Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / Years Lost in Letters with Delia Peruyera | Ship's Log #54

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Years Lost in Letters with Delia Peruyera | Ship's Log #54 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

• 0:00
  Delia: Not only did I read, by faith or by the grace of God, I became a reading teacher at the age of 24 years old
• 0:27
  Jeanne: Welcome to Project Candor, where ordinary people share unexpected stories.
• 0:31
  Jeanne: I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen.
• 0:33
  Jeanne: I'm glad you're here.
• 0:35
  Jeanne: Today we have a great guest.
• 0:37
  Jeanne: Delia Pereyera arrived in the United States from Cuba as a teenager, barely speaking English, figuring out one word at a time.
• 0:48
  Jeanne: She spent 37 years in Miami Dade classrooms as a clinical reading specialist before founding Read with Ease, a program that turns struggling readers into independent learners.
• 1:00
  Jeanne: Today, she teaches educators how to use those same proven strategies and build a business doing it.
• 1:06
  Jeanne: Delia, welcome to the show.
• 1:08
  Jeanne: Thank you for joining us.
• 1:10
  Delia: Good afternoon.
• 1:11
  Delia: Thank you for inviting me to your show, Jeanne.
• 1:15
  Jeanne: Oh, great.
• 1:16
  Jeanne: Well, we're gonna have a good time.
• 1:18
  Jeanne: You've got a interesting story all across the board, what you're doing now, and then when we get to the two truths and a lie, that's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 1:26
  Jeanne: But the way we get started here is I ask you some questions.
• 1:29
  Jeanne: Are you ready to go?
• 1:30
  Delia: Of course.
• 1:32
  Delia: Excited to do so.
• 1:33
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 1:35
  Jeanne: So first question, you arrived in the United States from Cuba as a teenager and barely spoke English.
• 1:42
  Jeanne: Before you became the person who teaches reading, what was it like to be the kid who couldn't read the world around her?
• 1:49
  Delia: Wow.
• 1:51
  Delia: Well, letters were jumping up and down at the age of seven, and even though I could read the sounds in Spanish in my homeland, when I had to look at a sign, I would be totally lost.
• 2:05
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 2:06
  Jeanne: So what does it look like?
• 2:08
  Jeanne: What were you seeing?
• 2:09
  Jeanne: I mean, can you describe it now, now that you know how to read?
• 2:12
  Jeanne: H- what did it look like to you?
• 2:14
  Delia: Letters were out of place, disaligned, and the more that I looked at the sign at the rail road station, the more frustrated I became.
• 2:26
  Delia: And that's when my grandpa told me, "No worries, we're going to the bookstore."
• 2:31
  Jeanne: Oh, how sweet.
• 2:33
  Jeanne: So I know you said they're out of place, so for people that don't quite understand it, and you're talking about dyslexia, is that correct?
• 2:40
  Delia: Yes.
• 2:42
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 2:42
  Jeanne: So explain to the people that are listening exactly what that's like.
• 2:46
  Jeanne: 'Cause to me, I've never had that problem, so I can't imagine, but you would have people trying to teach you, like, uh, the word says S-T-O-P for, like, stop, and you're like, "I see T and P
• 3:01
  Delia: and- Upside down.
• 3:03
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 3:04
  Delia: It's like when you take a mirror and you put it against, you get the reverse.
• 3:09
  Delia: That's what happens.
• 3:11
  Delia: Um, besides dyslexia, because that's not my specialty-
• 3:15
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm… Delia: my specialty is clinical strategies for better comprehension.
• 3:22
  Jeanne: Besides a little bit of dyslexia, I also had a lot of problems with my vision as a child.
• 3:29
  Jeanne: I started wearing glasses at the age of four.
• 3:33
  Jeanne: I had severe astigmatism.
• 3:36
  Jeanne: I had a tremor in my eyes, which I still have, that when I become triggered or nervous, you have a moment of blindness.
• 3:46
  Jeanne: So I think what happened on that visit to the rail road station, the more pressure that I felt because I wanted to read and impress my grandfather, the more blurry and the more crazy that the letters were on that wall at the railroad station.
• 4:04
  Jeanne: And mind you, the word for railroad in Spanish is very challenging.
• 4:12
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 4:13
  Jeanne: Say it… Delia: it's, it is ferrocarril.
• 4:16
  Jeanne: Oh my gosh.
• 4:17
  Delia: So imagine double Rs, the F- the, the E, which is a hard letter to, for young kids to see.
• 4:26
  Delia: When I taught kindergarten, there's a lot of reversals when they're little because they don't know which way to form the letters.
• 4:34
  Delia: So I had already done kindergarten and first grade.
• 4:38
  Delia: I was already reading the readers, but when I was asked to read something new, that was the challenge.
• 4:47
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 4:48
  Jeanne: And your grandfather took you to read books, and he really identified it, is that correct?
• 4:54
  Delia: He made me comfortable.
• 4:55
  Delia: I was already identified- Oh … as a struggling reader at the age of four.
• 5:00
  Delia: I went to a neurologist because when I watched TV, I was turning my head to one side.
• 5:06
  Delia: So my mother noticed this, and that's when they told her that I have nerve optical damage from the s- forceps.
• 5:15
  Delia: So they didn't make a big deal out of it.
• 5:18
  Delia: They still sent me to school, and they still said that I was gonna read, and I did read.
• 5:22
  Delia: Not only did I read, by faith or by the grace of God, I became a reading teacher at the age of 24 years old.
• 5:34
  Jeanne: Ooh, that's fabulous.
• 5:35
  Jeanne: That's fabulous.
• 5:36
  Delia: Cause the reading was not a struggle.
• 5:38
  Delia: Reading was a struggle in second grade at that visit to the railroad station, but after my grandfather read to me for an entire summer, I became so comfortable with listening and processing comprehension that by third grade, not a struggle.
• 5:59
  Delia: I was number one student in sixth grade, and I always read as a teenager, novels, classics.
• 6:09
  Delia: And then I became- Mm … a reading teacher.
• 6:13
  Jeanne: So what a fantastic grandfather.
• 6:15
  Delia: Yes.
• 6:16
  Delia: I became a reading teacher'cause I could not understand the struggle in Miami-Dade County.
• 6:22
  Delia: Here I was with a bachelor's degree in elementary ed.
• 6:26
  Delia: I was teaching children that came from other languages.
• 6:32
  Delia: I had all the s- the strategies, and yet reading was a struggle in their home language and also in the second language.
• 6:41
  Delia: So that's when I discovered that reading has to do with more than just reading the text.
• 6:48
  Delia: It's culture.
• 6:50
  Delia: It's habit.
• 6:52
  Delia: It's b- having access to a person that can make it doable, which is what I had.
• 7:00
  Jeanne: Oh, wonderful.
• 7:02
  Jeanne: But after 37 years inside Miami-Dade classrooms, you made a decision to step out and build something of your own.
• 7:09
  Jeanne: So what finally tipped you from educator to founder?
• 7:15
  Delia: Two years ago, in 2024, I decided to help my sisters, who are also teachers.
• 7:21
  Delia: And at the age of 70, they told me, "Take a couple of kids because we really need your techniques.
• 7:27
  Delia: You have helped my son, and with three sessions, he's doing very well in high school.
• 7:32
  Delia: He's reading his chapter books, he's paying attention to the structures in the textbook, and he's making A's in an English class.
• 7:44
  Delia: Please take these two kids in fifth grade and third grade." So I took a kid in each grade level, and the parents send me eight others.
• 7:52
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 7:52
  Delia: And the sessions, we'll do 15 sessions.
• 7:55
  Delia: So one of my coaches and friend from 2005 called me and said, "How are you doing?" And I said, "I'm doing good.
• 8:05
  Delia: I'm working at home, uh, with a little business that I have created from nothing." And she goes, "Why don't you take it to educators?
• 8:16
  Delia: I see you're so successful." So that's when I joined her in networking, building this home business.
• 8:23
  Delia: It's exactly a year ago that I was exposed to her company, and it's a year ago that I started making the model, and the past six months is when I started talking about helping educators build a home business with 10 students a week
• 8:48
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 8:49
  Jeanne: So this just grew from the Miami-Dade system.
• 8:53
  Jeanne: Uh, you now have-
• 8:54
  Delia: My experience, my experience and what I used in, uh, middle school, I went to work the s- the last seven years I went to work for a m- middle school in Miami, West Miami, that had foster children for the most part, and the school was an F.
• 9:15
  Delia: And the principal hired me because he saw my master's degree and he liked my resume.
• 9:22
  Delia: And in a year, with the help of all the teachers that we train and my clinical reading masters, plus Tallahassee came and also intervene, we moved the school from an F to a B
• 9:37
  Jeanne: Ooh
• 9:39
  Delia: And, and it was not-
• 9:40
  Jeanne: Fantastic… Delia: and it was, yeah, it We use five strategies that good readers use all the time, which are to browse the material before they read, look at the first paragraph, find the central idea.
• 9:58
  Jeanne: Children don't do this nowadays.
• 10:01
  Jeanne: They read like mechanics, and then they, they're, they're reading the words, but they're not processing what they're reading.
• 10:07
  Jeanne: Processing them, right.
• 10:08
  Jeanne: So they have to learn how to metacognition while they're reading.
• 10:12
  Jeanne: How can they process that?
• 10:14
  Jeanne: And looking at all the s- uh, text features, maps, illustrations, photographs, charts, dia- uh, designs, anything that's an, an illustration, and trying to make sense out of it before they start reading.
• 10:35
  Jeanne: So I tell them, reading is like turning the GPS in your mom's car.
• 10:41
  Jeanne: Before you put the two points where you're at and where you're going, after you enter where you're going, you see the trajectory.
• 10:54
  Jeanne: Reading is the same way.
• 10:55
  Jeanne: You need to look at the entire selection before you start reading and make sense of it.
• 11:01
  Jeanne: And with that in mind and a prediction, you can get the meaning of the reading, whether you're reading fiction or nonfiction.
• 11:10
  Jeanne: That's great.
• 11:11
  Jeanne: And now going back to when you said you brought it up from an F to a B, now that has so many implications because I live in St. Johns County, Florida, which is known to be the top county in Florida for schools, and people flock here to want their kids to go to these schools.
• 11:29
  Jeanne: So you just improved not only the kids' reading, which is the big point of this, but you improved the whole county area that, um, had this school in it because, you know, people were probably not wanting to be there due to the fact that it was a poor school.
• 11:49
  Delia: Yeah, it was, uh, like in a ghetto projects, and the principal was amazing.
• 11:56
  Delia: It was a combination of factors.
• 11:59
  Delia: He was a very experienced principal and a former basketball player and police officer, so he knew a lot about education and children and people in general.
• 12:12
  Delia: So when he stood up, everybody looked up to him.
• 12:15
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 12:15
  Delia: The teachers at that school were from all over the world, Jamaica, Africa, Cuba, United States.
• 12:24
  Delia: We had like the United Nations in that school.
• 12:28
  Delia: And then the children, well, were multiracial.
• 12:33
  Delia: They came from all different backgrounds.
• 12:36
  Delia: I had children from India, children from the islands in the Caribbean, children that were born in Miami, family, you know, generation after generation.
• 12:48
  Delia: We had everything.
• 12:49
  Delia: So reading needs to be approached within their culture because some cultures, it's not that they're not smart, it's just that reading is not a priority, and the language is expressed orally, and that's how the stories are told.
• 13:07
  Delia: For example, Haitians, so you need to know their background and make it tangible to them so they can embark in the reading because it's, for some cultures it's totally, "Oh, no, I don't know how to read. Oh, my parents don't read." So then they think that they can get by without reading.
• 13:27
  Delia: But not in the United States.
• 13:29
  Delia: We need to read here.
• 13:31
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 13:31
  Jeanne: That's, um, yeah, that's a true thing, and I think the next question I had, this, it, you led me right to it.
• 13:38
  Jeanne: You say America is, is in a literary crisis.
• 13:42
  Jeanne: You were inside that system for nearly four decades.
• 13:45
  Jeanne: What do you see happening, uh, that the system couldn't fix or wouldn't fix?
• 13:51
  Delia: Imagine the predictions are pathetic.
• 13:56
  Delia: I- in 19, in 1969, the deficit was 40%.
• 14:02
  Delia: It went down to 32% in 2011, and then it picked up again to 42%, and now it's 36%.
• 14:12
  Delia: So we don't have to have a perfect reading society, but we can improve it.
• 14:19
  Delia: So my pro- my program, I say if we can improve 50% of that 36% deficit, we will not be number 14 in the world like we are now.
• 14:31
  Delia: We can be number one because Finland has a deficit of 19%, and they are number one in the world.
• 14:40
  Delia: So if we improve only 50% of 36, that's 18%.
• 14:45
  Delia: And then what I see is, what is the problem?
• 14:51
  Delia: We have clinicians, but we have a deficit of 30 million, 10 students per classroom.
• 14:58
  Delia: We have clinicians 45,000 in the entire United States.
• 15:02
  Delia: They're not in the classrooms.
• 15:05
  Delia: They put one per school or two schools per clinician.
• 15:11
  Delia: They come and they teach the other teachers.
• 15:13
  Delia: The teachers grab what they can grab and learn, and then it goes to the students.
• 15:18
  Delia: So i- it's my opinion that when they get a version of the clinical reading, it's just diluted.
• 15:27
  Delia: They're not getting the specialty from the person that was trained at the university level with a master degree in clinical reading, applying the strategies where they're comfortable.
• 15:38
  Delia: If they're comfortable, the children feel comfortable
• 15:43
  Jeanne: Well, for those who aren't-
• 15:44
  Delia: So that's the problem.
• 15:44
  Delia: That's the ga- that's the gap
• 15:47
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 15:48
  Jeanne: But for those who aren't teachers and are listening, when you say clinician, can you please ex- say… You say it's someone with a master's and has a discipline in clinical-
• 15:57
  Delia: The, the clinical reading master's looks at the child and, just like a doctor, finds where the deficit is and teaches the remediation right there with whatever-
• 16:13
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm
• 16:13
  Delia: book or material they're using.
• 16:17
  Delia: They don't spend an entire year teaching one skill.
• 16:22
  Delia: They attack it right at the moment.
• 16:24
  Delia: Just like if you go to the doctor and you have symptoms, your doctor's gonna look at the symptoms and say, "Here's what you need to take." So if I see a kid skipping lines, if I see a kid not focusing from left to right, by me saying, "Read, read, read," it's not gonna get done.
• 16:44
  Delia: I need to look at the physical behavior.
• 16:47
  Delia: I need to look at the intellectual behavior, the metacognition.
• 16:51
  Delia: I need to see their background, if there's books in the home, if there's materials-
• 16:57
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm… Delia: where they're exposed to.
• 16:58
  Jeanne: I need to see they, they're accessible to Audible or Amazon, uh, Prime or, what is the other one?
• 17:07
  Jeanne: Kindle.
• 17:08
  Jeanne: Kindle.
• 17:08
  Jeanne: Uh, yeah, you got it.
• 17:09
  Delia: I give them all those resources because the more resources, the more experience that they're exposed, the better that they can read, the more comfortable they feel.
• 17:21
  Delia: And then to top it all is vocabulary.
• 17:24
  Delia: And nowadays with AI it's so easy.
• 17:28
  Delia: Like, I do- I say use AI to support you with vocabulary, not to get the answers because then you're not thinking, but to support you.
• 17:39
  Delia: And as I read with them and I continue to teach students, I taught my student in fifth grade yesterday, and he didn't know the word eerie.
• 17:48
  Delia: So I said, "Look at all the other answers that are synonyms with the word in the question." So he was able to get all the answers.
• 17:58
  Delia: And I said, "If you don't know what the word eerie is, don't circle it." He goes, "No, that's not part of the answer." So after the test I said, "Let's look up eerie." So we asked ChatGPT, and we got a wonderful definition.
• 18:13
  Delia: And I said, "Eerie is like weird, strange, not common." He's never gonna forget the meaning of eerie.
• 18:21
  Jeanne: Right.
• 18:21
  Jeanne: Right.
• 18:23
  Jeanne: Yeah, so that's even more interesting.
• 18:24
  Jeanne: Now you're instituting AI in your system, in your programs or encouraging it.
• 18:29
  Jeanne: That's wonderful because everybody's always fighting about AI not helping, but I saw just yesterday in my, and I shouldn't admit to this, my little game that I like to play on my phone, and when I run out of points, it goes to a commercial.
• 18:45
  Jeanne: And it went to a commercial about an AI-generated language, um, how to learn a new language using this AI, uh, facade, this person that talks to you conversationally as you're learning the language.
• 19:00
  Jeanne: So you're doing kind of the same thing in helping kids that can't read somehow use AI for definitions or for other things.
• 19:08
  Jeanne: Do you think there'd be a AI version to, um, talk to these kids as they struggle with reading?
• 19:15
  Delia: I, yes.
• 19:16
  Delia: I teach the strategies.
• 19:18
  Delia: I use AI on any resource that can help me ease- The strategies so they can feel comfortable.
• 19:27
  Delia: Because the most important thing, if you feel comfortable with anything in life, you learn it.
• 19:33
  Delia: But if it's foreign to you, you don't wanna try it.
• 19:37
  Delia: No one wants to fail.
• 19:39
  Delia: And children that don't read have a stigma and a fear about not being able to read, and this goes for generations.
• 19:50
  Jeanne: Wow.
• 19:50
  Jeanne: So I think I can see it right now after seeing this language thing just yesterday, how the, the people converse with this AI and then the AI tells them, you know, "Your pronunciation is wrong." I can see kids now reading to an AI that turns around and say, "Oh, you stumbled on that word, but here's how you say it." Oh, wouldn't that be so cool?
• 20:10
  Delia: Yes.
• 20:11
  Delia: Yes.
• 20:12
  Delia: We, we were, we were in Paris this spring, and my sister, my baby sister, she, she's not a baby, but she's the youngest one.
• 20:21
  Delia: She was born in- … the United States, and even though she's bilingual, she didn't know French.
• 20:27
  Delia: I know a little bit of French from high school.
• 20:29
  Delia: So she went into AI.
• 20:32
  Delia: I, she goes, "Give me a lesson." You know, my sister loves to use AI.
• 20:38
  Delia: She's been using AI before me, and when I took the course with Cheryl, I told her,"I'm using AI, too." So she got really excited, and she goes, "Why don't you develop a lesson in French that I can learn with my other sister, my, our other sister, so we know how to ask for a taxi, how to order food," blah, blah, blah.
• 21:00
  Delia: I said, "Well, everybody in Europe speaks, speaks English.
• 21:03
  Delia: Don't worry." She goes, "No, but I wanna do this." So I did develop a lesson.
• 21:09
  Delia: I said, "Tell me what you wanna say in French," and I wrote it the best that I could remember, and this is how I used AI.
• 21:19
  Delia: What I could remember from high school French, I wrote the dialogue, first in English, then in French, and then I said, "I could be making mistakes here 'cause it's been a long time." I'm 72 now.
• 21:32
  Delia: Mm. So I went to AI, I pronounced my dialogue.
• 21:36
  Delia: AI perfected the dialogue, and exactly what you told me, Jeanne.
• 21:42
  Delia: It gave her pronunciation.
• 21:44
  Delia: It gave her, uh, skills to practice.
• 21:48
  Delia: She was like in heaven because she felt,"Wow, I'm not gonna feel like out of place over there." And even though she didn't need to use it, it was a fun thing to do.
• 21:58
  Delia: So that same, uh, skill, I do for my language learners, l- children that are learning either Spanish or English.
• 22:07
  Delia: Even employees that come to this country- And they're working in restaurants and they don't know the vocabulary.
• 22:15
  Delia: Or maybe they're estheticians or maybe they're hairdressers.
• 22:19
  Delia: I take their vocabulary, I build the lessons, I give them the dialogue in English, and I teach them the language with the vocabulary and dialogues that they need.
• 22:30
  Jeanne: Oh, nice.
• 22:31
  Delia: So it's a lot of fun.
• 22:32
  Jeanne: I, I had to look down, sorry.
• 22:34
  Jeanne: I had to look down at my phone because as you're talking, I'm so interested in this AI and language because I just saw it, and the name of the app that I saw yesterday was called Jump Speak.
• 22:45
  Jeanne: And supposedly, I haven't signed up for it or anything, but, um, all these years that I've been trying to learn Swedish, 'cause my husband's Swedish, um, it, it actually gives you an AI person that you, you speak to.
• 22:57
  Jeanne: So, so to talk to your point, you're not embarrassed anymore because you're talking to an AI.
• 23:04
  Jeanne: They may look like a person, but it's not.
• 23:07
  Delia: Exactly.
• 23:08
  Jeanne: It, that would be very great for kids to be, have a app developed like that for them.
• 23:15
  Jeanne: But you were talking too, and I didn't, I… 'Cause I have another question, but I wanted to go back, 'cause you're saying so many powerful things.
• 23:20
  Jeanne: But you said a lot of things are about it not being in the culture and different cultures do different things.
• 23:27
  Jeanne: Could it be also, you said they don't have access to reading or whatever, could it also be that their living environments, because you did say where you were teaching was in a ghetto-type area, their living environments don't allow them to just sit like, you know, other people could just sit in a room in a nice chair and read a book, and they might not have that space or capacity, they don't have space or capacity to store books.
• 23:55
  Jeanne: Is, is that part of it as well?
• 23:59
  Delia: I haven't investigated their homes, 'cause I never visit their homes.
• 24:02
  Delia: I'm not a social worker.
• 24:04
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
• 24:04
  Delia: I think in the United States, mostly everyone has access to furniture, food, and shelter.
• 24:14
  Delia: And you see in other countries like Africa, and children read, I think it's the fact that it's habitual, and the value that they place in education.
• 24:27
  Delia: In other countries, they can be living out in the forest or a jungle, and they know that education is the only way to freedom.
• 24:41
  Delia: So parents cross rivers, and I know this because I belong to a charity that I learned from another trainer.
• 24:51
  Delia: I- the, the name is gonna come in a minute.
• 24:54
  Delia: These parents were crossing a river to get the children to school until my trainer bought them a school bus, and together they put a building together so the children now go to learn.
• 25:09
  Delia: So it is the value that you can give education.
• 25:13
  Delia: In other countries, education is very valuable.
• 25:18
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 25:18
  Delia: Here, because it's free or, uh, or we say that it's free education, we take it for granted And children go for 12 years, and if the parents are working hard just making life work with an income to feed them and pay shelter, and they're not educated because it has to do with the parents' education.
• 25:49
  Delia: So you're saying, why do we have this problem?
• 25:54
  Delia: We are a country that is made up of many nationalities.
• 26:01
  Delia: Reading doesn't dictate that we're smart or not.
• 26:05
  Delia: Reading is just a skill like driving a car.
• 26:08
  Delia: Just because some people choose not to drive a car, that doesn't make them dumb.
• 26:13
  Delia: They just chose not to learn how to drive a car.
• 26:15
  Delia: The same thing goes for reading.
• 26:18
  Delia: So if the culture that they come from reading is not a requirement- Then when they come here, they wanna do it, but they don't know how.
• 26:34
  Delia: And the way that I can make an example Families that cook together, the children learn, learn to cook, and it's like a generation of people that know how to cook.
• 26:51
  Delia: Reading is the same way.
• 26:54
  Delia: And if it's, if the children are exposed from the womb Up to the age of three, they can read 30 million more words than the ones that do not.
• 27:10
  Delia: They have done studies at Harvard.
• 27:12
  Delia: So if you are pregnant and you read the newspaper aloud, and you read books to your unborn child, the child is listening.
• 27:24
  Delia: It's getting used to the mom's voice.
• 27:27
  Delia: Start speaking of the vocabulary from the womb.
• 27:30
  Delia: And those are the kids that when they go to kindergarten, they're already reading.
• 27:35
  Delia: So the ones that didn't get that exposure, they see books for the first time in kindergarten five years later.
• 27:46
  Delia: So it's culture, it's habit, and it's having access to the people that really know what to do.
• 27:55
  Delia: I can tell you, "Jeanne, get on a bicycle and ride it." But if I don't hold the, the seat until you get the balance and you get the hang of it, you might learn by yourself, but it's gonna take you longer.
• 28:11
  Delia: There's stories of people that learn to read on their own, but that's a minority
• 28:20
  Jeanne: Right.
• 28:20
  Jeanne: Well, you have a line that if a child can ride a bike, they can learn to read.
• 28:24
  Jeanne: So you're just saying it's a, like a process, um, of learning that they can do, um, as long as they have a guide.
• 28:33
  Jeanne: I guess that's what I'm getting out of what you just said.
• 28:37
  Delia: Yeah.
• 28:37
  Delia: There was a study done, and they say that the same centers in your brain that are used for riding a bicycle, for example, focus, balance, coordination, those same centers are used for reading.
• 28:54
  Delia: We use both hemispheres, the right and the left in your brain, for riding a bicycle as well as for reading.
• 29:02
  Delia: So if you see most of our population riding bicycles, and yet reading is an obstacle in school.
• 29:10
  Delia: We're not doing r- riding a bike as we do reading, so there's a deficit in the way that we give children access.
• 29:20
  Delia: They need to have the model.
• 29:23
  Delia: They need to have that individual touch.
• 29:27
  Delia: They need to have that one-to-one with their mothers, grandmothers, clin- reading clinicians, reading specialists.
• 29:36
  Delia: When the kids are grouped in a room, 30, and 10 are failing, that's very hard.
• 29:42
  Delia: Very hard to, to teach 10 kids that don't read together.
• 29:48
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 29:48
  Delia: At our age, I had them.
• 29:50
  Delia: They were 15, 16, 17.
• 29:53
  Delia: Imagine having 30 kids in a room that did not read.
• 30:01
  Delia: Well, we taught reading four hours a day in that school that I was telling you about.
• 30:08
  Delia: And there were two of us in the room.
• 30:12
  Jeanne: Hmm.
• 30:13
  Jeanne: Well, I just saw on a news show yesterday, or, um, I don't know if I saw it or just heard it, because I listen to a lot of news online.
• 30:25
  Jeanne: Th- they were saying that in Pepperdine University that there are students, and you know their ages are 18, 19, 20, that cannot read still, and they're having to do remedial classes and remedial exercises to get them through their degree, and that's scary.
• 30:44
  Delia: Yeah, they might not read as fast.
• 30:47
  Delia: They have a speed reading in college.
• 30:51
  Delia: So it is practice, like riding roller bl- rollerblades.
• 30:56
  Delia: The first time you put them on, you're like, you know, can't move well.
• 31:01
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
• 31:01
  Delia: The more that you read, the faster that you come across the paragraph, the words, and it's like you can process.
• 31:08
  Delia: The more you read, it's habitual, it's practice, it's exposure, and it's also strategies that are used to speed the process and comprehension If I give you the books, and I give you the time, and I put you behind a computer and I tell you, "Read," and you have no clue how to attack the reading selection.
• 31:36
  Delia: You can do two things, fall asleep or just go eeny, meeny, miny, moe with the answers, which is what the students do when they come into my office here.
• 31:48
  Delia: In 2024, I had kids that were soccer players, very successful, 13-year-old.
• 31:55
  Delia: And he was failing the class 'cause when he took the, the tech reading program, it's called, uh, Reddy in Miami.
• 32:04
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 32:05
  Delia: R-E-D-D-Y.
• 32:07
  Delia: He had no clue.
• 32:08
  Delia: He couldn't focus because he had probably attention deficit and dyslexia.
• 32:14
  Delia: So I had to say, "Look each word from left to right. Read it and tell me what does that mean." I had to take him step by step.
• 32:22
  Delia: After three sessions of one hour each, he goes, "I already learned how to do this. I don't need to come anymore."
• 32:30
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 32:31
  Delia: 'Cause I told the mom, "Buy five lessons to see if he really needs this.
• 32:39
  Delia: And with, with three sessions, I will… Show me how you're doing this." But I had to spend entire hour st- stopping him, guiding him, putting him in the right lane, looking at the answers, what, finding out which one made more sense.
• 32:58
  Delia: It's, it's, what do you call it?
• 33:00
  Delia: It's- Tech is, uh, technique.
• 33:06
  Delia: How you take a test, how you look at the keywords in the, in the question so you can go back to the reading and find the answers.
• 33:14
  Delia: So teachers don't have time to do this.
• 33:16
  Delia: How do I know this?
• 33:17
  Delia: 'Cause I talk to my sisters.
• 33:20
  Delia: In my school in 2012 when we moved that school from F to B, we had a bookmark with the five strategies, so I still had some.
• 33:31
  Delia: And I told my sister, "You know, you don't wanna use this, and you think it's phonics." Phonics is one aspect, but it's not just phonics.
• 33:41
  Delia: So you can spend the entire year in phonics, they're still not gonna read and comprehend.
• 33:46
  Delia: It's everything.
• 33:48
  Delia: Everything in its totality.
• 33:50
  Delia: It's phonics, it's definitions, it's pronunciation, it's word processing, it's main idea, it's cause and effect.
• 34:02
  Delia: It's everything.
• 34:03
  Delia: You gotta look at the entire thing, and every day when you see that child, they need to be exposed to the five components.
• 34:10
  Delia: So she goes, "I don't know if I can do this." I go, "You have a master's degree." She goes, "Yes, but I teach…" Um, she teaches creative writing, which is the same thing as reading, but it's expressed on paper, right?
• 34:25
  Delia: You write, so it helps with the reading.
• 34:28
  Delia: But she told me, "You know, if I have to go through this marker, this bookmark every time I put them in a reading lesson, where do I find the time? This is what we need tutors." She told me, "I don't have time in my curriculum. I'm supposed to be following one grade level for all." This is what they're doing now because everything is inclusion.
• 34:54
  Delia: So you don't have re- different reading groups like when I taught.
• 34:59
  Delia: Everybody's in one level.
• 35:01
  Delia: They get the assignment, they go to their tablets, they complete the work, and then they get a response from the tablet The human touch is limited because the teachers have to do so much.
• 35:17
  Delia: And then the children that are having difficulty are in the inclusion in the classroom.
• 35:24
  Delia: But what are the chances for a reading specialist to be there on a daily basis for that hour or two hours of language arts?
• 35:34
  Delia: Minimal.
• 35:36
  Delia: This is why I think… And you know, Jeanne, I'm even thinking, uh, last night I was meditating about my business.
• 35:47
  Delia: I'm charging educators to learn the techniques, but I'm thinking in the future, charge the parents for the lessons and bring the educators as a nonprofit because we need… If every educator in clinical reading or language arts, which is like reading, came in with 10 students, there's 30 million, so that's 3 million reading teachers that we need.
• 36:15
  Delia: If they didn't have to pay, will they join me, learn the skills, and go find their 10 students, which is very easy.
• 36:24
  Jeanne: Right.
• 36:25
  Delia: They go to the school, they go to the school near them.
• 36:29
  Delia: They can volunteer at the library, read, use the clinical reading strategies.
• 36:34
  Delia: People see them doing this.
• 36:36
  Delia: Everybody likes it.
• 36:37
  Delia: I did it with you briefly, and you, you understood what I was doing.
• 36:42
  Jeanne: Right.
• 36:43
  Delia: Imagine the power when you have a book and they wanna open the book and start reading without looking at the pictures.
• 36:55
  Delia: They want… They, they don't even look at the picture of what's going on with the picture.
• 36:58
  Delia: A picture is worth a million words.
• 37:01
  Delia: So I stop them right there and says,"What's happening here with this girl?" And then they have to say, "Well, she looks like she's sleeping. We don't know. Let's go find out." And then that's a prediction.
• 37:14
  Delia: Let's go find out.
• 37:16
  Delia: And then they look at more pictures, and then we read together, and then we say, "Okay, was our prediction correct?" If it wasn't correct, it's okay.
• 37:27
  Delia: Now we can correct the prediction.
• 37:30
  Delia: And it keeps them involved in the reading.
• 37:34
  Delia: You need a whole person-
• 37:34
  Jeanne: Yeah, that's very important.
• 37:35
  Jeanne: But I, I like your model, your strategy on that.
• 37:38
  Jeanne: I've always been a big proponent of train the trainer, 'cause I worked in technology for so long.
• 37:44
  Jeanne: There's no way you can introduce a new, um, a new s- platform, a new software, uh, make significant upgrades to one, and then turn around and train everybody on it, just a single person or just a couple people.
• 38:00
  Jeanne: So you have to train people to then train people.
• 38:04
  Delia: You do it.
• 38:04
  Jeanne: So your model sounds really good.
• 38:06
  Jeanne: Train the educators so they can turn around and tr- uh, help the people.
• 38:11
  Jeanne: That's a great, that's a great idea.
• 38:14
  Delia: We'll see where it takes me.
• 38:17
  Delia: That's my dream.
• 38:19
  Jeanne: All right.
• 38:20
  Jeanne: So you've watched children go from barely decoding words to reading on their own.
• 38:25
  Jeanne: So what does that moment do to a person who's been in the room for it hundreds of times?
• 38:33
  Delia: Repeat your question?
• 38:35
  Jeanne: So I'm talking about your, your, um, gone… You've watched children go from barely decoding words to reading on their own.
• 38:44
  Jeanne: So what does that moment do to a person who's been in the room for it hundreds of times and couldn't understand what was going on?
• 38:53
  Delia: Transformation.
• 38:55
  Delia: It's like I feel happy because I know that I can do it, and I've done it.
• 39:01
  Delia: I know that practice makes perfect, like they say.
• 39:06
  Delia: But they, they, when they come in here, they're very insecure.
• 39:11
  Delia: And I can tell you a story about Brydon.
• 39:14
  Delia: Brydon was a first grader who played soccer also.
• 39:20
  Delia: Parents from Cuba.
• 39:23
  Delia: He's a first generation born here.
• 39:27
  Delia: And I said, "Brandon, why are you here?" 'Cause I always do an interview.
• 39:32
  Delia: I wanna see if they know why they're here.
• 39:34
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm.
• 39:34
  Delia: He goes, "Uh, I can't read." I said, "Okay, but you know that you're gonna learn to read, right?" He goes, "I don't know." And he went like that with his shoulders.
• 39:44
  Delia: And I said, "What, what would you like to be right now?
• 39:48
  Delia: 'Cause you don't wanna be here, do you?" He goes, "No, I don't wanna be here." And I said, "What do you wanna be?" He goes, "I wanna be playing soccer." So I used my intuition and I said, "This kid is totally kinesthetic.
• 40:01
  Delia: If I put him on a chair and force him to look at the alphabet and call out the sounds, that's gonna be torture." So I went into my yoga room, I picked up the 12-inch ball, and I said, "I don't have a soccer ball. My grandchildren have soccer balls, but they live seven miles away." And I made that connection that I had grandchildren so he didn't see me like a foreigner.
• 40:29
  Jeanne: Right.
• 40:30
  Delia: I said, "I could be your grandmother. Do you wanna play ball?" He goes, "Yes." And I said,"Okay, so now there's a requisite.
• 40:38
  Delia: As I toss the ball to you, you call the next letter in the alphabet.
• 40:43
  Delia: And if you know the sound, you're gonna give me the sound, too." So of course, the first day when we did that, he enjoyed the tossing back and forth.
• 40:55
  Delia: I had to recite the alphabet and give him the sounds.
• 41:00
  Delia: By the third session, he goes, "I know my letters." And I said, "If you know your letters, you knew them all along." Because how could he learn in three hours, right, of teaching?
• 41:12
  Delia: I said, "You knew it all along, but you didn't trust yourself. Thank you for participating." So he would always grab that aqua 12-inch yoga ball.
• 41:24
  Delia: I have it here and I'm looking at it.
• 41:26
  Delia: And-
• 41:26
  Jeanne: Mm-hmm… Delia: he would say, "Let's do the the vocabulary, again, we play games.
• 41:35
  Jeanne: We did kinesthetic activities to fit into the pattern that he learns.
• 41:42
  Jeanne: Not everybody learns by sitting down, writing and reading.
• 41:47
  Jeanne: That comes later.
• 41:49
  Jeanne: So I moved him along.
• 41:53
  Jeanne: I used the I See Sam books because those books are very easy.
• 41:57
  Jeanne: They start with, like, patterns.
• 42:01
  Jeanne: And I moved, like, 20 books and he goes, "I think I can read a paragraph." And I said, "Really?
• 42:10
  Jeanne: Let's see." Because he was getting already As in the spelling, 'cause I was also helping him with the spelling words, playing a game on the floor with cards, where he had to go and step on the word.
• 42:21
  Jeanne: I used kinesthetic movement.
• 42:25
  Jeanne: So I go, "Do you think you can read a paragraph?" He goes, "Yes." So I jump a whole bunch of levels.
• 42:31
  Jeanne: I didn't say, "You have to go through all the levels before you can read a paragraph." No.
• 42:36
  Jeanne: My common sense told me, if he says that he can read a paragraph, let's see.
• 42:40
  Jeanne: I pick the last book, I open it, and I said, "Can you read here?" And he read.
• 42:46
  Jeanne: And he goes, "Oh my gosh, I can read." So what does that tell me?
• 42:52
  Jeanne: That they're learning but they're afraid because they're not confident.
• 42:56
  Jeanne: They don't know how to put it all together, so that's where the coach comes in and gives the student the reassurance, the technique, the strategy, the practice, that the parents have no time.
• 43:12
  Jeanne: Oh, that's wonderful story.
• 43:15
  Jeanne: And so how long ago was that?
• 43:17
  Delia: That was, um, January 2025 to June 2025.
• 43:26
  Delia: The one that I taught this year, because I'm working the business five day, four days a week, and one day I tutor.
• 43:33
  Delia: The one that I tutor this year, I tutor him in math and in reading, but mostly reading, and he score above grade level.
• 43:43
  Delia: I had David since January 2024, so seven months?
• 43:52
  Delia: No.
• 43:53
  Delia: I had him for five months, then seven months and seven month, 14, 19 months.
• 44:00
  Delia: Total of 19 month.
• 44:02
  Delia: He's already reading above grade level.
• 44:06
  Delia: And the parents are so happy that they called me yesterday and they said, "We're gonna put him… He's going to middle school now, but we're gonna have him e- reading with you," because I also do high school kids.
• 44:18
  Delia: And I also had a high school child in 10th grade that was to- gifted, couldn't read.
• 44:25
  Delia: Getting Fs from the gifted program.
• 44:31
  Delia: And I said… He goes, "I need to be here with my sister." I said,"Well, tell me what your problem is." He goes, "I don't wanna read the chapter books that they give me.
• 44:41
  Delia: The language is like another language.
• 44:43
  Delia: It doesn't sound like English." And I said, "Everything is possible." So i- yeah, the book was written in 1954, Fahrenheit
• 44:56
  Jeanne: Oh, I know that book.
• 44:58
  Delia: And the lang-
• 44:58
  Jeanne: Is it written so it doesn't- The language- … sound like, um, a normal language?
• 45:02
  Jeanne: That's, I don't remember it being that hard
• 45:04
  Delia: Yeah, the language was, uh, inven- uh, made up for the future.
• 45:07
  Jeanne: Yeah.
• 45:07
  Delia: So the words that they use, you really have to pay attention when you're reading because there's a lot of imaginary, and probably he didn't know how to read and reflect what he was reading form of a picture.
• 45:21
  Delia: When I show him the strategy, he aced the class.
• 45:26
  Delia: Oh.
• 45:28
  Delia: It's, it's technique.
• 45:30
  Jeanne: That's fantastic.
• 45:32
  Jeanne: Well, I know, I know that you, um, have this great business to help students and, you know, I really feel like you're doing such a wonderful job.
• 45:41
  Jeanne: So, um, do you wanna tell us anything else about, um, any of your other students?
• 45:48
  Jeanne: Uh, because we're getting ready to transition over to two truths and a lie, so I wanna give you the floor for a second.
• 45:52
  Delia: No, I think that's en- that's enough.
• 45:54
  Delia: I think I've told you enough about reading.
• 45:56
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 45:57
  Jeanne: Well, I like it.
• 45:58
  Jeanne: I, I think- Good … it's interesting.
• 45:59
  Jeanne: I, uh, when you said he couldn't read it'cause it's in a different language, I was thinking in my brain, Shakespeare?
• 46:07
  Jeanne: I could not understand that for the longest time.
• 46:10
  Delia: Same here.
• 46:12
  Jeanne: Oh my gosh.
• 46:13
  Jeanne: But you did, you said you liked a lot of the classics, so what do you, what, just tell us what your-
• 46:17
  Delia: But i-… Jeanne: favorite book is… Delia: but I did read the
• 46:21
  Jeanne: Oh… Delia: lived in Spain.
• 46:23
  Jeanne: And then when I came over here, then of course they were doing Shakespeare in 10th grade and 11th grade, and I had to learn.
• 46:31
  Jeanne: It was very difficult for me to identify those metaphors, but I already knew how to learn.
• 46:37
  Jeanne: Learning how to learn is the key- Mm-hmm… Delia: because no matter what bring it from your home language.
• 46:47
  Jeanne: And because I knew that I didn't have the vocabulary or to understand the metaphors, but I knew that were metaphors, I knew that if I use my dictionary and I discuss it with other students, I would get my lesson done.
• 47:02
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 47:02
  Delia: And that's how I learned.
• 47:04
  Delia: The, the key-
• 47:05
  Jeanne: What is your favorite classical book?
• 47:08
  Delia: My favorite classical book?
• 47:11
  Delia: I guess Romeo and Juliet.
• 47:14
  Jeanne: And then we go to Shakespeare again.
• 47:16
  Delia: I'm a romantic.
• 47:20
  Jeanne: All right.
• 47:20
  Jeanne: Well, so now's the time we transition to two truths and a lie.
• 47:24
  Jeanne: Uh, and so for those listening, uh, I'll tell you how we play this.
• 47:28
  Jeanne: Delia has provided me with three headlines about herself, um, that show a little bit more of the personal side, and we're going to… I'm gonna read off her headlines, and then I'm gonna guess which one I think is the lie.
• 47:42
  Jeanne: Two are true, one's a lie.
• 47:44
  Delia: Oh, boy.
• 47:44
  Jeanne: And then she will go through them one at a time, but not tell us which one's the lie until the very end.
• 47:52
  Jeanne: She'll revea- reveal the truth, so you guys can play along with us.
• 47:56
  Jeanne: So here we go.
• 48:00
  Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
• 48:06
  Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, "Life can be different." Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story.
• 48:31
  Jeanne: And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech.
• 48:36
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• 48:55
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• 49:02
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• 49:07
  Jeanne: Thank you to our sponsors.
• 49:11
  Jeanne: All right, I'm gonna share my screen and read the headlines.
• 49:15
  Jeanne: So number one story is, at 14, Delia found herself lost in a new country, unable to speak the language and unsure how she would ever get home.
• 49:29
  Jeanne: Uh, that sounds scary, at 14.
• 49:33
  Jeanne: Uh, number two, a chance encounter in Vienna left Delia convinced she had recognized Lauren Bacall.
• 49:39
  Jeanne: But before she could confirm it, the act- actress vanished into the city.
• 49:45
  Jeanne: And she's a beautiful woman, Lauren Bacall.
• 49:47
  Jeanne: I, I always loved to watch her.
• 49:49
  Jeanne: Um, Delia was invited… Number three, Delia was invited to teach reading strategies to astronauts aboard the International Space Station through a literacy initiative aimed at studying reading comprehension in zero gravity.
• 50:04
  Jeanne: Well, that one's cool.
• 50:06
  Jeanne: I love it.
• 50:07
  Jeanne: So I'm gonna say, um, number two is a lie.
• 50:11
  Jeanne: I really want number three to be true, but I, I don't know if it will be
• 50:17
  Delia: Okay.
• 50:19
  Jeanne: Do you need another break?
• 50:20
  Delia: So what, what is my-
• 50:21
  Jeanne: Do you need another-
• 50:21
  Delia: What is my job now, to tell the stories?
• 50:23
  Jeanne: Uh, yeah.
• 50:24
  Jeanne: Well, hold on.
• 50:25
  Jeanne: Uh, did you need another break'cause you were coughing?
• 50:28
  Delia: I, I drank a little bit.
• 50:29
  Delia: I took a sip.
• 50:31
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 50:32
  Jeanne: Yeah, so what Delia's gonna do now is take us through the story.
• 50:34
  Jeanne: So start with number one, Delia.
• 50:37
  Delia: And number one is?
• 50:40
  Jeanne: Um, that you found yourself lost in a new country, unable to speak the-
• 50:43
  Delia: Oh, wow.
• 50:44
  Delia: Yes.
• 50:45
  6: 00. Now I'm gonna go to the middle of the story.
• 50:50
  6: 00, I pull into Royal Castle.
• 50:55
  6: I sit on a stool, and I see the chef cooking sliders.
• 51:02
  6: And I decided after being lost for two hours, I'm gonna pull my change from my little wallet and buy myself a root beer and a slider.
• 51:17
  6: And I had my notebook opened with my address.
• 51:22
  6: You see, that day I had to walk home from my, uh, middle school, and when I was told that I would walk rather than being picked up by car, they told me, "Are you sure that you know your way home?" And I said, "Sure.
• 51:38
  6: I know my way home." I didn't even rehearse how to get home because I had memorized the route.
• 51:51
  6: But what happened was I did the route that the car would do, which was go to my school and then go to the elementary school where my cousins went.
• 52:03
  6: So I totally got lost after the second bridge in Miami Beach.
• 52:08
  6: You know, there's a lot of canals, and I did the wrong turn probably a dozen times.
• 52:16
  School lets out at 2: 45, and by 6:00 I came to my senses, went into Royal Castle, order a cheeseburger, saw a couple of police officers, and asked, "Home, please."
• 52:35
  Jeanne: And they did it.
• 52:36
  Delia: And i… I smile, and they drove me home.
• 52:39
  Jeanne: Oh, that's wonderful.
• 52:42
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 52:42
  Jeanne: Well, uh, I've been to Miami, and I can't imagine where you would go without having to go onto a highway these days, so that's a scary thought for you.
• 52:54
  Jeanne: Um, so number two about going to Vienna.
• 52:59
  Delia: Oh.
• 53:00
  It's 2: 00 in the afternoon, and it's a very narrow sidewalk.
• 53:06
  It's 2: Only one person fits, so my husband is walking behind me.
• 53:13
  It's 2: And I'm looking forward, and he goes,"Look, that's the ca- the coffee house. We're almost there." And as I glance up, I see this beautiful woman in a tobacco silk pantsuit, three inches high heels, and a clutch.
• 53:36
  It's 2: And I said, "I know this woman." And I get all excited.
• 53:42
  It's 2: And I guess our eyes crossed one another because she became scared.
• 53:50
  It's 2: Even though I didn't speak, it's like I said, "I know this woman." And I looked into her after I looked at her clothes, and she was walking with a companion.
• 54:01
  It's 2: The girl was, like, six feet tall, beautiful blonde braided hair.
• 54:08
  It's 2: And she proceeded she was walking behind Lauren, and she proceeded to walk in front of her.
• 54:16
  It's 2: She made it to the courtyard to this huge door about eight inches in thickness, wood.
• 54:27
  It's 2: And I see her go in the courtyard, wait for Lauren, and then Lauren got in front of me.
• 54:33
  It's 2: And before I knew it, she disappear in that courtyard, and they closed the door.
• 54:37
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 54:39
  Jeanne: And no autograph.
• 54:40
  Delia: But you- It was a moment in, it was a moment in time.
• 54:44
  Jeanne: Oh, right.
• 54:45
  Jeanne: And you were very specific because you talked about a tobacco colored silk, uh, blouse or pantsuit.
• 54:52
  Delia: Could you imagine?
• 54:52
  Delia: And that, this was, this was 2002.
• 54:56
  Delia: And my husband, who always thought that I was a little bit, not awkward, but you know, I'm a, I'm like a I think a lot.
• 55:09
  Delia: He goes, "Oh my God.
• 55:11
  Delia: You and your stories and your ideas.
• 55:13
  Delia: Every women in Austria looks like Lauren Bacall." So before I told you the story, I said,"Could it be that I made that up?"
• 55:27
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 55:28
  Delia: And I went to AI and I asked,"Did Lauren Bacall visit Austria in 2002?" And AI says possibly because she had a boy- Even though she lived in, even though she lived in, um, New York.
• 55:46
  Delia: She had a boyfriend back then- Right… and she also participated in international movies, and she was going back and forth.
• 55:56
  Jeanne: Right.
• 55:57
  Delia: Okay.
• 55:57
  Delia: They couldn't say yes, but isn't that amazing?
• 56:00
  Jeanne: I know.
• 56:01
  Jeanne: It is.
• 56:02
  Jeanne: So how about number three about teaching the astronauts on the International Space Station?
• 56:07
  Jeanne: That sounds pretty cool.
• 56:09
  Delia: Wow.
• 56:11
  Delia: I don't know how I got that job, because I get sick when I fly-
• 56:17
  Jeanne: Mm… Delia: and when I ride carnival rides.
• 56:21
  Jeanne: So that was really challenging.
• 56:25
  Jeanne: You actually went up into the space station?
• 56:30
  Delia: I did the, what do you call it when you, it, it's not re- Yeah, you're going to the space station, but it's all simulated.
• 56:37
  Jeanne: Oh.
• 56:39
  Delia: But you experience the same symptoms, right?
• 56:42
  Jeanne: Oh, yeah.
• 56:44
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 56:44
  Delia: So imagine teaching English as a second language by teaching reading to astronauts that were not Americans.
• 56:55
  Delia: That was a trip.
• 56:56
  Jeanne: Mm.
• 56:56
  Delia: Everybody floating in the air, trying to hold on to their books back in the day.
• 57:06
  Jeanne: That is kind of crazy.
• 57:09
  Delia: Back in the day before we had iPhones, before we had any of this new technology where you open the phone and you can read a book out of your phone.
• 57:19
  Delia: I mean, children don't realize what we have
• 57:24
  Jeanne: I was actually doing that this morning.
• 57:26
  Jeanne: You're talking about me.
• 57:27
  Jeanne: So you've actually taught people in a space station.
• 57:31
  Jeanne: Okay.
• 57:31
  Jeanne: So I just think that's insane, but it sounds cool.
• 57:35
  Jeanne: So tell us which one is the lie.
• 57:38
  Delia: The last one.
• 57:39
  Jeanne: Ah.
• 57:41
  Jeanne: That would've been cool if it was, it was true.
• 57:45
  Jeanne: Um, but, uh, I can see that, you know, there could be some challenges with you actually fly- or going in a rocket up to the space station.
• 57:54
  Jeanne: So when you said simulator, I said,"Well, that makes it even more plausible." Oh, well, well, this was fun.
• 58:00
  Jeanne: So I know people are gonna listen to this episode and hear all about what you're doing with reading and helping students read, 'cause this is a very big crisis in the United States, and I'm, I'm so glad you're out there trying to fill that gap.
• 58:13
  Jeanne: Um, but if you wanna get in touch with Delia, I've got her information down here on the slide.
• 58:19
  Jeanne: Um, she gave us a great quote called, uh, that says, "Every independent reader is a result of a visionary educator who refused to give up on a child." And I think that says a lot about you, Delia.
• 58:33
  Jeanne: Um-
• 58:33
  Delia: Thank you… Jeanne: you can contact her, and here's link, her Instagram, her LinkedIn.
• 58:41
  Delia: And the call to action that you gave, you told everybody to book a Read with Ease Strategy Session and discover how you can transform struggling readers while building a profitable reading business, and all the details- Yes … there.
• 58:54
  Jeanne: All this will be, oh, yeah, and she offers a gift code, Delia Perujera-
• 59:00
  Delia: Pereyera
• 59:01
  Jeanne: Pereyera gift Gift Yeah.
• 59:04
  Jeanne: So please, um, please check those out, and, um, then book that stra- strategy session if you've got anybody that's struggling with reading.
• 59:13
  Jeanne: Maybe I need to do it sometime too.
• 59:15
  Jeanne: I'd just like to see what you do.
• 59:19
  Jeanne: Uh, anyway, uh, this has been a fantastic, uh, episode with you, Delia.
• 59:24
  Jeanne: I'm so thankful that you, um, came on.
• 59:26
  Jeanne: And I, uh, want to say to everybody watching, please join us next week when we have another great guest on Project Candor.
• 59:35
  Jeanne: And until then, I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen, uh, the Admiral of the Unexpected, and I wish you all smooth sailing.
• 59:44
  Jeanne: Bye.
• 59:46
  Delia: Bye-bye.
• 59:49
  Jeanne: Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real.
• 59:56
  Jeanne: If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew.
• 1:00:01
  Jeanne: Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck.
• 1:00:05
  Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
• 1:00:09
  Jeanne: See you on the next voyage.