Lessons in Learning #154

Margy Burns Knight:

I think especially in today's world where we want people to be culturally competent, the way you get to be culturally competent is you understand how the whole world works.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

There's a wonderful phrase called cultural humility where you just go in with an awareness of how little you know and that makes you receptive and vulnerable and responsive and curious, with no assumption that you know best or that your way is best. And it's a skill that children can learn.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Everything is embarrassing when you're a kid.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Everything.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

And it's hard to kind of admit that you have problems, but if this adult that you respect admits it, hopefully it'll be easier for them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 154, Lessons on Learning, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 24, 2014. How do we learn? Each of us answers this question differently. Margie Burns Knight and Anne Sibley o' Brien offer important insights about compassion through their book Talking Walls, which gives kids a glimpse into the lives of others. Garrett Temkiewicz is using his experience with dyslexia to inform his own style as a high school teacher. Our guests might cause you to think differently about the way lessons are learned. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of my favorite things to do

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

is spend time with children's books.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And all my children are older now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

They're all older than 13, so I

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

don't have as much of a good

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

excuse to spend time with children's books.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'll find myself sneaking over to my

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

nieces and nephews houses and picking up

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

books just so I can read them to my nieces and nephews. Today we have a children's book that's

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

newly out in the world Talking Discover

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

your World by Margie Burns Knight and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

also illustrated by Ann Sibley o' Brien. Margie Burns Knight is a children's book author and career educator. She is also an English teacher and former Peace Corps volunteer. Anne Sibley O' Brien has illustrated over 30 books and written 14. This month she was honored by the Maine Library association with the Lifetime Achievement Katahdin Award. Margie and Anne both received the National Education Association's Author Illustrated Human and Civil Rights Award and the Children's Africana Book Award for their book Africa is not a Country. They also wrote and illustrated the book we're talking about today, Talking Walls, a book that encourages children to ask questions and be curious about the world around them. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us today about this book

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

that you've put together. It's quite wonderful.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now on the COVID is the Vietnam Memorial and I'm going to read what you've written about this.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial USA Every day people leave flowers, boots, candles and letters at a wall in Washington, D.C. that is 165 giant steps long. Millions of visitors have lingered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall since it was completed in 1982. Some touch the names of loved ones and others cry as they honor the 58,165Americans who were killed or went missing while serving their country in the Vietnam War. Maya lin was a 21 year old architecture student when she designed the wall. She chose polished black granite because she felt you could gaz forever. If the names of all the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian men, women and children who died in the war had also been chiseled into the wall, it would be more than 7,000 giant steps long.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting that you're able to the title of your book is Discover your world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're able to pull in more of

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

a worldview when you're talking about something that we often think about as uniquely American. I love that about this book.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

The key idea that we had from the very beginning was when Margie first thought of it, was that sense of how the walls connected the world. I don't think that that was particularly conscious choice to do that. I've never noticed what you just referred to, but it was what informed the it was the underlying concept, the foundation for the book that these things we have in common, walls are what unite us as people and then we can look at our differences having built that bridge of what we have in common. So I think it was kind of instinctive to do that throughout was to tell everyone's story at the time that we were also telling a very Particular story.

Margy Burns Knight:

Yeah. And this. This wall actually is the inspiration for the book. So. And the reason the book is a book is because I heard a man named Doug Rollins read a poem about this wall called the Wall. And believe it or not, the whole book just popped into my head, and I said, we should have a book for children about walls around the world and stories they tell, and the rest is sort of history and a very long story.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

But it was because of what had been happening in the world with the different walls.

Margy Burns Knight:

Yes, because the Berlin Wall had come down. Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. The Western Wall is always in the news. And for some reason, I just. I really. Actually, it just popped into my head as I was hearing Doug Rollins read this book, poem about the wall. And Doug started Veterans for Peace in Maine. He's a writer, he's a poet, and he worked with me on how we're going to write about this wall. I didn't meet him until after the book actually came out, but I talked to him on the phone, and one thing he said is, you can write about the wall, but please include everyone who died in the war. Americans sometimes forget that the war was also devastating to millions of other people and kids, and not only kids, people who read this book are sort of amazed by the comparison in the number of giant steps. So it's 165 for the loss in America, which is huge, but 7,000 for all losses. And he actually said, you have to come up with a visual image, Margie, like a school bus or something that kids understand. So I came up with giant steps, so last week. So we've been in the schools a lot with this book recently, this new version of our book, and I was with fifth graders, and one reason I just love this work is kids are so curious. And we just love to encourage curiosity. We love to encourage questioning. And. And it doesn't matter what kind of questioning. I just love when kids ask me new questions. So a fifth grader was. I read it. We talked about my limb. We talked about the granite, we talked about the rain, we talked about the items. And he raised his hand and he said, well, I have a question about your wall. And I thought, okay, that'll be great. You know, I love questions. And he said, I need to know, do they wash it? And I thought, wow, no one's ever asked me that. I don't know if they wash the wall. Why are you asking? He goes, I don't know. I think maybe it gets dirty and people should take care of it. So I said, do you think we can find out? And of course we can find out, because we can find out everything now. So I went and I found on the Washington Post this great article, washing the Wall, to remember Vietnam vets. And not only do they wash it, you and I can wash it. Volunteers gather every Saturday and Sunday morning in the nice weather and wash the wall. And I will be joining that group in May 30, and I will wash the wall. So I thought, wow, what an incredible question. And we, Annie and I have actually shared this story, like, seven times. You're the eighth or ninth. And not one person knew that we washed this wall because we asked them to raise their hands. We've. We've done workshops with teachers, we've talked to kids. I've worked with college students, and nobody knew that you can go wash the wall. And I actually have called the National Park Service, and they answered the phone right on the first ring. It's like it wasn't dial one. And she said to call back and talk to the volunteer. And you sign up. And the Washington Post article, it's almost hard to read because it's very emotional. So that's one reason we love this work, because we get new questions and we find new answers.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There's something about that that's very biblical, like the washing of the feet.

Margy Burns Knight:

Yes, it is. And they do. It's all volunteers. And if so, I've told teachers and kids who can't get to the wall, you can actually go on Google Image and you can see people washing the wall. They give you soap and big brushes and they provide the water. And it's early, early in the morning before the park opens, and everybody just washes the wall and everybody leaves. So I thought, I wonder what else. I don't know. That's why I love this work. What else don't we know now? I will find out when I go. And I will actually take this new book and put it under the name of the man who died in the war that Doug Rawlings dedicated the inspiration poem to. And I did that previously with the other books. And Vietnam definitely is part of my life because I was alive, but I had very little experience with it. And I thought, oh, I'll just leave the book, you know, and it's so emotional. I didn't just leave the books. And now I understand why people leave things at the. At that wall.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You describe a very different sort of wall when you describe Nelson Mandela's prison

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

walls in South Africa. As a young lawyer, Nelson Mandela fought To end South Africa's system of apartheid, which divided people by race. Threatened by his ideas of justice and revolution, the white ruled government sentenced him to life in Prison in 1964. The entire world celebrated when he was

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

finally released in 1990.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Mandela and millions of black South Africans cast the first votes of their lives in 1994. And Mandela President, a beloved symbol of reconciliation and unity. He has often said education is the most powerful weapon which you can use

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

to change the world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you went from talking about a

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

wall as a memorial to talking about a wall that contained someone who was so pivotal to changing a society. But there was something very important about that wall. My daughter and I was telling you before we came on Air, my 13 year old and I were watching A Long Walk to Freedom and she was noticing how he had changed over the course of the time that he was in prison. So these walls actually did have an impact on him psychologically and how he did change the system of apartheid.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Well, it's how he chose to use that time of incarceration. And he said that he knew as soon as he was locked up and taken or handcuffed and thrown into the belly of the boat to be carried to Robben island, which is seven miles off of the coast, that he would have to. That they would try to break his spirit. And the most important thing was that he would not allow that to happen to him. And he chose to use the time, the 17 years he was on Robben island as a time to be strengthened. There's this wonderful Carlos Castaneda quote. You can make yourself strong or make yourself miserable. The effort is the same. And so he chose the strength. But I visited Robben island in 1998, and you take a tour of the prison and the guides are people who were formerly prisoners there. So it's unlike any experience I've ever had. It's so deeply moving. The entire time that you're viewing it, you have tears standing in your eyes. It's just deeply, deeply piercing to be there and then to see what these men and women chose to do with their time. And one of the things that becomes very clear is that Mandela is not an isolated individual. He was an individual of extraordinary gifts. But the choice to create community, to teach each other, to create a university to iron out differences in dialogue and conflict, debate that went on for weeks and months, and figuring out how the people from different tribal backgrounds could work together, like the foundation for the new government was laid during that time they spent together in prison. And it really had to do with a vision and a choice. And that was the point at which Mandela, who had a background in nonviolence from ANC, but then chose to. He came to believe that apartheid could not be dismantled with only nonviolence. And that's when he became part of the guerrilla arm that attacked munitions, not people, but places where weapons were kept. But in prison, he determined that. That nonviolence was going to be the most effective method. And so he embraced it completely. And everyone else, they taught it to each other and learned how to use it powerfully.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is something that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Marg, you were talking about Vietnam being part of your time. And I was born around the time that Vietnam was still going on, but I don't have really any memory of it. But I remember what was going on with apartheid. I remember Nelson Mandela, but I didn't really know what the significance of it was. I didn't really put it together with the civil rights things that had gone on in our country not very long before. So I think it's interesting now to be teaching another generation of children for whom this seems like ancient history. But it wasn't that long ago.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

No, right. It wasn't that long ago at all.

Margy Burns Knight:

And I think of all the illustrations in our book or the work we've done over 20 years, the Nelson Mandela illustration has piqued so much curiosity with kids. They really want to know, and they want to know, like, the facts. And I think that they see children protesting. They want to know, why are those kids doing that? Because they're children. And most children that we've shared this book with don't do that. But this is. You can connect this so much with what's going on in the rest of the world today, with the Arab Spring and every. All the other protests that people are trying to make the world a better place. And kids, when you just give them a little bit of Mandela's story, and I sort of make it a little magical because it is. So this is basically his story. They put him in jail. And I make it very simple. Why'd they put him in jail? He wanted everyone in his country to vote, and people were a little suspicious of that. And then he. He spent a lot of time in jail, then he was released, and four years later, he was elected president. What do you think of that? And they go, whoa? I said, yeah, it's pretty much of a whoa.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

And it's wonderful to kind of disturb those stereotypes in our mind of the kind of people who are in prison and the kind of people who become

Margy Burns Knight:

president and put that together, there's a lot of woe. And they always say, I need to know more. And I said, yeah, well, this book is just to launch your discovery and we hope that you go and learn lots more about Nelson Mandela

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you've also, I think, caused children to understand a little bit about what's actually happening right now. There's been a lot of press about people who are Muslim and we don't really exactly, I think not all of us really understand the issues that have gone on with people who are Muslim quite as well as we now understand in retrospect what went on with civil rights. So you have written about the Mecca walls in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and you talk about how Muslims paint the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

walls of their homes to tell neighbors

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

that they have made a pilgrimage to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the city of Mecca, the holiest place

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in the Islamic world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think this is a different way

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

of looking at walls. It's a way, it's a communication that occurs between people. So tell me why this was important to you.

Margy Burns Knight:

Well, this is, I can illustrate it with this great story. So my husband and I are both teachers and we were on a Fulbright Teachers Exchange in Manitoba and I went to Winnipeg to share this book. I went to a sixth grade class in Winnipeg and I showed the picture of the little girl who's hoping one day to go to Mecca for Hajj. And all of a sudden a little girl stood up. I don't know if she stood up. She started talking and she said, well, I can just tell you, that's my story. And she told the whole story. Someday I hope to go. And she said, do you know Mecca? I'll tell you all about Mecca. So she basically repeated what I had written. She sat down or stopped talking and the whole class clapped and the teacher clapped. And I thought, oh yeah, these very nice Canadians, they just clapped for everyone. And afterwards the teacher said, you know, we don't clap every time someone talks in Canada. I said, well, why'd you clap for her? Well, she's a new arrival from Afghanistan and this is the first time she's ever talked because it was her story. And I think it's not easy to write other people's stories. We have to be very careful how you do it. We are not, we do not follow the faith of Islam. We will never go to Mecca. But I think especially in today's world where we want people to be culturally competent, the way you get to be culturally competent is you understand how the whole world works. And this is like a little primer for that. Right?

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

A foundation.

Margy Burns Knight:

A foundation you mentioned about.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Not that we're often not really fully aware or understanding what's behind actions or, you know, the meaning of stories that we hear. And we get so much misinformation about people who are different from us. For this particular story, I read three adult books on Islam in order to correct my own ignorance. I was very aware, as Margie said, when you're telling other people's stories, you have to be so, so careful and pay attention and continue to ask questions. And because of all the sometimes hysteria,

Margy Burns Knight:

but all the

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

stereotypes, the fear that surrounds the faith of Islam and the fact that I knew I had so little information about it myself. I knew that of all the walls that I was illustrating, this is the one where I had the biggest chance of making a really big mistake. So I read 3 full length adult books in order to fill in all the blanks and correct my own misinformation. And then we showed it to a number of people. We did that with all of the cultural information, made sure that we checked with people whose culture we were representing before it went to press, and in some cases caught mistakes that really saved us. I think that starting with that, there's a wonderful phrase called cultural humility, where you just go in with an awareness of how little you know. And that makes you receptive and vulnerable and receptive, responsive and curious, but not with no assumption that you. You know best or that your way is best. And it's a. It's a lovely way. It's a skill that children can learn. And that's the. One of the things that talking walls can do is to just give us an access, give children a door, a bridge to walk over where they can connect. Oh, I'm like this child in this way. But then it also becomes a window to look at difference in a way that's. That's a lot of metaphors. Doors, bridges, windows, where children.

Margy Burns Knight:

You get an A today. A metaphors

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

so that children can be invited in to view difference from on the found standing on the foundation of what we have in common.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In this book you mention, Ann, that part of the reason for your passion

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

was because you were raised bilingual and bicultural in South Korea as the daughter of medical missionaries.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So there is, you know, you started your life with this needing to be part of something that you need to understand, something in a way that I think not every American child needs to understand. I also know about you, Margie, that you are the middle in 11 children. So that's not necessarily an American thing or not an American thing. But you certainly have had to understand different personalities and different communication types. And this book really does reflect that. It reflects this sort of assimilation and kind of a very gentle way of approaching similarities and differences. So did you have any sense when either one of you were starting out your lives that you might go into

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this sort of work?

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

I knew we have very different stories. This is Annie. I had a dream from the time I was seven years old. It never changed. I told everybody who asked that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. And I. Essentially, the image in my mind was I wanted to draw pictures for my job. And I really enjoy talking to classes, especially second and third graders, and saying, when I was your age, I had a dream. And guess what? Now my job is drawing pictures and writing stories.

Margy Burns Knight:

She has pictures from her. Oh, she wrote stories about. She was really jealous. She wasn't from a large farm.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

We only had four kids, and I wanted like eight or 12. And that's what all my stories were about.

Margy Burns Knight:

But you would just name her ten brothers and sisters and their ages and their ages. Nothing ever happened for years in these little stories, which she still has. Right? She brings Those sometimes. And she brings the pictures that her mother saved. Saved when she was 3 and 6. And I could draw just as well. Now

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

she only had four children, so

Margy Burns Knight:

she could save pictures. But

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

I was very clear about wanting to draw. I didn't in my 7, 8, 9 year old mind think I want to grow up and create books that show the beauty and glory of human diversity. But I was living that experience because first of all I was a spectacle for being the one who was different. But the lens was positive. So I was put up on a pedestal and celebrated. Often responded to almost with awe at my differences. So my association with differences was, you know, this is pretty great. It's working well for me. And it was kind of, I tell kids it was like a cross between being a princess and a friendly space alien. There was that wonder and amazement just to see me, but it also made me very conscious of my own racial and cultural identity. And then at the same time I was being welcomed and, and embraced by people who were not my people, people who did not look like me, were communicating in all kinds of ways that we were family. So that was really powerful. And all of that was happening unconsciously, but was absolutely the foundation for what I do today. My parents were unusual at that time per missionaries. Just, just a few people were thinking that way. They didn't want to stay on the mission compound. They had at that time in the 1960s, these huge brick mansions on mansions, but in contrast to Korean housing at the time, they really seemed palatial. Three story brick Victorian houses on hills surrounded by walls and barbed wire. And that wasn't their idea of how to work and live side by side with their Korean friends and colleagues. So we got into a Korean home by the time I was nine and that changed everything. So it was very much my parents example that, you know, we are family. We're here to learn. We're the ones who need to watch and be careful and notice how things are done. So I really followed their lead. I mean I learned cultural competence as a 7, 8, 9 year old by my parents example. And what a wonderful, wonderful education that was. You know, it's a life skill that everybody benefits from. And then the more that you're exposed to that, the more your ease and comfort of navigating across difference grows. And then you're a global citizen in your experience.

Margy Burns Knight:

And my story couldn't be any different than Annie's. So we show these funny little pictures when we do our workshop. And here's Annie and Korea and here's me in the row with all my siblings. And we looked exactly alike and we wore the same dress and we had the same haircut. And the kids, we have to be careful not to spend too much time on those pictures because the kids are sort of overwhelmed. That we were actually children once. And we think, oh, the teachers did not hire us to talk about our life as six year olds. But in my big family, education was absolutely. Regardless of what else was going on, education was absolutely crucial. Especially my dad. He just really knew that we all had to be well educated. My parents were both college. Had both had college degrees, which I think was not that common. So, you know, and when we finished the book this time, you know, I chose that Mandela quote about education because it's really my life work. And I think education will change the world. It does change the world. It has changed the world. And just coming to Maine and going to college here because of people I met at Bowdoin. So this is a little Bowdoin story, but you should know it. Michael Fiore. I don't know if you know Michael. Do you know Dora Mills? Well, she's married to Michael Fiore. So Michael Fiore fell in love with these illustrations and bought them all. He owns all the talking walls illustrations. Can you tell a little bit why he fell in love with your illustrations and bought them? Because it's very rare. What he did was very rare.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

He. He created a traveling exhibit so that schools can borrow them and see the original illustrations. And he's also preserved them. He just saved the finances of an illustrator at that time, too. He felt that they should be publicly shown, that people walking around and just looking at the pictures would learn about the world in a way that was really valuable. At the time. He was the owner of the Downie's drugstore chain, and I think he kind of had that.

Margy Burns Knight:

Well, we did a mural on his wall. So we've done 10 community murals in Winthrop. Instead of me signing books, I wanted to do something else. And he gave us the first wall because I knew him. And I said, michael, Comey, use your wall. Do you know how to do a mural, Margie? No, I really don't. But at one point, I didn't know how to write a book or ride a bicycle. So trust me. And that's why when he talked to you.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Yeah.

Margy Burns Knight:

And literally, he purchased. Most of your illustrations are at home in a.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

They're all stacked up in my shelves. Nobody sees them except in the book. But he just had this vision, this really, really unusual vision. So now the Original illustrations have all been preserved in that way and they've gone to some extent.

Margy Burns Knight:

And we actually wrote thank you to Michael Fiore for purchasing the original illustrations, for talking walls and talking the stories continue and for preserving them as a collection to be shared. So that's one thing we really want to do with the new edition of this book, is to get these illustrations. So I took them to Park Avenue School in Auburn and they were there for about a week and a half. And I went and worked with the kids. And Park Avenue has a lot of new Somali arrivals and we are working on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. And by then the fifth grader had already asked me for Winthrop. So I was talking to them about washing the wall. And then a fifth grade boy from that school who's, I think he was born in a refugee camp in Kenya, he raised his hand, he goes, well, I have a question. After they wash the wall, do they add the new names for that week? Because how does he know the war's over? His war is that war. That war he thought the wall was for every week after people died in wars. After we washed it, we added new names. And I thought, what an amazing question. What an amazing thinker. Thank you for asking. Let me explain, Let me explain.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

And how long would that wall be?

Margy Burns Knight:

And how long would that wall be? So these are 10 year old boys asking these unbelievable questions. And the teachers were like, whoa. I said, I know, but that's why we're in the business. We're in the woah business. And you know, of course you should think that. Yeah, he should think that. He has no experience with Vietnam, so he has no experience with time, really. He's 10, but he has experience with war.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

And he's right, you know, everybody should, you know, all the Syrians who are dying.

Margy Burns Knight:

Right, right. Yeah, So I thought that was that. That, I mean, just since this book has been really re released in February, it has renewed my passion. When Annie won the Katahdin last week, I gave her a present. And I gave it to me, too. A bumper sticker that says, books change lives. So we are now proud owners of that new bumper sticker that I bought at the bookstore in Brunswick. And I'm going to buy more today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I hope that people who are

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

listening will pick up a copy of your book, Talking Discover your world by Margie Burns Knight, illustrated by Ann Sibley

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

o', Brien, and share it with their children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, maybe just read it for themselves. Because I learned a lot reading this book.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

We learned a lot making it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you both have websites. What would those be?

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Tell me our names.comannsibleyobrian.com margieburnsnight.com well, you're

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

a very effective duo.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

We've been working together a long time.

Margy Burns Knight:

Kids think she's my sister.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I and I said, well, then

Margy Burns Knight:

I'd have seven sisters. That would be too many. Maybe I could trade a few.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I hope your sisters aren't listening.

Margy Burns Knight:

The ones that are listening, I don't want to trade you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your both coming in and talking to us today. And Margie for helping continue the relationship that you and I began when we met, since we're both Bowdoin graduates and you were helping me with our daily tread back when we published it in Hanley's memory in honor of safe passage. And I hope that people, as I said, take the time to learn more about the work that you're doing. And I really appreciate that this is the way that you've chosen to spend your lives. It's very important. Books do change lives, and I think that that's what's happening in your case.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

Thank you so much.

Margy Burns Knight:

Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I am very lucky to have teachers in my life. As a doctor, I've had many teachers over time. My mom's a teacher. And today I get to sit across the microphone. From a man known as Mr. T

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

to his students at Thornton Academy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Garrett Temkiewicz, who is a science teacher at Thornton Academy. Garrett was diagnosed with dyslexia in sixth grade, which has informed his work both as a student and a teacher. And in fact, that's, I think, what

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we're going to talk mostly about today. But we really appreciate your taking the time to come in and be with us.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, of course. It's no problem.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So first I need to ask you about this Mr. T thing. Did you actually understand the cultural reference

Margy Burns Knight:

because you're pretty young.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah. No. I pity the fool who doesn't.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Very good. Well, for people who are listening, you aren't black and you don't have fun

Garrett Temkiewicz:

hair, zero gold jewelry.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. You're pretty much as lily white and blonde as they come. So I think it's kind of interesting and ironic that you get to be the opposite of what you look like.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But it's also something that's kind of interesting because with this dyslexia, you've always had to find your way in the world in a different manner. Is that so?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Sure, definitely. And having a last name like Temkowicz with all the consonants and vowels, I almost failed kindergarten trying to spell it, but yeah, I think that perhaps everybody makes their own different kind of way, though.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about your journey a little bit. If you weren't diagnosed with dyslexia until

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you were in sixth grade, then that's a long time to be in school

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and not know exactly why things weren't falling into place for you.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, I was always a poor reader. I don't know if when you were young you had the reading groups, but I was always in this low reading group. I was always, you know, fretful of when they would call on me to read out loud. But sixth grade is kind of when you go from learning to read to reading to learn, and that's really where I was. I started to have problems just because they'd give homework assignments that were reading based and I just wouldn't do them. I just didn't commit. So that was really when. And I had a bunch of other problems as well when I was younger. Speech impediments and a couple of other things. But yeah, the sixth grade was when I really started to struggle because I wasn't Learning, because it was all book based.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So when you look at a page, what do you see that's so different? I guess there's really no way for you to compare, right?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to describe. I see what I see on every page. I guess the big issue that I have is I will mix words. So if I have a word like friends and fiends, something like that, I might read fiends as friends or vice versa. And spoonerisms are difficult as well. So if two words make sense swapped, I will swap them in my head. And that was probably the biggest issue. And it just takes me longer to compute. I mean, if Katie can read a book in five hours, it'll take me a week. So it's a real commitment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you're talking about Katie Kelleher, who's the managing editor for Maine Magazine. She was actually on our show not too long ago talking about the future 50 people list for Maine Magazine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is interesting that you ended up

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

with somebody who really goes towards words. You know, this is her thing, is words.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And your thing with words has got to be a very different relationship.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

It is. It's part of the, you know, part of how. Why I admire her as much as I do. It's her ability to express herself in written word. And that's just something that's always been out of my reach. So I like how much she reads. You know, it's encouraging how much she reads. And she's never bugged me about how long it takes me to finish a book. So if she's willing to wait two months to talk about a book, I think that that's fine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You teach 11th and 12th grade students,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

which means that you yourself not only had to complete high school, complete college, but had to have the ability to communicate with other, you know, people who are relying on you for information and had to use books in order to do a lot of this stuff. That's. That's kind of a big deal.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, it was. It was difficult, especially in middle school and high school. But once I got to college and professors starting to put their lectures online, I could just go through the PowerPoint two or three times, and that would. That would definitely get me past any questions that I had. I could ask other students or the professor. I really did avoid reading in my education for a really, really long time just because it was hard. And I don't get a lot of information from what I read, so I can't pick up facts or something like that. But once I got to College, it was okay. And after college, a lot of my learning has been done on YouTube. So, like Khan Academy and other YouTube things have. If I'm having a physics problem that I can't figure out, I'll look online. And it's not a lot of reading. It's almost a reference book. So that's kind of how I got by and where I am today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What subjects do you teach?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

This year I taught astronomy and physics and biology, and then next year I'm just teaching biology and physics.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So your mind really kind of relates

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

more to the scientific realm.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, math and science have always been a really strong point for me. Strong subjects. But I don't know if that's because I'm dyslexic or because I'm male or because I just like them. It's hard to kind of attribute that to one thing or another. But, yeah, I've always had a tendency toward science and math.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Was there a history of dyslexia or

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

any other learning disabilities in your family?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I don't know. I don't think that my parents have ever been been tested, and my two brothers are not dyslexic, so I could be the first plowing the way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did that feel to be within your family, the only one that had this issue and have to work twice as hard as anybody else to kind of make it through?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Honestly, I never thought about it. Our family is competitive, but not academically. Academics weren't really something that our family ever talked about, so it wasn't a huge, huge deal growing up. Now that I'm older, I'm a little bit embarrassed because my little brother will power through six or seven books in a vacation, and I'll be struggling with one book, and, you know, he'll ask me if he can read it, and I'll have to say no, because I'm not done with it yet. So it's a little bit embarrassing, but only until recently.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you talked about being competitive, but not academically. So were you more athletically competitive?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah, definitely. Athletics. We had a couple of neighborhood kids and we played football and baseball. We played at school and just in almost every other way. We fought a lot, bickered and fist fighting with my brothers. But yeah, so competitive in other ways.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it sounds like you not only learned through visual because you talked about YouTube, but you also have kind of a kinesthetic sense, kind of a body learning that you do.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I excel at, like, labs and things like that where I get to use my hands and see what happens. And I can actually see the processes. For some reason, it stays with me better than if I just read it in a book.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how are you using this information

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

to help teach students who may have a learning disability or may not have a learning disability, but may just learn differently? How do you use what you've gone through to help you, your own students?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I try to be really open about it. I'll make errors when I'm typing out a test or grading a paper where I'll make a spelling error or I'll switch letters in a word or something like that, and I just say, I'm badly dyslexic. So when you see a spelling error, let me know and I'll fix it. And I think that being open about my issues is important and maybe helps them come out of their shells and. And admit it. Everything is embarrassing when you're a kid. Everything. And it's hard to kind of admit that you have problems, but if this adult that you respect admits it, hopefully it'll be easier for them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Have you had kids approach you and say, I'm having some issues myself and I need some guidance with this, or have you been able to help anybody that specifically had problems that you've noticed?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I don't think it's ever come out that way. I don't think they've ever come up and said, I've had problems reading. What should I do? It's more, I'm having trouble in this subject. Can you help me? Or I'm having some problems in this topic. Can you help me? And in that, I think perhaps I can be helpful because I've been so open. But no one has ever come up to me and said, I'm dyslexic too. We should hang out. So it doesn't quite work out that way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it is an interesting age group if you're dealing with 11th and 12th grader. If you're dealing with high schoolers, I suspect you're right. That's not something that generally people want to use as a badge of honor, I guess, at that age. Why become a teacher? Was there a pivotal moment where you said, okay, I really want to do this thing that's going to help other kids, maybe in a way that I would have liked to be.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I. Yeah, I think so. In high school, I really wanted to be a teacher because I thought that my teachers weren't doing a great job of it. And now looking back, they were. They were incredible people. But at the time, I thought I could do way better than they're doing I, you know I like most teenagers I thought I could do everything. Then I graduated and I actually worked as a scientist for seven years before for switching in college I kind of started learning and I really appreciated my teachers and I was inspired to go into lab science and I tried it out and I actually really liked it. Then the business I was working for went under during the recession and I decided it was time for a change. I wanted to try it out and it was great and I love it. So there wasn't necessarily a single moment that but it was kind of a culmination of my life and what I wanted to do and I've always liked teaching.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

if you were working as a scientist, how does that contrast with the work that you do now?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

As a teacher, my problems as a scientist were very linear. I had some issue that I had to solve or some problem that needed working and I could do that and I could go to work every day and try to solve that same problem every day. And that was nice. It was nice to know what I had to do to accomplish something. Where as a teacher my problems are varied. Every day it's a new issue and every day it's some student not getting something or there's a fight or there's something. Every day is different and I really like that too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Having brothers and fighting with your brothers, did that give you some insight into the social aspects of children?

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Strangely, I wish that I had had sisters because I don't get young girls. I just don't get it, you know, the way that they behave the way that they act, I just cannot. It doesn't compute. You know, they'll come and speak with me about something and I'll say, do this. And they'll be like, well, I've already done that. Duh. Like, okay, then why ask? But, yeah, so brothers are good. But I do wish that I'd had a sister growing up.

[Unidentified voice]:

Well, that's.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Actually, I'm laughing over here because you are not the first person who has said that. That they have a hard time understanding girls. And it is really interesting because we're talking about your brain and how your brain processes words differently and how your experience has helped your brain process things a certain way. But you're right. Having never experienced the way that girls brains process things, that is a whole new realm for you to struggle with.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah. And I think, you know, that's kind of how I feel about dyslexia, trying to describe it. I just. I don't. I can't. I can't. I can't relate to what you see on a page. I can't. I don't think that way. And that's okay. You know, I think that I've been pretty successful as, you know, an educator, as an academic, and as a scientist. But it's difficult when people ask, kind of, what is it like? It's difficult to describe.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, of course, if you've never had it any other way, it's kind of like asking somebody who is blind, what is it like not to see.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Right, exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But it does speak to something that I think is really interesting, which is that you may have dyslexia. And it's something that we can say at least this. We know more about it than we once did. At one point, we just would call people who had dyslexia. We would just say that they weren't smart or, you know, there was just something wrong with them.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Right.

Anne Sibley O'Brien:

You.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think we have the advantage of just saying, okay, there's something in your brain that isn't working quite the same.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But I think all of us process

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

information in different ways, certainly. So, I mean, what you're doing as a teacher is whether it's boys or girls, whether people are visual or auditory or tactile or kinesthetic, whether any of these learning styles. We're all trying to figure out how to communicate with the people around us and how to process information.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

I agree. I agree completely. I think that I don't get a sheet that says this student is dyslexic. I might get a sheet that says this Student needs more time for reading assignments, or this student needs more time for assignments in general. But that doesn't tell me what their particular learning disability is. And I like that. If I knew, I might be. Be tempted to change something for a specific student. And that's. I think that's a. That's a dangerous road to go down. That's a slippery slope because I have 150 students. If I tried to change every lesson for every student, I couldn't. I'd be overwhelmed and I'd be ineffectual as a teacher. So instead, I think maybe just review and revisit things in different ways. And I think that's probably the way that I go about trying to deal with students that are dyslexic.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is also important because as much

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

as we would like to be all accepting of various learning styles, in the end, we're a very test driven society. I mean, it's all about the standardized tests. So simultaneously, we want to respect how people learn and make it possible for them to learn. And that's extremely important. But we also need to help them adapt to the larger system, which at this point is set up in a very specific. And linear is the word you used. Linear way.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Yeah. In standardized tests. Thornton just got graded on our SAT scores. And I feel okay about it because science isn't on the SAT at all. So, you know, judging what I'm doing is difficult in standardized tests, but again, it doesn't. They don't shorten the length of those reading sections for people that are dyslexic. So when, you know, they're calling out two minutes and I'm flipping through the last five stories, there's a lot of stress and I don't know how I feel about it. I don't know a better way, though. That's. I guess the big issue is I don't know a better way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I think that you're right. That, that is the thing, is that we. It's not ideal. It's what we have. And hopefully in the future we'll work towards something. And I know that there are some. In some standardized testing situations, we do allow for more time and there is more way to make things up. But it's an interesting place that we're in now. We finally come to the realization that not everybody's the same, amazingly enough.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we're just trying to kind of work through it. Kind of like scientists, you know, you've got some issues step by step. Exactly. Well, Garrett, I appreciate your coming and talking to us about your experience. I appreciate you being a teacher.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Teachers are very important, especially science teachers. I had a number of very good science teachers going through and I think what you're doing is quite valuable. So thank you for being a teacher. As Mr. T at Thornton Academy, we've been speaking with Garrett Temkiewicz, who is a science teacher at Thornton Academy. Thanks so much for coming in.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 154, Lessons on Learning. Our guests have included Margie Burns Knight, Ann Sibley o' Brien and Garrett Temkowicz. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit Dr. Lisa.org the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For a preview of each week's show,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

sign up for our e newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page, follow me on Twitter as doctor and see my daily running photos as bountiful one on Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. So please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Lessons on Learning show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Sa.

Margy Burns Knight:

It.

Garrett Temkiewicz:

Sa.