There’s a story a lot of people tell about themselves that goes like this:

I’m just not a math person. Some people get it and some people don’t, and I’m in the “don’t” category. I’ve always been this way. It’s fine. I manage.

It’s told in a certain tone — part acceptance, part mild embarrassment, part practiced deflection to move the conversation along before anyone presses for details. The details being: how you quietly calculate tips on your phone before the check arrives. How you always “let” someone else split the bill. How you’ve never fully understood your own bank statements. How payday feels like briefly visiting a country where you speak the language and then slowly losing it again.

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A full-scale replica of one of the earliest programmable digital computers now fills a classroom space in Arizona, built almost entirely from cardboard and wood by students working under a teacher who credits his own dyscalculia (the math equivalent of dyslexia) for shaping how he engineers.

The life-size recreation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), widely regarded as the world’s first general-purpose programmable electronic computer, stretches across hundreds of square feet and mirrors the layout of the original machine that once weighed about 30 short tons.

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Keeping my kids as my main focus. When things got tough, I chose to homeschool. It started with one child, then two, and eventually three of my four children. That experience taught me how to truly support them and how to teach in a way that made sense for how they learn.
My strong entrepreneurial abilities, which I attribute to my neurospiciness. I have learned to lean into how my brain works instead of trying to fit into a traditional mold, and that has been a huge advantage in building my business.

What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Build your support system intentionally. Surround yourself with people who encourage you, challenge you, and remind you of your vision when things feel hard.

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See her story HERE

Have you ever felt like the mango in a line of lovebirds? Sure, you look like you fit in—same general shape, same red, yellow and green coloring—but, well, you’re a mango and everyone else is a bird.

That’s how Ruby Emmerson feels at Benton Academy, where she’s starting sixth grade with her twin brother, Bryce. But while Bryce is an academic high achiever who likely will excel at the competitive charter school, Ruby’s diagnoses of dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia mean that reading, writing and math are tough for her.

And when she fails her first test at Benton, wow, does she feel like a mango. She even writes a brief blog post about it: “I dont belong at Benton Acadamy. I’m an imposter. I walk beside you in the halls every day. But I’m not smart enuff to stay much longer. Theres so much work. Im failing.”

Nathan Pieplow (left) and Katheryn Lumsden (right) are the authors of Confessions of a Mango, a new mid-grade novel that explores questions of belonging.

Except . . . so many of her classmates relate. Just as readers likely will.

Ruby’s are the confessions in Confessions of a Mango, a mid-grade novel published this week and written by Katheryn Lumsden, a University of Colorado Boulder molecular, cellular and developmental biology alumna, and Nathan Pieplow, an associate teaching professor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric.