There is hope for every child: A conversation with Karen Schoeben
2024-07-20 00:57:23
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Good afternoon, America, and welcome to the Dean's List. I'm Dean Bowen. You are listening to America Out Loud Talk Radio. We are happy to have you on board today. The past few days, as you know, we have been talking about the miracle of Mississippi, and I don't know that it's that much of a miracle.
And today I've got a guest on the program who I'm going to ask about the miracle of Mississippi. I didn't tell her about it. She doesn't know it's coming. It's a curveball. But that's kind of how we like to do things.
We just like to do, we like to throw curveballs around here. But I believe that she will be able to give us some insight into what is happening in Mississippi. in terms of their reading scores skyrocketing. Now we've talked about this. We've talked about how they have left the whole-word method, what they call balanced literacy.
You got to love the terminology. Balanced literacy. They've left it, and they've gone to what they're calling the science of reading, which is really just good old-fashioned phonics. And they're seeing wonderful, wonderful changes. As a matter of fact, Mississippi was ranked 49th in elementary school literacy just a decade ago, and they have shot up to the 21st spot.
Now, it's not number one. It's the middle of the pack. But they are showing the fastest growth in the country in terms of reading comprehension. And I'm excited to talk to Karen Chauvin about this and to talk to her about other things. Karen Chauvin is the founder, the owner, the director of All Things Are Possible Education.
Karen, thanks for coming on today. I appreciate it.
Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here.
So had you heard anything about what's going on in Mississippi?
I had not. Kind of my prayers and my focus had been on what had happened with the president and pulling my own students into reading fluently.
Well, before we get into that, what do you think about this? What do you think about, and I want to ask you this specifically because you kind of know the details, or you would know the backstory as to why Mississippi would experience such explosive growth from leaving this balanced literacy method, when, you know, we can talk about the labels that they put on things, you know, but we would know it as Dick and Jane. And so they've left Dick and Jane and they've gone to a phonics-based approach. And I'm going to ask you this. What is it about phonics that is different?
What is it? What's in the makeup of it that teaches the child to read better?
Well, I'm just kind of dumbfounded by the whole thing. You know, every strong reading program includes phonics. It includes sight words. It includes being able to hear the sounds, phonological awareness. It includes reading fluency.
It includes vocabulary. It includes comprehension. And the whole goal is to be able to comprehend what you're reading and be able to get information and share information and actually add information, create new things, do new things and make our society, make our world a better place to live. So any time that you systematically take one of the major components or foundational pieces out of reading, you're going to have a severe lack.
Excellent. Excellent answer. So tell me how the work that you do with all things are possible. education. How do you incorporate all of this?
Because I know that you deal with a diverse population.
Can you give me some examples of how you tie it all together?
So I want to see every child is wired for their gifts and their calling.
And a lot of times there's a family inheritance. So I want to get to know the child and I want to get to know what their gifts are and what their challenges are, what the family gifts are and how that child fits into that family.
And I do that. I have my master's degree in special education. I'm a reading specialist. And what I discovered when I went into a homeschool co-op, turned into a school, Christian school, kingdom education school situation is. there was one test, the Jordan reading reversal.
And so it just highlighted how many like the letters and numbers that the kids reversed and put into the wrong order. And most of the time in public school, private school, homeschool, the 16th percentile was pretty low. And I had a child that had a lot of dyslexic traits. I get into this highly functioning, highly like the apostolic gifts, the fivefold ministry. I get in with all these pastors and evangelists and and worship leaders, kids, and most of the kids are in the zero percentile.
And I'm like, I had to explain this, like, well, there's a line of 100 people. We're not even standing in line. Like we are. we are just not seeing the direction in the order of our letters. And then I thought about it for a second.
It's like, but some of these kids are playing like 15 instruments and having their own recording studio. You know, they're not, they're not stupid.
And and then I started thinking about it is developmentally, when we, as children, are small and they're like computers and they're just receiving all this information, it's getting organized through their five senses. And so most of the world is the five senses, touch, taste, smell, you know, seeing and hearing. And all of those things are getting backed up and organized and and filed into their memory. And then all of a sudden we get to school and we go from a 3D world to two dimensional world. And some of those kids don't transition quickly.
Some of those kids just need to be taught those the letters and the sounds need to get anchored in.
Those are the kids that are your inventors.
You're in fact, NASA hires 50 percent dyslexic. because they're gifted in problem solving, gifted in 3D thinking and gifted in spatial orientation. They will lock the geniuses in a room in this, with the same environment as you and the problem in space. They'll lock them in there until they come up with a solution.
And so you can go into any field and see that your top CEOs, your top, that every everything that in my world, getting my master's degree in special education that was considered a handicapping condition, is actually an extraordinary gift. In another field.
So you have referred to the word gifts often here in the last five minutes, and specifically you talked about family gifts. We have a mutual friend, Homer Allen, who talks about that Bible verse that says, train up a child in the way he should go. And he talks about that word way being in reference to the child's bent or the child's gifts. Do you incorporate that when you say gifts and family gifts? Is that what you're talking about?
Right, right. So if I I, when I sit down with the family.
I'll ask what they, what they do. I'll put in mind one of my family's. The dad was computer, a computer artist, graphic designer. Mom was a visual artist. They did dance.
They did theater. And so it was just a highly gifted in the in the arts and entertainment area. And so when I sat down with the kids, there's a good chance that they carry some of those same gifts. And the one one of the kids, after being vaccinated, completely shut down and actually qualified as having autism.
And and so.
I look at. I take all of the special ed testing and I and I and I look at. Some of the things that they do naturally. And it doesn't match. So if I'm testing a child and and and their language is super, super suppressed, that will lower their whole IQ.
Well, that doesn't match, you know, in that family, this little girl was running the house. She was doing all the dishes. She was babysitting the neighbors. That's not. that's not a mentally impaired.
Sure. Right. Child. That's a child that's running the house.
There's a disconnect happening somewhere, then.
Right, right. And so I, my, so I partner with the Holy Spirit. I'm like, I want to know what that disconnect is. What what's missing? Well, in that family's case, they went to Bethel and and she was called, you know, she prophetically called up on the platform, major healing, and she smelt like fish for a week.
They did a detox. There was probably mercury. There was something that happened in that vaccination that altered her. And I didn't mean to go here, but and this is just one one case. But in her case.
When she went through that, that detox and after that prayer, she was at another when I tested her, she was, she went from that autism range up into the learning disabled range.
So she, she's in a, she's in a church service and they and she gets prayer and there's a spiritual detox. that's happening.
Right. And then the family partnered with a physical detox. OK, it did like the GAPS diet, and they eliminated a bunch of things. And and the child smelt like fish, like something was being detoxed physically, spiritually and physically from her body. Got it.
And she was. her brain was different. There were more neural connections.
See there. Go ahead.
So then I went in with my special ed testing. I'm like, OK, well, compared to kids, her age, this is normal. This is normal. This is normal. Oh, we have a challenging area here.
So instead of saying, oh, my goodness, it's a permanent learning disability. What am I going to do? I partner with the Holy Spirit and we do games, we do strategies, we do workbooks, we do computer games and we work on that neural pathway and make that connection.
OK, so you said you partner with the Holy Spirit and and there might be some people in the audience that are thinking, well, what in the world is that? How do you, how do you partner with the Holy Spirit? And I don't think we should brush over this. I'm interested. I'm intrigued.
What. What? what's happening in this process when you say you're partnering with the Holy?
Spirit? I think that. That this is a really extraordinary generation that is really important to the kingdom of God and into ushering the Lord's return, and I think that they carry gifts, spiritual gifts, physical gifts in their, in their body, in their physical makeup, and and intellectual gifts, and and and. We got, whether it's environment, what, for whatever reason.
It feels like the enemy is out to wipe out their gifts. Mm, hmm. And so I happen to.
Be a person that feels and sees. Mm, hmm. And so I'll pray and I'll get a feeling like, hey, I think I should do this curriculum today, or I'll actually see myself sitting with a student and giving stickers and in doing this curriculum. And then I'll just pray and go through my day and all of a sudden I'll find myself in that exact position, doing that exact thing. And I'll be like, oh, my goodness, this was so important that the Holy Spirit highlighted it this morning.
This is more than just a usual day. God's going to use this common thing that I do, but he's going to use it in an uncommon and in a supernatural way, supernatural way to reconnect this child to their gifts and to their calling.
Wow, that is huge. So you're at. you're asking God for direction. Give me direction in this.
There are thousands of curriculums, millions of curriculums out there that have worked for somebody. They wouldn't be printed if they didn't work for someone. There's no catch. all, you know, miracle, miracle like magic pill, like, OK, if you buy this, this, you know, if you do this phonics program, every child is going to read. Now, it may be such a strong phonics program that 80 percent of your kids are going to read, but it really we're so uniquely wired for our gifts and our calling that we really have to partner to see exactly what's missing and exactly what's needed.
That's a big deal.
And I can't tell you how many times that situation has happened, and everybody's different. You know, God speaks to you in a different way. God speaks to your wife a different way. God speaks to us all in our own frame, because we're so fearfully and wonderfully made. But when we do, when we jump in that river of the Holy Spirit and we go with the flow every single time, the plans for each child and the future full of hope is so strong that what feels natural is supernatural and God uses it to release them into their gifts.
So let me ask you this. What type of kids are you seeing? What does your population look like?
The first child that popped into my head was a judge's son. who was, they went on a judge's vacation, so all the judges are there and all of their families. And this child blew up the outhouse.
Okay.
It's like, oh, okay, so I've got this genius child here. He's not using his powers for good.
He needs to be redirected. And I need to know, because behavior is communication, I need to know what is happening with him and why he's not acting in his, you know, and I found out later, because I say it kind of arbitrarily, because it just is familiar to me.
But what are his gifts? I mean, what does he like? What are his passions? What is he going to do? And why is he, you know, why is he blowing things up?
Well, it ends up that his grandfather invented, I don't know, like the tape recorder, like something major. And inventions were in his family line. He had, and I'm not going to say what his invention was, but he, as, you know, as a nine-year-old, he had this amazing car invention that has not been invented yet.
Wow.
That's why I'm not going to say it out loud.
Okay, good. All right.
And he had poisonous frogs. I mean, he's just is outside of the box. And, you know, I've had other kids. I've had other kids that are inventing things and maybe they're on some people's radars because they're inventing things that they don't know that they're inventing yet.
So you just had to get to the bottom of that. You know, why is he blowing up the adults? Now, when you said, I got to be honest with you, Cindy's saying, don't say it. When you said blew up the outhouse, I was thinking he had some bad Taco Bell or something. That's where I was going.
But you're saying he actually blew up the outhouse.
He actually blew up the outhouse. And how do you, and you're with a bunch of law people.
And he's out there blowing things up. Right.
And that's a real statement.
It is. Yeah, it is. It's a real statement. And you took the time to figure out, you know, what's going on with him. You know, that to me is, I think it doesn't require a special kind of patience.
I would say it does. It does. And I would say that when you, at any university, when you are with, when you're hanging out with special ed teachers, there is that special gift, that there's that special kindness. There's that special patience there. And, but it's like everything else.
You have to be called. You have to be passionate about, about what you do. And he.
Go ahead.
So he had an IEP. He has, you know, he qualified for special education.
Okay.
But obviously to me, obviously, that wasn't the right, I mean, that may have fit his circumstances, but I had to figure out why and why he was still stuck there. And so then I went back through how his brain was organized, which is the IQ, how he processes new information. I had to go through his memory and then go through all of his academic skills. And he had a bunch of holes. He had a bunch of deficits in his academics.
Now, when you're that bright and you can't read, or you can't do math like the people next to you, or you're put in the dumb class, you know, or, or whether this is the special best class or whatever, every generation has some mean words for that population that are really lies, really lies. Um, and I, so I had to figure out, I had to unlock some doors for him and, and catch up some, some academic skills for him and, and, and break off some lies. There's nothing wrong with him.
Uh, this, so is he, does he still have the IEP?
Oh, this is, this is like 20, 30 years ago, a long time ago.
Okay.
Sometimes I get to meet these, these people there's, there's in the same generation, there was another kid that was just a hot mess. And they're like, we don't know what to do with them. I, I barely saw the parents. They just paid me, dropped them off at the door, paid me. Uh, and, um, I ran into him.
10 years later. He ended up that his family owned a chain of, um, of grocery stores and he went, and I went into, um, to, uh, ask for, um, some donations for a new group of kids that was failing all of their classes. And, um, and he's like, do you remember me?
Oh, wow.
And I'm like, no, he was not only, it was a, a, a low time in our, in our economy. And he had come up with all kinds of super cool things and reinvented his family's business and was really doing well when other places were closing down.
Wow. You mentioned memory that, that you, you had to get into his memory. Can you describe that or, or maybe explain it? Yeah.
So I, I ask a series of questions and I, and I'm always simplifying, oversimplifying things. So in my mind, when I'm sitting, you know, face to face with someone, um, I'm, I'm looking at their foot, at, at how they're receiving information, in their five senses. I'm looking at the differences. So in my memory testing, I might ask, um, I might tell a story, and how many details can the story that do they remember?
Um, they, they're asked to memorize a list of words. Well, there's a huge difference between the, their details to stories and they're being able to memorize a list of words. These are all clues on how their, how their brain is wired, how their memory is wired.
Um, one of the biggest things in the memory testing is being able to see and hear at the same time. So I might have them memorize a list of words. I might have them, um, memorize a pattern, so auditory and visual. Um, and then in one of the tests, I have them, uh, look at pictures and I say the name of the picture and combining what they see and hear simultaneously.
And some of my most gifted kids cannot see and hear at the same time.
Hmm.
And that's huge. It goes into a learning index score and it's a big predictor of whether, of, um, of them not being successful in the classroom.
Wow.
Because if you think about a teacher that's doing all the things, they're combining all five senses and that, and that's considered better. The reality is that teachers teach the way that they learn.
Mm-hmm.
And if that child's learning and memory doesn't match the way the teacher is teaching, a lot of times, they'll just completely shut down.
Uh, if, if a teacher finds themselves in this situation, my question to you is, uh, how do they figure out, I mean, how do they work around it? How do they, how do they change their own pattern or their own way of thinking or their own way of teaching? If, if they've got a situation, you know, like this, don't answer now, uh, sit with it for a second. We, uh, we're up against the break. So let's pause here.
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Welcome back to the Dean's List. Thank you for joining me. today. We are speaking with Karen Chauvin. She's the founder, the owner, the director of All Things Are Possible Education.
And Karen, I want to get into the title of that name, but not yet. I want to go back to my question before the break. And the context was that teachers teach in the way that they're taught to teach, but kids learn differently. And if the teacher is teaching to all five senses, but, as you said before we went to the break, a child might not be able to comprehend seeing and hearing simultaneously. Um, my, my, my question was, and still is,
how, how can teachers recognize this? And is there a way that they can, they can change how they are delivering stuff?
That would be amazing. I literally tell my students that teachers teach the way that they learn. And I'm in the perfect world. They would teach the way that you learn, but we're not in a perfect world. So I need you to go in and figure out whether your teacher is visual or auditory or a combination.
So you put that, you put that back on the student and you say, you go back in and figure it out. All right. Okay. Keep going.
Which is really a crime.
But, and, um, and so the question is then do these kids that don't match how their teacher is teaching, do they end up in special education?
Okay.
Most of the time. Um, but it's more systematic than that. So, back in the nineties, um, the, the new teachers were trained. Okay. Here's a list of characteristics of a learning disability.
And, um, now, prior to that, you get with the, the older generation teachers, if a child couldn't process what they saw, if a child reversed their letters, if the child couldn't balance on one foot, if the child couldn't sit and follow directions, the back in the day, the, the, the old, older kindergarten teachers would actually teach them how.
Then there came this generation at the college level, where they taught them. You can't say that this child has a learning disability because then we're liable for it and we have to do something about it. And so just get that checklist and the child can't do these things. Then, um, you know, just pass that on to the experts. And so they didn't train up children at the developmental age that those children, that those children needed those things by third grade, all of those children would qualify for special education services.
Wow. So, uh, I, I like history and I'm interested in history. I'm interested in dates, and you may not know the answer to this. Uh, but you said, you know, back in the day, kindergarten teachers, the older ones, would teach them how to, how to do it. And we got to a point where that stopped.
Do you know where that, where that line of demarcation is?
I do. I, I know that when I got my, I got my bachelor's degree in learning disabilities and behavior disorders out of, um, university of Steubenville, Ohio, um, in the mid eighties, by the mid nineties is when the, I would see the older teachers that, that were ready to retire and the newer teachers coming in.
Got it. All right.
And that's when I started teaching the reading readiness skills. So I pulled out an old criterion reference. These are the skills that you need to have to be able to, to read. And I noticed that if they didn't have their developmental reading skills, which they should have been picking up in kindergarten by third grade, when they went to the public schools to be tested, they always qualified as having a learning disability.
Oh, you're kidding.
So I thought I'm going to teach them. They're reading readiness skills.
Yeah.
And so I went in and I had this camp and I taught them their reading readiness skills and they jumped up grade levels.
Wow. Now, now, when you say you had a camp, is this during summer?
Yeah.
Okay.
So which is another historical piece. Okay. So why are we only going to school 180, 185 days so that our kids can take the summers off to work on the, in the fields when we are no longer a farming society?
Well, there are a lot of schools that are looking at going year round. I know there's one, I mean, it's not the district I live in, but the district next over or next door, the kids there go year round. But you're right. It's probably rare.
And all of the teacher stays off the three months, like literally, if you're a public school teacher, you call it the summer slide. There was a COVID slide. And I mean, all of the kindergarten students that missed school for COVID, they're going to be coming up by third grade. We're going to have a huge population of kids with learning disabilities because they just missed developmentally what they needed in that time frame.
So you're going to have your hands full, then. That's what you're saying, right?
I need to train up people too. And I just started with a girl at ORU, and I started to share with her about teaching developmental milestones, and they're teaching that at ORU.
Oh, wow. That's a big deal.
It is a huge deal. In fact, I was getting my master's degree, and there was a guest speaker from Australia, and they have only 1% to 2% population of learning disabilities. And I couldn't help myself. I kept interrupting him. And finally, he's like, OK, OK, what is it that's so important that you have to interrupt my lecture?
I'm like, well, where are you getting your research? He's like, America.
He's getting his research from America to teach the developmental milestones. In fact, they test the developmental milestones on a child's birthday. They play Montessori style and give children opportunities to hit all of their developmental milestones. And they don't teach. They don't start formal education until they've hit all their developmental milestones.
Oh, oh, that's huge. So I was talking about this yesterday. What's happening in California is they are attempting to pass a bill that would make kindergarten mandatory. And you're saying nothing should be mandatory until we hit developmental milestones.
Right.
Right. And that's one of the only things I think that solidly in public education has been working is the early childhood, because they focus on that. And somehow, even though it feels like there's, there's a huge reward for there to be more special ed kids, somehow in early childhood, there's a reward if they meet all their developmental milestones and they test out of and they don't have a handicapping condition.
And that works. That works to bring in your speech and language, your occupational therapist, your physical therapist. In fact, the early childhood programs, Maria Montessori and the Head Start. I was in California when they threw this out. They said that the Head Start program didn't work because all of the kids caught up and were at the same developmental place by third grade.
I'm like, doesn't that mean that it worked?
Yeah, right. Keep going.
Kids from the most, the poorest incomes and the, you know, and the kids that have, you know, parents that have been whatever and incarcerated or whatever, if you can get all those kids, no matter what the environmental environment, they're all caught up by third grade, then that's a win.
So you're saying they saw success and then decided they didn't need to keep doing what they were doing to achieve that success. Let's do something else.
Right, right.
All right. That's a mindset that, okay, I'm not going to call people names, but that's all right. I guess that is a road to failure, right?
Exactly. And that's anytime you take out something systematically, anytime you rewrite a textbook, committee, rewrites curriculum and take something out, you're systematically setting kids up to fail.
Yeah, no, you're right. I agree.
If you're not training your teachers at the college level to be able to look at a child and see them as an individual. I mean, when I got my bachelor's degree, we're at one to two percent learning disabilities. When I started teaching second grade, that was 1985..
1987, before, in that time frame, they took phonics out. By the time I got my master's degree in 1989, 1990, we're at 20 percent of the population having a learning disability.
And the common denominator is the removal of phonics.
Right. Pretty much anything systematically, because that was the same time that I'm running into the new kindergarten teachers that are told, you know, we're not given any strategies to help kids.
Mm. hmm.
It's like, oh, no, you can't go there. You know, that's. that's for the specialist.
Okay. All right. So you're saying that if you saw this, let's just say a 20 percent increase and special education students. What I hear you saying is if phonics had stayed in the classroom, then all of these students would not have been labeled. I mean, an additional 20 percent would not have been labeled special education, maybe not given an IEP or whatever they were doing in those days.
I think that's an oversimplification, but it very well could be true.
Okay. All right. No, that's fair. That's fair.
Because there's so many different factors that go in. But I will tell you, by the 2000s, that when they started the whole intervention and the response to intervention, the RTI programs, that they're now trying to reach 20 percent of the classroom.
So, I mean, before the curriculums were set up learning style wise to hit 80 percent of the classroom, they could teach 80 percent and you're gifted and you're lower kids. That curriculum didn't hit.
Got it. Okay.
And now they can't. they can't reach 20 percent of the classroom.
What's happening? Why is that the case?
I feel like it has to be at the college level and it has to be systematic.
Now, when you say at the college level, you're referring to the students that are going in to become teachers.
Correct. Correct.
They have to be taught differently.
Right. That we're literally taught. the latest curriculum is pretty much whatever the latest curriculum is.
The latest and greatest, instead of going back to what has always worked.
Right. Right. Or using any of our own research.
Sure. Right.
We're not using our own research. And when I so, when I went into a high school situation, kids were functioning at a first to third grade level in the special ed programs, in reading. And I went in with all of it, you know, because you don't know what's missing. You don't know what's missing until you go in. And when you're working with a big population, then you might as well give them all phonics, reading, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension,
you know, just auditory processing, visual processing, the whole thing. And so I went in and the teachers bought in and we taught this to all the high school students that were special ed. And when we got done, they were all reading at or above an eighth grade level and pulled up the state scores, you know, significantly. So it pulled the whole school scores up.
Oh, wow. Of course it did.
And so what was missing? What worked? Well, maybe the kids saw the need to learn to read. Maybe they didn't have anyone that believed and that knew what, you know, and gave them all the pieces that they needed. Maybe it was environment, you know, whatever was missing.
It has to be one heart and one child at a time.
Okay. Yeah.
And we have to do what works for each child and each heart.
And I know that's hard, but, you know, at the same time that I was getting those results, Harvard and Yale were getting those results, but they didn't share any of their secrets. They just said a child should, if they have an average IQ, they should be reading at, you know, a sixth or eighth grade level. I was thinking, oh, I can, I did that. You know, we could do, we did that. But there's no, there's no answers, but there are answers.
You know, I had a family of Valedictorians and they had a child that was super low functioning, walked at a tilt, and they went into a adult literacy program and were trained, the parents did. And as I'm working with their child, and I'm just going all the way back to crawling and, you know, just developmentally, just whatever was missing, I just went through and, and work with them until, until he could walk upright.
And, and the parents are like, oh, we just learned that in our literacy. We, you know, whatever I brought in, they're like, oh, we were just trained in this. And they showed me all the training. It's like, why is that training being shared?
Right.
Why isn't that training in the public schools? But where, what's happening with all of the research and all of the stuff that's working, why is it not getting to the teachers?
Good questions. I've got my own thoughts on it, which would take us, you know, everything I think, I feel like everything that I think about stuff goes back to Marxism as the foundation. And that's, you know, that's, that's probably not true about everything, but sometimes it feels like it's some, some evil Marxist hiding behind a curtain somewhere. I want to ask you this. So, so, tell me about, and I'm kind of getting a feel for the title of, of your company, All Things Are Possible Education, just by listening to you talk.
But tell me about that name. You know, what, what was it that, that, that made you say, this is it? All Things Are Possible Education. That's what we're calling it.
Wow. I, I think I, I, I always struggled in school and, and I was, you know, like always, third, everything that I did, I was always third, the top third of my class, the, and, and I just didn't feel, I just didn't feel like I fit in.
And, and I, and I was a competitive water skier and I was always third.
And, and I remember, you know, sitting in a sandbox and I was like, okay, this is it, Lord. You know, I, and I didn't even have a personal relationship with, with Jesus. I just looked up into the sky and I'm like, all right, this is it. You know, if, if, if I get third again, then, you know, what am I supposed to do with my life? I was in junior high and, and I got third and, and in the sandbox was a little girl with cerebral palsy.
And I'm like, I, like, I, like, I, like Noel. Her name was Noel. I like Noel. I'll just work with Noel for the rest of my life. And, and I went into my school and they sent me to an orphanage and I, and I worked in the orphanage with the severely, at that time they were called the severely and profoundly retarded.
And the, the kind of a spoiler, the very first child I ever taught to read came into, into the orphanage with not walking, not talking.
Are you still in junior high at this point?
Yeah, I, yeah, I got, because I was in a farming community, I got a driver's permit and permission to, to leave campus and, and, and work at this orphanage.
And, and he was a hot mess. He just screamed and cried and didn't, you know, didn't have any parents and saw all kinds of, you know, tragedy and trauma. But I just kind of started singing and dancing and, and, and he got up and walked with me and I was pointing to letters and, and blending them together. And, and long story short, he started walking, he started talking, he started eating, just with love, just with love. And just from whatever I felt like doing with him.
And because he was on the extreme, I got to do whatever I, I got to do whatever worked with him.
Sure, it was whatever. They just, they just gave you carte blanche.
Right. And, and, and I, I ended up, he ended up reading. He ended up, you know, and I just thought nobody knew what was inside that little mind.
No one knew. He fit all of the characteristics of being severely and profoundly retarded when he came in, but we didn't know what was in there.
Sure, right.
Only God knows what's in there.
And, and, and, and sometimes it's for a season that, that, that, that person is impaired for a season. And, and sometimes that is their wiring, but we don't know.
Right.
But we're with a God that is the God of the impossible. And he sees the end from the beginning. And if I partner with him, I, I can, I get to see him on locked doors and I get to see miracles.
Yeah.
And I get to see kids released into their, into their potential.
Mm-hmm.
And, and, and that's the, at this time of the, that was when Hillsong had come up with the, or come out with the. All Things Are Possible. And I was just like, that's me. That's my theme song.
I'm doing it. I like it.
That's the name of it. All Things Are Possible Education. We're doing it.
Yep. Yep.
I absolutely love it. So I want to ask you this, as, as time is winding down, who, who might access your services? Is it individuals? Is it, is it schools? Is it, you know, parents listening that, that think, hey, my child could, could maybe use this?
I hate to say this because they say you have to niche down and you, you know, you shouldn't say all of the above. But really I work with schools and I train up teachers to get the same results that I get. It's super, super easy to work with a kingdom education school and people that are already partnering with the Holy Spirit, because then I can just teach them. just, there's just some mind shifts. There's just some paradigm shifts.
And, you know, like your question about, well, what happens if I'm a visual learner and I teach visually and, and I'm not connecting with a student, you know, how can I flip that up? You know, how can I change that up? And a lot of times at the school level, cause I've gone into, to mega churches and partnered with schools and trained up teachers. One school, I, this is bad, but it's really, really good. So I, I'm like, here's all these developmental schools.
I'm going to meet with the PE teacher and we're going to make an obstacle course. I'm just going to teach all the developmental skills to all of the elementary.
Okay.
So I went in and the teacher's like, no, you don't want to work with me. I'm super old. And I started pulling out all my stuff from Kephart and she's like, Hey, that's what I was trained in way back in the day, when, when we stopped doing, you know, when we stopped coming, when we started going off of the farms and into the, you know, the factories, we needed to start, start teaching these developmental skills that they were missing on the farm.
Yeah.
And so that's how PE started.
Okay.
She's like, I can do this. I'm like, all right, then. So we taught, and this was a huge mega church, three grade levels or three classes of each grade level taught all of those kids in a, like a two or three month span, only two kids.
lacked some developmental milestones, everyone else. And I completely worked myself out of a job. Oh, no one qualified for services in that build, in that, in that elementary school.
Oh, they didn't, because you took care of all of them in one fell swoop.
The one child who was pulled out of the womb with forceps and his head was in the shape of the forceps. He still needed services. Okay. And one girl needed to go to the eye doctor because her eyes didn't track.
Okay.
That was it.
Oh boy.
Three classes, 20 to 30 kids in a class, kindergarten through fifth grade.
Karen doesn't have a job anymore.
I don't have a job. So they moved me up to the junior high.
And of course, that PE teacher, you know, she's like, well, they should have never taken the rope out. You know, like she's, she's pulling back.
I'll bring back that rope. Oh, we love the rope. That's for sure.
Well, let me ask you this. So how can people get ahold of you? How can they, how can they find you?
So, um, I'm at, um, ATAP. is the, so it's www.atap, all things are possible, dash edu.com.
Okay.
And, uh, I just started working with, um, the, uh, uh, comedians schools on the East coast.
Yeah.
I've been working with the Daniel Academy. I worked with Christian life up in Rockford, uh, had over 200 families. So I, I definitely do schools.
Okay.
Um, and, but more as a, um, let me train up your leaders. Um, and, but the best way to do that is one heart and one child at a time. So if I go in and I test one child and see how their brain is organized, how their memory works, and, um, and pull up their skills and you're alongside of me and you've been working with this child and you're partnering with the Holy spirit. It's an easy, it's an easy jump.
It's an easy jump.
It's an easy jump, because we've all loved that child.
Sure. Right.
And, and, and you might, I had one dad, he was, uh, starting a new company. So I couldn't meet with him until 10 o'clock at night. And I tested his, his son, and he listened to all of the test results. and how was, you know, how the, the, um, how his son learned new information and how the memory worked, where the skills were at. He's like, so if I set up an obstacle course and I threw a football and I did this and he took, he took all the test results and he turned it into his own family camp.
Okay. So now you're even teaching the parents to do your job. You just, you just don't want to work. That's the moral of the story. No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. Right. And that child, I mean, is a prolific writer. Like by, um, he was not reading in like his first or second grade. Um, but now he's a prolific writer.
They, mom has to go and get his books bound. He writes three and 400 page novels.
That's wow. That's a beautiful thing. Karen, that is listening to your story and listening to you, to you talk, has been, uh, it's been refreshing. It's been encouraging. Uh, we're up against it.
I want to thank you for, for joining me and, uh, I, I hope you'll come back.
Thank you. Thank you. I just want to, I just want to say and pray that there is, that every child is wilder for their gifts and their calling, and that there is a future of hope for each child. And I just want to release kids and release families, uh, so that they, the kids, can be who they were created to be, so that they can do what they were created to do.
Perfect. That is a fantastic way to end this. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining me. Uh, encourage your friends and family to get on the Dean's list.
Let's unite to renovate the age.
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