Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Susan Baum on the podcast. Doctor
Speaker 1: Baum is the director of the Twoey Center for Research
Speaker 1: and Professional Development at Bridges Academy, a school for twice
Speaker 1: exceptional children. She's also Provost of the Bridges Graduate School
Speaker 1: of Cognitive Diversity and Education. She's the author of many
Speaker 1: books and articles, primarily focusing on understanding and nurturing the
Speaker 1: needs of special populations of gifted underachieving students, including the
Speaker 1: award winning third edition of her seminal Work to Gifted
Speaker 1: and Learning Disabled. Her research and experience in the field
Speaker 1: of twice exceptional education have earned her much recognition. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: I could listen all the awards, Susan that you've won.
Speaker 1: You've won a lot, But I just want to say
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: such an honor to have you here. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: for asking me. I look forward to talking with you.
Speaker 1: As you know, I'm a big, big fan of yours
Speaker 1: and love the work you've done to pioneer this field
Speaker 1: of two ey twice exceptionality. Let's talk a little about
Speaker 1: how you got interested in this topic. What was your
Speaker 1: dissertation on in graduate school. It was looking at students
Speaker 1: with superior cognitive abilities and how being gifted or learning
Speaker 1: disabled made them different populations. So I think it was
Speaker 1: trying to see if there were statistical differences among kids
Speaker 1: who were identified as learning stay both with average ability,
Speaker 1: kids too were identified as superior with an IQ of
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty or more without a disability, and
Speaker 1: those who had both they were identified with learning disability
Speaker 1: and their IQ was in the superior range. Cool not
Speaker 1: a big fan of the labeled superior. I know neither
Speaker 1: was I, but at that point we didn't want to
Speaker 1: use the word gifted. Oh I don't know which is worse.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. So around that time when you're
Speaker 1: working on that, first of all, who was your advisor
Speaker 1: Zuli Jovinzuli was your advisor. Now what year was this,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five? So around this time, it's nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five and you're doing this this foundational work. What were like,
Speaker 1: what was the landscape of the field at that time
Speaker 1: within gift education? How much did they appreciate the fact
Speaker 1: that you could be both learning disabled and gifted. It
Speaker 1: was just beginning. I had trouble convincing my committee during
Speaker 1: my doctoral program that I should even be looking at
Speaker 1: this population. They felt that, Yeah, they said, you're talking
Speaker 1: about such a very few kids, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's going to be worth your time
Speaker 1: or energy looking at them. Maybe you're talking about one
Speaker 1: percent of five percent of the population. And why were
Speaker 1: they wrong? There were some people doing some work in
Speaker 1: this field. Joanne Whittmore June Maker, some amount of work
Speaker 1: coming out of Johns Hopkins, but it really wasn't catching on,
Speaker 1: not yet. Yeah, no, I feel you. I don't think
Speaker 1: it still hasn't caught on in the education in two
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty. It's kind of caught on with people
Speaker 1: who are not in education in ways that it hasn't
Speaker 1: caught on with people in education. Well, so can you
Speaker 1: tell our audience what that means to be two E?
Speaker 1: What does that mean to you? To me, it means
Speaker 1: that you are a puzzling paradox. There are so many
Speaker 1: things that you do very well better than most people
Speaker 1: that people just look at you and say, gee, you're smart.
Speaker 1: And they are very simple things, perhaps like spelling or
Speaker 1: knowing your math facts, and things that other people seem
Speaker 1: to have little difficulty with that you just can't do.
Speaker 1: So it presents this paradox of behaviors that are difficult
Speaker 1: to live with. Yeah, and everyone to a certain degree
Speaker 1: show strengths and weaknesses, all right, So there's a specific
Speaker 1: population two E where you're extreme on both the gifted
Speaker 1: side and the disabled side. Yeah, and sometimes it seems
Speaker 1: more subtle, but the discrepancy makes it difficult. That you know,
Speaker 1: if you are capable of high intellectual conversation and can't
Speaker 1: put anything in writing, that's hard for people to accept
Speaker 1: in themselves and for others to say you must be
Speaker 1: just lazy. You know, there's no reason you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to write out your ideas so to speak, or
Speaker 1: do well focus better in areas that you are uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or understand the social climate when you're so smart, right, No,
Speaker 1: I hear you. And I'm just thinking because you've talked
Speaker 1: a lot of about how a person's learning disability can
Speaker 1: and suppress their giftedness, and so it's not so evident
Speaker 1: or so obvious that a students gifted. How do you
Speaker 1: tell the difference between a learning disabled ungifted student and
Speaker 1: a learning disabled gifted student? And does that question even
Speaker 1: make sense to you? Well, it makes sense in the
Speaker 1: fact that I think about kids who have been identified
Speaker 1: because of a learning disability and they might be receiving
Speaker 1: special at services. You know that profile, and people aren't
Speaker 1: looking for what's special about that child in terms of
Speaker 1: their interest levels, their ability to be creative, their interest areas.
Speaker 1: They're just not looking and no one is thinking that
Speaker 1: those areas are important. So they're hard to figure out
Speaker 1: if you're not looking for those things. Rather, why aren't
Speaker 1: you reading better? Why aren't you telling better? Why aren't
Speaker 1: you able to process information? And no one's paying attention
Speaker 1: to the wonderful engineer that you might be building with
Speaker 1: these extraordinary things, you know, building extraordinary monuments with a
Speaker 1: set of legos, And so there that child is, they say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he can build with legos, but just can't read, and
Speaker 1: no one cares that he can build with legos. But
Speaker 1: that's important. That's very important information, much more important than
Speaker 1: paying attention to the fact that, yes, he needs reading
Speaker 1: support right now, unless what they're doing requires reading exactly right.
Speaker 1: And then if it does require reading, like reading the
Speaker 1: directions to build whatever they're building with Legos, somehow they
Speaker 1: seem to be able to compensate and reading works in
Speaker 1: that situation. Somehow they know enough about Legos that they
Speaker 1: can decode. But if you have them read their textbook,
Speaker 1: not so much. How do you what do you? What
Speaker 1: do you put within the purview of giftedness? What counts
Speaker 1: as gifted? Here? It is? It's hard. I am very
Speaker 1: liberal in my definition of gifted. It may show up
Speaker 1: in an IQ profile if you're looking at subtests. But
Speaker 1: more importantly for me is the kinds of interest that
Speaker 1: child has and the depth that they have in that
Speaker 1: interest area. Is high levels of creativity. It's shown by
Speaker 1: knowledge they have about a certain topic that most people
Speaker 1: don't have. It's the ability to think critically about something,
Speaker 1: argue with people with a coherent argument verbally. There's so
Speaker 1: many behaviors that don't translate into grades in school or
Speaker 1: scores on an IQ test, but much more behaviorally how
Speaker 1: they're navigating the world. And then the other thing that
Speaker 1: I pay attention to is that sometimes their giftedness is
Speaker 1: seen in their ability to circumvent their problems. So they
Speaker 1: become very good at coming up with excuses why they
Speaker 1: can't do something. They might come up with twenty five
Speaker 1: reasons why they didn't do their homework, or why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do the math problem that way, and they might
Speaker 1: come up with twenty five reasons why it's stupid to
Speaker 1: learn history. But people think about that as making excuses,
Speaker 1: and they don't say, what a great divergent thinker that
Speaker 1: young person is. Well divergent thinking, you just brought divers
Speaker 1: thinking so different thinking is? What is that? Is that
Speaker 1: a form of creativity that's really important. If you can't
Speaker 1: think divergently, it's going to be you're going to have
Speaker 1: a hard time coming up with something original or new.
Speaker 1: You have to that out of the box thinking is
Speaker 1: such a strong characteristic of creativity, and so many of
Speaker 1: these cases are such out of the box thinkers, but
Speaker 1: they use them to survive a system. Sometimes instead of
Speaker 1: something that people are looking for. You find that to
Speaker 1: sometimes students from minority populations, I think racial minority students
Speaker 1: when they creative, is it viewed differently than when someone
Speaker 1: else is being creative? Like, are there's any research on that.
Speaker 1: I don't know of research about culturally diverse people. About
Speaker 1: the research other than the fact that if we're trying
Speaker 1: to identify these kids as gifted, we need to be
Speaker 1: looking at performance of these kinds of kids, especially giving
Speaker 1: them a task that involves divergent thinking, and we identify
Speaker 1: many more kids as gifted through their divergent thinking. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's better than kids who are not Caucasian,
Speaker 1: but they do seem to have that wonderful ability to
Speaker 1: problem solve and to use things in ways that they
Speaker 1: weren't intended because they don't have those tools that for instance,
Speaker 1: playing with toys, they don't have the toy. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this has to do with cultural diversity or
Speaker 1: if it's about poverty, but when you are having to
Speaker 1: invent things because no one gives you the things, that's
Speaker 1: certainly as trade that shows creative potential for sure, and
Speaker 1: it's not doesn't seem to be too terribly appreciated when
Speaker 1: a teacher wants you to pay attention to their lesson
Speaker 1: plan and all you want to do is read something new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you've got the ability to do that, and because
Speaker 1: it holds your attention, and because you see a use
Speaker 1: for it. And too often we don't use enough creativity
Speaker 1: in the curriculum so that people could recognize this as
Speaker 1: a potential for high levels of creativity. You've done work
Speaker 1: on creativity, You've done well. You've don't work on everything,
Speaker 1: You've don't work on multiple intelligences theory? Is that right?
Speaker 1: And did you do a book with Howard Gardner? You
Speaker 1: edited a book with him or something that? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: asked a team of us to write a book that
Speaker 1: he was asked to write, but he didn't want to
Speaker 1: write it, so he would edit. You know, he would
Speaker 1: be our editor if you will, but he didn't want
Speaker 1: to write it. And it was trying to use his
Speaker 1: theory more authentically in school because a lot of people
Speaker 1: misused that theory and made it seem like everyone was
Speaker 1: gifted and made it seem like you needed to do
Speaker 1: things in eight different ways when that was never ever
Speaker 1: his intent. Okay, what was his intent. Do you think
Speaker 1: intent was to be able to understand that the brain
Speaker 1: deals with different contents or inputs differently. Not about modality,
Speaker 1: but some of us deal with numerical symbols, some of
Speaker 1: us can deal with music the content of music, Some
Speaker 1: of us deal better with words, and some of us
Speaker 1: deal better with spatial input. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: what area of the brain deals best with numerical content,
Speaker 1: and maybe some brains do that really well, where others
Speaker 1: deal with verbal content in a better way. So, beginning
Speaker 1: to look at I guess we should call them talents,
Speaker 1: but he chose to call them intelligences. Probably got him
Speaker 1: into trouble, right, He would not not have gone in
Speaker 1: trouble if you just said multiple talent theory, exactly right,
Speaker 1: exactly right. He wouldn't have been as controversial. But he
Speaker 1: wanted to. I remember him saying, if I call it
Speaker 1: multiple talents, nobody would buy the book. I call it
Speaker 1: multiple intelligences. It's more intriguing. He wanted the idea to
Speaker 1: get widely disseminated. Yeah, but it's been very helpful in
Speaker 1: us understanding kids who are twice exceptional, because it gives
Speaker 1: you a way of looking at what these kids can
Speaker 1: and cannot do in a more concrete way, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you've developed your own assessment tools for this, right
Speaker 1: am I? Right, you have a strengths finder sort of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We do look at trying to find out kids abilities
Speaker 1: to what they're interested in, where their talents lie, and
Speaker 1: begin to look for patterns and so. And what we
Speaker 1: try to do is say, you know, with these patterns
Speaker 1: of talents, these kids are our future philosophers, These kids
Speaker 1: are our future lawyers, because boy do they argue well,
Speaker 1: and they have the great vocabulary and they can argue anything.
Speaker 1: And they might not do well on an intelligence test
Speaker 1: in mathematical reasoning perhaps, but we do get to see
Speaker 1: that in the real world are all kinds of talents
Speaker 1: made up of different patterns of abilities, and our tool
Speaker 1: kind of tries to find what are those talents of
Speaker 1: abilities that's defined by perhaps their personality, their interests, the
Speaker 1: things they like to create. So it's trying to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more concrete than using an abstract or
Speaker 1: to predict what these kids may do in the future. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I love that, but some students are really
Speaker 1: good at abstract stuff. So there still needs to be
Speaker 1: a place for those who scour sky high even on
Speaker 1: the traditional measures, right, Right, So for me, I don't
Speaker 1: prefer one way over another. If you can put together
Speaker 1: some evidence that shows that what you can do needs
Speaker 1: to be nurtured and and need services that other kids
Speaker 1: may not require, you know, I think that's the definition
Speaker 1: of gifted. These kids are showing different potentials in ways
Speaker 1: that their peers do not show it, which requires us
Speaker 1: to provide ways for that talent to be developed in
Speaker 1: ways that may be different than what we're offering these kids. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I hear you, and we're not just talking about
Speaker 1: ability or talent. Can you tell me more about this
Speaker 1: program assessment you came up with to help people understand
Speaker 1: personality aspects and themselves as well, because you go beyond intelligence, right,
Speaker 1: we develop something we call the suite of tools that
Speaker 1: has some assessments within it. So the suite of tools
Speaker 1: is trying to gather information about who this child is
Speaker 1: in terms of their strengths, interest, talents, and part of
Speaker 1: the assessment is something called clues, and that is where
Speaker 1: we try to collect information that's from existing IQ tests
Speaker 1: from this thing we call the learning print, and the
Speaker 1: learning print is working with a child, where that child
Speaker 1: identifies the best ways they like to learn, the things
Speaker 1: they're curious about, things that they're hobbies, what they like
Speaker 1: to do outside of school, what kinds of lessons they
Speaker 1: had that they've absolutely adored. So we put that together,
Speaker 1: and then we have another tool called the quick Personality Indicator,
Speaker 1: which we have four different personality types that are similar
Speaker 1: to people's like the Meyers Briggs. One are the fours, well,
Speaker 1: the four that we use. The practical manager and this
Speaker 1: is your sequential learner who's great with details, who loves
Speaker 1: to think in a very linear way, and these people
Speaker 1: are great programmers, and their creativity often is shown by
Speaker 1: making anybody else's idea better. They have an attention to
Speaker 1: details that far exceeds my attention to details. And so
Speaker 1: one that we call learned expert, meaning these are your scholars.
Speaker 1: These are people who are great at arguing. They love
Speaker 1: to give their opinion, they like to challenge theories, they
Speaker 1: like to create their own theories. And then there's another
Speaker 1: type that we call the creative problem solver, who are
Speaker 1: the inventors, who are the out of the box thinkers,
Speaker 1: who are the tinkers who just you know, they can
Speaker 1: be great entrepreneurs and they or they can be great
Speaker 1: inventors or just great new ways of doing old stuff.
Speaker 1: They're really good at that. And then there are people
Speaker 1: the other styles, people persons who have wonderful ways to
Speaker 1: be ambassadors, to get people to work harmoniously with each other,
Speaker 1: to use an emotional their emotions, to become artists or poets.
Speaker 1: But we're never one thing. We're really all four of them.
Speaker 1: So what we try to figure out is what's your profile?
Speaker 1: Because when I have to be linear, I can be
Speaker 1: really linear, but it's not a place I like to be.
Speaker 1: And if I have to be in that place every
Speaker 1: day twenty four to seven, it really does damage to
Speaker 1: my psyche yourself. I can use that those skills or
Speaker 1: that part of my personality when I have to, but
Speaker 1: I can't live there. I really need to live in
Speaker 1: a place that's more like to create a problem solver
Speaker 1: and the people person. I'm a happier individual if I
Speaker 1: could work from that perspective. But truthfully, we're never one thing.
Speaker 1: But I know that if I have a job, I
Speaker 1: better have I do a better job if it aligns
Speaker 1: to what my personality strengths are. Where I can use
Speaker 1: those strengths more of the time than being stuck in
Speaker 1: this more linear mode. For instance, right now, we're putting
Speaker 1: together at papers for accreditation and I can do it,
Speaker 1: but it's driving me crazy because I don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with those details and I can't every single day
Speaker 1: fill in all those details. You know, it's just not
Speaker 1: a happy place for me. You're not going to get
Speaker 1: the best out of me there. So well, then tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you're trying to get
Speaker 1: accreditation for. In other words, tell us about this new
Speaker 1: cogniversity degree graduate school. It's very exciting. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about it. So that that fourth tool, let me go
Speaker 1: back finish up. You know, what we do with these tools,
Speaker 1: We try to collect what we know about kids from
Speaker 1: existing information and their learning print and their QPI. But then,
Speaker 1: and this is what the school is going to become
Speaker 1: known for, using those to come up with a strength
Speaker 1: based talent folks is approach to their development. And so
Speaker 1: when we really understand who these kids are, we can
Speaker 1: better understand how to leverage their strengths. We can better
Speaker 1: understand how to use what their personal best to engage
Speaker 1: them in learning. And also looking at those talents that
Speaker 1: beg for development to give them all a talent plan?
Speaker 1: What is your personal talent plan? What kinds of experiences
Speaker 1: you need to go a law to navigate that journey?
Speaker 1: And so it's a different way of looking at development,
Speaker 1: intellectual development, emotional development, social development. And so our graduate
Speaker 1: school has three programs to help professionals work with families, schools, adults.
Speaker 1: How do we help you become the best that you
Speaker 1: can be? Even if you have these cognitive differences that
Speaker 1: people see as deficits, we see them as strengths. Well,
Speaker 1: I love that you'repplying the strengths based approach to a
Speaker 1: field that hasn't really traditionally focused on it, especially the
Speaker 1: field of special education. I feel like gifted education focuses
Speaker 1: on strengths because that's all about giftedness, but special and
Speaker 1: not so much. Well, so, can you tell us then
Speaker 1: about this graduate school? Yeah? So do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about the graduate school? I always want to talk
Speaker 1: about graduate school because now it's been in existence about
Speaker 1: eighteen months and we're seeing such great results. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a dream, a vision, but what we're beginning
Speaker 1: to see is a group of dedicated professionals and some
Speaker 1: are parents as well who see that this is the
Speaker 1: way they would like to begin to look at their
Speaker 1: own children and to change the field many different fields.
Speaker 1: So we offer a certificate program in twice exceptional education,
Speaker 1: which is a fifteen credit program, and when and people
Speaker 1: in our programs, everybody ends up with this certifical certificate
Speaker 1: because it is the foundational courses and how we begin
Speaker 1: to look at kids differently, how we begin to embrace neurodiversity,
Speaker 1: How we begin to understand that you may have the
Speaker 1: challenges of ADHD, but because you have an ADHD wired brain,
Speaker 1: you tend to be more creative, and you tend to
Speaker 1: be better in certain fields and better careers. And to
Speaker 1: begin to bring those two pieces together, and how we
Speaker 1: can begin to look at instruction in a way that
Speaker 1: brings out the best in you. All right, So we
Speaker 1: have that program. Then we have a master's degree program
Speaker 1: in Cognitive Diversity and Education, and that is a thirty
Speaker 1: credit program where you know you begin to be able
Speaker 1: to bring to your own say you're coordinator of Gifted,
Speaker 1: well you can do it better because you'll be able
Speaker 1: to take those kids who also have challenges and embrace
Speaker 1: them and bring them into your program, or you can
Speaker 1: sit at a team whether trying to come up with
Speaker 1: an educational plan, and you can offer different perspectives about
Speaker 1: what's best for that child. Or you can be a
Speaker 1: counselor and look at these kids differently, or even an
Speaker 1: educational therapist who adds a different dimension to your program.
Speaker 1: And then our most exciting part, of course, is our
Speaker 1: edd program. And you can focus on social justice where
Speaker 1: cognitive diversity needs a more positive spin. Or you can
Speaker 1: look at it in terms of developing curriculum and instruction
Speaker 1: that uses kids strengths, talents, and interests as a way
Speaker 1: of developing curriculum. Or you can become a leader, a
Speaker 1: director of a school, someone who wants to start their
Speaker 1: own school, and a lot of schools for two week
Speaker 1: kids popping up and the leaders. We have several of
Speaker 1: people who are the heads of schools who really want
Speaker 1: to make a difference and have models of schools that
Speaker 1: can work better for these kinds of children. Well, what
Speaker 1: if you can't get access to this graduate program. You're
Speaker 1: an educator who wants to identify these kinds of students,
Speaker 1: serve them. What can they do in their public school
Speaker 1: system or private school system? Just a teacher listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast right now doesn't have all these resources you're
Speaker 1: talking about. I think all of us have to begin
Speaker 1: to look at what the child is doing well other
Speaker 1: than what the child is not doing well. A good
Speaker 1: teacher is one who knows how to deal with the
Speaker 1: child's these a gift in the child's strengths and interest.
Speaker 1: A superior teacher is one that can see the gift
Speaker 1: in their fall. Well maybe it's a great teacher. Not
Speaker 1: like the word superior by the way you said it,
Speaker 1: but that's what I mean, because you can see the
Speaker 1: promise in that child and to begin to notice when
Speaker 1: the child is having a good day, and what did
Speaker 1: you do as a teacher that allowed that child to
Speaker 1: have a good day? Just do more of it. Maybe
Speaker 1: you did orgamy that day in school, and this child
Speaker 1: who's always been problematic, who's always made you worry about
Speaker 1: what you're not doing for that child, but that day,
Speaker 1: the day that you did orgamy in your classroom, this
Speaker 1: child was phenomenal. Well, then you have to figure out,
Speaker 1: how can I use oregamy more in the curriculum. Or
Speaker 1: that child might be very spatial, how can I have
Speaker 1: more assignments and options for that child that allows them
Speaker 1: to be the builder, to allow them to use their
Speaker 1: ardability in my math curriculum or in my science curriculum.
Speaker 1: And if we just begin to think that way, we'll
Speaker 1: serve many more kids, and then we'll begin to look
Speaker 1: at them and honor and value what they can do,
Speaker 1: which brings other kids in the classroom to begin to
Speaker 1: look at those children differently as well. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they want that child to teach them how to do origamy,
Speaker 1: or teach them how to be great in drama or
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're doing in an area in
Speaker 1: which that child can excel, rather than always find a
Speaker 1: way to help the child do what he can't do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You have
Speaker 1: this metaphor about the complexities of green, So does it
Speaker 1: mean to be green as opposed to yellow or blue?
Speaker 1: Our metaphor says that these kids have these paradoxical behaviors.
Speaker 1: So there's this gifted side, the side that shows their
Speaker 1: high abilities, the side where they excel and that we
Speaker 1: call yellow, and then there are those challenges that make
Speaker 1: them blue on any given day, but they're depending on
Speaker 1: the environment, they're both yellow and blue. They really are green.
Speaker 1: Now are they blue green? Are they yellow green? Now,
Speaker 1: there's different shades of green. But when they're green, it
Speaker 1: means you can't leave their giftedness outside while you deal
Speaker 1: with their challenge. And so, for instance, if they are
Speaker 1: having trouble reading or having trouble decoding, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to water down the curriculum so they're trying to read
Speaker 1: or giving a linguistic approach, a man can fan, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they can decode those words, but they have no
Speaker 1: interest in those words. They have these bright minds. But
Speaker 1: instead if you use poetry, for instance, my favorite one,
Speaker 1: and maybe Robert Frost, whose woods are these? I think?
Speaker 1: I know those are first grade words? Whose woods are these?
Speaker 1: I think? I know those aren't hard words. But the
Speaker 1: message is complex as we go on with that poem,
Speaker 1: and poetry is written perceptually in a way that these
Speaker 1: kids can decode because there are not a lot of
Speaker 1: words on the page. And if you took that poem
Speaker 1: and you took it out of a picture book of
Speaker 1: Robert Frost poetry, then we see some beautiful works of
Speaker 1: art that a lot of these kids could relate to,
Speaker 1: and they can read those words and they can talk
Speaker 1: about what does that poem mean? Miles to go before
Speaker 1: I sleep? And we've got all the pieces together, and
Speaker 1: that yellow could come out because the environment is in
Speaker 1: putting them in something to read that they're so overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the words on the page that you see the
Speaker 1: darkest side of them. You see them do behaviors to
Speaker 1: avoid the task. You see them rubbing their eyes and
Speaker 1: being overwhelmed. But they're green. They need to make sure
Speaker 1: that they're yellow. Part of their brain can work as
Speaker 1: you're trying to get them to become better readers. They're
Speaker 1: very complex and to look at them as two different people.
Speaker 1: They have the gifted side, let's work on that and
Speaker 1: the challenging side. Let's just work on that. You can't
Speaker 1: separate them. They're always together. And so it behooves us
Speaker 1: to what we call dually differentiate the curriculum. So let
Speaker 1: me get this right. So the yellow is the giftedness
Speaker 1: and the and the uh, what's in the wearing disabilities? Blue? Blue? Okay?
Speaker 1: Why why do you blue could have been giftedness? Why
Speaker 1: do you associate it doesn't matter? It's arbitrary, right, Yellow
Speaker 1: with everything good in the world, and blue is you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a if you're saying that I'm so blue today.
Speaker 1: So then it worked out very well to have green
Speaker 1: as a metaphor go go go, because we always say
Speaker 1: then Kermit the Frog would say, it is an easy
Speaker 1: being green. Oh yeah, that does Regod, did you come
Speaker 1: up with us? Yes? Hell did you? Were you? Just
Speaker 1: like it was an epiphany. I knew that Twoey was
Speaker 1: the whole was greater than the some of the parts.
Speaker 1: So I was actually talking to my friend Rachel mcnellan,
Speaker 1: who does a lot of who's known as miss Math.
Speaker 1: She's a good friend of mine. I said, I think
Speaker 1: this is mathematical. You know, the whole is greater than
Speaker 1: the some of this part. So she start we start
Speaker 1: talking about colors, and so she we were talking about, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just when you mix colors together, so if you
Speaker 1: mix more blue than yellow, you're going to get deeper
Speaker 1: green and you know, and so we were just fooling
Speaker 1: around with the mathematics of color, and then it borred
Speaker 1: to then we began to think about, well, you're right.
Speaker 1: If I take yellow to be giftedness and blue to
Speaker 1: be the challenging part, and we start mixing them together,
Speaker 1: we're going to get green, but the environment is going
Speaker 1: to determine, you know what, the shades of green, because
Speaker 1: we know that in certain environments you hardly notice the disability.
Speaker 1: The child just absolutely shines because the environment is right.
Speaker 1: Put the same child in an environment that's demanding they
Speaker 1: use skills and airs of their weakness. It's a really,
Speaker 1: really hard hill to climb. And so if we can
Speaker 1: get the environment to tip towards yellow by using their gifts,
Speaker 1: the child is in a better position to be successful.
Speaker 1: And that's great orientation. I mean, you and I have
Speaker 1: talked about that. If you can pick a career that
Speaker 1: keeps you that where the demands are more of the
Speaker 1: things you're good at, then forces you to be always
Speaker 1: accommodating and trying to get around your weak area, you
Speaker 1: know life is going to work better for you. And
Speaker 1: so as part of your own way of making decisions
Speaker 1: about the kind of career in which that it's going
Speaker 1: to keep you, it's going to become a passion area
Speaker 1: and where you have to get around your disabilities to
Speaker 1: a much lesser degree. In recent years, the idea of
Speaker 1: learning styles has come under fire, as you know, how
Speaker 1: do how does how does strengths differ from warning styles.
Speaker 1: I think learning styles for me grew out of the
Speaker 1: special ed movement when we were trying to find out
Speaker 1: if these kids were auditory learners or more visual learners
Speaker 1: or kinesthetic learners. We know that we can learn in
Speaker 1: all any of those modalities, and we probably have a
Speaker 1: preferred way of learning given the choice. But no one
Speaker 1: is saying that the only way anybody can learn if
Speaker 1: they're a kinesthetic learner, the only way they can learn
Speaker 1: is kinesthetically. I am a Brunarian. I love me too
Speaker 1: the work of Jerome Bruner, and I really liked him
Speaker 1: his modes of learning, the enactive mode, the iconic mode,
Speaker 1: and the symbolic mode. Right. So, when you're little developmentally,
Speaker 1: most of what we learn is store muscle is through
Speaker 1: understanding things experientially. But let me, I don't care what
Speaker 1: stage of your development you're in. If you're learning to ski,
Speaker 1: you're going to learn better and actively then you are
Speaker 1: about reading about skiing. Right. Oh yeah, but for some
Speaker 1: so I like the idea if we can start off
Speaker 1: in the inactive mode and then visualize it. And everyone
Speaker 1: says that if you're going to understand something, you're better
Speaker 1: off if you can visualize it. You should have a
Speaker 1: picture in your brain. And then when you get on
Speaker 1: into a discipline and you're really well versed in it,
Speaker 1: you can learn it symbolically. What is the symbols of
Speaker 1: that discipline? You know, if you have that scientific mind,
Speaker 1: then you can look at chemical formulas. If you are
Speaker 1: really extraordinarily you're great psychologists. Understanding you know, how emotion
Speaker 1: impacts the brain is something that's very comfortable. You don't
Speaker 1: need the enactive mode anymore. I like that way of
Speaker 1: looking at learning, not all your visual learning or an act.
Speaker 1: It depends what you're learning. If it's better to learn
Speaker 1: skiing kinesthetically. But so I kind of think Bruner very
Speaker 1: much influenced Gardner way of thinking about You know, there's
Speaker 1: just different symbol systems in different times, depending on what
Speaker 1: you're learning, that make you better at what you do.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's more complex than just saying
Speaker 1: figure out their learning style. You know, it might be
Speaker 1: more of a learning preference for that particular thing you're learning,
Speaker 1: regardless of what quote unquote multiple intelligence you have, flash
Speaker 1: tense talent or learning style or et cetera. You have
Speaker 1: talked about in your book the importance of working memory,
Speaker 1: Like there are certain abilities that cut across all intelligences,
Speaker 1: which is why I personally think there's such a thing
Speaker 1: as a general intelligence. Maybe not, it doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: the world. It's a lead invariable or it's an emergent property.
Speaker 1: But there are some basic cognitive limitations that will impact
Speaker 1: your learning across multiple fields and multiple symbol systems. And
Speaker 1: you talk up a little bit about that in your book,
Speaker 1: which I thought that was really cool. In a section
Speaker 1: of two YE Students and learning, and you talk about
Speaker 1: long term memory and working memory. So talk a little
Speaker 1: about two WEE learners and how working memory might be
Speaker 1: a bottleneck for some of them. It's a bottler for
Speaker 1: most of them. But the research does show that if
Speaker 1: you're an expert in a domain, your working memory is
Speaker 1: can hand more information. So it used to say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you have five to seven elements that you can remember,
Speaker 1: but not if you're the expert. So that led me
Speaker 1: to believe that if you're really an artist, the working
Speaker 1: memory for visual details in a work of art might
Speaker 1: function better than when we're talking and we're using linguistics,
Speaker 1: and if we take information from working memory and code
Speaker 1: it into long term memory as an image or as
Speaker 1: or verbally or some linguistic snaps occurs. I think that matters.
Speaker 1: I think that depending on where I think, you might
Speaker 1: have working memory for music that might be amazing that
Speaker 1: you don't have for verbal language. And this came. This
Speaker 1: occurred to me when I was doing some grant work
Speaker 1: in New York City and we had a grant to
Speaker 1: look at children who were advanced in either music or dance.
Speaker 1: The steps that they could remember in dance when they
Speaker 1: couldn't remember the steps to a math problem because the
Speaker 1: working memory didn't process that way was very meaningful to me.
Speaker 1: There's got to be something about They could do it
Speaker 1: kinesthetically it's the same working memory, or they could be
Speaker 1: playing a piece of music and it was Afro Caribbean music.
Speaker 1: It was very complex with different kids coming into that
Speaker 1: piece of music at different times and their role was
Speaker 1: different with the drums and the person next to them
Speaker 1: on the symbols. Why could they focus? Why was their
Speaker 1: working memory okay for music and it wasn't okay for reading?
Speaker 1: And one child told us that my music is helping
Speaker 1: me learn to read better because in music it has
Speaker 1: to flow. If I'm going to decode a word. I
Speaker 1: can't keep sounding it out. It has to just flow.
Speaker 1: And so I am really interested in how does the
Speaker 1: working memory work with different symbol systems, with different content,
Speaker 1: and if it does work better musically, and I use
Speaker 1: music to help that child read better, And that's what
Speaker 1: we began to think about strength based. I want that
Speaker 1: child to read, I want them to be more fluent
Speaker 1: with linguistic symbols, and they can do it in music.
Speaker 1: I want to understand this better. How can we use
Speaker 1: music then to get that child to read more fluently?
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what's behind that conversation in the
Speaker 1: book about let us understand that information processing model. And
Speaker 1: I don't find many people talking about it in that way. No,
Speaker 1: it's a very fascinating and rich research area that you're
Speaker 1: talking about. When I was an undergraduate a long long
Speaker 1: time ago, and I did my honors thesis, I was
Speaker 1: curious at the extent to which musical expertise. I was
Speaker 1: interested in the psychology of music and IQ and the
Speaker 1: extent to which people who have expertise in music can
Speaker 1: override some of the working memory limitations, the domain general
Speaker 1: working marory limitations and they could. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think honors Erickson, who passed away recently, but honors Erickson's
Speaker 1: work showing that experts can circumvent some of these limitations.
Speaker 1: I think is just shows the power of expertise and mastery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't think there's enough research in it. Or
Speaker 1: wasn't Forstein looking at music helping with their cognitively delayed individuals?
Speaker 1: Was it his work I'm trying to think of for
Speaker 1: Rubin Forrest, you know, the work that he did with cognition.
Speaker 1: He was looking at people very challenged, and I thought
Speaker 1: music was part of what he was looking at. Might
Speaker 1: not might that might not be right, It might not true.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You could be right. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's not. I mean what Howard Gardner says, We're not
Speaker 1: talking about putting music on in the background. That's that's
Speaker 1: personal preference of how you like to learn. That's not
Speaker 1: helping your cognition. But it's very different that if you
Speaker 1: if you think about there's there's music that plays in
Speaker 1: your head when you see certain characters under stress, or
Speaker 1: when you're understanding the psychology of a people by looking
Speaker 1: at their music, their resilience comes out in the kinds
Speaker 1: of music they write. I just think this is very fascinating.
Speaker 1: I don't do enough for my own research in it,
Speaker 1: other than read about others looking at those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: But I really think that's what the basis of strength
Speaker 1: based education is. We work with a program with William
Speaker 1: Syndrome students who happened to have a strength in music
Speaker 1: and they have a weakness in math. That's their cognitive pattern.
Speaker 1: And we worked with these kids teaching them. They understood
Speaker 1: up and down in music and they were beginning to
Speaker 1: but they didn't know graphing. But by teaching them musical
Speaker 1: scales and that the musical scale was nothing but a graph,
Speaker 1: they were able to get them to begin to graph
Speaker 1: things like the weather. Nice because they understood up and
Speaker 1: down musically and we were able to bridge it to
Speaker 1: make them then understand it quantitatively. It's beautiful. It's such
Speaker 1: an innovative, progressive way of thinking about education. And I
Speaker 1: can't say that all all teachers are there yet. No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think they really get strength based talent focus.
Speaker 1: They think it's going back to just simply learning styles,
Speaker 1: which is not getting a good press at the moment
Speaker 1: or growth or growth mindset or growth mindset, right, But
Speaker 1: I do think you know, as you know, and if
Speaker 1: we even look at Vagotsky, I think there is a
Speaker 1: way to offer instruction if we understand how best that
Speaker 1: particular child's brain works and what symbol systems seem to
Speaker 1: align with that brain wiring. So I want to end
Speaker 1: with the fact that it doesn't just take one teacher,
Speaker 1: takes a community. Look, I love your book, you know,
Speaker 1: I love it. People should buy it. That's called to
Speaker 1: be Gifted and Wording Disabled, and I recommend the new edition.
Speaker 1: The first second editions are great, obviously, but the third
Speaker 1: edition is a little different and updated. I'd like to
Speaker 1: end my podcast today in the same note in which
Speaker 1: you ended your beautiful book, and that's on the importance
Speaker 1: of a community of support. And I was just wondering
Speaker 1: if you could talk a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: how parents can help, what community resources might be available
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. That's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: we started the graduate school, because we do need a
Speaker 1: community of support. And so if your child was going
Speaker 1: to need a neuropsych we need people neuropsychologists who understand
Speaker 1: the two week child so they can look at a
Speaker 1: risk profile. They can look at these correl it tests
Speaker 1: and come out with the idea that there's this gift
Speaker 1: decide that needs to be nurtured as much as this
Speaker 1: other side that needs to be fixed. We need people
Speaker 1: in the community who could be models for these kids.
Speaker 1: If you have a young gymnast to be working with
Speaker 1: jymnasts in the community. We need parents to be opportunity
Speaker 1: makers for these kids, you know, and to be able
Speaker 1: to hook them up with people who could be role
Speaker 1: models for these kids because they have similar brains. We
Speaker 1: need to have your neighbors who have the similar interest
Speaker 1: to these kids interact with them over lunch sometimes. And
Speaker 1: we definitely need teachers to work in collaboration with families
Speaker 1: to come up to become a team to support this
Speaker 1: children emotionally, socially and intellectually. Wonderful, sud thanks so much
Speaker 1: for the legendary work that you've done in the field
Speaker 1: and for supporting me so much and me wanting to
Speaker 1: make a contribution to the field. You've been so supportive,
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, and thank you for becoming
Speaker 1: a new leader in the field, because we need, we
Speaker 1: need to move this field for forward to the next
Speaker 1: level we need all these gifts to transcend us. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a rating
Speaker 1: and review of the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as we're really trying to
Speaker 1: increase our viewership on YouTube. In fact, many of these
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Speaker 1: want to check out that channel. Thanks for being such
Speaker 1: a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next
Speaker 1: time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.