“As a student, I had great difficulty concentrating during lesson time and consequently didn’t retain much knowledge. I was diagnosed with dyslexia and had the symptoms of attention deficit disorder. Academic information just didn’t get through to me. Here are samples of reports that my teachers sent home when I was ten:
- “He tends to dream in the middle of a calculation which leads him to lose track of the thought.”
- “Has not paid much attention. Appears to know more of the Universe than the Earth.” (This was a veiled reference to daydreaming from my Geography teacher.)
- “Terribly slow. Often cannot repeat the question. Must concentrate.”
- “Unless Dominic really shakes himself up and gets down to work, he is not going to achieve any success . . . he is painfully slow.”
The comments contained no evidence that I would one day become an eight-time World Memory Champion and author of over a dozen books and courses on memory training. So what happened?”
Continue reading Dominic’s story here: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/win-the-memory-game-dominic-obrien
Teaching Today - Minnesota 