Speaker 1: 0:36

Welcome back to Speak Out Standout. I'm Elizabeth Green and today's guest is Sam Young. Sam is the founder of Young Scholar Academy and also a neurodivergent educator who has ADHD himself, so he understands the experience and related to education whenever kids are dealing with such things, and today we're talking about twice exceptional learners, which might be a new phrase for many of you. Hopefully it is, because that's what we want to educate people on it. So, sam, we're really glad to have you here. First and foremost, thanks.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Thanks, elizabeth. I'm really excited to be here and talk about twice exceptional kiddos and all of that amazing stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Yeah, so before we kind of dig into, like what it is and the services and things that we can provide for these kids, how did you get to this point where this is your mission and goal in life?

Speaker 2: 1:25

Yeah, I mean, I think, like most people, like kind of, how did you get here? Is usually like a personal journey, right. And so for me, I'm very much that I was diagnosed with ADHD really young fourth grade and always struggled with that discrepancy between, like, what my mind was capable of doing, but then the production difficulties, you know, the intake struggles with, you know, reading, processing, digesting. So my academic journey was a difficult one and very early age I decided I wanted to be an educator and I would help people and kind of the older that I got, the more you know strategies and resources and so forth that I explored, the more I realized there's actually a way that I could maybe help people, you know, not struggle the way in which I did.

Speaker 2: 2:09

And as I got older and got even further and further into this space, I realized that a lot, actually a lot of people around me were very similar to my dad, you know, who also really, you know, at a time he was a baby boomer and dyslexic and had ADHD and you know there wasn't really like understanding around that kind of stuff and so I had a really difficult life most of his life because of that. And I think that you know, coming from a place of like service and helping people, my whole mission in life is how can I help people lead with their strengths and develop their strengths and talents, because that's where they're going to find happiness, that's where they're going to feel good and that's where we're going to have a richer, more beautiful kind of mosaic of a society, rather than everyone trying to, you know, fix themselves and kind of fit in all the time.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's so interesting because you hear my son is ADD and I feel like there are so many diagnoses, these now, but still not a lot of support behind it, especially in traditional education. And so that's kind of where you know we come in and we want to talk about young scholar Academy and what you will do, but before we get there, I guess let's dig into twice exceptional. What does that mean for somebody who's never heard that phrase before, or has heard it but has no clue what we're talking?

Speaker 2: 3:27

about. Yeah, yeah, no, it's. I think I joke that, like my work will be done when people know what that means.

Speaker 2: 3:34

But twice exceptional refers to and it's kind of a wait for us to redefine giftedness and being learning different or learning disabled, and the idea is ultimately that we have someone, a profile that has, you know, to think like a bell curve.

Speaker 2: 3:51

They're kind of on like two ends of the bell curve, so someone who has like strengths, maybe what we would call like gifted strengths or high intelligence or high ability, and then at the same time, they also have like a learning difference, right? So a profile of someone, if you think of that kind of asynchronous be someone who's maybe like really high IQ or you know, and that could be, by the way, not just like academic schoolhouse gifted, but also someone like a Simone vials or someone right who Simone vials has ADHD and at the same time you know, obviously the metals speak for themselves like a world renowned gymnast. The same with a Greta Thunberg or Richard Branson, alan Turing you know so many different people throughout history or we have this asynchronous. It's not like a gifted person or a learning disabled or learning different person, but it's someone who simultaneously has and this is where the name comes from two exceptionalities exceptional strengths and exceptional struggles.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Thank you, Do you think, is it fairly common, or is it, you know? I mean, how often do you see if somebody has a gift like that? You said they're on the gifted range. Do they also have a struggle? How often, I don't know. Yeah, it's numbers on that.

Speaker 2: 5:04

There are, I don't remember them off the top of my head, but the difficulty is it's incredibly difficult because there's this concept in the twice exceptional community called masking, which is this idea that you know you have someone with these two domains right and that the strength area can actually mask or cover the learning difference. So they might just appear as gifted this could be someone who's really highly verbal and might struggle with dyslexia but because they're so gregarious and charming and they seem to know it all, they kind of overcompensate and we don't notice that the learning difference. At the same time you could have the opposite, someone who just appears to take like the Simone Biles example, like if you only had her in the classroom I'm not sure that she struggled in the classroom, but if she only did, and we never saw her on a gym mat, right, we might think that she's just like learning difference. And then, the most difficult of all, which really skews the data, is the simultaneous masking, where they're kind of both, you know, the learning difference and the strength are kind of at the same level and they're kind of mutually covering one another, and so it can be really difficult to get a good data set.

Speaker 2: 6:14

I think that as we get more into an era where we're kind of better screening, where we're looking for like multiple intelligences, you know this student might struggle Because if you think of like the grand scheme of intelligence, right, we talk about multiple intelligences.

Speaker 2: 6:27

We've got, like you know, verbal, visual, mathematical, kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, interpersonal right we really only look for like three of those in school. It's kind of like verbal, visual, right, can you like talk and read and write, and then mathematic right, that's like you know what five eighths that we're not looking for. So when we think about you know, I think a big first step to like screening and better checking is better understanding what intelligence means and realizing that giftedness or gifted behaviors are far more than just like what we would call like schoolhouse gifted right. That's a really narrow range of skills and we look back like a hundred years. You know it's like schools were really created to get kids ready for factories and yes, they've changed some but they're largely still doing kind of a similar thing. That kind of isolates a lot of the skills that students might be incredibly great at and we're just not looking.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's interesting because I feel like some good things came from the pandemic and I feel like more visibility into this and also seeing that there are different forms of education there's not one size fits all for everybody. So I think, and I think, that that is one good thing that's come from it, we're hearing more and more about other opportunities for kids that are twice exceptional. So one of the things you talk about, too, are the harms of the deficit model. What is the deficit model? And that was a harmful?

Speaker 2: 8:00

Yeah, that's a good question what the heck is this guy talking about? The deficit model is this idea that we should bring the bottom up right. It's this idea that we should fix ourselves to fit in so, for example, you know, if someone has again I'll use my own example. Like, if I have ADHD right, like I struggle with visual processing, sometimes present as dyslexic, I am not going to ever probably be a rock star reader, right, and me spending my life getting better at reading is and as I can speak personally done harm to me because it's just like taking something that I'm kind of incompetent at right and just trying to get better at it. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't like non-negotiables. I do think everyone should learn how to read and write and no basic math. But me spending my whole life there is fundamentally draining right. There are skills that I have that are super strength for me, and I think that much of society is focused on bringing the bottom up and that's the deficit model, it's the medical model. You have ADHD. Let's focus all of our attention on you getting better at focusing so that you can do XYZ and it's like well, if you pay attention, I'm really focused over here. I'm just not really focused over here, because I go through hyper and focus modes and then kind of lack of focus modes, and a lot of that has to do with not necessarily just attention but my interest, right, and so a strength model. The antithesis would be how can I lean further into the things that light me up, that make me excited?

Speaker 2: 9:39

And I think the best quote that I know is the mentor to my mentor. So my mentor is really like one of the pioneers in the space. Her name's Dr Susan Baum. She was my professor when I was in grad school studying neurodiversity, and her mentor, dr Joseph Renzuli, has this quote which I absolutely adore, and he says, when you think about it no one cares about Einstein's ability to paint or Picasso's ability to do complex math. Nobody cares about Einstein's ability to paint or Picasso's ability to do complex math. So why do we hold all our students to the same standard? Why does every kid need to be good at everything and why, when they deviate, do we focus on just kind of, you know, pushing them back into the hole, rather than letting them go for a run and explore their interests? You know, I don't care about Einstein's ability to do anything else, but have fantastic wit around, you know physics and complex mathematics. And nor about Picasso, right, I want him. I don't know him as a world-renowned artist, but school seems like it wants us to be quote unquote well rounded, and I think that that's incredibly dangerous, because well rounded just means that we converge to the mean right and I think that, like the deficit based system I joke about this all the time but, like, imagine if Superman committed his whole life to getting over his kryptonite allergy, you know.

Speaker 2: 10:56

Like no stopping trains, no, you know. Stopping Lex Luthor. Like Superman is Superman because he was able to have these superpowers and he had, you know, a real issue around kryptonite, right, but those two existed simultaneously. Superman didn't dedicate his whole life he would never have become a superhero to just getting over the one thing he was bad at. I focused up on the 99 things he was good at, right, and I think that we need our kids to do the same thing, and that's the harm with the deficit based model is that it's all about bringing the bottom up, and I say that we should push our kids to raise the roof.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Yeah, I love those are fantastic examples too. So what do you say to the parent who has a kid that is, they assume, or has been diagnosed as exceptional? How can we support our kids from home without necessarily getting into the school options yet, because I do want to talk about that but from home, what can we do to push our kids in the ways that are going to push them to the roof and also in a way that they don't feel like because they have ADHD or dysgraphia or something like that, that they are less there because they have this attachment to them?

Speaker 2: 12:05

Yeah, I think that the key is to be curious. What is your kiddo really fired up about? What's filling up their cup? What's making them feel good? And, I think, is it happening in a place that you wouldn't otherwise. Look Kind of lift up the carpet and be curious about what's going on everywhere.

Speaker 2: 12:24

Maybe your child's actually doing some pretty profound stuff on Minecraft or in Dungeons and Dragons or it's coding, and maybe they're really important in a video game, or they're on Reddit and they're like running a server or discord and running a channel, and so, I think, being curious about what our kiddos are doing and why, I think conversing with them and reflecting with them, what are the things that really fire you up? What are you curious about? What are you learning about? What do you want to learn more about? What are some problems that you are identifying, just as you would if you were an entrepreneur. Go in with this really curious mindset and not to necessarily prescribe, or I think we also have to be careful not to overdo. Something Like okay, they're interested in chess, it's going to be chess lessons for the rest of life now and they're going to be like a grandmaster and that's the pathway to happiness. But just being curious, what are the things that are firing them up, where are areas in which they're already meeting this need and where are areas in which we could explore them further and greater? And I think that, like two key factors, what I call like the X and Y axis of this working well are bringing in I know you asked from home so it could be virtual, but bringing in mentors, I think, if there's someone who really knows the content area or the interest of your students into robotics or coding or engineering or something, because there's someone that you can connect them with, that can maybe look past some social differences or struggles and really appeal to that intellectual part of their brain.

Speaker 2: 13:53

And number two, are there other kids like them? Because the research is super clear that when we put our kids with other neurodivergent kids, other twice exceptional kids with similar interests, that they really flourish. I'll give you an example. We have an 11 year old girl who has a 179 IQ, which Einstein was believed to have like 165, right? Or 165 to 185 is the range for Einstein.

Speaker 2: 14:18

So she is 11 off the charts IQ. She's not going to hang out with other like neurotypical 11 year old girls, right. She's like freaked out about climate change and ocean levels rising and meteors hitting the earth and she's not going to talk about like Pokemon or whatever other kids are doing. So at the same time, she's not going to hang out with a 20 something graduate school student, right, who's maybe intellectually in the same place but is socially like way different. So you know, our kids are, by definition, pretty asynchronous and I think one of the best things that we can do is steep them in their interest areas, explore more, be curious, and do that with mentors who get them and with kids who are like that.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Yeah, I think that's great advice, and I want to backtrack to something you said just a couple of minutes ago because you were talking about maybe they're like really great at this video game or in Minecraft and the examples you used were online largely and video games, and I think that that's something, too, that is so important for us as parents to stop and remember. We're not talking. Video games today are not like playing Mario Brothers whenever we were kids. Right, Like obviously we don't let our kids to live on video games, but there are a lot of video games out there that they're really learning by exploring and playing. It's not just, like I said, just you know, beating Donkey Kong or something.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Right, yeah, yeah, and I talk about this a lot Like I think that a lot of the deep work starts with us, right, like I would argue that what our kids are doing mind you, it's a spectrum, as you're saying.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Like you know, there's a difference between a kid who's like tech addicted and is playing games and cannot stop and needs help and may be advocating for it or may not know how to advocate for it, and a kid who's like really showing up online and like doing really meaningful stuff that's far more exciting than anything happening in the quote unquote real world.

Speaker 2: 16:09

And so when I say a lot of times it's like our work kind of starts with us, because what we may think they need to be doing or ought to be doing to be successful is probably outdated and what our kids are doing is probably a lot more, you know, in line with the future, right, and so, like we're not going to ride our like banana seed bicycles to the cul-de-sac and I'll dump them in a pile and go play with football in the backyard our neighbor's house, right, that just isn't really happening as much as I see anymore, and the reality is like work isn't the same as it used to be either.

Speaker 2: 16:42

You know, I have a team of 14 teachers and we have 159 students right now. I've met maybe five people in our school in person and never met my team. You know, in real life, and we're doing just fine, you know, and that's the future. I think of work, and so again I say, like you know, as parents and educators, we need to challenge ourselves. Are we holding on to something that we think is like the norm and how it ought to be, and is it out of date a little bit Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 17:13

And it's all evolving so quickly so it is hard to not hold on to some of those things and those perceptions. So we've talked about, you know, how to help our kids in at home. And we also talked about, you know, my kids are public school educated. My husband's a public school teacher. There are a lot of benefits to it, but there are obviously a lot of weaknesses too. I feel like it's just one of those things that it is not the right fit for every learner, right, every single student. And so what do you say to the parent who's like, this has been a really struggle for us to like, really get my kid. They've lost their excitement to learn. They, you know, because maybe they really struggle with writing, so they just don't want to. You know they have a negative outlook on school, but it's not that that's the only function anymore, right, and that's kind of where you and Young Scholar Academy come in.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Yeah, and if I could backtrack for one sec, because actually I want to reframe the question from before. I think I maybe didn't do the best job totally answering it. But I think that when it comes to the home again I talked about like mentors and being curious and everything like that I think also just giving space, you know, giving space for our students to do what they love and try a bunch of different things. And you know, when you say support from home, that may be choosing what you want to stand your ground on, right, and maybe you know your students may be a little bit behind on homework or something like that, but there's something that like really recharges them and maybe it's, you know, creating like a space for them to have like a work zone. Maybe if you're finding that you know they need a place to like kind of explore. Maybe they have like a desk. Even if you don't have a lot of room, you can do little things like a mood change. You know like like change the lighting or change the music or change something, or like put tape on the floor around the spot. It's just like the workspace or like the ideation space or whatever it might be. So I think there's like physical, tangible ways that we can alter the home space as well when we go into like curiosity and exploration mode and we kind of try on different hats and then, of course, all the elements I talked about before. So I just wanted to add that quickly, answering your question from a second ago. Yeah, I think you know finding community right If you have a kiddo who is in.

Speaker 2: 19:29

You know, and I also was a public school teacher previously I went to public school much of my life and I think that for students, especially who are schoolhouse gifted, like students who do well in school, public school can be a fantastic fit. There's a lot of resources. Bigger class sizes aren't as much of a bother because they're just going to soak up the information. They're going to work independently, probably, and can do really, really well, and there's a lot of resources and funding for things like robotics programs and so forth. It's when our students, who are, you know, differently wired, can start to struggle. Is that same setting as these bigger classes where more independence is maybe required?

Speaker 2: 20:07

And I think that you know our typical thought as parents is like, well, let's get a tutor right, and these things all make sense, but I think that having space that's like protected, to do what we love is really the key. And a lot of us and I really want to make sure if everyone's, if anyone's a little distracted come back to me for a moment here it can be our tendency as parents to take away, like the electives, and take away the enrichment things when it feels like the ship's going down a little bit. You know, and I want to be the voice that says please, don't do that, because that might be the thing that's recharging your child, that might be the thing that refills their cup. And even though it makes total sense on paper, you know, if we're getting a D in math, then we have to stop debate. Right, I get that it makes sense, but focusing constantly on having a D doesn't feel very good. There's a deficit, right, there's an idea that I'm failing, and I think having something that recharges your child is so important. So what I would say is and again, I'm obviously in bias Elizabeth, you have an amazing education program, I have an amazing education program, but find a place where your child can find those two factors that I talked about earlier the X and the Y axis, the mentors and the similarly minded peers, because when they can come together with the things that they really love and they can do those things, that's something that refills them. And we have these open houses. We have like five semesters a year where we open for enrollment and every time we do we have our families come together and we usually have three families who come and talk about like they share their testimonial, their experience.

Speaker 2: 21:41

And two open houses ago there was a phrase that was coined. It was called the YSA glow, the Young Scholars Academy glow. And this mom said like my kid has really tough weeks and when he goes to improv or when he goes to theater or when he goes to Minecraft, he glows for 24 hours and so they schedule a class every other day because he has a very busy schedule and it just recharges him and just refills him. And the reason he said that he likes it is because it's fun, there's no grades, he's doing what he loves with kids who are just like him. He feels like he's totally understood.

Speaker 2: 22:16

And in one of those classes we had a young girl the other day who was just like I'm autistic, who else is? And three other kids were like I'm autistic and two said I have ADHD and one said I have dyslexia, and it was just this beautiful moment where a lot of our kids might go through the day more or less masking, hiding or being ashamed or feeling like they need to fix themselves. Again, it's natural you have 30 kids in a class and you see one kid struggling and it's like let's just get them to be part of the pack. But here's a place where this girl and this young boy can come together and brag about their way. Their brains are wired and they can hang out with kids who are like them and they can do the things they like. So I think it's so important, no matter where you're doing it, that your child has wins each week, that your child is doing the things that they love. Because, again, I think about this all the time.

Speaker 2: 23:11

At some point George Lucas was probably in the back of some fourth grade class doodling and his teacher was like put your doodles away. And that's like the doodles that became Star Wars, like he's creating characters that turned into this multi-billion dollar franchise that have literally changed our language. We have daily Yoda references and whatever May, the fourth holiday. That all came from someone's brain because they developed their interests and curiosities. And if you have a kid who has great stories, loves fantasy, maybe feels more safe being an avatar in a Dungeons Dragons game than they do in their own skin, lean into it. If you have a kid who's coding and wants to be in robotics or game design, I know YouTubers making far more money than people that went to school to be doctors, and so I don't think it's up for us to totally decide like how and when and where our kids are going to thrive. So I do think it's up to us to empower them to explore different programs that might help them grow into their strength areas.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Absolutely. I think it's so great because now there are so many opportunities Virtual classes are just everywhere. Now there are so many opportunities for them to explore things that it used to just be you could do karate or scouts or whatever. It was just like in your neighborhood, right In your town.

Speaker 1: 24:29

And I just wanted to emphasize, too, what you were talking about the glow because we see that too. I'm sure you see this as a teacher, and my husband's a public school teacher and obviously in my business we teach speech and debate online, and he has overheard many of the classes just being around, because I work from home and you just don't get it. That's not the way kids are in school, right, and they're so excited to be there, they're excited to learn, and somewhere along the way we are stripping that away from them with trying to make them fit into this box that you kind of talked about. And so understanding the importance and the ability now to enroll our kids in anything that they're interested in, even if it's something so obscure that you couldn't find it in your state, it's out there online and can make a huge difference for their personality, their confidence and their happiness, you know.

Speaker 2: 25:19

Yeah, no, at that same open house we had another mom and son come and present and we asked the same questions. You know what do you like about Young Scholars Academy? And this eight-year-old boy said everybody wants to be there and everybody wants to learn what they're learning because they chose it. And the mom is like she's a lawyer and she's like I didn't realize how important that was until I was in law school and I realized some people have been forced to go to school and some people are doing this to make their parents happy and you kind of see the wheat from the chaff, kind of, and I think that's the biggest thing. It's like nobody wants to be told what to do.

Speaker 2: 25:53

And I understand that kids need to be right. Certainly there are things that eat your vegetables, like all that stuff's good for you. But I think that when our kids can have more agency and when they can have more autonomy in the things that they're doing, there's going to be far more buy-in and it's going to go far, as your husband's observing and as you're experiencing every day. You're going to get way more depth and complexity and, I think, a lot more excitement because they choose to be there right and choices everything.

Speaker 1: 26:22

And that's what we want them to be excited and happy about what they're learning. They're going to always say if you're not having fun doing it, you're not going to do it.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Well, so Especially ADA Seers. I mean, humans are dopamine chasers, right. Like we're going to go towards the feel goods and we're going to go away from the pain, right, we run towards pleasure, run away from pain. It's basic psychology. And so if we can make things more fun which again that's a luxury Like I'm not pretending to be privileged. Like I taught public school, I know what it is to have 33 kids in a class. It is. You can be really entertaining, but it is incredibly difficult to appeal to all different kinds of learners versus, like we have six kids in a class, right, that's a very different game, and so there's a lot more individual attention than our kids require.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Yeah, yeah, and so tell us a little bit more. You all offer a full curriculum or electives. Tell us a little bit more about what you offer at Young Scholar Academy.

Speaker 2: 27:17

Yeah, so we're an enrichment school. So basically the idea and the other part to the online element that you mentioned is that we're bringing kids together and you get to see that, as you said, someone could be the only twice exceptional person in their zip code and so they think there's something wrong with them or that they have to kind of go it alone and when they come together online with a bunch of other kids who maybe have ADHD and have these other unique profiles, they feel super seen. And there's that connection of you know. We have. I think we have like 38 states or 37 states right now in 13 different countries. We're still a really small. I know you could brag about way bigger numbers or a really small program, but the idea is that we're a virtual I call us a virtual enrichment village and bringing families together around their interests.

Speaker 2: 28:04

We do have fully accredited, credentialed classes, so we have like year long, we have four AP classes that we run and we also have an adulting class that I created like a decade ago, which is helping kids get ready for, you know, kind of doing the deep work instead of just like, what are you going to major in, which I think is a really tired question.

Speaker 2: 28:22

You know kind of doing the deep work of like what it is that you feel called to do in the intersection of like your interests and your passions and your strengths and the needs of the world.

Speaker 2: 28:31

And then we have like 25 courses total from speech and debate, engineering, robotics, theater, we have narrative design, we have like streaming content creation, entrepreneurship, like so many different classes, and the vision was really you take university as an example like that's when learning usually really gets good because you get to go head first into your interest. And so I just flipped the model and I was like, well, why don't we just do that? But for like seven year olds, why don't we just have like deep seated passion exploration? If you again take the girl from earlier 11 years old, 179 IQ, like she shouldn't have to wait for high school or college to you know learn how to code or engineer or take debate so you know and we're doing authentic stuff like that same girl built a website. You know when she built like a claw machine that like would pull up questions about you know climate change, and you know she reached like a congressman in her advocacy class like stuff that really matters, that they're interested in. That's really the vision, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Well, you're definitely making a difference for these kiddos and the future as a result, right, which is, you know, obviously, our goal. So well, sam, we will link to everything so people can check out all the details for Young Scholar Academy and if you have any questions, you can reach out to him. And if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, this all sounds great, I can't afford for my kid to take extra things like this, I just encourage you to look into it anyways and reach out. Many, many of us offer scholarship opportunities. Things like that will work with you. So don't think, oh, I can't afford to put my kid in a debate program. You can. You can't find the right one, so just check like, check it out, look at it and then you know, don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested in Young Scholar Academy or anything like that. So, sam, thanks again for your time, your expertise. I thought this was a really great conversation and again, thanks for all that you do.

Speaker 2: 30:36

Thank you, elizabeth. I appreciate you. You know bringing this value to people and welcoming me, you know, onto your platform. So thank you for having me and thanks for being a beacon for parents.

Speaker 1: 30:45

Absolutely, thank you.