Eli Davis: Dr. Annette Teasdale is a nationally recognized scholar of urban education and an acclaimed author.
She is currently an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at Clark Atlanta University and the principal investigator for the Panther Project and the Laney Scholars Project, which prepares future educators for careers in special education.
A 2022 United Negro College Fund teaching and faculty fellow.
She is committed to excellence in education.
She has received national acclaim as an Asa g Hillard the third, and Barbara, a Sizemore research fellow by the American Education Research Association.
A ERE grounded her research in over 15 years of teaching.
Dr. Teesdale believes in the transformative power of education.
She holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Dr. Teasdale is a co author of two books, Race, Class, Gender, and Immigrant Identities in Education, Insights and Perspectives from First and Second Generation Ethiopian Students, published by Paul Grave.
Macmillan and Unbleaching the Curriculum, Enhancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Beyond in Schools and Society, published by Rowan and Littlefield.
, this is Eli and this is my first podcast.
And I have, I mean, this is just an absolute blessing because I have Dr. Teasdale, who I met at the what was that?
The, um,
Annette Teasdell: That it was a teacher fellows.
Um, what should we call it?
Seminar?
Eli Davis: yeah, well, yeah.
In Charlotte, North Carolina.
Annette Teasdell: right, right.
On the media and its influence on how African Americans are portrayed, I believe.
Yes, that was a very life changing class.
Sometimes you take a class and you're just going through the motions and but at the end of that class with Dr.
Smith, it really informed a lot of the decisions that I've made in my life since then.
And so it's a pleasure to be here with you again, Eli.
Some.
What?
Maybe five or six years.
Hence,
Eli Davis: Yes.
Okay.
Annette Teasdell: to talk about a really important topic that is connected to that.
Because when we think about dyslexia and its impact on different populations, the impact Particularly for African Americans is one that's significant and one that I've experienced personally with members of my family.
So I'm glad to talk to you today about dyslexia, about what we can do to meet the needs of students with dyslexia, with AI technology.
And to talk about how important this is, not only for faculty, but also for.
Educators at all levels to understand what dyslexia is impact and how to help students overcome and be able to meet their learning needs as a result of it.
Eli Davis: Okay, so that do me a favor.
Tell tell people how you got into um, thinking about Dyslexia I know that you were a special education teacher, and when we were in that seminar, I remember being blown away at what you created during that seminar, and we had to create a project, and I remember sometimes you come across somebody that, that just exudes strength and power, and it's not necessarily something in which they need.
Thank you.
They broadcast is just who they are.
And, you know, Dr. Teasdale she wasn't a doctor at the time.
We also have another colleague that was in there.
She's a doctor.
I'm almost done with my PhD. We had some power in that room, but can you tell us the walk in your profession?
Annette Teasdell: Let me begin at the beginning.
So if I go way, way back to the beginning, I have a nephew who struggled tremendously in school.
He's very smart.
There's anything wrong with your car, he can diagnose it in seconds and fix it in no time.
But he was absolutely miserable in school.
He didn't do well academically in school and he became very frustrated because he had what we now know is dyslexia.
And so as super auntie, I wanted to learn as much as I could about how to support him, how to help him.
Now, you mentioned my role as a special education teacher.
So for probably over 15 years.
I taught special education general curriculum at an urban high school in North Carolina.
I did not come to special education as a teacher with intentionality.
It really was by the by.
I had moved to Charlotte.
I had always worked with students.
I used to direct an Upward Bound program, which was designed to help students in rural communities be able to attend college.
They're usually the first in their families to go to college.
And so when I moved to Charlotte, I thought, You know, I most of my heroes are teachers.
Most of my heroes are educators.
Why don't I take a look at what difference I could make as a special education teacher.
I had graduated from the University of South Carolina and had a variety of experiences.
You know about some of those, especially my background in African American studies.
Eli Davis: Yeah, I didn't know you.
I didn't know you graduated from University of South Carolina.
Annette Teasdell: Yes.
I graduated from University of South Carolina in 19.
Ooh, I won't date myself, but I love the university.
I'm a game cop through and through, as long as you don't ask me about football or any of the I'm glad to rep Carolina in that regard, but I I came to this role as a special education teacher, because I wanted to make a difference.
And so I landed and The school that had the highest population of students in the state.
I think there were over 3, 000 students at that particular school at the time.
And I was I did not have a classroom.
So I was floating from room to room, meeting students who had a variety of different learning needs.
Some who had specific learning disabilities, some who were on the autism spectrum, some who had cerebral palsy and other health impairments.
And so I had to learn quickly the depths of how to best meet their learning needs.
I spoke about my nephew earlier.
So I've always been a student of this, but I knew that I needed to put it in practice.
right away.
Eli Davis: Silence.
You
Annette Teasdell: who may not be able to
To take an alternate curriculum, which is the occupational course of study.
Now, you'll recall, we had to develop a curriculum unit in that class that you and I took together.
Eli Davis: Yes, we
Annette Teasdell: And so I thought long and hard about that thing.
I thought, what can I do to meet the requirements for the seminar, but also to make it useful for my classroom?
And so one of the things that was also happening at that time, Eli, was Viola Davis and Denzel Washington had just started in fences.
Eli Davis: Yes, I totally remember.
Annette Teasdell: one of the things that I love to do, I, my background is also in English.
So I taught most of the English classes for the occupational course of study.
So that means that I had students from ninth grade through 12th grade.
And so what that allowed me to do was build rapport with them, but it also helped me to
Eli Davis: Okay.
Annette Teasdell: whether that's Troy feeling like he was being marginalized because of his race, whether it was Gabe, his brother, who had traumatic brain injury.
Who was being marginalized because of that, or whether it was Rose, his wife, who faced a whole lot of issues surrounding her role as a woman in this community in Pittsburgh.
And so the book well, it's actually a play by August Wilson.
Whose story is very unique, and I think it's apropos to our discussion here.
August Wilson didn't do well in school.
In fact, he dropped out of school.
He dropped out of school and decided to educate himself through the libraries of Pittsburgh.
And as a result, he wrote 10 plays.
That really share a wealth of history about the African American experience, not just in Pittsburgh, but throughout the country over 10 decades.
And so fences is one of those plays.
And I loved it because I could bring in a variety of themes with my students.
We always did a play.
We did Raisin in the Sun.
We did The Fences play.
We I liked plays because I could prepare students to engage language.
Without feeling that they had to read a whole chapter to do so, so they would be assigned roles and my assistant and I would coach them so that we could build their confidence, build their decoding and phonics skills so that they would be prepared to participate in learning.
And so as we taught that fences curriculum unit, it was really revelatory because it showed me the creativity of my students.
I'm not the teacher who says, All right, we finished this.
Now it's time to take this multiple choice test.
I believe that there are different ways of knowing.
I had students who would rather listen to the book on audio, so I combined that with what we were doing in class, but they also had to do projects that allow them to showcase their skill.
So, just as my nephew is very skilled in doing mechanical tasks, so I came up with ways of assessing the students understanding through the assignments that we had in class, so their learning disability didn't necessarily and we had to, remove them from the learning process, so they built a whole scene from the play.
They show bill that showcase the play.
They did the obituary for one of the characters in the play.
We really had an amazing time with the capstone project where they did artwork.
From the play.
They had to choose a favorite scene, whether that was Troy at the bat, whether it was the sun going off to the army, whatever the case.
And so we turned our entire hallway into a gallery.
Why is this important?
because it allowed me to emphasize the fact that even though a child may have dyslexia, it doesn't impact their ability to access and acquire knowledge.
The International Dyslexia Association says that Over 20 percent of the U. S.
population has dyslexia.
Eli Davis: That's a huge that's a lot.
Annette Teasdell: well, and I would offer that there's more.
Dyslexia is a specific neurological learning disability.
And it's generally Found in families so that it's passed down.
And so when we think about it, the main characteristics of students with dyslexia are difficulty with word recognition.
There's always the.
The mantra that, oh, instead of seeing stops, they see pots.
Dyslexia is much more complex than that.
So it's phonological awareness, it's phonemic awareness, it's being able to decode.
All of these things are common for students with dyslexia.
So as I became a teacher at this school, one of the first classes I had was with a student who was probably one of the most significant cases of dyslexia that I'd ever seen.
As a new teacher, I had to learn quickly what I needed to do to be able to meet that student's learning needs and to be able to do something very critical, Eli, and that is, we know that students with dyslexia.
often have low self esteem, they suffer from anxiety, they suffer from depression.
I already mentioned that some students drop out of school, but this is the piece that really is of interest to me.
The fact that there's a significant correlation between the students who the black males in particular who are incarcerated and who have dyslexia.
And so not enough attention is paid to that.
We need more professional development for teachers and more funding to be able to effectively diagnose dyslexia and train educators.
Now, one of the things that I think is really important is that the number one support in the literature supports this, the number one thing that benefits students with dyslexia is explicit, direct instruction.
Eli Davis: So, so, so I have had two of my students, particularly just a single one mile.
They were twins.
They were some of my mixed babies.
They were Korean, black and white.
And there were some beautiful looking kids.
I, you know, their swag was on point.
10. They used to have this hair that they would flip all the time constantly.
So socially, I noticed that their their confidence was impacted by their inability to be able to sit there and participate in, in, in kind of reading.
And also you mentioned about August Wilson.
I had no idea that he did not finish school, you know, But that's like so many of the black men that we know.
And what I teach my students a lot of times is that the curriculum sometimes does not offer us the opportunity to succeed.
It doesn't offer us the opportunity to unfold some of the greatness that we have, so we have to become autodidactic and always teach them this word, autodidactism is that you have to become a self learner.
And yeah I think that is something that we see all the time.
And with the incarceration rate, I had no idea of the correlation.
It would seem to me that would make sense if you were having difficulty with reading that correlation probably substantiates itself with the incarceration.
So, uh, man, amazing.
Go ahead.
Go ahead, sister.
Go ahead.
Keep on going.
Teach
Annette Teasdell: so, so it's interesting that you brought that up because think about what happens in the classroom.
If I'm afraid for you to call on me because you'll know my secret that I have difficulty reading, then the likelihood of me acting out in class is going to be much
I start acting out in class, then I may end up getting suspended.
Or worse yet, and we know the literature supports this as we talk about over representation I may be, quote, unquote.
Deemed eligible for special Ed.
And so as we think about that we see that there's a significant overrepresentation of black males in special education.
And I don't, I, I'm painting with a broad brush here.
I keep saying black males, but I want to pull that back and say black students in general tend to be sent to special education settings without the testing for dyslexia as a learning disability, without the Response to intervention and make sure that is it a hearing issue?
It's a visual vision issue.
Have you tried evidence based practices to determine.
Whether that's something that could be mitigated in the regular education setting or not, and so I want to continue the walk that I began earlier.
So we did this Francis curriculum unit.
I was really impressed with the results from students were able to get a grant to purchase books and materials to teach the curriculum.
And then I thought to myself, wow, this is great.
But there's so many teachers here who don't have this skill.
And so I decided that I wanted to go get my doctorate and be able to educate future teachers, particularly special education teachers.
And way would have it that I would end up at Clark Atlanta University.
The wonderful thing about that, and this brings the story full circle, is that Marva Collins.
A graduate of Clark Atlanta University excelled in teaching reading when we looked at her work through Westside Academy and Westside Preparatory School in Chicago.
Her work is unparalleled.
And also at Clark Atlanta, we have Lucy Craft Laney, who graduated from Atlanta University.
At the age of 15.
And so I'm here among all of these pioneers in teacher education.
And I thought, wow, I need to really focus in on how dyslexia is Impacts our populations, impacts the reading skills and what we can do.
So Eli, I'm proud to say we were recently awarded, not one, but two U. S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Program grants.
And so we've got over three million dollars that we're using to train racially and ethnically diverse special education teachers who are skilled in how to diagnose dyslexia, teach students dyslexia, and help them build their literacy skills.
And so that's a great benefit for us because we know that.
We're living in a world with AI and there's technology that we can use to support students, but at the very fundamental level, we need to identify students who may be suffering from this specific learning disability.
Eli Davis: but just let's not gloss over 3 million, you just can't, you just can't say that.
And then just,
as if that's something.
That everybody gets, you know, so, so I know for a fact that you mentioned several of the powerhouses that have gone through Clark Atlanta but let it be known that you are now part of that power.
You know, so, so when I say, um, that just being in that course, that seminar with you and then seeing your work with you did with the kids and the fences.
I mean, and your presentation that you did at the end of the course.
I mean, it was amazing.
It had to be like one of the strongest presentations that I have ever seen.
And I have seen many presentations.
So, you know, you are not only walking in the footsteps, but you are creating them to, you know, so yeah, most definitely.
Yeah, let's not gloss over that.
That's an amazing accomplishment.
Congratulations,
Annette Teasdell: Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I I remind my students every time they come into my classroom, I remind them that we're on sacred ground.
I mentioned Marva Collins and Lucy Craft Laney, but here at Atlanta University, you had people like James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois, giants.
Giants, if you will, in black education.
And so it's really important that we understand that we need more teachers and we need teachers who can relate to students who the research shows that when they are in the presence of a black teacher.
They are way more likely to pursue a college degree.
we want to increase the number of people who are working with these students from elementary all the way through high school and even at the post secondary level.
We mentioned that There are tools available for students with dyslexia.
One of the things that I'm really impressed with, and I know I'm a guest on this show, but I'm very impressed with your work, Eli Davis.
And using chat GPT and AI to meet the needs of students.
This is critical.
This is absolutely amazing.
And so I hope.
You'll talk a little bit about how that came to be, perhaps not in great detail because I'm sure you'll discuss that later, but you're one of the few out there who are really doing focused research on how we can use.
AI generative, AI chat, GPT to meet the needs of students.
So please indulge me and just talk a moment about why you think that's so important for students with this particular learning disability.
Eli Davis: No problem, uh, while a is one of one of a very conscious rapper you know, from DC love while a, while they had His album and album about nothing and Seinfeld said talking is fun.
People love to talk.
So most definitely you know, it actually started in Jackson Creek elementary with those two twins that I were telling you about.
You know, they don't the special education program that I was in.
They do not test for dyslexia but the mother having conversations with the mother the mother perceived that they probably were dealing with some kind of dyslexia.
I didn't, I can't tell you if she knew that because of some kind of generational thing, maybe the father.
Maybe she dealt with something, but she was pretty adamant about her children having dyslexia.
And you know, and I know that those kids, the swag was way too strong to bow their heads when it came to learning, you know, they, what they knew too much they were super athletic.
So I started to think about ways and at the time, artificial intelligence came out, chat GPT came out, and I just was interested.
And I started to ask them what kind of stories that they liked, they wanted to do and talk about what they were interested in, you know, to see if I can try to promote some.
Engagement with different kind of reading.
And I started to put on my smart board chat GBT and, you know, I started to craft stories with them using using words and Phonemic sounds that we were working on so that they were familiar with it, but not only were they familiar with it, they saw themselves.
I would use their names.
I would use the other names of other students inside of the classroom and they saw themselves inside of there.
Not only did I see them start to improve with their reading, but their comprehension increased.
You know, using you know, with chat GPT, you can most definitely pull the whatever state standards you are working on, whatever course of study that you're working on.
You can pull all of that.
You can pull in the standards and you can put it right in there.
You can create a blooms higher order thinking, critical thinking.
You can do all of that right.
There and you can cultivate it to the stories and you can start to practice with the students so that they can build their confidence.
You know, that's one of the big things that I saw when those students started to read.
It was another student who he had he wasn't able to write his ideas down.
I had him type a story in, in, into chap GPT and, you know, his words were jacked up.
His sentence structures were all over the place.
And I remember when he pressed enter and then he started to read what it wrote and he could not believe that it made sense of it.
Annette Teasdell: Wow.
Eli Davis: Oh, you should have just seen like something happened inside of him.
That was amazing.
So, you know, since then this that's been several years now, but since then I've really turned it up.
Annette Teasdell: Right, right.
And again, I don't wanna minimize the fact that you created this bot, right.
Eli Davis: Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Annette Teasdell: that's a big deal.
So, hats off for that.
And I think it, it comes out of, I think both of us come from a place where.
See a need and we want to be able to meet that need.
We know that, we know the brilliance of these students.
I think it's Asa Hilliard who says, I've not met any child who's not a genius.
key is to love them and know how to teach them.
And so, as we think about dyslexia, we've got to use the tools that are available to us to be able to meet their learning needs so that we have less students falling into the prison pipeline, school to prison pipeline, and more, securing college degrees.
Achieving their personal goals and becoming successful members of the community.
One of the things that I think I've, in my research, I've been looking to see what tools people have been using in their classrooms.
There's one called Dissolve that Coral Hub, created it's an AI computer program for students with dyslexia, which really helps with Decoding and language skills and it's gamified.
So, you know, we live in a world where students love to be on the computer playing games, but they're learning as well.
And that's why I think AI tools like yours.
And like, the dissolve tool and there's another one called why, W H Y, why these are all important.
But one of the things that's happening, I know it's happening at my university and probably is yours as well, is we're behind the curve on How a I can be used as an effective tool.
Eli Davis: Yes, we are.
Annette Teasdell: so there's so much research and our students are coming to us knowing a lot more than we may know about how to use these tools to support them.
But can you imagine what a difference it would make if we can use it.
The chat bot that you created the tools that I've just mentioned to be able to get that a ha moment, that level of confidence that you saw with your students.
It was fighting that we can move them away from where they were to where they can see possibilities for themselves and where the classroom is fun.
That's the takeaway that I had with teaching August Wilson's fences to my students.
They were engaged.
They were ready to turn the page.
They were ready to see.
What do you think is going to happen?
You think Troy is going to get that job?
Do you think Corey is going to go in the military?
You think he's going to play football?
So it gave them an opportunity not to have their decoding challenges stop them from being an active participant in the learning process.
So my hope is that we'll see more and more tools like this that we can use to better support them.
and provide them with the tools that they need.
It really is a social justice issue.
Special education in and of itself is a social justice issue.
There's so many students who are not able to take advantage of a free and appropriate public education in our country.
And so, for students with dyslexia, We need to really be specific about how we can support them and how we can help them.
So I'm grateful to have had this conversation with you and be able to really just begin the dialogue about why dyslexia and AI is so important.
Eli Davis: Yeah.
You know, Claude, do you use Claude?
Annette Teasdell: We do.
Eli Davis: yeah, Claude has a a specific click to to do a visual represent representation for students who are dealing with dyslexia.
I thought that was pretty amazing.
You know, I just think that it is, it's, it is just something about using the artificial intelligence inside of education.
I've been, you know, using the the image generator as well, and.
I would sit there and I'll use talk to text.
So I'm sitting there and I'm doing talk to text and I'm, and you know, I'm being myself, I'm being very goofy with my students.
So, so I'm talking to I'm doing talk to text inside of the the GPT.
And I'm saying we have a little black girl, nine years old in the third grade with a ponytail.
She got a rib bow, a yellow bow on, she got a t shirt on with a big teddy bear on there.
She got some ribbed shorts on or something.
And and I described these students and then next thing you know, they, it generates the image.
No, it generates the image of these students.
And then and then we start to interrogate the image.
And then we start to interrogate what is wrong with the image.
And then we also talk about how artificial intelligence, the current models that we have are created by white men.
So some of the things that we have to do is we have to start engaging and letting the artificial intelligence understand that this is the representation that we are too.
So I go into all of those critical analysis with these little pooh poohs, you know, and and they and they just eat it up and you should just see, they come into the classroom, Mr. Davis, we creating one of those stories today, you know, so.
Annette Teasdell: They get excited,
Eli Davis: Yeah, they absolutely get excited.
And just if we're working on specific skills, I can tell to, I can tell it to most definitely highlight the different skills.
I could tell it to separate particular words and to break them up into syllables, you know, so we work on our phonemic awareness.
It's just, you know, But, you know, at the same time, a lot of educators and a lot of administrators aren't really on with using it.
A lot of people want to stick with the same kind of program, you know, use these scripted things, but those can come in handy.
But I like the the the ability to navigate you know, with interest with these students.
Annette Teasdell: That's our job, I think, as educators, is to figure out creative ways, what strategies can we use to peak their learning.
We have brilliant students.
A student has a learning disability.
It is no different than if a student has a visual impairment, which is a disability, of course, and we give them a pair of glasses, so they have dyslexia.
What can we give them to help them better prepare?
Now, you mentioned something that I don't want to go into great detail regarding it, but one that I really want to Encourage investigation of and that's the work of Ruha Benjamin.
She was here at Georgia State last year for the Mays lecture, and she was absolutely amazing.
Her book is called race after technology, and she talks about the new Jim code C. O. And how important it is to reimagine the default settings of technology in society and how even as we begin to explore a I and its use.
As a tool to help learners, we also have to look at how a I can present social justice issues as well.
And so it's really important that we investigate the tools that are out there and how they can help.
and how they may impact us.
And so, her work is quite fascinating.
She's at Princeton and has written quite a few books about about this viral justice is another one of those.
So, who Benjamin is probably one we need to pay attention to.
Her Algorithms of Oppression, another book.
So, really great work in that area.
Huh.
Eli Davis: You know, that, that is goes into exactly what I had envisioned like, like what this podcast was getting ready to be about, you know, of course we wanted to talk about artificial intelligence Yuval Harari just.
You know, amazing guy, just a historian.
He said, we don't need to call it artificial.
We need to call it alien intelligence, you know, because he's like, I don't see too much.
That's artificial about it.
But you know, that goes into thinking about the name AI with Eli developing the new human.
That is.
Yeah, that is something I believe, you know, thinking about the science of epigenetics and how the environment transform and modifies how we experience the world, you know, artificial intelligence most definitely is getting ready to modify how we experience the world.
So we essentially are, you know, developing a new type of human.
Thank you very much, Dr. Annette Tisdale.
Annette Teasdell: Thank you.
Eli Davis: Super honored and and just yeah, and just absolutely blessed, you know,
Annette Teasdell: huh.
Eli Davis: you are here, that you have done this for me.
Annette Teasdell: Okay.
Thank you so much.
I wish you well as you go forward.