The Flash Method for Mastering Dyslexia ft. Educator Kim Parra

Even though I thought I was going to get into special ed, gifted is kind of the other end of that, but you also get special ed mixed in there, and a lot of people don't know that, so there's gifted kids that can't read.

Hey, everyone. We are Nick and Sonja, and this is Dyslexia Journey, and today we are excited to welcome Kim Parra, who is a teacher in Alabama. Welcome, Kim. Thanks for having me, Nick and Sonja. I appreciate it. And we're really excited to hear, you know, about these different resources you've developed for dyslexic students, but let's sort of start at the beginning of your journey, you know, perhaps towards being a teacher at all, and your background, just anything you want to share initially here about your background and how you came to be a teacher.

Yeah, so it was accidental. I became a mother, and along the journey, I've tried to go to college for many years. I lovingly call myself the 20-year student, because I would have to take many stops along the way to mother. But I have a wonderful, awesome autistic son who also got, about five or six years ago, got diagnosed with ADHD, and I kind of found out that I also held a lot of those traits and got kind of a diagnosis from my doctor, you know, that, hey, yeah, you do have some problems and some issues and some learning difficulties.

So along the lines of teaching my son, who was going to drop out of kindergarten again, took kindergarten again, and about that second year, I realized that this, it wasn't going to happen for my kid unless I did something drastic. So I sat in on the floor of a monastery school, and I taught my kid, kindergarten, basically, is what happened. They let me come in, and I just said, give me a checklist of what you want done, and at the end of the day, we'll make sure that we do all these things that you're asking my child to do.

And so I kind of built a bridge to my child, and unbeknownst to me, I had, you know, good capabilities of teaching. I just didn't know it until I was kind of thrust into it. Interesting, interesting. Yeah.

So you mentioned that you have some learning difficulties, and I think you mentioned earlier offline that you have dyslexia as well, right? Yes. I have a type, and I don't know the exact name of it, but it's when you have a word like boat, and at first I would be able to remember the AT in it, and then the BO, you know, would be on the other side of it. And so as I'm spelling it out, sometimes I have to attack the word at the end and then remember the beginning of it, and then other times when I'm really stressed out about testing, which is, you know, pretty common for those of us that have dyslexia, we have, you know, testing anxieties.

And so when that happens, I remember in second grade, the word swirling around the page, and then trying to get your mind still enough to where you can actually read, you know, verse by verse, sentence by sentence. You know, it's a difficult commodity. And then if you have ADHD on top of it, you're, you know, you have anxiety to go along with that because your short term is shot. You can't usually remember from sentence to sentence what's being said.

So it has a lot of challenges to it. Yeah, so how did it, how did that transition then? You were thrust into it, you kind of realized, hey, teaching, you know, something there with teaching. How did that transition into working with others? Well, I ended up doing Girl Scouts after that, and then you, you have to motivate, you know, a whole bunch of girls to want to love camping. And during a digital time, you know, that's a lot of, you know, trying to earn badges, trying to get them outdoors, and trying to get them interested in, you know, in all these things.

And so you spend a lot of time, you know, doing research, you spend a lot of time reading, because they make you take these courses and things like that for volunteer. And before long, you know, the kids asked me, they were like, so, you know, you're, you're talking about getting a degree and everything and us to earn these badges so that we'll think about college. But have you finished your degree? And I said, no, I haven't.

And they were like, why? And I said, well, I just, I just haven't had time. You know, I've just been so busy. With you guys and, you know, trying to get things going for, you know, my child. And all of a sudden, you know, next thing I know, I'm back in college because of what they, that conversation they had with me. So, you know, it's kind of like put up or shut up when a kid tells you something, you kind of have to, you kind of have to do it.

Interesting. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. And yeah, so then when you went back to college, were you actually thinking potentially of teaching already? Like, is that what you majored in or? No, I actually kind of got my associates and I wasn't thinking of teaching at the time. And I was actually making pottery back in 2008 and I was doing pretty well with it. I was a Raku pottery. I was trying to light myself on fire at any given weekend, you know, with friends.

And, you know, it was, it was really fun. And I was in places like Dustin and Sand Dustin and selling out the back of my car like a hippie. And then, you know, the stock market crash happened and it kind of re-altered all of our brains. And we kind of had to say, you know what, art's great, but it's not going to pay the bills. So I started getting serious about the teaching aspect and taking courses and at the junior college.

And they kind of helped antiquate me and fill in the gaps where I had, you know, big missing content of information. So it was really neat, the journey along the way. And my family was really supportive. I'm lucky enough to have a really great husband and child to, you know, to help, you know, say, yeah, you're totally good at this. You know, go for it. You know, so it's good. Yeah, so it's also a little bit about, about your teaching career now so far.

So I started off getting a degree in four different things. General ed, which is regular classroom teacher, special ed, then ELL learners, and then a reading component. So what that means is I took extra classes to get all four of those certificates. They also give you one in gifted in Florida. But when you travel over to Alabama, it's a different kind of system. And so I had to hurry up and run and get my master's in gifted because it was the only thing I could find in Baldwin County that would, you know, support me.

So I went ahead and did it after I became a tech teacher for a little while, for a year. I decided, hey, you know, why not bite the bullet and help the other side of the spectrum? You know, even though I thought I was going to get into special ed, you know, gifted is kind of the other end of that. But you also get special ed mixed in there. And a lot of people don't know that.

So there's, there's gifted kids that can't read. There's a, there's a whole, you know, bunch of them. So along the way, I was able to help some of those kids as well. And I pulled in as many as I could from different areas to help, help in any which way I could with, with my methods. And I was able to save, you know, quite a few hundred. Yeah. So, and you mentioned that you do some one-on-one work now.

I want to also talk about your offerings that are resources people can access on your website. A lot of parents, they look at my website and it's being revamped right now, by the way, but soon it'll have a new page and it'll all make more sense. But they can go on there and they can book a coaching 30-minute call or a 15-minute call, whatever they need. But it basically coaches them through because what I've realized being a parent is there's so much information out there on dyslexia, ADHD, testing, resources, schooling, you know, there's all these things.

And I'm not purporting to be, you know, an expert by any means. All I'm doing is offering what I know works and they can try it out for two weeks. And I kind of guide them through the process to see, you know, if it's going to work for them and their kid. And that's like the biggest thing is sometimes they need hand-holding. Sometimes they just, they get on there and they go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how easy it was to do this.

I didn't realize how easy it was for my kid to get this help. And so by the end of the year that when they're on, they buy the 52 weeks for, I think for 150, they get six, they get, no, I'm sorry. They get two weeks free. And then within those two weeks, they know if it's going to work or not. I haven't had anybody say that it doesn't, but I'm so ready to meet those people because I can't wait to learn more, you know.

So I hope that everyone tries it out, see if it's viable. And if nothing else, I give them the coaching on how to study better. Some people come to me and they go, hey, I've got a 14-year-old that can read okay, but doesn't take the content in. And they want to know why that is. And I can kind of help them in that area as well. So what age level is your method targeted at?

I mean, would you call it an intervention or remediation? They know, yeah, a lot of people want to categorize it like intervention or remediation or whatever. But there's so much that goes into the process. Say you've got a word like Africa, and I'm holding up a card right now for the podcasters out there. You'd be surprised, but when you capture it as a picture, the word Africa, you actually remember to capitalize the A, because you're now memorizing this as a picture and no longer just letters.

And so a lot of people, they want to categorize it, you know, is it a method? Is it, you know, is it phonics? Is it this? Is it that? There's so much going on in the brain. There's like five different sensory things that were lighting up in the brain that were actually rerouting the neurons to your train station of where it's being stored so that it has more to rely on. Not just the phonics and the phonic blends, but the sounds, the picture itself of the word, and it's being stored in short-term memory.

And then as they practice over the week, it's being stored in long-term memory. So I guess you could say it is an intervention, but it's so much more after you get into it. By the end of the year, you're actually reading on higher grade levels. I think it's really interesting how you're talking about phonics also. So it's like a comp, because often people think of it as sort of one or the other, but what you're describing seems to bring in both that sort of picture method and phonics, it sounds like.

And everybody says, you know, well, does that mess up the phonics that we're learning in school? Does that mess up anything, you know, whole word or whatever? And it's similar to, and this is what my second grade teacher did with me, Mrs. Matthews, is I kept rereading this sentence over and over and over again. So NF, in essence, I kind of was flashing before I was making up this method, and it was just tedious.

You know, you keep having to read the same sentence over and over again. You see, you figure five times, and finally, I was understanding the content. And that's what a lot of dyslexic kids are doing, is they're having to reread the same sentences, and they have to memorize each and every word in order to retain it. And then you've got to figure out application after that. What I'm offering is a way to picture these words, and then what the brain does is take pieces of them and apply them later in their own way as a phonic blend towards other words.

That's really interesting. So you're talking about, if I can see if I can capture this correctly. So you're saying that with the flashcards, people are learning to recognize sort of the overall shape of the word. It's not the shape. It's actually the letters within that frame. Okay. So if you close your eyes, right. And I flash this card to you. Let's for all our listeners out there that don't get to see the video. I'm flashing the card for them. And it's Africa. And I flash it 15 times in front of you. And I say Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa to 15 times. And I cover it up and then close your eyes. What do you see?

You see it clearly. And what we're doing is we're developing that, that optical lobe in your brain where it stores that information. And then we're reinforcing it and we're making a really cool groove in your brain to make it uglier and make it awesome. And we're able to store that information in your short term. And then if we practice it twice a day, we then store it in the long term. And when we write it, we store it somewhere else to reinforce all those neural networks into a circuitry.

Yeah. And I think you already mentioned this component, but it's just coming together for me now that it's kind of multi-sensory in a way too, right? It's like, because they're hearing it also at the same time. And all those sensory pieces are at once being encoded. Sounds like, yeah. Right. And there's like five different things. There's rhythm going on. There's, there's chanting, you're saying it, right about the, in between the 10th and the 15th mark, when I'm flashing it for the kids, their brain actually relaxes and goes, Hey, I think I got the whole thing, you know?

And they like are ready, they're poised with their pencil in their hand and they're ready to write it out. And once they get that solidified and they get that, that juiced up in their brain, then the reward no longer is, Hey, I have to bring my kid to the park or whatever is a reward. It's, I get to read. I can read everything. I can ride down the road. I can read the stop sign. I can read that that sign over there says wine and has a goblet on there. And I think it means juice. And you're like, no kid, that doesn't mean juice. That's, that's wine. And how did you learn that word? We didn't teach it to you.

And later on, we find out that the, the hanging E, you know, made sense because we had another word that we learned and we learned that rule along the way. And suddenly all these things are starting to make sense with phonics, with, sight words, with the language being over like 50 different languages shoved into our language and all the roots and derivatives, you know, it's all starting to make sense to them and they can start gathering that information and applying it towards other words.

Well, I think just the fact, it sounds like you're, it's less effortful in a way than some things is what you're saying. Cause it's that the, having all those senses going at once, right. Doing maybe the heavy lifting. It is. And we're lighting up portions of the brain that they haven't been able to use or utilize properly. I don't want to say they've been doing it wrong. Cause that's not right either.

But the brain is so magnificent that we've only scratched the surface to its capabilities. So I kind of accidentally stumbled into this learning and the way that I learned it was that I was, I was, studying for on like a Quizlet type situation where I was flashing the cards. And I accidentally, I mean, I just kind of overstudied one night and I was just upset and angry because I had to learn all of this information in two weeks, you know, I only had two weeks left and I've been studying for a month.

And there were all these banks out there. And I was like, how am I going to get this information to stick in my brain? So I use keywords. I use, small definitions and I stuck it all in the car, just like, for Africa. And I was like, okay, if I can just write it out and I can apply it because, you know, as you know, when you get into college, they make you apply the information. It's not, you just can't regurgitate it, but you have to have a content base, a foundation, if you will.

So I had to figure out how to make that information stick. And the way that I did that, as I clicked about in between 10 and 15 times, and I noticed that it was different. My recall was different. the jello stuck, you know, kind of stuck to, my brain. And when I took the test, I went from 70% to 90% in the course of like a couple of days. So I noticed that over time that was, that was what was missing. We can't just study for a couple of days.

We need to give the brain time and to root it into long-term memory.

Yeah. I, one thing that I find really interesting about this approach is, you know, the schools in the U S have, have really shifted kind of back to a phonics based approach, in recent years. And I've always, struggled a little bit with, with that because I feel like it's, it's incomplete. that it's, it's very difficult to become a fluent, quick reader. If you're, you know, going sort of bottom up and sounding out each phoneme for every word.

Right. And so what I like about, about your method is that it's teaching children to recognize, maybe, you know, bigger, chunks and really teaching the brain to recognize those bigger chunks so that they don't have to sound out each, each phoneme each time. But yet it has the phonics as part of it, right? Cause we also know that they've done all this research, but it's a good thing to do. So, yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that. Cause phonics is phenomenal. I mean, it really is important. the only thing I'm purporting is I'm just wanting to help build that bridge because we're neurodiverse and because we can't possibly learn in the same way or even as fast because we're battling all these obstacles along the way. And like you were saying, Nick, you know, one of the problems is speed, you know, and if we can't get up to speed, there's no way we can figure out how this applies and we can't pass a reading test for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like it was this method for you started coming together. Was that when you were going back to college or do you think you did some of this even sort of as your own accommodation? Well, I did the accommodation for my child first. We used flashcards, to learn to read. but what I noticed is that the way that we were using them, like the normal way you would use a flashcard is you would, you would flash it for a second and then you were onto the next one.

But what I noticed was, is that if I stayed on it with the child longer, like it held up Africa for a little, for a bit longer, you know, you could take a picture of it. That was the difference. Yeah. The timing. That's really interesting. Cause you need time for your brain to process it. And you know how many frames that you are on a film, right? Before, you know, you get one picture of my head, there's like 15 frames out there in order to encapsulate who I am and what I look like as a person.

And so it only makes sense that we've missed a part of history when we used pictures in order to communicate. So if you remember hieroglyphics or you remember, you know, that there used to be, animal, you know, cave drawings. So this used to represent the, the word for bull, and it was an A and upside down A. And then later on, other communities would flip it and they would lose the eyes and the horns and it would become our, what we know as the letter A today.

So evolutionary, you know, lettering and, alphabets and word usage. the only thing that's even close to what it used to be is kind of like the Chinese characters. So that, actually makes me think of a, I guess, I don't know what you call it. approach that, our daughter who, who has dyslexia, used, which was the clay words approach. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's like the Davis method. I'm not.

Yeah. So how would you describe it? Well, I think it's trying to bring in sensory and sort of picturing too, but in a different way. So, you know, so it maybe doesn't have as much the phonics approach, although sometimes they'll do it with letters too. I guess they do do it with letters and sounds as well. so it's not as much playing in the phonics, but it's trying to at least get that sensory piece in, you know, because you're modeling the letters and 3d, right?

That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just think that, reading isn't a natural thing. it's only something we've been doing in the last 4,000 years. And the reason why it's been so difficult is because we are literally evolving as we're going. And some of us work in different ways. And, those of us that are neurodiverse, are having a bit more difficulty because we don't fall into that, you know, okay, now a is going to represent only one sound.

You know what I mean? It's, it's, we need something also to move faster. Neurodiverse people are able to learn faster a lot of times too. So we have to figure out the frequency. We have to figure out the rate we need to figure out what works best. I've learned that some kids, they like to write purple, some in blue. some kids that are younger like to read only in red from, for a certain time period.

So there's so much more that we need to know. And, like I said, I'm no expert, but I'm learning as I go. And, recently I had a case where I had a, a boy that was reading no, words whatsoever. He had letter recognition, and he was on the videos for two weeks and he had two different, word banks. So that's 24 words. And he only got, the last time he took a spelling test, he, only got one word wrong.

And it was the word upset, but he was able to master peanut butter, elephant, and other more difficult words. So I was kind of blown away that, you know, it came so quick. I expected that we would have to start smaller and even three letter words, but he blew it out of the water. Yeah. That's so interesting. yeah. So you mentioned, you thought maybe perhaps neurodiverse people, they're often thought of sometimes in certain ways of slower learners, but that sometimes they're faster learners.

I'm curious about anything more you want to say about that. And then just in general, what are some positive aspects you've seen in neurodiverse learners and dyslexic people? I think that the challenges that, a lot of neurodiverse people, have is that they're misunderstood. but also we haven't been able to identify and get identification number one, cause it's expensive. Number two, there's not enough people out there. number three, you know, school systems, they're doing the best they can trying to catch up and get, funded for this.

And so my hats off to the teachers out there that are trying to learn as fast as they can to help their students, the admin for trying as well. I mean, we're all just in this boat together rowing and I'm just noticing patterns and I'm saying that I can, I can possibly help with that. And I'm willing to help, you know, whoever comes along for that. And I've hope my ADHD has gone off too.

So I hope I answered your question. Yeah, no, no, you did. I guess, yeah, I guess I, as we sort of shift into the next part of the conversation here, I'm curious, this may be sort of retroactive for you. So, you know, especially, being identified later in life, but I'm curious, sort of like going back now and thinking about yourself as a learner and school, like, how did that go for you?

Do you like, see, how do you see it now? Like how it was for you and different ways you may have approached it or heart struggles? Well, I'm very creative. So I kind of identify, you know, with a lot of creativity. I did a lot of art along the way, which kind of kept my brain alive, but, all really great elementary teachers know that kind of the art and PE and lunch kind of keep their kids alive where we're trying to figure out how to learn best.

But I was lucky enough to have a really wonderful second grade teacher, Matthews, and she built this loft, in her classroom and, we used to, and it was a reading loft. And the only way you could get up there is if you, you know, tried really hard on the reading exercises and the worksheets. So everybody was just going at it, you know, and she motivated, she knew how to motivate us. Like she knew that some of us weren't going to be fabulous students.

And I love that about her and I, and I do that for my kids as well. When they're in my class, not every gifted kid is, a student. And so, you know, part of that, that I carry with me, her legacy, if you will, is to remember that, you know, to meet kids where they are and to honor that because the reason why you're in school is to make mistakes and to learn from them.

And we don't know enough, you know, we can't label kids. So we can't just smack, you know, dyslexia on them and ADHD because that we're so multi-layered and we're, we're peeling those back as we go. And, I think I would have more patience for myself and other kids now that I can look back. And, I had a good, reference point. You know, Matthews was amazing. and to help me understand, you know, how I learned best, she put a ruler underneath the sentences because it was the only tool we had.

Dyslexia was just starting to be identified, you know, and my dad was severely dyslexic. he could barely spell his name out. He used to purport, you know, and I don't know how he got so far in the Navy, but, I'm grateful, you know, to, to know these things because, and I'm great, I'm grateful that we're evolving because, and I'm grateful for great people like you guys to, to do these awesome interviews.

Because without the word getting out, there's, there's kids out there that are struggling, that don't think they're good enough, that are wondering why their best friend is getting A's on everything and they're flunking. they don't understand why they're not reading right now. so the most important message is, you know, is to know that two weeks free, try it out. You don't know what you're doing. You know, give me a, give me a shout out and I'll see what I can do to get you going.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think really, definitely the main reason that we started this, started this podcast and YouTube channel is, is because, it seems like it's still, you know, for something that affects anywhere from 10 to 20% of the population, depending on what statistics you believe it's, it's still so misunderstood. and, you know, we still don't really identify, let alone help, you know, the kids. Yeah. And you change their whole entire trajectory.

I mean, once they learn to read, they can do so many more things. and I've talked with adults, I've worked with adults. I don't have any, there is no age range for me. I even teach people how to swim on the side just for fun. but you know, if you don't know enough about how to write, you can't, you can't make it, make money happen enough in your life, you know, unless you get somebody on the side that can kind of help decode, those things for you.

And so I've met a lot of people on the way that say, I'm a lost cause. I can't do it. I'm 80 years old or whatever. And it's never too late to learn to read, believe it or not. I've, I've taken in 80 year olds. We've done it. you know, if they're consistent, I mean, sky's the limit because the brain's still pliable. like I said, we barely scraped the, surface of learning.

That's amazing to hear. Yeah. And inspiring that you've got an 80 year old to read. I mean, they knew how to read, but sounding it out, they just couldn't, you know, they couldn't figure out some harder words like photosynthesis would have been impossible. but because they're chunking it together and they're flashing it, they're starting to get to know that photo is part of the word and it's there at the beginning and they can start seeing that and they can use that recall and parts of their brain where they've stored that information and apply it in other places.

And like you were saying, Sonja, it's just, sometimes it's just given the opportunity, you know, given them the space in which to say, you know, you're important. Let's grow, you know, and all these kids, you know, got it from somewhere, you know, genetically speaking, we can look back into our past and see some of our uncles and our aunts and grandmas, grandpas struggling. And, and, and, and they just were said not to have the right stuff.

I mean, that's incorrect. We just haven't built that bridge yet. Yes. Yeah, that's so true. is there anything else that you want to share with our audience? Any final tips or, or things you want to emphasize? And then we'd, of course, you can share with them too, as well, where to find you again, which we will put in the description box, but. That's awesome. What do you think? I would just say that, if you want to try me out, I'd love to have you.

it's, you know, no commitment whatsoever. no selling jargon. Cause I don't have time for that. but I really appreciate everyone that's listened today. don't give up, put yourself out there, try new things, get ready to fail. I can't tell you how many times I've failed. I think it took me 20 years to get through, school. So, you know, don't give up. Well, we really appreciate everything you're doing. I mean, both in terms of being inspirational, like you were just saying, but also that you've developed this method and really are working with it.

And like, when you see it's working, you're going forward and trying to get it out there. So hopefully people will check it out. Cause I, I'm going to definitely check it out. I think it sounds amazing to pull all those pieces together, you know, the sensory piece and the bigger chunks of words piece and the phonics, like all of it. So that's wonderful. And later on, I'll have a study component to how to study easier.

cause that's another challenge for people with dyslexia is like, how do you chunk the information together and retain it? So I've also developed a system, for that as well, but that's easily done through the coaching. So anybody struggling out there trying to pass something, I can help you out and we can do a free consult at the beginning. Excellent. Yeah. And we'll put a link to that website, in the, comment section, description.

I mean, yes, description box, but thank you again, though, for coming on and for talking with us. And thanks for having me. I just really appreciate y'all. Thank you so much.