Interview with Howard Eaton, Ed.M.

What is Eaton Arrowsmith School?

Families regularly turn to us to help their children or young adults with learning differences. They often have tried everything from special reading programs, tutors, or other private schools, yet their children continue to struggle academically and at times socially. Many have nearly given up hope for their child to live a successful, independent life.

What we do is restore that hope and transform their children’s lives by approaching things differently.

Eaton Arrowsmith School offers specialized programs onsite in Vancouver, BC and Redmond WA. There is also an online program for children and adults with learning differences. Our programs are designed to enhance cognitive capacities. We don’t teach children or adults to work around their cognitive weaknesses. Eaton Arrowsmith School has help them address these challenges head-on.

If learning differences are impacting your family, you know how tough it can be. Although many children and adults with learning differences can achieve just as much as their peers, the sheer effort required can be overwhelming. They must work much harder and put in many more hours than their friends. For many, the stress and fatigue become too much. They might suffer from depression, anxiety, or behavioral problems, and may even consider dropping out of school early. These challenges can lead to serious problems in adulthood as they struggle to cope with the world around them.

Were you diagnosed with a learning disability?

Yes. I know all about this because I’ve been there myself. I was diagnosed with severe developmental dyslexia in 1971 when I was in Grade 1 attending Maple Grove Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As a child, I was inquisitive and curious. I wanted to learn about everything and was always the kid asking, ‘Why?’ I was excited about starting school due to my eagerness to learn. However, my experience didn’t match my expectations. Instead of feeding my curiosity, school crushed it due to my cognitive weaknesses in the classroom. I really hated school.

Many people think that dyslexia simply means struggling with reading and writing, but it’s much more than that. I struggled to keep up with my teachers’ instructions, analyze what I was hearing, and effectively express my thoughts on paper. Although I eventually learned to read, I had to read each textbook four times to fully understand it and retain the information. Everything took longer, leading to cognitive fatigue.

By the fifth grade, I was severely depressed and suicidal. I felt like a failure and remember telling my parents about my plan to drown myself in the bath using bricks to hold me down. The pain felt unbearable.

My parents were incredibly loving and supportive. They tried everything to help me, from investing in special reading programs to sending me to a private boarding school for boys with dyslexia, 3,000 miles from home. They were desperate to give me every opportunity to succeed in life, but so was I.

Once you learned to read was learning much easier?

Unfortunately, none of these so-called solutions truly helped me in the classroom. I learned to read using the Orton-Gillingham method, but struggled in the classroom due to ongoing cognitive weaknesses with auditory processing for listening and remembering, and visual-motor integration needed for printing and copying speed. Orton-Gillingham was not designed to change or enhance the brain areas needed for classroom success because, back then, nobody considered that a possibility.

My childhood was tough, but despite hating school, I managed to get through it without being picked on, primarily because I was good at sports. However, I saw many children like me being ridiculed by teachers and bullied by peers. It made me so angry that I often stepped in to help them fight their battles.

What was even worse than seeing those kids being berated was seeing the look in their eyes showing they had given up on themselves. They felt hopeless and believed they wouldn’t amount to anything. It was heartbreaking and seemed unfair.

Why did you go into education?

That sense of injustice has stayed with me throughout my life. When I left school, I decided to help children who struggled like me by changing the education system. I thought becoming a teacher would allow me to do that from the inside, so I went to university to study psychology and special education.

It wasn’t easy. I faced challenges like those in elementary school and high school, but I was driven and determined, so I persevered and eventually completed my degree after fighting the University of British Columbia for a language exemption in 1990.

After university, I was thrilled to land my first teaching job. However, on my first day, the unique smell of the school brought back all the anxiety I had felt as a student, and I almost turned back home.

Luckily, I didn’t. When I met my students, I saw the same problems still existed for children with cognitive weaknesses, strengthening my resolve to make a difference in dyslexia and find a new way of doing things.

Before long, I made a name for myself as an educator. I became an assessor, identifying and supporting children with dyslexia, and was appointed to dyslexia boards due to my specialist knowledge.

How did you hear about the Arrowsmith Program?

During this time, one of my clients—a parent of a child with dyslexia—asked if I had heard of an educator named Barbara Arrowsmith-Young. She worked in the emerging field of neuroplasticity and had radical new ideas for treating people with learning differences.

Being my inquisitive self, I investigated her work immediately. I soon became convinced that she could help me in my quest to transform the education system for children with learning differences. She said, ‘The brain can change.’

Barbara had compelling evidence to prove the brain could be enhanced and cognitive dysfunctions transformed. They didn’t need to be lifelong disabilities. I read about her revolutionary program that directly targeted the brain functioning.

Learning this was amazing. In that moment, I decided to dedicate my life to ensuring no child with learning differences would have to endure the years of misery and struggle that I and so many of my classmates had experienced.

We were told by our teachers and doctors that the best we could do was work around our cognitive weaknesses. We were told these weaknesses were permanent and that we would never achieve anything significant. As adults, we struggled with low self-esteem and various mental health issues like depression and anxiety—constantly believing we could never truly excel. I didn’t want that to happen anymore.

So, in December 2004, I flew to Toronto and met with Barbara. She was remarkable, humble, and knowledgeable. After that meeting, I was convinced I should open my own school for people with learning differences using Barbara's methods—so that's what I did, and that school became Eaton Arrowsmith School.

I was excited about the school, as were many parents of children with learning differences. However, what really surprised me was the skepticism from so many medical professionals and teachers. They were deeply entrenched in their thinking and unwilling to consider new ideas, so they disagreed with what I was proposing. I was often shunned by my community and removed from many of the boards I had served on.

But I never gave up. I knew how beneficial our methods were. I saw the transformation in my students—and, as time went on, my peers did too. The results speak for themselves. I was also fortunate to coordinate some of the first brain imaging research on the Arrowsmith Program at the University of British Columbia. A bit ironic, as that was the university not wanting to give me my psychology degree 15 years previously.

Since Eaton Arrowsmith School opened its doors 19 years ago, we’ve helped more than 2,000 children and adults change their brains in ways that seemed unimaginable. We’ve helped them build a sense of self-worth, knowing they can achieve anything. When they leave our program, they leave with a life worth living.

What makes the Arrowmith Program so unique?

Unlike regular teaching methods, the Arrowsmith Program doesn't teach children or adults ways to work around their learning differences. The Arrowsmith Program uses neuroplasticity to go straight to the root of the problem and improve what were previously cognitive weaknesses. The focus is on strengthening critical, large-scale brain neural networks, essentially improving the brain's wiring and connectivity so it operates more efficiently, allowing children and adults to make better sense of the world around them. The neuroscience research over the last 10 years is showing this to be a fact for students engaged in the Arrowsmith Program. It is very exciting to see.

It may sound complicated, but it’s not. In practice, each student works with a teacher to complete a series of intensive and graduated cognitive exercises designed to strengthen any underlying weak cognitive capacities. Each program is based on a careful assessment to identify the student’s learning difficulties, and students can join virtually from anywhere in the world with as little as four hours a week.

I'm pleased to say that our students go on to return to public and private schools and the workforce with an increased capacity to learn. They complete high school, earn post-secondary diplomas or degrees, find employment in their chosen fields, or go directly into entrepreneurship after high school and pursue their dreams.

Thanks for your time, Howard.

Interview by Ife Thomas, London, England - Motivational Speaker, Author, Coach and TEDx Speaker

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