Dear Colleagues and Friends,
What about your brain have you come to love and appreciate?
That was one of a host of questions that ECLC Book Club members posed in a lively discussion with author Jonathan Mooney earlier this week. Mooney is the author of Normal Sucks, a compelling memoir about his childhood experiences with ADHD and dyslexia. His book reinforces a powerful message: Let’s stop trying to fix people and start empowering them to succeed.
Our colleague Bryan Mascio often uses this book as a prompt for conversations about neurodivergence and how best to adapt classrooms to meet the full range of students’ assets and needs. A group of our members read the book for themselves this summer – some for the first time, some for the second or third time – and were eager to discuss their reflections with Mooney.
Jonathan is brilliant, irreverent, and passionate about reframing the concept of “normal.” He speaks courageously and honestly about his own lived experience: as a child, he was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD and didn’t learn to read until he was 12. Over time, he came to realize that what he had internalized as an individual problem was actually a system problem. He now devotes his life and career to sharing his story of feeling trapped in environments that shamed and labeled him and talks about how, with help from his mother and some special teachers and mentors, he moved from feeling “less than” to “different from.”
Jonathan is committed to preventing young people with learning differences from giving up on themselves and urges parents and educators to think differently about difference.
We will soon share video clips from the conversation, but this moment is the one that stands out most to me:
“I had a third grade teacher named Mr. R who I met right when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. This was a teacher that was really committed to the idea that every student had something good about him, right about him, and he was on a mission to kind of celebrate these strengths and find them, and to the best of his ability, name them and nurture them. And so he was always coming at kids like, Hey, what are you good at? What do you like? What are you into? And he would come to me with those questions and my response would be like, I’m not good at anything, you know, nothing, because I was over in SPED IEP land.
Mr. R never gave up on me. One day he came to me and said, Hey, I’ve been watching you, and you’re wrong about yourself, and I think a lot of other people are wrong about you. He said You are so good at telling stories. Now, sometimes they’re inappropriate stories you tell, but I don’t care. You are so good at telling stories that you could be a writer.
I was nine. I mean, I had just been diagnosed with dyslexia. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before in my life. And I looked at him and I said, Mr. R, alright. You really think I could be a writer? Are you out of your mind? I can’t spell. And his response to that was Jonathan in my class, screw spelling. Screw spelling. Man, yeah, you should have seen me jump out of my body. And that was a transformative moment for me.”
At Power of Place, we recognize that whenever stigma is present, learning is compromised. We all carry assumptions shaped over time, but because the work of educators is so high-stakes, it is essential to examine and interrupt the biases that can inadvertently limit how we see our students. We provide you with the focused time and psychologically safe space needed to reflect, challenge assumptions, and grow. This can be complicated, emotional and messy, and we are here to support you along the way – let us know what you need.
In connection,
Jane
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