[Applause]
when I was in high school I could read a
fantasy novel and what felt like minutes
and then forget the homework I did the
night before as soon as I walked into
the classroom I always loved literature
and I considered myself pretty good at
writing my own creative pieces one night
during the end of my junior year my
mother came downstairs at the witching
hour to find me sitting at the computer
sobbing because I couldn’t figure out
how to start big and begin my research
paper starting in elementary school
teachers found their own labels for me
talented but lazy she’d do so well if
she would just hand in her assignments
on time extremely disorganized one of my
brothers and my favorite was wasted
potential maybe you or people you care
about have had these labels applied to
them maybe you’ve labeled people as such
it’s easy to dismiss students strengths
when their weaknesses seem so
insurmountable it’s easy to dismiss them
in ourselves when my mother found me
crying at the computer that night even
after transferring me from public to
private school we knew we had to seek
more help that much more had to change
we were referred to a certified school
psychiatrist for educational testing he
ran me through 16 hours or so of these
this educational testing so that we
could find out the specifics of how I
learned what I needed to do in order to
succeed but not everyone can afford
private schools sympathetic teachers or
a certified school psychiatrist or even
conceive of them as options so what I
want to do tonight is to give you some
steps you can take today now in the next
few days whether that be for you as a
learner an educator a parent or some
combination by telling you about my own
experiences and the decisions I made in
order to succeed my learning difference
begins with executive functioning
organizational skills and a processing
difference
by processing I mean that I tend to
internalize and absorb information at a
slower rate than what we would consider
the average person’s processing speed to
be I can read something and write
something and say something even though
I tend to talk pretty fast and can think
on the spot but I can’t delve into
deeper analysis in the worst case
scenario you could ask me what I just
read or studied or written or have
written but I wouldn’t be able to recall
a single detail from something I read
seconds minutes hours before so how do
you trick your own brain if your brain
tells you yep you got this
you’re 100% ready to go then how do you
know your brain is wrong well let me
tell you something the way your brain
tells you things isn’t you the way
you’re wired isn’t you the only thing
that makes up the yunus is itself the
unis the you that you decided you wanted
to accept and be maybe you’ve said to
yourself my learning differences and the
way I learned does not define me or
maybe you say it factors into my
personality and led me to where I am
today
or maybe you’re somewhere in between or
some combination of these two but what I
would like to do is to show you that
it’s not you that were there learning
difference that makes you you it’s the
acceptance of yourself that both these
minds as there any of these mindsets
require certain knowledge and acceptance
of knowing that you learn differently
from the way everyone around you seems
to learn but acceptance takes time so
we’ll use my remaining minutes to talk
about some steps you can take first self
assess think about your basic strengths
what are you good at what do you enjoy
can you write word games or logic
puzzles really quickly do you enjoy
reading telling listening to stories are
you an athlete that sort of thing
remember those strengths and use them
next more basics think about your
weaknesses or what you perceive as
weaknesses mine is maybe my ADHD I tend
to lose focus on something pretty
quickly here especially if I’m not
interested in it but if I am interested
in something like narrative based
storytelling then I can do really well
on the other hand math doesn’t interest
me it tends to elude me I find it too
abstract there’s no story there’s no
flow so what can I do then if I’m
interested in reading a book and not
writing a math equation so I turn to
step 2 which is to put up your defenses
now I don’t mean get defensive and
refuse to admit your weaknesses to
anyone we’ll get to the telling people
part don’t worry I think of it as a
turn-based strategy game or you have a
field of units and soldiers that are
yours to command and you have the bigger
bulkier tougher soldiers that can take
out an enemy in one fell swoop and then
you have the slightly squishier soldiers
like the mages who can really pack a
punch if they’re set in the right
terrain but on their own they’re gonna
get taken out so you pair the tougher
soldiers with the squish soldiers so the
tough defends the squish but the squish
still get experience points and level up
it’s cheesy but it works in video games
and it’ll work in real life
third and perhaps my most important step
is to talk reach out don’t be afraid or
ashamed tell your teachers your parents
your students let them know that you’ve
thought about the basics and the way
that you learn and perhaps what you can
do to balance out your strengths and
weaknesses because if you let them know
that you know yourself it’ll be easier
to let other people know you too don’t
be afraid or ashamed now where teachers
are concerned that your students know
when you’re available for non-judgmental
learning specialty conversation many
students are new to the concept of
office hours or may be leery of coming
to a teacher for outside help
the best thing you can do is to let them
know right off the bat
that you’re available for these
non-judgmental talks and accommodations
it doesn’t have to be a big deal you
don’t have to scream at the start of
class and for those of you with learning
differences just open the door
start the conversation show respect
normalize these talks reinforce the
normality because learning outside the
average range of learning methods is
something that everyone needs to know
and something students especially need
to be reminded of fourth take initiative
try your learning methods and your new
support system by applying them to less
pressing tasks can you find a place to
store the clutter in your room by
designing something artistic by using
your artistic talent to make a new
organizational model can you write a
thousand word short story or essay as if
it were a mathematical proof if you can
or if you can’t you’ve learned something
take low risk trial and error if you can
and you if you work if it works or if it
doesn’t work and if you feel productive
or if you don’t feel productive then
you’ll be able to find out how you learn
I call the fifth step motivate hopefully
once you’ve reached this step you’ll be
motivated to accept your learning
differences and see that you can change
things and change your interests so that
it better fits your learning environment
but it’s a process even in this final
step maybe once you reach this step
you’ll realize that you need to self
assess again or follow the other steps
but this time a little differently maybe
before you thought reality is simply
reality life requires a certain adhering
to the status quo that I may or may not
fit and that comes with the territory of
the work or study place but now
self-motivated you’re willing to see
that it’s not you or your learning
habits that need to change
it’s your mindset maybe you’ve even
changed the status quo so that it fits
you and your strengths but all this is
pretty abstract without an example so I
will turn to my own story and it’s a
math story and a game designs
because if you can’t tell that sort of
my interest and I’ll tell you how I use
these steps to make what I think is a
pretty cool card game first I thought
about what I was good at writing and
reading I liked those things
I also liked King Lear so I figured for
my final game design project which is a
course I took I would make a King Lear
inspired card game downside game design
requires a decent amount of math I am
not very good at math like I said it’s
too abstract so how could I make myself
interested in this so I turned to step
two and I tried to balance my King Lear
interest with the math so I need three
players and I want there to be 54 cards
to a deck and there’s gonna be five
types of cards for the players and then
there’s going to be a non player nature
character of King Lear who will also
have five cards oh I thought to myself
now I was interested in the math aspect
so if I was interested in the King Lear
aspect and the math aspect how could I
balance them when I only understood one
of them so I turned to step 3 and I
reached out to my math TA for the course
he started telling me something about
constrained value settings and I
remember holding out my hand to stop him
and say can you teach it to me in a
different way I’m good at logic puzzles
not math can you teach this to me as if
it were a story I half expected him to
say I’m sure all shrugging maybe well
game design requires a decent amount of
this abstract math stuff you don’t like
maybe you’re just not cut out for this
but instead he said okay if you were
going to take a stained glass window and
paint it with a limited amount of colors
and you wanted to have it so that no
windowpane touched the same pane of the
same color which pane would you paint
first and what color would it be here we
go to step 4 applying these learning
methods and support system to a low risk
environment like colors and windows
oh I said you would paint the one in the
middle because it touches everything and
you would paint at the amount you had
least of exactly he said now you
understand constrained value settings so
we’re going to take a card that affects
all the other cards and we’re going to
see which card is the most powerful of
these Mathis map of cards and we’re
gonna sign of value to it let’s call it
X and so on and so forth until wow we
had an equation that equaled 54 cards we
plugged the values into a calculator and
he said ok you’re good to go I didn’t
try doing it on my own
so we plugged them in we got an equation
so a little less scary than I had feared
it’s that one in bold at the bottom if
you can see it but it’s pretty simple so
now that the rest was up to me I had
figured out what I was good at I had
reached out to my teacher I had balance
my strengths and weaknesses and we had
found an alternative and now it was on
me so I made a team that worked I got an
A in the course and on the project I put
it in my portfolio and something that
was ordinarily have sent me into a panic
was now taken notice of by schools in
California in my portfolio this summer
I’m going to be working as a summer
research assistant at one of these game
design labs and it wasn’t because I
tried accepting math for its own merits
I didn’t try fitting myself into a
certain expected category now this is
just an example but I hope you see how
the process works and you can apply it
to your own lives and create your own
anecdotes if there’s nothing shameful
about learning these these steps and
these processes because there’s nothing
shameful about knowing yourself in the
way you work self assess defend talk
experiment motivate when you learn the
way you learn you’ll be on the road to
self-acceptance thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
when I was in high school I could read a
fantasy novel and what felt like minutes
and then forget the homework I did the
night before as soon as I walked into
the classroom I always loved literature
and I considered myself pretty good at
writing my own creative pieces one night
during the end of my junior year my
mother came downstairs at the witching
hour to find me sitting at the computer
sobbing because I couldn’t figure out
how to start big and begin my research
paper starting in elementary school
teachers found their own labels for me
talented but lazy she’d do so well if
she would just hand in her assignments
on time extremely disorganized one of my
brothers and my favorite was wasted
potential maybe you or people you care
about have had these labels applied to
them maybe you’ve labeled people as such
it’s easy to dismiss students strengths
when their weaknesses seem so
insurmountable it’s easy to dismiss them
in ourselves when my mother found me
crying at the computer that night even
after transferring me from public to
private school we knew we had to seek
more help that much more had to change
we were referred to a certified school
psychiatrist for educational testing he
ran me through 16 hours or so of these
this educational testing so that we
could find out the specifics of how I
learned what I needed to do in order to
succeed but not everyone can afford
private schools sympathetic teachers or
a certified school psychiatrist or even
conceive of them as options so what I
want to do tonight is to give you some
steps you can take today now in the next
few days whether that be for you as a
learner an educator a parent or some
combination by telling you about my own
experiences and the decisions I made in
order to succeed my learning difference
begins with executive functioning
organizational skills and a processing
difference
by processing I mean that I tend to
internalize and absorb information at a
slower rate than what we would consider
the average person’s processing speed to
be I can read something and write
something and say something even though
I tend to talk pretty fast and can think
on the spot but I can’t delve into
deeper analysis in the worst case
scenario you could ask me what I just
read or studied or written or have
written but I wouldn’t be able to recall
a single detail from something I read
seconds minutes hours before so how do
you trick your own brain if your brain
tells you yep you got this
you’re 100% ready to go then how do you
know your brain is wrong well let me
tell you something the way your brain
tells you things isn’t you the way
you’re wired isn’t you the only thing
that makes up the yunus is itself the
unis the you that you decided you wanted
to accept and be maybe you’ve said to
yourself my learning differences and the
way I learned does not define me or
maybe you say it factors into my
personality and led me to where I am
today
or maybe you’re somewhere in between or
some combination of these two but what I
would like to do is to show you that
it’s not you that were there learning
difference that makes you you it’s the
acceptance of yourself that both these
minds as there any of these mindsets
require certain knowledge and acceptance
of knowing that you learn differently
from the way everyone around you seems
to learn but acceptance takes time so
we’ll use my remaining minutes to talk
about some steps you can take first self
assess think about your basic strengths
what are you good at what do you enjoy
can you write word games or logic
puzzles really quickly do you enjoy
reading telling listening to stories are
you an athlete that sort of thing
remember those strengths and use them
next more basics think about your
weaknesses or what you perceive as
weaknesses mine is maybe my ADHD I tend
to lose focus on something pretty
quickly here especially if I’m not
interested in it but if I am interested
in something like narrative based
storytelling then I can do really well
on the other hand math doesn’t interest
me it tends to elude me I find it too
abstract there’s no story there’s no
flow so what can I do then if I’m
interested in reading a book and not
writing a math equation so I turn to
step 2 which is to put up your defenses
now I don’t mean get defensive and
refuse to admit your weaknesses to
anyone we’ll get to the telling people
part don’t worry I think of it as a
turn-based strategy game or you have a
field of units and soldiers that are
yours to command and you have the bigger
bulkier tougher soldiers that can take
out an enemy in one fell swoop and then
you have the slightly squishier soldiers
like the mages who can really pack a
punch if they’re set in the right
terrain but on their own they’re gonna
get taken out so you pair the tougher
soldiers with the squish soldiers so the
tough defends the squish but the squish
still get experience points and level up
it’s cheesy but it works in video games
and it’ll work in real life
third and perhaps my most important step
is to talk reach out don’t be afraid or
ashamed tell your teachers your parents
your students let them know that you’ve
thought about the basics and the way
that you learn and perhaps what you can
do to balance out your strengths and
weaknesses because if you let them know
that you know yourself it’ll be easier
to let other people know you too don’t
be afraid or ashamed now where teachers
are concerned that your students know
when you’re available for non-judgmental
learning specialty conversation many
students are new to the concept of
office hours or may be leery of coming
to a teacher for outside help
the best thing you can do is to let them
know right off the bat
that you’re available for these
non-judgmental talks and accommodations
it doesn’t have to be a big deal you
don’t have to scream at the start of
class and for those of you with learning
differences just open the door
start the conversation show respect
normalize these talks reinforce the
normality because learning outside the
average range of learning methods is
something that everyone needs to know
and something students especially need
to be reminded of fourth take initiative
try your learning methods and your new
support system by applying them to less
pressing tasks can you find a place to
store the clutter in your room by
designing something artistic by using
your artistic talent to make a new
organizational model can you write a
thousand word short story or essay as if
it were a mathematical proof if you can
or if you can’t you’ve learned something
take low risk trial and error if you can
and you if you work if it works or if it
doesn’t work and if you feel productive
or if you don’t feel productive then
you’ll be able to find out how you learn
I call the fifth step motivate hopefully
once you’ve reached this step you’ll be
motivated to accept your learning
differences and see that you can change
things and change your interests so that
it better fits your learning environment
but it’s a process even in this final
step maybe once you reach this step
you’ll realize that you need to self
assess again or follow the other steps
but this time a little differently maybe
before you thought reality is simply
reality life requires a certain adhering
to the status quo that I may or may not
fit and that comes with the territory of
the work or study place but now
self-motivated you’re willing to see
that it’s not you or your learning
habits that need to change
it’s your mindset maybe you’ve even
changed the status quo so that it fits
you and your strengths but all this is
pretty abstract without an example so I
will turn to my own story and it’s a
math story and a game designs
because if you can’t tell that sort of
my interest and I’ll tell you how I use
these steps to make what I think is a
pretty cool card game first I thought
about what I was good at writing and
reading I liked those things
I also liked King Lear so I figured for
my final game design project which is a
course I took I would make a King Lear
inspired card game downside game design
requires a decent amount of math I am
not very good at math like I said it’s
too abstract so how could I make myself
interested in this so I turned to step
two and I tried to balance my King Lear
interest with the math so I need three
players and I want there to be 54 cards
to a deck and there’s gonna be five
types of cards for the players and then
there’s going to be a non player nature
character of King Lear who will also
have five cards oh I thought to myself
now I was interested in the math aspect
so if I was interested in the King Lear
aspect and the math aspect how could I
balance them when I only understood one
of them so I turned to step 3 and I
reached out to my math TA for the course
he started telling me something about
constrained value settings and I
remember holding out my hand to stop him
and say can you teach it to me in a
different way I’m good at logic puzzles
not math can you teach this to me as if
it were a story I half expected him to
say I’m sure all shrugging maybe well
game design requires a decent amount of
this abstract math stuff you don’t like
maybe you’re just not cut out for this
but instead he said okay if you were
going to take a stained glass window and
paint it with a limited amount of colors
and you wanted to have it so that no
windowpane touched the same pane of the
same color which pane would you paint
first and what color would it be here we
go to step 4 applying these learning
methods and support system to a low risk
environment like colors and windows
oh I said you would paint the one in the
middle because it touches everything and
you would paint at the amount you had
least of exactly he said now you
understand constrained value settings so
we’re going to take a card that affects
all the other cards and we’re going to
see which card is the most powerful of
these Mathis map of cards and we’re
gonna sign of value to it let’s call it
X and so on and so forth until wow we
had an equation that equaled 54 cards we
plugged the values into a calculator and
he said ok you’re good to go I didn’t
try doing it on my own
so we plugged them in we got an equation
so a little less scary than I had feared
it’s that one in bold at the bottom if
you can see it but it’s pretty simple so
now that the rest was up to me I had
figured out what I was good at I had
reached out to my teacher I had balance
my strengths and weaknesses and we had
found an alternative and now it was on
me so I made a team that worked I got an
A in the course and on the project I put
it in my portfolio and something that
was ordinarily have sent me into a panic
was now taken notice of by schools in
California in my portfolio this summer
I’m going to be working as a summer
research assistant at one of these game
design labs and it wasn’t because I
tried accepting math for its own merits
I didn’t try fitting myself into a
certain expected category now this is
just an example but I hope you see how
the process works and you can apply it
to your own lives and create your own
anecdotes if there’s nothing shameful
about learning these these steps and
these processes because there’s nothing
shameful about knowing yourself in the
way you work self assess defend talk
experiment motivate when you learn the
way you learn you’ll be on the road to
self-acceptance thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
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