many of them run their own businesses.
The second group I call the student group, and these were people that were individuals that recently discovered that they were a person with a disability, that they had this learning disability, and they were taking steps now to go through tutoring as well as some of the people were going through counseling to deal with the emotional aspects of it, particularly with self-esteem. They were fun to talk to too.
Then there was this third group, that I call the ambiguous group, and these people were having trouble not only with their jobs, their personal life, many of them were having trouble with drugs and alcohol, trouble with the police, trouble with all aspects of their life, and some of these people were kind of scary to talk to. But I divided these people into these three groups falling into these three different categories. Then I took this information back to my advisor, Dr. Sigried Hoppe, who was my advisor in graduate school, and I said, "Look what I discovered." And he kind of rubbed his salt-and-pepper beard and -- he's a German immigrant, and he says, "Yah, that's good. That's good, Jim. But what made the difference? What made the difference?"
And I said, "I don't know," and he says, "Go back your research and look at your information." And I looked back, and it hit me right between the eyes what made the difference. And the people in the successful group and the student group all could identify one person in their past that said, "There's something special about you, and you're going to make it." And the people that were in the ambiguous group, they were having trouble with drugs or jobs, the police, none of those people could identify anybody in their past that ever said, "There's something special about you." And I think that's real significant, because in some cases it wasn't a parent or a teacher. In one case it was a neighbor that said, "There's something special about you, and you're going to make it." And -- and so I'm not saying -- you know, if you know somebody that's in the ambiguous group that I described, perhaps even you could be that person for that person and let enough light in that life to say, "You can make it. There's something special about you." And so it was -- it was an eye opener for myself.
EH: You're tuned to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program. STAR stands for a System of Technology to Achieve Results. My guest has been Jim Bauer, a registered occupational therapist in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and author of two books, "The Runaway Learning Machine: Growing Up Dyslexic," and "Too Much Time on Sycamore Street."
For those folks who fell into the ambiguous category, were those young people, typically, teenagers to early twenties?
JB: They tended to be young adults, and so -- but, like I said before, that, you know, you can learn to read at any age.
EH: It's a tough age anyways for --
JB: Oh, yeah, and all this other stuff piled on top of it that -- I've gotten telephone calls from parents saying, you know, "I have a son with learning disabilities." You know, "He's 35 years old, living in the basement," and they go on. And it's kind of scary because some of them just say, "Well, he smokes a little marijuana," and I'll say, "Well, what do you mean 'a little'?" "Well, he smokes a lot."
Well, in a situation like that you have to deal with that drug abuse or drug addiction before you can deal with the learning disability. You gotta get that straightened out. But to face that for some people is that big Achilles' heal in their life, that that's the biggest thing holding them back, and it's not easy to admit it. And it does take time, but it can be done, but if that's the goal or standing in your way, let's move it.
EH: So who do they call?
JB: A good resource would be Learning Disabilities of Minnesota in Saint Paul, 651-222-0311, and they can be a good resource person. They can find you someone in your own community that can help you be evaluated or help you with evaluation or tutoring or both, and much of the tutoring is low cost or even free. And if people are interested in my book, they can go to educationalmedias.com, and they should be able to set you up.
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You've been listening to a broadcast of STAR Point, a production of the MN STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. If you would like to provide feedback, be a guest on our show, or if you'd like to find out more about the STAR Program, please visit our Web site at www.admin.state.mn.us/assistivetechnology. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for listening.