with my second year of college

when I signed up for chemistry.

Now, I love starting here

because it was in this class

that the most incredible things

started to happen to me.

I remember my attempts at studying chemistry,

mostly because they were extremely painful.

I remember reading these words over and over again,

but for some reason, when I was putting them together,

no new meaning was happening.

It was as if I had an inability to learn

from reading this textbook.

And as fate would have it, this triggered in me

something that happens to a lot of my students.

I started to wonder, "What's wrong with me?"

And this triggered my interest

in educational psychology.

Now, as any good psychologist does

when wondering "what's wrong with me?",

I began to analyze my parents.

(Laughter)

Now, this is my father.

My father can be described in a lot of ways.

Dyslexic.

Trouble-maker.

High school dropout.

He also can be described as an outside of the box thinker.

Mathematical engineer.

Inventor.

Self-made millionaire.

I remember as a child

really important people coming to our home

to ask my father if their ideas would work.

So, one day when I was struggling along with chemistry,

I decided to ask my dad,

"How do you know if something is going to work?

How do you know when you know something?"

And he said to me the most profound thing.

He said to me, "I can picture it in my mind."

And it was as if something cracked open inside of me.

And I got it.

These chemistry words were not making pictures in my mind,

but I also understood I've got to figure out

a way to make pictures,

or I'm never going to be able to read

and learn from this textbook.

Now today, neuroscience has a very good understanding

of what was happening to me.

If you comprehend a word,

your brain triggers a simulation.

When you comprehend the word "jump",

your brain fires off a neurological pattern

that is very similar to the same pattern you use

to physically propel your body.

Your brain experiences words.

If you're very good at thinking with words,

you have a lot of words that move over

into that simulation process.

But I am a picture thinker.

And for me, words can actually block my comprehension.

I might be able to read a word,

write a word,

memorize a long hairy definition for that word,

but all of these things

are actually quite separate from learning.

Years later, I started my career by working in school districts,

testing and diagnosing children with learning disabilities.

And I started to see a lot of common themes.

This is Sarah.

Now, Sarah can be described in a lot of ways.

She's highly distractible.

She makes a lot of careless errors.

She's not a good test taker.

Jackson hates to read.

He has low reading comprehension,

and to be honest, most of his teachers

just think he has average ability.

Joy appears unable to learn.

She has a diagnosed learning disability,

and experiences school failure in many academic ways.

But the more I started to get to know my students,

the more I really started to see my father.

And the more I really started to see me.

And I began to wonder,

"What if your child

is not being measured by their ability to learn?

What if school performance is actually measuring

your child's inability to think with words?"

So, I left working with schools

and I went into private practice

where I was researching and designing

some approaches to learning.

And I ran across three powerful statistics.

50 to 60% of all students will be perceived by school

as having average to bellow average learning potential.

50 to 60% of all students,

will test as being very strong at picture thinking,

with weaknesses in word thinking.

50 to 60% of all words

that a kindergarten child

needs to learn how to read

is taught to them using rote memorization only.

So, I decided, "You know what?

I am going to take my students back to kindergarten, so to speak,

and look at where their learning inability really began."

And we've honed in on the first 40 words

that their brain had been forced to memorize,

but, this time, we engaged their creative thinking

and we activated their problem solving skills,

And we moved those words from memorization

over to experience and meaning.

And we started to see some amazing things.

This is Sarah today.

She's an 11th grade.

She's an A student,

and she's actually actively looking for ways

to capitalize on her social networking skills.

Jackson is above average in all areas,

and he's an avid water polo player.

Joy has defeated all the odds.

She now loves to read,

and she's an elegant writer.

Over the last ten years,

my students have been showing me

the crippling effect rote memorization

can have on a developing brain.

But they've also been showing me

that there is nothing average about the human mind.

Because, as it turns out,

all our children really need from us,

is to be given the opportunity

to see learning.

(Applause)