 Think Tech Alive. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha and welcome to Out and About on the Think Tech Alive streaming network series. I'm your host, Winston Welch, and delighted you are joining us today, where we explore a variety of topics, organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. As a disclaimer, any views or opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and not connected with any organization I might be affiliated with. That's it. Joining me today in the studio, I am delighted to have Ryan Mesa, K through a principal of asset school, and Mari Kim, parent of a student there. Actually, multiple students there, depending on if it's summer or not. So with that, I would like to welcome you both to the show today. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. So tell us, what is asset school? I think that most people are not aware that this institution exists. Yeah, so we are a K to 12 independent school, and we have a really unique mission within the independent school community. So we are there to serve really bright kids who often have something that is some kind of learning difference. So really bright, but struggle with reading or writing or math or spelling. Sometimes they have a hard time sustaining attention. They could be gifted. It could be any number of those things I said combined. And so is that really unique profiles and often struggle in very traditional settings? So we do things in often very non-traditional ways. In very non-traditional ways. So the specialty is on gifted and is it dyslexic, or is it just some kinds of learning difficulties? Yeah, good question. So we definitely have a lot of kids who are gifted or who are just bright, maybe not identified as gifted as a unique profile, but certainly bright and capable. And then, yes, more than just dyslexia, things like dysgraphia, which would be struggle with writing or dyscalculia, which is struggle with math. But reading is the number one learning difference. So because of that, we have more kids with reading needs than those other needs, just because in the general population, that's how it plays out. And that's the term of dyslexia? Dyslexia. Okay. And dyscalculia? Dyscalculia. Everyone wants to say they have that, which brings us to a point that I think we use these terms dyslexia and gifted rather loosely in our society. So I don't know, Marie, can you tell us about your experience if you had told me that you actually were diagnosed dyslexic, or maybe you diagnosed yourself, or how did you get that? Yes. So as a very young child, I was referred, as they say, because I seem to be problematic in school. I seem to have some kind of learning difficulty, although despite being relatively bright. So at that time, the ways of testing were such that they labeled you as just a sort of special education needs child, which is a really broad term. And I now, having had four out of five children diagnosed as dyslexic, three of which also have dysgraphia, I can see the parallels to myself. And at that time, when you were a student, were you placed in the special ed class? I wasn't placed, but I was placed in speech pathology. I think there was an earnest effort to try to figure out what is with this child. Does she need a speech therapist? Does she need some kind of other occupational therapy? So there was a kind of lack of understanding, like our children are so lucky today. There's a greater legibility of what the need is. So basically, back in the day, we'll just say they didn't have standard tests that would do this. And for kids these days, are there tests that they get right when they come to kindergarten, like across the board? Well, that would be fantastic. I mean, I think it obviously varies school to school, district to district. I mean, that would be amazing. And some states and districts are moving towards that, where all kindergartners are being screened and kind of being red flagged for either having some kind of learning difference or at least being sort of at risk, because sometimes it can be difficult that young. But I would say we're really far from that, unfortunately. Can I add that also having had so many dyslexic children and being very vocal about advocating, so many parents have come when their child is four or five to me and say, my child is also dyslexic, they're reversing their letters. And I always have to say, there are things that are just normal, dyslexic children. It certainly appears differently and uniquely. And when you say reversing their letters, are they seeing the C backwards, so the brain is just not switching it? It can't differentiate a B and a D. It is unable to differentiate which way it should face every time. So in the same sentence, a dyslexic child will write the B one way, and three words later it will flip this way, and two words later it will flip this way again. Okay, so parents might, at some part of that might be normal. When they're young, when children are four, five, six, they may just go, oh, my child is dyslexic. Right, so yeah, what Mary is saying is really important because one of the big misconceptions is that dyslexia is something with the visual system, and it's not. It's not, it's about language. But what Mary is saying is really important because most early readers are going to do letter reversals, and that's actually really common. Except that, you know, oftentimes folks with dyslexia that will persist. And it's not the defining characteristic, but it does persist. And most other kids will grow. But it's not, you know, at that early stage, an automatic right by any means. So you're K through, your school is K through 8, and then there's the high school, which is, I guess, 9 through 12. I guess. How do parents figure this out, like right from K or 1 or 2, and they're coming to you? Do you see like large numbers of increase by the time they get to 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade? That's exactly right. So we're trying really hard to sort of change that trend, but what I would say is the more common projection is that we're not identifying kids early for a variety of reasons. Either the schools aren't helping, parents aren't willing to accept that yet. All kinds of really legitimate reasons why that's not happening. And then as kids get older, certainly these conditions aren't going away. They're actually, you know, kind of being exaggerated because demands are increasing, their skills are lagging, and so we see an increase around 3rd and 4th grade. We'll see an increase around middle school. So, you know, we will continue to see our inquiries in a moment go up, just because the demands are now exceeding the skills. And I can imagine that a lot of kids that are dyslexic or have these other learning differences, they're not diagnosed properly, so they get labeled in a certain way or they go to the special resource room for between one and three or whatever it might be in the public schools, and they might get shuffled along and then that might contribute to some social or behavioral issues than feeling like I'm not the same as the other kids and what's wrong. So you have maybe some other things on top of that too. On top of just school being hard for every child. If it isn't, you know, I think most kids feel like they don't want to be different. And you know what Ryan is saying is really important. Often I'm very vocal in telling other parents that my child is dyslexic. My child will probably consistently have very low marks in a more traditional school system and I've actually had parents react to me as if I've just said my child has a terminal disease. I'm so sorry, what can I do to help? And I have to remind them it's such a gift. It's such a life gift, but the perception when you're not exposed to it is one of fear and anxiety. So the fact that parents sometimes take longer to be able to come to terms with it is not always the best thing for the child. So the earlier the diagnosis the better. Absolutely, I mean I think we would always want to get intervention as early as possible, in terms of helping kids learn to read. But also what you were saying earlier is so important. Kids are really, really bright. They're intuitive, they're smart. When something is off they know something is off. And so when the adults in their life don't help them understand who they are as a learner they start to draw really inaccurate and inappropriate conclusions about themselves. Like they're not smart, like they're not capable. Which is just not true, but it's a very logical conclusion to draw. So if we're not seeing somebody to let's say 5th or 6th grade now we're also unpacking 5 and 6 years of school failures, school struggle, identity issues. Because again it makes sense that that would be confusing and frustrating and aggravating. And you said so 4 out of 5 of your kids have been diagnosed, you were diagnosed so it is genetic. Is it possible that it's not genetic or it's always genetic? It's highly heritable. So by no means is it a guarantee if your parents have it that you'll have it, but your odds go way up. So the best numbers we can give around that is, even though it's a big range, like 30 to 60% prevalence rate would mean that if your parents have a 30 to 60% chance certainly we have kids at the school whose parents are not dyslexic. But sort of the kind of tongue-in-cheek way of saying it is that apples fall from apple trees. So often times what a child is struggling with is often a parent's experience as well. Okay so maybe you have a little more empathy for your kids, hopefully because of what you went through. Did you get yours tested at a young age? About 10 or 11 and after some frustration and of course the testing was not, the testing as we know today was nonspecific. It was just that this child, it's what, and Ryan can explain this better, is a twice exceptional child. Why is this child so smart, but why is this child so unable to do basic things that it does, at the time when I was young it didn't make sense, so you get labeled as a special needs child. Well and it's interesting because as we get more involved in genetic testing I'm sure they'll exactly be able to highlight and say in advance, okay just to be aware this may or may not be a condition that comes up in the future but right now it's something where you sit down with the evaluator and she or he goes through some tests with the kids. And you mentioned the double gifted or the gifted part of your school which is another, it's very interesting for me that Assets focuses on that as well because our gifts are all unique and special and kids don't, I would say typically don't receive any special attention to develop those gifts in the traditional public schools although I would like to say that they, teachers do the best they can with what they have but they're overwhelmed with having too many kids in the class at another time and a lot of difficult responsibilities. Tell us about the gifted part of the school. Yeah so the school has had this really wonderful legacy of serving both gifted kids and kids with learning differences and like, am I really saying kids who are both you know what we call twice exceptional so if you were gifted and dyslexic and that's a unique profile unto itself and so what's, those are such neat kids but I think what I just want to share that's so important to understand about them is that all human beings have these sort of strengths and weaknesses kind of like a jagged profile but for the most part if you're a relatively average person you know it's not that big a difference but for these two e-kids these twice exceptional kids look like this you know intense strengths and significant weaknesses and so that experience I think again if the adult aren't helping you and supporting you it's very confusing why can I do math two levels above my classmates but I can't read still you know that so you know how we as a school sort of address all this together is that we just have this long legacy of meeting kids where they are growing from there differentiating instruction and individualizing it as much as we can and that allows you to work with kids who are you know moving really quickly kids who are moving really slowly we also try our best to do a lot around strength based education so yes you know there are some deficits and we need to give those attention and we're going to hopefully help you improve in those areas but you can't focus all of your time and you know only see the kid through what he or she doesn't do well you have to give equal attention to what he or she does really well how we help you develop those skills and kind of flex those muscles because at the end of the day typically if you help a kid you know those strengths really really carry the day it's sort of what they leverage as they get older and as adults and they sort of figure out how to compensate for the deficits it's when we can get them through school on one piece so you know focusing on strengths is a major part of what we do in assets. It's a space education that's it's really nice no matter who the student is if we could focus find what the strengths are and focus on those you know of course mathematics is important but I don't use a lot of calculus or you know assets they actually use a child's strengths to break the code I always tell my children it's like your weaknesses it's like a code and you cannot read that code you have to be the code breaker and once they break their own code but assets uses a child's strengths to leverage their weaknesses which is what's so unique about assets it's a really great it's incredible and how did you find how did you find the school so excuse me when my I have a 12 year old and when she was little I actually reached out for the first time because I having her two other brothers been diagnosed and seeing the same traits in her I knew she would need specialized education but at the time I chose not to I was a very much a single parent so I chose I wasn't able to take her so far from where we lived in Kailua so she actually went to a very traditional private school I have two seven year old twins one at assets and one in a traditional private school but one has very specialized needs and I knew that he would not succeed in any traditional environment and there was no question that he had to be taught in a way that was so unique to him and how long has he been there now since kindergarten so he's just completing first grade almost two years and actually my daughters go there during the summers okay so there's a summer program too in case people maybe won't think that this might be a place to try out or to or maybe supplementary to what they're getting or something and we will have to get that after our break see the time moves by really fast there's too much information to cover here but it is my pleasure to have on my show today Ryan Mesa and Maury Kim a parent of a student and Ryan is the K-8 principal at asset school and Winston Welch and we're going to be back in just a moment I'm out and about on Think Tech Hawaii who's gonna drive it's nice to know you're gonna get home alive plan for fun and responsibility choose the DG captain of our team it's the DG for every game day a sign a designated driver hey hey baby that's you I want to know will you watch my show I hope you do it's on Tuesdays at one o'clock and it's out of the comfort zone and I'll be your host RB Kelly see you there hello hi and we are back on out and about on Think Tech Hawaii I'm Winston Welch host of the show and I am delighted this week to have Ryan Mesa principal K-8 of asset school and Maury Kim parent of a student or more at asset school and you said you've got a couple twins and one of them is going to school there and the other one is going to be going this summer yes two more my two daughters will both be joining this summer two daughters and how old is the other one so I have a 12 year old going this summer and then twins are seven okay and is the school program the same in the summer or is it how does it differ um well it's a shorter day but but it's sort of at this at philosophically it's the same program and that we're going to give you know kids really individualized attention and differentiate instruction and you know evidence-based practices to help with specific skills like reading so that part of it is is the same so the teachers that you hire obviously have very specific skills and training background in in working with gifted and learning differences kids with learning differences yeah I mean ideally yes I think that again sort of unfortunately the reality of the field is that most folks aren't coming out of their undergrad programs or even their graduate programs with this toolbox I think it is a really and I think it sort of explains why so many kids are struggling in other settings so we do a lot of professional development in house and for the community but also for our own faculty to get them those tools in the toolbox so it's still really a kind of an emerging and growing field as we're understanding this more and more and how to work with it and how to develop teachers and students that's interesting yeah well as in every field we're just I feel like humanity is just on the verge of yeah we're just just starting to know what we don't know you know it's in some levels so so tell us then you've got these other kids they they were dyslexic are they are they successful yes and so my oldest son graduated from medical school a few years ago okay he's been seeing his residency okay he struggled tears tears tears all through school struggle struggle struggle and my second son graduated last year and he joined Morgan Stanley as a young investment banker so both of them struggled and neither of them went to actually specialize schools and so most of the kids the huge majority that have some issue are going through the regular schools absolutely but they're able to figure it out and get along but it's so much better if they can the kids can be met and they can be you know addressed yes we are the dyslexia poster family and in our family it's so normal and it's such a gift to be dyslexic that that is their standard of normalcy that the one that hasn't been diagnosed is so upset that he doesn't have a formal diagnosis it's a gift it's a gift it's a gift because it's from our differences and we develop as human beings I'm a firm believer of that absolutely and maybe even our struggles or difficulties that that's sort of where the channels come in and makes us deeper people as well so obviously now with your sons did you know that something was up with the older ones so the older one was the hardest because he's the first so he had to break ground but he actually went to the London School for Boys it's a very difficult and you know very privileged private school in England where the curriculum really was tough for him my second son actually went to the London School for Boys so it's a public school and we have a joke that Christopher learned fencing and Louie learned survival knife skills you know two different but you know and they found their own ways and I as a parent I truly believe if you have a child with a learning difficulty what you can do for your child is to let them find their way and try not to interfere too much and try not to impose what you think is going to be best because in that resilience of finding their way they will build the strength they need to succeed and so when kids come to you and they might have had you said those five or sixty seven years of difficulties and maybe then some identity things of where they're saying oh I'm this or I'm that so I can't do that or tell us what kind of support is there in the school or what type of supportive environment is there yeah I mean so we think of you know intervention as being educational but also environmental so it's not one or the other I mean if it was only educational it would be like tutoring you know it has to be environmental and so we have a lot of kind of counseling support and that's just to help you know oftentimes these kids don't like school it hasn't been a good experience they don't trust classmates they don't trust teachers it just it hasn't been a place where they thrive so again that's a logical conclusion to draw and so you're really helping them regain trust in learning and education and you know learning is such a vulnerable experience you have to really take a risk to learn and so if you're kind of wounded you know you need help to take that risk again because it can be scary and so we talked about sort of the gift of dyslexia but all these things that we're talking about you know that can turn on you that gift can turn on you and these kids really are at risk even though we have a million success stories if they don't get the right kind of support we know that they have higher rates of juvenile detention centers and unwanted teen pregnancies and car accidents and substance abuse and all kinds of things because they've drawn really inappropriate conclusions about themselves and what their future could be now are you a member of any like parents with dyslexia group or anything like that no actually I'm not yeah it's I've actually reached out a few times but I think it's more of a testimony to the lack of time but that's enough and you're gainfully employed yourself and very busy so is there what for parents do you have at the school actually just now that you brought that up yeah we try our best to have sort of parent forums where people can come together around different topics so this year we ran a handful of ones one was on exceptional kids one was on mindsets one was on I think it was information processing or sensory processing so just you know different things in the life of raising a child particularly one who may learn different okay so you're teaching the kids about their kids or you're teaching the parents about their kids and what they might be learning now what are the courses do you offer besides the regular courses at school or are they the regular courses at school but maybe with some more emphasis on each individual student's interest and needs I mean we are traditional in that sense that you still have you know your sort of basic subjects what's unique about us is that we do integrated thematic units so that you know what you're learning in homeroom is the same thing that you're learning about in music and drama so that all sort of you know comes together nicely I think the biggest difference is that we have this really fantastic enrichment program so even the youngest kids we give them a menu of things to choose from different courses like rocketry 3d printing coding yoga glass etching clock making yeah I remember all those classes when I was a kid you name it and we offer it and then kids rank them and then we run them on on on like three week cycles so it gives kids a chance to try something on that they maybe don't know if they like or not and then you have the kid who knows exactly what he or she loves and it lets them just do a deep dive and I get really flexible muscles and that's what we mean when we say strength based that's awesome so you got do you have specialty teaching folks coming in and just teaching a class for a series occasionally but more often than not it's our teachers offering things that that they have their skills for instance my son is taking knitting and he said mom I'm not going to school today and I said why he said I don't like to knit mom but but Philip has dysgraphia he the nerves in his hands are damaged and knitting is a really fun he's come around he's come around now but of course he thought this knitting thing mom is really hard but it's such an amazing way to teach a child how to use their fine motor skills that is so interesting and who would have thought something like that you know I know and in a very different way than the pencil to paper so absolutely I know the school I I was reading on your on your website which is assets-school.net assets-school.net okay or assets-school.net and it said it started a long time ago on the military base and then I know you you had a sort of acquisition or merger with Academy of the Pacific up on in 11 is it 11 Heights yeah a beautiful new campus up there so now you have two campuses and tell us what growth is going on there either at both schools I guess yeah it's super exciting for the school in its history so we have the two campuses now within the last five years the high school it's a beautiful setting up there it's a great place to go to high school and so we're focusing our time and attention there just sort of giving it a little bit of a base lift okay and it's beautiful up there and then the K-8 which is over by the airport we are building a new K-4 village okay and that will be construction should be completed at the end of May and then we'll spend the summer doing landscaping and moving things in and it will be ready on day one next school year and Mairi is an architect and she helped design it so not only is she a parent she is she wears many hats for us and it's a really brilliant 80s so it is it's super exciting that is great that you can also be involved in literally the design and construction of your child's learning environment and actually the most important influence of the design was being a parent of an assets child and knowing from the inside how they teach and what they need to teach but actually Ryan the first time I met you you you said Wiggles Wiggles or Wiggles Wiggles Wiggles out Wiggles out and Ryan said we go outside a lot because our children tend to have a lot of Wiggles and we need to get the Wiggles out and I remembered that so many times when designing the new school with G70 is that you need to create an environment where a child has equal access to a living learning space outside as inside and I can see it and I can easily access it and it's seamless and that one statement you said actually was one of the biggest influencers cool and so it's made for a student who learns differently but to be honest any student would succeed in that. It sounds like just a really wonderful environment for any student to be in and the types of classes that you offer and the way that everything is. If I know you have fundraisers involved so some students receive I'm guessing tuition scholarships or partial scholarships or something along those lines. Yeah we do our best we know I mean as a private school we know that tuition is hard for a lot of families especially you know with a school like ours our mission is really unique and specific and I have planned on being private school parents this is sort of what they figured out their child needs so we do this past year I think it was $850,000 in financial assistance which for a school our size is good. We're trying to always do more we know that if we could give more to folks more kids would come. We know that that is a burden for some families so we try our best. Well people can always donate to your school by going to assets- life and school.net and you have regular fundraisers throughout the year and I know you have a lot of unique and interesting programs that we haven't gotten to you at like your assets teacher training and outreach program where you're going to the wider community and I saw in the past you've offered classes to adults with dyslexia so a lot of topics that we won't be able to get to today unfortunately because we are out of time and I really appreciate you both coming in here sincerely to tell us about your own personal experience and experience with your kids and how meaningful this school is for you and for you to be a principal of the school how gratifying that must be to see the kids come in develop and grow and manage a staff of obviously really terrific and dedicated teachers so maybe I hope you'll come back again and maybe we can bring a student who has an experience or a teacher or somebody else. That would be great. We would love that because if they want more information they can go to assets-school.net and in any event. I'm sorry that we are out of time but thank you so much for being here. This is Winston Roche on ThinkTech live out and about streaming network series. Today we have been speaking with Ryan Mesa and Mari Kim of Assets School. Thanks for tuning in. We welcome your feedback. Thanks for our broadcast engineer Ray Sangaling our technical producer Ian Davidson our floor manager Robert McLean and to Jay Fidel our executive producer who puts it all together. I will see you here every other Monday or maybe once a month depending on if David Tasaka is taking the show or not at 3 p.m. for more out and about on ThinkTech Hawaii. Aloha everyone.