LD Expert Podcast with Jill Stowell
High Performance Isn't Out of Reach, It’s Under the Surface
Jill Stowell
Jill Stowell: When you think of high performance, what do you think of? Maybe an elite athlete, a CEO, or maybe even a formula one pit crew? But at its core, high performance is about being able to do what you're capable of when it counts. For our students at Stowell Learning Center, high performance could, but doesn't necessarily, mean straight A's. It means showing up to school with confidence, holding on to what they've learned, organizing their thoughts, following through handling challenges without meltdowns or shut down.
It means performing to their potential. And that starts with developing the foundational learning and processing skills that make it possible.
Welcome to the Expert Podcast, your place for answers and solutions for dyslexia and learning differences.
I'm your host, Jill Stowell, founder and executive director of Stowell Learning Centers and author of Take the Stone Out of the Shoe: a Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning, and Attention Challenges. We all have high performance potential. At Stowell Learning Center, we see that potential every day in students who are smart, capable, and stuck because the skills they need for learning haven't caught up with the brilliance inside them.
And here's something I want you to think about: The challenges that we see in struggling students don't go away with age. They just show up differently. A child who struggles with learning or attention doesn't grow out of it without intervention. They grow into it. They find workarounds. They cope. Some wonderful masks might be developed, like being kind or helpful or intuitive, but others develop pricklier exteriors, always pushing people away.
But underneath the masks, there's a story, a root cause, something real that's getting in the way. When parents reach out to the Learning Center to get help for their child with reading or math, our first question is “what's getting in the way of learning being easy for this student?” When we do our assessment, of course we're going to look at reading, writing, math, whatever the student is struggling with academically.
But we also look at auditory and visual processing, attention, memory, processing, speed, self-regulation, executive function. Because skills, not will, are usually what's behind the struggle. And that goes for adults too. If you're an adult who has always wrestled with follow-through, or you freeze up when you get overwhelmed or you still feel that imposter syndrome even with a successful career, maybe it's not a personality flaw.
Maybe it's a skill gap that never got addressed and skills can be developed. I remember a fifth grade student named Ethan who came to us completely defeated. He was really smart. You could see that. But reading was exhausting. Every assignment took twice as long as it should. His teacher thought that he was unmotivated. His mom, she could see how hard he worked, but she just didn't know what to think.
And he thought he was just dumb. I've seen this so many times. Smart kids like Ethan, they know they should be able to do it, but they can't. So they figure they must be dumb. But the problem wasn't motivation or lack of effort or smarts. It was skills. Ethan had weak auditory processing, so it was hard for him to make sense of the sounds.
And we have a phonetic language, so that's really important to be able to think about the sounds in words. His visual processing skills were also weak. So he confused letters and he felt disoriented when he was reading. He tried to memorize everything, so his working memory was overloaded all the time. When we worked with him, we targeted the foundational auditory, visual, and memory skills that support reading comprehension and attention as those underlying skills got stronger.
Ethan stopped hating reading. He started finishing his homework on his own. He began raising his hand in class. He told his mom one day, “I actually like school now.” That shift didn't come from tutoring or accommodations. It came from changing the way his brain processed information. And once that change happened, everything else followed. What we see when a student is struggling is like the tip of an iceberg.
Let's say your child has reading challenges. So here's what you might notice in the classroom or while helping them with homework: resistance or refusal to read. Make frequent reading errors. Reads very slowly or extremely fast. Confuses similar looking words. Reads a word correctly at the top of the page, but doesn't recognize it later on. Has difficulties with reading comprehension.
Those are things that we see, like the top of an iceberg, but under the surface are many, many skills that we don't necessarily see that are actually at the root of the problem. These are skills like phonemic awareness, visual-spatial orientation, working memory, attention, stamina, sequential processing, processing speed, visual processing, neuro timing, phonological awareness, decoding, regulation. We assume that when a child goes to school, they're going to get reading instruction, and they are going to learn to read.
It makes sense on the surface, but only if the underlying skills are in place. So the brain has the tools it needs to benefit from the reading instruction. When a student is struggling, we often see resistance or frustration or whining. The other piece that we don't always see is how much resilience it took for that child to get through that day.
For a student with weak underlying learning skills, school is a marathon of tiny obstacles. Every time the teacher gives a direction, every time they have to read or take notes or remember steps, stay focused or hold it together socially, it costs them something. They're adapting and compensating and stretching their executive function muscles all day long. That's resilience. It just doesn't look the way we expect.
Imagine how that same student would feel if their foundational skills were strong. If processing, memory, attention, and self-regulation were working for them instead of against them. Homework wouldn't feel like such a heavy lift. School wouldn't feel like just trying to survive. They'd have space for curiosity and confidence and joy. At Stowell Learning Center, that's what we aim to give our students, not just better grades, but a better experience of learning.
Not accommodations, but real change. That frees up energy for growth so they can stop just surviving and start thriving. High performance starts with skills. When we understand that smart kids can still struggle, not because they can't learn or because they're lazy or unmotivated, but because something's getting in the way, everything changes. We stop blaming behavior and start uncovering potential because high performance isn't about perfection.
It's about having the tools and support to rise to your potential when it counts. At Stowell Learning Centers, we help children and adults break free from the constant struggles associated with dyslexia and other learning challenges. Despite what you might have been told, your child doesn't have to “just live with it” and every day doesn't have to feel like a battle for them or for you.
If this episode gave you hope or insight, we'd be so grateful if you'd share it. Like, subscribe or send it to another parent or educator who needs to know. Real change is possible. The story for struggling students can change. Let's change it together.
