Today's Segments:
Supply Chain
How will the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key bridge impact the supply chain? We visit with Dr. Marcia Santiago Scarpin, a Supply Chain Management Specialist, and Director of the Management Science and Quantitative Methods Program at Concordia College.
Dyslexia and Haley's Hope
The inspiring story of Kari Bucholz. She left her career to learn about dyslexia and provide a better life for her son Haley, now a college graduate. Hailey's Hope now provides services to students and adults in a three-state area who suffer from Dyslexia. Haley's Hope provides the training that children and adults with dyslexia need. They equip them to better process and understand the information that they receive, and help turn dyslexia into an advantage.
Plains Folk Essay Tom Isern - The Invasion of Johnson County
Tom Isern's "The Invasion of Johnson County" provides an insightful look into the Johnson County War of Wyoming, emphasizing the clash between the Wyoming Stock Growers Association's wealthy cattlemen and smaller homesteaders. Isern critiques the skewed historical narratives that favored the cattlemen, highlighting the nuanced reality of the conflict as revealed in John W. Davis's "Wyoming Range War." He concludes by connecting the events to modern times through a forgotten ballad, underscoring the lasting impact of the war on Great Plains' cultural memory.
Transcript: Kari Bucholz, Dyslexia and Haley's Hope
Main Street
Kari, welcome to Main Street.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah, thanks for having me. I am so happy to visit with you.
For me, this has been a learning journey too, learning about what dyslexia is, and as we begin our conversation today, I think that's where I'd like to start. What is dyslexia?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
So, dyslexia is a reading and spelling challenge for students and adults. It is based on the processing of oral information in that left hemisphere of our brain. So it's not looking at letters or words backward, as I think most people think.
It's writing things backwards or seeing things backwards, like the word was or saw. It is more understanding the graphic images, the letters of our language, but then understanding what sound is attached to those. And then how do we blend those sounds together?
And our language is really quite difficult because all of the groups of letters that can make different sounds, but the stem part is neurological and how our brain is processing sounds.
Main Street
So it's not just what I see, it's also what I hear?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Actually, it's not at all what you see. It has nothing to do with eyesight, and it has everything to do with processing information. The part where we see or some of our kiddos will reverse letters or numbers is more of a directionality issue of how do I create that shape of, say, that B and D or P and Q that are so common?
How do I create that shape so it sounds the way I want it to sound? So those B and Ds are sticking in a circle, right? So really, it's guessing on where do I put that circle because I know it's somewhere.
Sometimes I know it's somewhere, but that's kind of the shape I want to create. But I don't understand what shape corresponds with the B sound or what shape corresponds with the D sound, right? It could be Ns and Us because we know that we have to kind of swoop our hand to create that letter, but I maybe swoop it right side up or swoop it right side down depending on if you want that uh sound or that n sound.
Sixes and nines, sevens. So it's more of a directionality of where we're putting our pencil and creating that graphic image.
Main Street
Your backstory of why we're sitting right here today is so inspirational to me. Carrie, you knew nothing about dyslexia before you had your son, Haley. Is that kind of true?
Absolutely.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
When I kind of tell our story or a backstory is my husband and I have two children and our daughter, three and a half years older, you know, was very quiet and shy. So I worried about her going to school because I wanted to make sure she had somebody to eat with at the lunch table and she could make friends in the playground and teachers would like her.
Main Street
Every parent's concerns.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Every parent's concerns, right? And as a new parent, that was my concern with her. But she went to school and just, there was like no issues.
She thrived. She did her homework in the car on the way home from school and I just, everybody was like she's just such a great student, right? And person.
I mean, along came this little boy and he just was not quiet and shy. So he would talk to anybody, talk to a rock, talk to a tree, just very outgoing and gregarious. So I never had any concerns about him going to school.
Main Street
Language skills were good.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Oh, language skills were awesome. He would remember things. He was using big words, just highly curious little man, you know?
And he was anxious to meet teachers and friends and kids and be in school and so I didn't, I didn't have a worry at all, you know? About a month into his preschool year, his teachers started telling us he wasn't keeping up with kids in his class. And I kind of said, I don't, what do you mean he's not keeping up?
Is he talking? Is it behavior? Is it, you know, what's he doing?
And she was like, no, he's a great kid, but he's just, just not where the other kids are. And as I say, that started this journey of trying to figure out why this happy, gregarious, outgoing, brilliant little boy was having difficulty in school. And we went through many different things of, you know, he ended up in Title I.
I didn't know what Title I was, why he was in it. Nobody told me he was in it.
Main Street
What is Title I?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
So Title I is a reading resource or a support system for either kids that are struggling with reading. Maybe they're struggling with math and they kind of get pulled into a little group outside of the classroom usually to get some reading intervention. And typically it is fluency based, right?
We just read more often because that's what they kept telling me is, you know what? You really need to read to him 20 minutes a night because he doesn't know how to read very well.
Main Street
Were you doing that? Were you reading books to your kids?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Oh gosh. Read to my daughter all the time. She loved to be read to every night.
I started that with Haley when he was younger and he just didn't like it as much as Summer did. But when I started to hear that he wasn't keeping up and I had to read to him every 20 minutes a night, I did. But it became not a fun thing for us because he would jump off, you know, the rocking chair and run around the rocking chair and I would still keep reading and, you know, finally in the end when we were just really getting nowhere, I would kind of hold him in bed with me and make him look at the pages and he would turn the pages really fast and look at the pictures as I figured out because he would tell me this story that was greater than the story that was on the page. Finally one night I looked at him after being angry and saying, why can't you read that word on the next page?
It was just on the page before. And why aren't you reading the words that are on the page, right?
Main Street
You were getting frustrated.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Oh, two years of frustration. And not only on my part but on his part, I mean, you know, we cried because we just didn't know what to do. And finally that one night I thought, it wasn't B's and D's, it wasn't reversal letters when he was writing.
It was more, I have no idea what you're looking at on that page, but I know you're not seeing what I'm seeing. I didn't ever think he was seeing things backwards. I just knew that looking at that page of words was really hard for him and it made him angry and anxious and upset because he couldn't do it.
Main Street
Forgive me for this question. You said he noticed the images. Could his mind process images just fine?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Oh gosh, yes.
Main Street
Without trouble?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yes. When we went to a neuropsych at one point to see what was going on, he was superior on, I think they do like looking at faces or looking at images and he could remember those in a split second. But when it came to letters, you would think that then he would be able to recognize that T-H-A-T was that all the time.
He didn't know what the word I was. If he looked at that letter, that's only one letter and it's a word to us too, right? He didn't know that that said I.
Yes, he can see things in his world and he remembers them and he can tell me what color shoes he was wearing on a particular trip that we had. So his memory, his visual memory is off the charts.
Main Street
When did you first hear the word dyslexia?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
He was in kindergarten after we had been in Title I, doing hearing tests, vision tests. This teacher, bless her, she was awesome, kept telling me, you know what, he is a really smart kid, but I don't think he's ready to go to first grade, but he's so smart that I don't think you should hold him back either. And she said, but I think you should look into dyslexia.
And then she said, don't tell anybody I said that word to you. And I didn't understand it then. And we still went for another year of, again, more neuropsychs, private tutoring until about October of his first grade year where we just, I completely hit the wall.
And this is when we were sitting in bed and looking at this book and I thought, something else is going on here. That I started to Google dyslexia and found this place that could assess him actually out of California, the Susan Barton Association.
Main Street
Put a time frame on this, about 15 years ago?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah. 15, 16 years ago. Yep.
He was six at the time, seven at the time, October of his first grade year. So research about dyslexia ended up finding somebody in St. Paul that had been trained because I couldn't, nobody would even say the word or knew what the word was here. When I started talking to her on the phone, I just was like, what, what are you talking about?
How do you know my son? How, how do you, have you been sitting in my house for the last two years? Because all the little things that I didn't know were warning signs were just like a be mean light right now.
I will say after that, I did at one point go to my pediatrician and share with him that I thought the neuropsych report that I had at that time was not accurate. And I wanted a referral to someplace down in the cities of Rochester. Because again, I knew something else was going on.
He was an ADHD. They had told me just to wait another year because he was a boy. Anyway, when I was sitting in his room, he too said, you know what?
And he started drawing some stuff on the whiteboard and he said, I think he's dyslexic. So here's this little word again. He shared with me what to do.
He said, take this note. He literally wrote me a note back to the school and ask him to do cognitive testing for him. So you can see that he has, you know, he's cognitively able to learn, but he can't in this sense.
Main Street
I should note here, intelligence essentially is not related to dyslexia.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Thank you. It is not. You have to be average to above average intelligence to be dyslexic.
You have to have the cognitive ability to learn. So again, another misnomer is that, you know, and I say the S word, they are not stupid. They are not dumb.
They are brilliant people. We just have to open their minds to the way they learn. Two places I heard this word dyslexia, I did go back to the school and ask them to do this testing and they literally looked at me and said, once you have your child on medication for six months, we'll consider doing that testing.
Main Street
He wasn't on medication, correct?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Wasn't on medication. Never was recommended. But again, and he wasn't behaviorally challenged in the classroom, but he was off task.
When that preschool teacher said he wasn't keeping up with the rest of the kids in the class, it was because he was off task. He didn't look like he was paying attention because he had no idea what was going on in the classroom. Eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, you're looking at written material.
You're writing things. You're trying to process information orally, right? And write that down in a written language.
So that assumption that you're off task and you're not paying attention is a behavioral issue. We have to really understand what is the problem behind these situations. Certainly, you know, ADHD is not something that you take lightly either, but we have to figure out what is the biggest factor in holding those kids back.
So needless to say, nothing was done. And that's again, when I started this little world and thought, okay, I, I lost that happy little boy.
Main Street
You had to advocate for your son in a way that it changed your life.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yep. I lost that happy little boy I sent to school and nobody could figure out how to get him back.
Main Street
Were you convinced at that time he had dyslexia? Were you pretty sure?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Oh no, I had no idea until we went in January of his first grade year to have that assessment done. And once I saw the results of that and had researched what dyslexia was, I instantly knew that, I mean, he's profoundly dyslexic. He's not mild.
He's not classic.
Main Street
He's not severe. There are different levels of dyslexia. There are different levels.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
He is profoundly dyslexic and severely dysgraphic. So once I found those results, I knew that that's what it was. And it gave me a path to go down.
It gave me a way to help him and a way to understand how he worked and how I had to work with him. And again, that was one of those, well, yeah, life-changing events.
Main Street
Did the schools know much about dyslexia?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
At that time, nobody did. Physicians didn't. Neuropsychs didn't.
I was literally told a couple years after I started Haley's Hope by a superintendent of a rural school, because a parent had asked about dyslexia and that superintendent had told her and told me, actually on the phone, that what I was doing was superstition and it was witchcraftery.
Main Street
This is from a person in power who's a superintendent of a school in our state.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah. And that was probably 2012, maybe 2013.
Main Street
That must have made you angry.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
You know, it made me angry, but here's been my thing since day one. I had such a challenge trying to figure out what was going on with Haley. After I went and got trained and learned it was one in five, I knew I just, there are more kids like him out there.
I've always said, I will do whatever it takes to try and get to those kids and to get those adults. But I said, you know, I was not let in the front door of the schools. I was not let in the back door of the schools.
I was not let in the side door of the schools. But I still was like, you know what, if I have to go through the roof or dig a hole underneath to find those kids, that's what I need to do because I know there's so many kids struggling. So was I angry?
I was frustrated because it was so far away from what the truth is, right? And so far away from why, why can't we just help these kids and figure out what's going on? But I knew it, you know, those kinds of things just give me, puts fire in my belly.
And look at today. Look at today. We have three laws in our state that have been a group effort, but three laws in our state for dyslexia in education, opposed to this one, well, many incidents, but this one particular incident about that it was witchcraftry.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
I am an interior designer by trade, so I have no educational background, right? Once we found out Haley was dyslexic and we literally, we drove to St. Paul every week for six months, took him out of school. He would tutor one hour one day, one hour the next day, until I could go to California in June of that year and trained with Susan Barton on what dyslexia is, trained on tutoring him myself.
And that first day, I learned that it was one in five.
Main Street
One in five kids have some form of dyslexia.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
One in five. That evening, in between sessions, I called my husband crying and I just said, Kevin, we need to help more kids. His reaction was for many years, we need to take care of Haley first.
And of course that was the mission, but somehow I knew our struggle was so huge and that lack of understanding I needed to help other kids. So fast forward, you know, 2011, crazy way these things happen. I had trying to figure out a name for this business and did some work with my marketing person for by design.
And we came up with this name, Haley's Hope. And then it was, okay, what do we do? How do we open?
We don't have any money. Actually was meeting at a, with a banker doing some personal stuff for our loan. And she said, Oh, what are you doing?
And I kind of started talking to her about Haley and dyslexia. And she's like, Oh my God, my daughter is dyslexic. I read everything to her all through college.
She said, you really need to start that. Literally two days before I called this landlord and said, I can't take that space because I don't have any money. I don't know how to pay you.
So I can't take that space. When I left that bank, I called him on the phone and said, you know what? I'm going to take that space.
I don't know how I'm going to pay you, but I need to take it. And so that was January 1st, 2011. We technically opened the doors to Haley's Hope.
Main Street
What was your vision then?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Wow. That's a, that's a big question. My, I wanted to just find kids, find more of the kids that were struggling because parents were reaching out to me now because Haley had changed, you know, his, his whole social demeanor, his whole school demeanor had changed.
I'm not saying it wasn't a struggle still, but parents started reaching out and saying, and said, what did you do? So I think my goal at that time was just, I need to reach more kids. I'm one that my husband always says this idea of thinking outside the box.
People need to think outside the box a little bit more often. My husband always says, can you get back in the box? Because when you think outside of the box, you kind of do crazy things.
So I don't really know what my goal was. It was just to help kids. I didn't know how that would transpire.
I did go back a couple of years later and get trained on identifying dyslexia so that we could screen and assess.
Main Street
So there's the screening and the assessment, but then there's also the, the surface end of what it is that you provide. How do you do all that?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
We need to figure out why kids are struggling. Is the main culprit dyslexia? Is the main culprit attention?
Is the main culprit something else? And then see, you know, where they are on that scale, if it is dyslexia, even or not. Okay.
So once we identify, then we need to look at that specific tutoring. So we do have about 30 literacy coaches, we call them, that work one-on-one with our kids through this Orton Gillingham program, the Barton Reading and Spelling System. So that is the core of what we do is identify and tutor.
Main Street
This is extra to any services that a child may or may not be receiving in school.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Absolutely.
Main Street
Yeah.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
90% of our kids come after school hours.
Main Street
How do the parents cover the cost of that? Because this is not a come to the doctor, get a pill and be, you know, better for the rest of your life.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Right? No. Insurance doesn't claim dyslexia.
Main Street
Though one in five kids have some form of dyslexia, insurance does not cover services for those who have dyslexia. Exactly. Why is that?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah. I don't know. You know, the medical community doesn't embrace it in that fact.
I mean, they do now, you know, have in a DSM, you know, identifier for specific learning disability or dyslexia, but the medical community or the insurance doesn't claim it because they assume that the schools are taking care of it, right? They're teaching reading. And the schools aren't claiming it because they don't have the understanding or the knowledge of the difference between developing reading fluency and developing basic literacy skills so that you can read, right?
It's not about using picture clues or contextual clues to learn how to read. I mean, some of our kids can do well with that, but one in five need to understand what those little scribbles on the page are. So it's kind of goes back and forth.
The insurance, I think medical community says, well, they're teaching that in schools and why should we pay for it? And the schools without knowing are not teaching to the real root of the problem. So for us, my model as a nonprofit, because I never wanted to, when I started, rely on grants or outside funding to keep myself open.
Because if you lose those monies, I can't help kids. We are a fee-based nonprofit. So it is, we charge the parents, they pay out of pocket.
It hurts me to do that because it can be limiting. Although we do have sponsorships and I just, any student that walks through our doors or calls us, I can guarantee that they're going to get support somehow here because I don't ever want to turn somebody away. But it is fee-based.
So the majority of our revenue comes from the fee base for our tutoring services.
Main Street
A student, a third grader who has been diagnosed with some form of dyslexia, they come to you after school. What do they do? What do you do?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Well, we greet them at the door. I would say, I would really have to say almost all of our kids enjoy coming. They don't mind coming.
They're not fighting parents to get out and come in. So greet them at the door. They meet with their literacy coach that they have all the time.
So it's one-on-one with the same literacy coach. And we start by, I'm going to say, I always say this, teaching them how to read with their eyes closed. I need them to be able to hear and process the sounds of our language, manipulate those phonemic awareness before I ever teach them what a letter is and what sound is attached to that letter.
During the whole program, in every lesson, we work with auditory skills. We work with identifying letters and their sounds. We work with blending those sounds together in real words and nonsense words.
We do sight word work. We do fluency work. So it's a very structured program and it's a very deep program.
We introduce letters really systematically, not all at once.
Main Street
How do you know what you do works?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
The biggest thing is the confidence these kids come out with in a matter of a couple sessions. These kids are broken. They think they're that S word.
They think they can't learn. They can't read. They can't write because they can't spell.
I always tell parents the first thing you're going to see is their confidence and they're going to start reading street signs. They're going to start reading the McDonald's menu board. They're going to start reading things that are in your house.
And that confidence that they get for understanding those black marks on a page allows them to understand that they can learn. Oh my gosh, I can figure this out. And so that's really the first thing we see is that confidence and that ability to just try.
One of the things that will be the thing that I make sure our literacy coaches do and we all do is we need to meet that student where they're at. We're not pushing them to do something that they aren't capable of doing yet. We need to build that skill piece by piece so that they can push themselves to do more.
And then we can push a little bit more and say, you know what, you couldn't understand a letter before. Now you're reading single syllable words and two syllable words. I had a young boy in here yesterday that I listened to him reading a paragraph.
He is 13, 14 years old. He did not know letters. He could not tell me what M was.
He could not tell me what P was. He had no idea what that shape was. He could not write his name.
He could not read a thing. He read a two paragraph little story for me. The change in number one, his fear was gone that he could read in front of me and somebody else.
That he could read these words fluently. He has since gone on to be in some other community and organizations that he never thought he would be able to do.
Main Street
Kari, we're in your offices here in West Fargo at Haley's Hope and I'm looking at three words big on the wall right behind you. Integrity, acceptance, determination. How do you use those words?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Integrity is we need to do to others as we would want done to us, right? We need to be able to sit in their shoes and understand that we have the responsibility of being the best we can be. The acceptance is as I talked about before is we have to look across the table to see who that student is and what their needs are and accept them for their strengths and for their weaknesses in reading and understand that somebody is going to be more challenged and somebody is going to be able to learn a little bit faster.
But our mission is to look across the table and see who is needing our support. And the determination for me is I go back to when I said I can't get in the front door, the back door, the ceiling, the roof, the floor. Is I will, I will, I will.
I will do whatever it takes to help those kids, those students, those adults learn literacy skills so they can be a part of our community and our society.
Main Street
We spent a lot of time, Kari, visiting about students. What about adults that might be hearing our discussion?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
I love that we're going to talk about adults because we have had several adults, adults in the past few years that have gone through our program and again just life-changing. One man who just so articulate you would never know came to us because he had a son and he wanted to read him books when he got old enough and he couldn't read. He has since gone to get two or three job promotions and I think he just finished his master's degree.
Our push for the next couple years not only to take care of those students but we need to reach those adults that are struggling in the workforce, knowing that they can do so much more than they maybe are doing in their position and can help support those businesses or corporations with their skills as long as we just understand what they are. So we have had many adults in the past. I want to reach those adults and make our corporations and our businesses and our community stronger by giving these people a chance to really be who they are.
Main Street
Catch me up with Haley. He's graduated from high school. What's he doing now?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah, well he graduated from high school. He graduated from college. He is done with UND.
He graduated with a very high GPA.
Main Street
I have goosebumps.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
That's cool. It's incredible. He used to ask me, we used to sit every year, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade.
Mom, am I going to pass? Am I going to get to the next grade? For years, his senior year, we sat down with a counselor to kind of get ready for graduation and she looked at us and she said, what do you want on your diploma?
And he turned to me and he's like, mom, we did it. So he graduated high school. He graduated college.
He's in a sales position at Butler Machinery in town that he loves because again, he can see something, he can look at that machinery and he just knows what's going on. And his sales ability is awesome. He can relate with people really well.
He got married last August to a wonderful girl, Minda.
Main Street
I'm going to ask a really naive question here. Is dyslexia genetic? Do we know?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yes, it is definitely hereditary. 50, 50 chance that somebody else in your family is going to be dyslexic. We have some families that four kids are coming here, all different ranges of severities.
We have twins. One is profoundly dyslexic. One is not dyslexic.
Oftentimes when I talk to parents, they say, I don't know. But yeah, grandma used to read grandpa all of the newspapers or grandma used to sign, write out all the checks when they went to town, right? So absolutely hereditary.
You will find it in your family tree if you start talking to people and listening to what's being said.
Main Street
Carrie, if those who are listening right now are thinking, I need to maybe reach out to you, but I don't know, what should they do?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
So the thing that we have on our website, there's a page that goes through some warning signs. It's really easy. You don't have to feel like you need to call in yet.
Just go to that page, click on some warning signs. Think to yourself, oh my gosh, some of those things really fit me and maybe I should call.
Main Street
And you can just Google Haley's Hope.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Haley's Hope.org. Yep. You will find that.
We get an inquiry. We get that report. If you feel like, oh my gosh, this may be the reason as an adult or as a parent struggling with your child, give us a call.
We'll talk you through what we do, how we do it. Certainly you decide if you feel like it's time to come in for an initial assessment. We have no, you know, we're not locked into anything.
Main Street
What can they expect at an initial assessment?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Okay. So first we need to do a parent interview. And that, I love to be in person, so I encourage that.
But we can do that phone or Zoom because we really service our tri-state area. So Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. But at that point, I really want to get some background on the student and educational history, family history, some questions to understand what's going on.
From there, you schedule an assessment. And so whatever you come in that day, it usually takes a couple hours, just depending how long or how much a person can do. So we do many different norm standard assessments and some non-standard assessments.
And after that, we do a follow-up meeting where I sit down with the parents or the adult and talk through what we found. And is it something that they need us for right away? Is it something that we need to refer out first and get this taken care of before this can be taken care of?
So if that person wants to start tutoring, then we put you in our, we call it our circle of support, where we all sit together and learn about this new person and figure out how to get them into tutor.
Main Street
You've come so far since you opened your doors. I have a feeling there's more to do. What's your vision for five or ten years from now for Haley's Hope?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Well, right now, one of our biggest things that I wanted to do, because Haley and I ended up moving outside of Boston for a summer and going to a school specifically for kids with dyslexia. He went to school during the day and I went to some training. And so we did create a summer academy that is based off of that.
So that has been one of my big goals through the years. That is running every year. We've also formed a math program.
So we do math intervention. I want to expand the summer academy. I want to expand our math program.
I want to expand our reach to adults. What I would really love to do, I've always talked about, you know, we need a school here. I would love to be able to collaborate with a school that is passionate about helping our kids as I am.
There's no reason in our community that we can't come together and work together to help kids the way they need it.
Main Street
So that door, to use your metaphors, they're kind of closed to you?
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
That door is closed. That door is closed. It is unlocked.
It's not cracked open, but I think it's unlocked with more education and understanding of how just to teach. And I say it's not a problem with teachers necessarily, it's a problem with lack of education and understanding. So yeah, I would love to have an environment that our kids can be in from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon that understands and expresses their strengths.
Oh my gosh, you know, they are entrepreneurs. These are the people that build our world, right? They are outside-of-the-box thinkers.
They can do things with their hands and see things that other people can't see. They're inventors. And why are we questioning their spirits when the only thing they struggle with is print?
I do want to say when we talked about what we do and how we do it, and I mentioned that we are working in our tri-state area, we have a very strong virtual program. I want those rural communities to know that we will access them however we can. One of my goals with starting this was our challenge to have to drive three and a half hours every week to get services.
And one of my goals when I started is we need to reach those smaller communities that don't have access to things that we maybe think we have access to in the big city, which we didn't at that time. So I need and want to reach out to those rural communities to help those students.
Main Street
You mentioned on your website some famous folks who have figured out somewhere along the way that they have dyslexia. Give me some names.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Well, does everybody know Richard Branson? You know, if you look at some of his videos, he admits that when he sits in a financial meeting, he doesn't understand what the difference is between net and, you know, what he's making and what he's not making, right? He doesn't understand his financial debt.
But look at how brilliant he is and what he's been doing in the community. One of my favorites, of course, is Henry Winkler because he wrote a series of book, Hank Zipster, which I recommend to all parents to read with their kids because it follows, you know, almost him as a little boy and that those strengths and those challenges.
Main Street
So His biography is out now as well, and it's great.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah, and his biography is out. And I'm trying to think of some that are Friends.
Main Street
Jennifer Aniston.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Jennifer Aniston. You know, Walt Disney. Really?
Is another one. Whoopi Goldberg, you know, Winston Churchill. They're just really embedded in the foundation of our country and our world.
Anybody know Rashawn Gary or Connection to the Packers? I would love to have that.
Main Street
I think the great takeaway here is something we mentioned earlier. Somebody with dyslexia, and I'll say the word, is not stupid.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yeah, thank you. They need to hear that. They need to know that.
Main Street
Kari Buckles. She founded Haley's Hope. Your offices are here in West Fargo.
Congratulations for what you've done and best wishes.
Kari Bucholz, Haley's Hope
Yes, thank you so much.
NOTE: Prairie Public transcripts are created on a rush deadline by turboscribe.ai. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of "Main Street" is the audio record of the show.