68. Shelley Woon and Arrowsmith

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Shelley Woon, the head of Arrowsmith School in Toronto. We discuss Arrowsmith's innovative approach to addressing learning disabilities through cognitive exercises based on neuroplasticity principles. Arrowsmith’s mission is to harness neuroplasticity to change brains and transform lives. Shelley shares her personal journey in education, insights into the Arrowsmith program, and practical advice for parents and educators, especially those in the homeschooling community.

Connect With Shelley
arrowsmith.ca

Resources
Limitless Mind
Growth Mindset
Limitless
The Woman Who Changed Her Brain - TED Talk
The Woman Who Changed Her Brain

This Golden Hour
Free eBook Course
thisgoldenhour.org

Transcript

Shelley Woon: 0:00

once you strengthen a capacity, a function in your brain that's underperforming once it's activated, it will continue to be engaged and then develop if it's lagging and its ability to function and hasn't been stimulated in the way that it needs to be stimulated, it's not growing and expanding. What we do is we really facilitate those connections. We activate the brain, we strengthen the brain. It's actually physically. Changing. And then because you're using it. You're not going to lose it. You're going to continue to grow it.

Timmy Eaton: 0:41

Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You're listening to this Golden Hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Shelley Wound, the head of Aerosmith's School in Toronto. We discuss Aerosmith's innovative approach to addressing learning disabilities through cognitive exercises based on neuroplasticity principles. Aerosmith's mission is to harness neuroplasticity, to change brains and transform lives. Shelly shares her personal journey in education insights into the Aerosmith program, and practical advice for parents and educators, especially those in the homeschooling. Welcome back to this golden hour podcast today. We have with us Shelley Woon, who is the head of school of Aerosmith school out of Toronto. And they also have an online campus and reach to people throughout the world. But Shelley, thank you for being with us.

Shelley Woon: 2:23

Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Timmy Eaton: 2:25

Really appreciate you taking time. Would you just give us a brief biography of yourself and then how you ended up with Aerosmith and then we'll jump into some questions.

Shelley Woon: 2:32

All right. Sure. Yeah. That I actually started in the public education system and had around 30 years in public education with a lot of that being in special education, a special class teacher, resource teacher, and even as A teen, I worked with individuals with special needs that both my dad and my brother have significant learning disabilities, but there's not a task you couldn't give them that they can accomplish. They're just both so remarkable in many ways, but to write, spell. That those are real challenges for them. So my heart is always being linked to supporting individuals with special needs. And yeah, I retired and then during COVID actually, I was thinking this is getting a little not very exciting. Wonder what's out there. So I looked up some ads and I saw a posting for Barbara Aerosmith Young School and it was like, Oh my gosh, I need to work for for Barbara. So I put in my application and it led me to here in April of 2021. And it's it's great. I love being here.

Timmy Eaton: 3:41

Excellent. No, thank you for sharing that. If you don't mind me asking, I was wondering about your, you said your dad and your brother, what were their learning differences?

Shelley Woon: 3:49

Yeah, so what they really struggled with was both reading and writing, and I would say even today, reading and writing and yeah, just, and I think more so for my brother than, My dad, it really impacted his overall well being as well that really struggled. He repeated twice. And I'm two years younger than him. From grade six on, we were in school together. People thought we were twins. We actually look quite a bit alike. But yeah, just a real took a real toll on them. But both of them were in leadership positions. Positions in General Motors and my dad ran had his own electrical business and volunteer firefighter a farmer probably a lot of ADHD happening there as well but yeah, it just shows you that even though you Have a learning difficulty that there's different paths out there for that.

Timmy Eaton: 4:45

I think that's interesting. Cause that's, I feel like that's the mantra of what Aerosmith stands for is this idea of the ability to change and neuroplasticity that we're going to talk about. But was it dyslexia that they were.

Shelley Woon: 4:56

I would say yes that they wouldn't have been at that time formally diagnosed. My dad's 80th birthday was yesterday. So he was not formally diagnosed and my brother did access special support, but not, they didn't do assessments at that time the way that they do now and, from being in, in education and seeing assessments, you pretty much know and can write an IEP before and after an assessment. And there's not a lot of difference that. Basically, what in front of you is what's going on with that's what I think is so different about Aerosmith that we look at the brain differently and the cognitive functions. And when. Individuals look at the assessments that we do. They really can see themselves and what we have to offer our solutions.

Timmy Eaton: 5:43

Excellent. That, that is a good segue into Aerosmith. And so just for our listeners, so Aerosmith school and I'm not sure, maybe you can give some details on when it was founded, but it was founded by Barbara Aerosmith Young. And she grew up with her own challenges and I don't know. Personally, I'm just, I'm reluctant to use the typical words we use. And so that's why I almost want to say like learning differences. To me, that seems to be a good way to say it. I'm reluctant to say disability, even though. I understand why people use that term but Barbara had her own challenges and and basically came across some important writings and research when she was, I think in her graduate studies and which led her to study more about the brain and, with the. With the new science of neuroplasticity and neuroscience discovered that the brain was not unchangeable, but very changeable and she's, just gives talks and speeches about how she's living proof of that. So maybe give us a little bit of a background of how the school was founded and when and what you do.

Shelley Woon: 6:44

Yeah, so you got it. Right On there that Barbara really developed Aerosmith based on some of her own learning difficulties and Yeah, when she was doing her graduate studies, she became aware of the work of Rosenzweig and Laurie Laurier and Just recognizing that With Rosenzweig's work, he was studying rats and the stimulated rats brains were healthy and strong and changed, where unstimulated were not, and then with Luria, she, saw, recognize that different parts of the brain had different functions. And so looking at the work of these two individuals, she realized, Hey, I think the, this applies to the human brain as well. And because one of our greatest needs was making connections and relationships, seeing relationships really that whole sense of understanding what's happening around you and in front of you. That she began to create an exercise that was really based on clocks and the relationship of the hands on the clock. And it's actually when you see the exercise that's like, how did anyone ever come up with this exercise? And it just really, it's, it works on the symbol relations cognitive function, which is one of the strongest functions within our brain. Brain and it is what helps us comprehend when we're when we're reading, when we're understanding, making connections between something we're reading in a book and something that's happening in real life, yeah, just and it gives us the ability to reason. That's where like our reasoning lies. And so she worked on that exercise first and then she looked at some of her other needs. I'd recommend people watch the TED talk because she does a really nice summary. Yeah, because she explains how

Timmy Eaton: 8:45

She explains in that because I watched that she, it's like her brain just didn't make the connection between the two hands on the clock. And so literally until later years, she did not know how to read time and, and felt so inferior because of that but really it was just a space or a blockage that was in her brain that needed to be developed and changed.

Shelley Woon: 9:05

Yeah, yep. So when you some of the exercises with the clock the levels and clocks like you're working on a six handed clock and an eight handed clock and a ten handed clock and just you're wondering what could all those hands be And some of what you have to do to understand those hands is also Yeah, really incredible that that she's developed this exercise. And then she, yeah, worked on other, developing other exercises. We actually have 19 different exercises for 19 different cognitive functions. She worked with different individuals trying to understand their problem, thinking about what would be happening in the brain with whatever was getting in the way of them being successful, and then worked to. Try experiment, try out different tasks and turn them into exercises. And yeah, that's what our students do every day, depending on what their needs are. They engage in working on cognitive exercises that target specific functions within their Brain, which then allows them to read or write or comprehend or do math. Yeah, all sorts of different things. Yeah. And

Timmy Eaton: 10:17

I do want to come back to a specific example so people can have kind of a concrete example of, what a student might do and for how long and how much repetition is required. In order to see results. And I know that will be I know that Barbara has talked about that being so subjective because every brain is unique just as each individual is unique. Every brain is unique, but there are principles that underlie how to create that change. I'm just seeing The thing in the background of your screen that says Aerosmith, the brain change school. And so I think it's clear about what you're wanting to do, but how is it like who comes to the school or how do you get students? What's the typical way? And maybe walk us through the process of who, who goes to Aerosmith and then how do they, how long do they stay with you? And what's the format of how the programs are run or rolled out.

Shelley Woon: 11:01

Yeah, so we have students anywhere from around six years old all the way up to adults. We had, actually, in our summer program, the one summer, we had a woman on site, like in person, who was 65, doing our Cognitive Intensive Program in Simple Relations. Yeah, we have a A younger population, the teens, we have young adults right in our school every day as well. A lot of adults or professionals join our program on a part time basis. Some work independently with just by Most of the program for a couple of the exercises is available. So you can do it mainly independently, but connect with a teacher for maybe 40 minutes every couple of weeks. But the majority of our students attend, our full time students would come in either online or in person and attend anywhere from four periods to eight periods a day. A period is 40 minutes in duration. And Monday to Friday. That sounds good. Yeah, it is. It is. And in the summer we have our summer program where students are either attending online for a part of the day or they're coming in person and joining us for six weeks in person. For, a typical. Length of a school day, six hours and yeah, just a real mixture.

Timmy Eaton: 12:24

Will they enroll in Aerosmith as if they were going to a public school or some other institution?

Shelley Woon: 12:28

Yeah, so our full time students enroll with us just the way they would or a private school. A license, licensed private school in Ontario and yeah, we do. Families meet with our admissions officer. He hears their story. We really want to get to know them looking at the individual's needs, what their strengths are, what they're hoping for what time they're able to commit. And then if it seems as though it's a profile that we would be able to support, then we would Have the student enroll some students. We recommend that they start with one exercise, one cognitive exercise where others we suggest. Yeah, you would make a great candidate for a full time student. All of our full time students have significant learning difficulties like. Where some of our students are more of an enhancement type of student where

Timmy Eaton: 13:30

when

Shelley Woon: 13:30

we look at the way our brain functions, all of us can improve from cognitive enhancement, all of our brains can be enhanced. And depends on the needs, we have a professionals who maybe they're struggling to really focus or. Take in their emails or information at work and process it in the way that they need to quickly enough that They might enroll in our symbol relations exercise as well but our yeah, some of our students who are in here full time. They're Working on six different cognitive exercises in a day and then doing English and math classes as well at whatever level that they're currently working at. And yeah that,

Timmy Eaton: 14:12

that spurred on quite a few questions for me. So I want to ask you if you're okay, I don't mean to pepper you, but I just, I'm so intrigued. I just actually finished a book a couple of months ago, maybe three months ago by a guy named Jim Quick and it's called Limitless. Yeah. And I don't know if you've read that before, but he talks very similar stuff. And he talks about he was in grade school and had a brain accident and then had another accident. And, was told that he, his very limited, kind of like Barbara's story, but just studied it. And, and now he's, He's, he's world renowned as far as his work with brain change and the ability, basically he does quite a few things. One of the things he does is speed reading. And I noticed in some of the, on your website talked about a few of the same things that like we live in a world that those who can learn the fastest are those that have the, basically it's learn the fastest, earn the fastest, because if you're in a world like we're shifting today. To such a rapid information age that you need to be able to learn quickly to be able to stay up with the time so a couple of questions. So one just very practical questions. How many students total do you have

Shelley Woon: 15:19

right now? Combination between full time and part time around 100 and 70 just over 100 and 70.

Timmy Eaton: 15:26

And that's associated

Shelley Woon: 15:28

with our own school where people license, other organizations license the program and we're throughout the world. And so I don't even know what the total number of students are there if we look at Australia and New Zealand. But it's all tied back to here. We've got our Aerosmith School and our Aerosmith organization. Corporation. But yeah, so

Timmy Eaton: 15:49

you have like onsite students that would be a certain amount of students and then you have online students, but then you have people that could license to Aerosmith and then do their own program.

Shelley Woon: 15:59

Exactly. Exactly. Does that incorporate the hundred

Timmy Eaton: 16:02

and seventy or does that's beyond the hundred and seventy?

Shelley Woon: 16:05

Yeah. That it would be well beyond the hundred and seventy. Yes. Yep. Gotcha. That there's some school, some private schools that have us as part of their. Curriculum where they have students who are maybe doing one exercise a day or that they're, or they're offering the full program themselves on our website at week, there's actually a section about providers and it shows where they're located all around the world. Yeah. So

Timmy Eaton: 16:32

is that like basically almost like an affiliate program? It's like you become licensed to Aerosmith's. Whatever program, for example, if I wanted to teach Aerosmith resources or offer resources, I would get licensed or certified with Aerosmith and then I could have students under me.

Shelley Woon: 16:49

Yes. Yeah, you could do that. Yes. As a, with, as part of an organization or start your own private school or program some mental health organizations. Yeah. Offer our program to support with different areas around focus or addiction traumatic brain injury. Yes, that it's anyone that's looking at trying to build specific cognitive functions that they can license our program. It's still all linked to us. Our. Our Aerosmith program staff support those sites. If they're, have questions, struggling, we do the teacher training through us as well for sites. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton: 17:30

And of the 170 students how many of those are full time?

Shelley Woon: 17:34

Let's see. I would say. Ish. Ish, 20, Around 30 are full time.

Timmy Eaton: 17:42

Okay, and that's, so theoretically somebody could start at six years old and go all the way and graduate with a diploma?

Shelley Woon: 17:49

No, so going back to your question earlier, how long you might attend here, we are not a lifetime school. Our goal is to support you. In strengthening your capacity to learn, and so some students might be with us for two years full time or four years full time. We, when a student's attending full time, we do an assessment and and then we Give an estimation of how long, if they were attending full-time, the program would take, certainly if you're only taking one or two cognitive exercises at a time, then it's going to be longer before you Gotcha. Reach average and those different functions.

Timmy Eaton: 18:28

So is the objective then? I would, I'm just wondering if the, like if I had a, or if I wanted to take courses, the objective is to learn. to, to the degree that basically you're working yourself out of a job and then I can do those functions and those activities on my own so that I can continue those principles of cognitive strengthening and then do those on my own and then set sail basically.

Shelley Woon: 18:50

Yeah, like it's once you strengthen a capacity, a function in your brain that's underperforming once it's activated, it will continue to be engaged and then develop if it's lagging and its ability to function and hasn't been stimulated in the way that it needs to be stimulated, it's not growing and expanding. What we do is we really facilitate those connections. We activate the brain, we strengthen the brain. It's actually physically. Changing. And then because you're using it. You're not going to lose it. You're going to continue to grow it. You're not going to keep doing the specific exercises. Now you're going to be using it in a way that's going to continue to have it strengthened and keep performing. I can see,

Timmy Eaton: 19:41

I can just see this being relevant to not only to people who have. learning disabilities or differences or challenges. But I'm just wondering if maybe people who have a family history of dementia or something like that might say, man, I want to look into something like this so that I can strengthen those, I don't know. I don't know the correct. Terminology, whether it's connected those or strengthen those neural pathways or create new pathways that allow if I were to visualize it, is it me visualizing? I was looking at one of Barbara's things saying how You know, if you look up in the stars and you see just billion, we can't behold with a naked eye much, but like we know through science, how many stars are in our galaxy and in galaxies. And then you're the, what the connections in a brain, I think get up into the high billions to the, even, I don't know if it's bordering trillion, but just that idea to visualize a brain actually being strengthened. And it's not just like a. It's not just a notion, but it's like very observable that your brain has gotten stronger.

Shelley Woon: 20:45

Yes. On our website, there's images, MRI images that's showing, the brain activated. And, but yes, if you were to actually physically look. At a brain that you would see changes in the physical structure that these neurons would be activated and forming connections and pathways and the dendrites are reaching out and it's it is a very physical like if you think about a plant or a vine yeah, it's a,

Timmy Eaton: 21:18

it's growing branches and it's strengthening and bearing fruit. And yeah, that's good. I like the visual, the visualization of that. No. We talked before the interview and my audience is a homeschool audience and what I'm wondering is like, When you have like let's say somebody does take it for two years, they go, I'm going to go into Aerosmith and they have their reasons for strengthening a particular cognitive function. Let's say you have dyslexia and you really wanted to focus on that. During those two years, it's almost like it's, is it like you're enrolling in a private school or is it like, because in, in Canada, and I don't know, I'm in Alberta, but we, you have to go through a school authority. If you want a supervised. Situation and then unsupervised is fairly new in Alberta basically means that you're choosing the government route and you get no funding basically is the thing there. But in Ontario, if somebody enrolls in Aerosmith, let's say I'm in grade eight and I enroll in Aerosmith for two straight years and I do my work through Aerosmith, And I go back into school or I go into my homeschool situation or whatever. How does it work with that?

Shelley Woon: 22:24

Yeah. So you, within Ontario you can enroll in a. Private school, just the way you would roll in any sort of public school. You don't have, I know with homeschooling, you need to register with, in Ontario, with your local board and a form is signed to approve it, which You know, it's not necessarily that the board, they're going to support a family unless they were really concerned about the decision to do this, but overall in my career as a superintendent, that we supported homeschooling families just by, by signing off on them, but here, for a private school, you just register in a private school. If it's students in Ontario, we would request their records from their Ontario school that they were attending. But our homeschool families that they just come in and they register with us or they contact us online and they register some of our families, are their Children are doing four exercises in a day, which would be half a day. And then they're still doing their usual homeschooling program. And the other half of the day, some families are and our day starts at quarter to eight. Toronto time, Eastern time. And our last offering is finishes at 8. 20 PM. So there's time throughout the day, so we can accommodate different time zones. Some families, their child Just attends for one or two exercises. We do have a couple little people who their families decided, you know what, we really want to focus on the next two or three, three years full time. We're pausing our homeschooling instruction to really address these challenges. Learning challenges and and then their intention is, possibly going back into a homeschooling situation or something else. Yeah, we really accommodate and, so we have students joining at all sorts of different times in the day. Even locally, we have students coming up. Different times in the day. Some are coming for three periods, some four. Most of the ones in person are coming for eight. Some are coming for six. And then online, yeah, it's a real mixture from full time to, and some full time blending from our afternoon into, the, our evening, our extended day program. So yeah, we really notice a trend.

Timmy Eaton: 24:50

Do you notice a trend between your On in person students, because you said there's probably only about 30 ish and then much more online. Are the ones online typically coming to you for reasons of challenges or of trying to enhance? Yeah, it's a

Shelley Woon: 25:07

mixture. So the students coming in person and we're under 30 right now, that's. Prior to COVID, we had, 65, 75 students in person. And the program wasn't available. We didn't have an online school prior to COVID. Yeah, so now we have full time students online, full time students in person. The ones that are attending full time that they would be individuals who are definitely struggling with the learning. That's why they have, many more cognitive functions that they're really wanting to to strengthen and they're pausing their traditional educational. Program or their homeschooling program to focus on, making cognitive gains. And then, yeah, a lot of them, a lot of our students, it's they haven't been assessed. They haven't necessarily been identified in any school system as having a difficulty, but their family knows. You know what? I want them to focus better or think faster or comprehend or, yeah, it's most people come to us because they're sensing some type of difficulty, but in Spain right now, we have one of our executive directors actually been in Spain for a year now, and and longer than a year, Spain has been implementing a whole school approach where depending on what grade level you're in, everyone's doing a cognitive exercise. And it's, we can all benefit. I was going to say, I can't see how

Timmy Eaton: 26:43

that couldn't be beneficial for just every single one of us. We can all enhance our learning and, different cognitive functions. I wanted to ask you about The 40 minute class period, because can you tell us why that is? Cause I've read quite a bit. I'm still surprised. Like I'm in a, I'm in a system where I teach religious education, but the, but I'm tied to an adjacent school. And it's base it's a high school grade nines to 12 and the periods are 85 minutes and I just wonder how that is still happening in, in educational practice. And I know it depends on the subject matter and that's valid, but I like that you have these 40 minutes, especially when you're talking about cognitive function. How did 40 minutes get decided or, what's the, what's behind that?

Shelley Woon: 27:27

Yeah, so what we really want to look at is for neuroplastic change to occur. As you were mentioning earlier, there are some key factors, and so you need the individual engaged for a sustained period of time, and that you want to be working on a targeted that's activating that particular cognitive function. Yeah. And that there needs to be a gradual level of increase in difficulty. So it's just like when you go to the gym and you're lifting weights, you don't walk in and lift the heaviest weight. You start and it builds upon it builds upon the growth that's occurring. And so the 40 minutes, like we have some students actually who maybe are here all day, but they're not doing six cognitive exercises. They're doing some cognitive exercises for 80 minutes or our summer program you're doing the symbol relations cognitive exercise throughout the day for Much more like 135 minutes. Wow If you're a younger student and even longer if you're over 15 But we want that Time to rest as well. We want to engage and focus and be really on and have some quality engagement occurring and then you know, then we transition to another exercise and or we Transition to recess or take a break or and then we re engage We reactivate the brain again by focusing on another cognitive function or get back into the same one but you want to really optimize that level of engagement you don't If we're tired, then we're not going to be optimizing the level of engagement as well. So it's also about engagement. You're not going to make the gains through osmosis you're not going to make the gains if it never gets more challenging you're not going to make the gains by spending only a couple minutes. It is a sustained period of time

Timmy Eaton: 29:35

And I was just thinking, that's a good model of education. I'm not sure. I'll ask you in a second, but I just, the model of education of teaching when the student is ready and the student preparing for that time to be ready, or, in a state of readiness, I love the term gains, they use a similar thing in weightlifting or something else, but like you want to see gains and it's measurable. Whereas a lot of what we do in teaching, sometimes you can't measure because there's so many students to one teacher. What is the ratio? Like you have, under 30 students, how many teachers are working with how many students at a time?

Shelley Woon: 30:07

Yeah, so we have typically it's a 10 to 1 ratio that sometimes. Depending on the group that's with the teacher, it might be less. Sometimes it might be more. It really depends on the makeup of the, so we right now during the regular school day, we have 21 students and we have in. The classroom for part of the day two teachers and an educational assistant. And then another part of the day, it's the teacher and an educational assistant because some of the students are out for English and some are out for math. So it's still in our English and math. Our ratio is usually around 1 to 5. We would go as high as 1 to 8. I haven't seen that in the time. That I've been here. Some classes are one to three. It's really based on the needs, the profile of the students that are in front of them because we want. The teachers to be able to support and engage them as well. And everyone has different needs. Even the programs, when we think about the 40 minutes, 40 minutes for our little seven year old might look a little different than the 40 minutes for, the 18 year old, because of, how they're able to engage. They might have more frequent breaks. Breaks, and we're trying to we set within our programs, students are aware of what their goals are for each day around either the number of sets or accuracy. And we can see that data. They can see that data. Families can see that data by logging into the system for the actual web based exercises. And for the ones that aren't, we can input the data and you can still see graphs for that. And the goals look different and students progress at different rates as well. Yeah. That's why we give an estimate for for how long a program might take because everyone does progress at a different rate. And some of these things, engagement, ability to remain. Sustained in the exercise that Yeah, that's all unique, personalized.

Timmy Eaton: 32:14

I really like the, when I was looking into Aerosmith and I love the core principles to the approach, which is like targeted activity, which you mentioned, attention, novelty, and complexity practices, where you're talking about the sustained engagement and then effortful processing. Yes. So when a student comes to the in person or online, so they're just, they just know That the way it works is you come in and then you're basically doing exercises, so it's not necessarily embedded within your typical curriculum. It's very focused on we're not talking about, they go there and do. History and math. It's it is brain function and it is exercises. What I like about that is, and I think that's maybe what would appeal to a homeschool audience is that it is expertise in one area. And so it's basically outsourcing one way that somebody could look at this is no, you're going to like the brain subject class, instead of, you're going to history over here. Yeah. And you're doing math here, but at Aerosmith, you're going to brain development and brain change. And that's the subject and that's what's going to happen. And the other thing I like about that is that your progress is more easily measured. It can you speak to the success rate of your students as far as your teachers assessing and then being able to see where they started and where they've gotten to in their development.

Shelley Woon: 33:32

Yeah, so our students who have had an Aerosmith Cognitive Assessment done, that we reassess them every year. We're just moving into assessment month now. We initially assess them in all the cognitive functions. Then, whichever cognitive functions they have been working on, we assess them every year.

Timmy Eaton: 33:52

Yeah.

Shelley Woon: 33:52

And we have lots of research online. I, Truthfully, I won't be able to speak off the top of my head. Oh, there's tons. I did see that. I would just

Timmy Eaton: 34:00

say that to my listeners. You gotta go on Aerosmith School website because they have tons of research articles that you can read about the various cognitive functions and developments.

Shelley Woon: 34:12

Yep. No, exactly. And yeah. And with each each student, We get a sense of whether they're progressing as well each day because we also can tell whether they're advancing through the levels, right? If someone's staying at a certain level for, then we need to come up with an action plan. We need to think about what's getting in the way of their progress and come up with ways to engage them, support them. And yeah, and some students will finish a cognitive exercise Achieve average earlier on than others, and then we. might mid year, move them into another different cognitive exercise that's a priority for them and based on what their family is looking for as well, what a priority is. Oh, the one thing I was going to say, with our school, and when you were talking about history, geography, other sort of subjects,

Timmy Eaton: 35:07

when

Shelley Woon: 35:07

we think about all those subjects, what's in common to them all is our brain. And so a cognitive function, so the symbol relations cognitive function, whether I'm working on trying to understand and make connections between the present day and history and comprehending a history text or comprehending a word problem in math or my ability to whatever in whichever subject that symbol relations cognitive function is linked to so many different Tasks that we do each day whether it's at school, at work, in life, with whatever, that, that part of my brain is engaged and working. And if I'm talking subject based, it's going to transfer across. So by targeting that, rather than solely focusing on a reading development program, a math development program, that, By working on the functions that support all of those curricular topics, then that I'm benefiting

Timmy Eaton: 36:11

all

Shelley Woon: 36:11

of those areas.

Timmy Eaton: 36:12

Yeah, talk about interdisciplinary that this is that. And the other thought that I had is that when you are improving in those areas. Unfortunately, we assign identities to ourselves, or we might get that from a teacher or from other surrounding students of our level of smartness based on these perceived difficulties or challenges or real challenges that we have. And so the other benefit I see to strengthening your brain is that you're confident in your identity is strengthened at the same time. And so the transferability of, okay, I go to Aerosmith or I do something else that really strengthens my brain and my cognition, and then that transfers to every other area, like you've said, because now I, I'm a better reader. I'm I retain more. I have these exercises that I've gone through and I've been strengthened and so that transfers to everything. Plus, it allows me to feel more confident in in life and in my approach.

Shelley Woon: 37:10

Yeah, we have students, who will come in. And it's a very fixed mindset, right? Like they have been beaten down that they haven't felt the success. And so when they're working with us, yes it's that shift to a growth mindset and perseverance the ability to persevere and and succeed to come in and be, whether you're nine or 13 and you're a non reader and then to suddenly be able to. Read and how that,

Timmy Eaton: 37:41

So do you have teachers that are specific to kids with dyslexia or dysgraphia or

Shelley Woon: 37:46

No. So our teachers are trained in all of the different cognitive functions. And so every individual who's within our school is working on their own program and People will be doing different exercises at the same time. Some might be doing the same exercises at the same time, but they'll be at different levels. And yeah, they're really just focusing on whatever their needs are. And the teachers are able to facilitate all of those exercises. And it's very interactive. Like some exercises are More interactive with the teacher than others, but the teacher is always engaged verifying. We always need to watch for compensations. What strategies might someone be using rather than it actually being activating the the cognitive function you mean the teachers

Timmy Eaton: 38:41

or the students?

Shelley Woon: 38:42

The teachers are watching to see if the children are or students are compensating in any way. And the online world can make that even trickier to try to figure out if a student is using other strategies to complete the exercise than actually using their brain. What

Timmy Eaton: 39:01

would be an example of that? Like of compensating?

Shelley Woon: 39:04

In one of our exercises, Quantification Sense, which is helping you understand numbers and be able to work with numbers and do it at a quick pace, a student might be able to do that. Using their fingers, they might be counting up all the time and counting back all the time. They might just be because they know that we're looking for compensations. They might be just changing the pressure a little bit in their fingers.

Timmy Eaton: 39:32

I see.

Shelley Woon: 39:33

Online, if they're trying to remember a passage, memorizing a passage, they might take a screenshot of the passage and then when they're being tested, they're actually looking at the screenshot rather than that they've actually memorized, it's also compensation

Timmy Eaton: 39:48

could be a nice word for like cheating or something like,

Shelley Woon: 39:52

Yeah, something like that. Maybe. Yes. Yeah, they're coming up with a different way than what was intended to come produce the, yeah, which is

Timmy Eaton: 40:00

really cool. Which is really counterproductive because the whole, but I get why. There's a, like you said, there might be some kind of pressure or something, cause I want to improve and I want my teacher to know I'm improving. But if you

Shelley Woon: 40:11

think about too, where a lot of them are coming from, especially in our current system in education, it was one of my greatest frustrations When we shifted to all about accommodations and modifications for students rather than getting to the addressing the core concern root for this. Yes. And so we have students. Who are used to well, you don't need to remember that here. It is right here. And the computer is going to read it all. Sure. I believe in some of these tools while you're building and closing the gap, but not as a lifelong solution. And so that's what I love about Aerosmith. This is solution focus. This is about address. You're carrying your brain everywhere you go. You're not carrying a computer everywhere you go that here it is. And kids maybe came to us with all of these other strategies that they were encouraged to use before. And now it's you know what? No, we want to get right to the root of the problem. And that's the cognitive function.

Timmy Eaton: 41:16

And that's why they're there. How many teachers do you have on, like for the, your classes and how many teachers are online?

Shelley Woon: 41:23

Yeah. So we have on site, we have three or two and a half cognitive teachers and then some of our online teachers are on site and we have an EA. We have a math teacher on site, a English teacher on site, and then we have. Right now, three teachers who are teaching from home and they're teaching online, and then we have on site one and a half teachers who are teaching to the online classroom as well, because really, to have an in person school, we need in person people there's a lot more than just the teaching hours that make a school function, right? And so we want to provide yeah, that quality. Experience and safe learning environment. So the more teachers we can have right on site for working with the kids, the better.

Timmy Eaton: 42:12

How many, do you have a sense of how many home educated students have come to Aerosmith?

Shelley Woon: 42:17

No, I do not. Some of those stories we drill down into and definitely one of our current full time and three of our Full time online are homeschooled but historically, I don't know, and even the ones who are attending, just an exercise a day, I don't know whether there are any of that, any of those students are homeschooled.

Timmy Eaton: 42:41

With your experience as super superintendent of the of special needs and also just your experience at Aerosmith, what would be your message to homeschool families as far as, How they might incorporate this if they see it as a need they can fill what, yeah, where does Aerosmith become relevant to homeschool families?

Shelley Woon: 43:00

Yeah, so a couple of ways. One, that certainly if your child is struggling to learn at all that we would encourage you to reach out so that we can you support your child in their learning and depending on the need, if we did an Aerosmith Cognitive Assessment, that would give us a sense of whether, you could just do one exercise a day for 40 minutes, here's the full range of time, very accommodating. We even have some students, if they're not attending full time, who might double up in 40 minute periods, because on Fridays, they're That's when they're doing lots of community based activities with their family, meeting up with other homeschooling. Oh, it's flexible

Timmy Eaton: 43:47

that way.

Shelley Woon: 43:48

Yeah, absolutely. Basically build your own schedule if you're going, doing it that way. We'll say five periods throughout the week is equal to one One exercise. Others, if your child is, really struggling, then we encourage that you might want to consider four or more periods to shorten that time because there is a connection between compromised mental being and learning disabilities and that, the, just the struggle of navigating the world and and recognizing that you are struggling and Yeah, and just the frustration of not being able to take information in and then other families if we want to, if you like our symbol relations exercise that's an exercise where if you want to really your child's doing well, but you want to sharpen their brain even more, support them in their focusing, thinking faster, their processing speed making connections at even a higher level than Then, just joining for one period a day, focusing on one exercise, but, and just remember that even, if you're, if you come full time, like this one family of a little guy that we have in person, that they just really wanted to reduce the difficulties that it was already, he was so young, but it was already compromised. He could see his younger brother performing. In a stronger way than he was and seeing what his older brother could do and feeling far like that being unreachable. So they really wanted him to just, they started off homeschooling half a day and coming here half a day and now they've switched to full time. Let's do this. Yeah. And then on to whatever's next for him. Is

Timmy Eaton: 45:36

there an ability? I know you said that there's basically affiliates or I forgot what the term is, people that get certified or what's the terminology? We

Shelley Woon: 45:44

refer to them as sites.

Timmy Eaton: 45:46

Yeah. Aerosmith

Shelley Woon: 45:47

sites.

Timmy Eaton: 45:47

Is it possible that parents could be like a site? I guess what I mean by that is, If I had a, let's say I had a child that had dyslexia or some other challenge and I wanted as the parent, I didn't really want to I don't live, let's say I live, not in Ontario, for example, and I want to do it online. Could I do some kind of learning? Beyond just surface learning for I mean, cause I, these teachers that you have on site and online are in some way certified to be cognitive cognition strengthening

Shelley Woon: 46:18

teachers. Yeah. So

Timmy Eaton: 46:20

is there something offered where I, as a parent could learn sufficient to be able to help my own children?

Shelley Woon: 46:26

Yeah, so we do have some. I think a couple of situations where I'm aware of that it is, was really originated by the parent that they have, that they're a site and that their main focus is supporting their own

Timmy Eaton: 46:43

children.

Shelley Woon: 46:44

Yeah, child, children, and maybe they branched out to supporting, one or two others or are really still focusing mainly on themselves, but they have to go through the whole process that a site would as well. Aerosmith

Timmy Eaton: 47:00

doesn't want to Validate somebody who's going to do something not totally, reliable or, it'd be like somebody not knowing that much about a particular, that'd be like me teaching dance right now. That's a little wild cat or something

Shelley Woon: 47:12

that we really support our, Teachers actually that was one of when I started in this role The first thing I did was the Aerosmith teachers training and I was totally impressed by the quality of the train. I've had lots of opportunity For education and pd throughout my life and the quality of the training. I thought it was remarkable and it's not it was it six weeks five or six weeks full time and then There's always upgrades. Refreshers. And were you doing

Timmy Eaton: 47:44

those cognition exercises? Yes, I

Shelley Woon: 47:47

was. I was having to do them as, while I was learning how to do them. Yeah. What did you think?

Timmy Eaton: 47:51

Did you, could you, do you feel like genuinely you were like, wow, this is like I see the difference or?

Shelley Woon: 47:56

When we go back to the principles of neuroplasticity and being able to do it for a sustained period of time that that I didn't engage in the exercises that way. So some of our teachers and some of our staff One of our teachers actually came to us as a young adult and who was struggling to learn. He paused his university program and came to Aerosmith. Then he went back to university. Then he got into teacher's college and then he completed his teacher's training. And then he came back here and he's working for us. Yeah, no, it is. Yes, it is. But yeah, that, it's I just became aware of, each of the steps and the clocks when I got to learn about some of the thinking behind it. So

Timmy Eaton: 48:44

The sustained learning really is like those exercises, like what's a typical period of time that would be, considered sustained?

Shelley Woon: 48:52

Yeah, we do really try to promote like at least 30 minutes. On a task. Ideally 40 if someone's doing our independent that some of the students will work for a lengthy period of time uninterrupted. And

Timmy Eaton: 49:06

but over the course of we're talking a year or 2 years. Or it depends

Shelley Woon: 49:10

on the pro so when we do an assessment, you'll be scored right from very severe extreme all the way, to above average and it's in increments all along there So it depends on where are you? Yep, where you are what your starting point is and then yeah the individual and yeah, so it's, like we had a student on, and his testimonial is on the the website, Michael, where he really focused on dedicating his time staying on tasks with the Symbol Relations Cognitive Exercise, and within a year, Reached ten hands. Now, not everybody goes to ten hands, but and then speaks of the difference that it made for him in his life where Yeah, it just really varies someone might move up to average or above average within a year while they're here some It might take yeah longer

Timmy Eaton: 50:11

Yeah. Thank you. I just love the work that you're doing and I can see people in my audience being interested in that, especially, if they're looking for answers for their children. And so I, I love that this resource exists. Would you, do you have any like books that you would recommend or things? Yeah. Yeah.

Shelley Woon: 50:28

As in Barbara's book, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain.

Timmy Eaton: 50:31

For example, that, or I know Norman Doidge, we

Shelley Woon: 50:34

talked about. Yep, the brain changes itself. And, oh, and Joe Bowler's book, Limited Limitless Mind. That's Like she's really focused on math and growth mindset, but she's written about Barbara in her book as well. Yeah, and then our website, I would suggest going onto our website and going to the cognitive functions page. And it lists the 19 cognitive functions and for each of them, it will tell you what the function is, and Difficulties might look like that are related to that function. And then by working on it, what sort of improvements you would expect to see. And then we also right on our site, we have something called a cognitive questionnaire. If you complete it, it starts to give you a bit of sense just based on your own Perception of your child or your perception of your own needs and strengths. You write yourself and it will Give you a bit of a rating within each of the functions cognitive functions as well Yeah, and then lots of information on the website About and even webinars like learning webinars on our website as well

Timmy Eaton: 51:49

Excellent. No, that's great. I would maybe one I would add is that kind of emerged in our conversation was just like you talked about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. So Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset. And wow, thank you very much. And then, and is there where are the best ways to get ahold of Aerosmith and you and if we have people that are interested,

Shelley Woon: 52:07

Just if you put in Aerosmith. ca that you will come up with our program site and there's a link to our school there. And within it, there's all sorts of contact. Us and my name, Shelly. Woon at Aerosmith. ca will reach me as well. So yeah, please reach out if you have any questions.

Timmy Eaton: 52:27

That was awesome. I appreciate you sharing that with us and thank you having a great conversation with Shelly Woon today from Ontario and Aerosmith School and all that they're doing to strengthen the brain. So thank you for spending the time. Appreciate it.

Shelley Woon: 52:38

Thank you. I really enjoyed the time together. Thanks. Have a

Timmy Eaton: 52:40

great evening.

Shelley Woon: 52:41

Thank you.

Timmy Eaton: 52:44

That wraps up another edition of This Golden Hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it if you would take a minute and give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.