Life-changing … Debra Gilmore, left, says the Arrowsmith Program had a transformative effect on her son Robert, 17. Photo: Fred Thornhil
Debra Gilmore knows better than most the anguish, despair and frustration felt by children with learning disabilities and their parents. It goes with her job, as head of diverse learning needs at the Catholic Education Office in Sydney. It also goes with her experience as a mother.
Her son Robert, now 17, has struggled since he was three with a receptive language disorder, a condition that causes him to grapple with the most basic instructions, leaving him frustrated and angry as he fell behind academically.
By year 9, Robert had convinced himself he was stupid. Anxious and depressed, his self-esteem plummeted. He lost interest in school, started skipping classes and was on the path to dropping out.
''He was a really good kid at school and he tried so hard, but it was just becoming very, very difficult for him, to the point where he could not bear going to school any more,'' she says. ''He would say, 'You're sending me to the lion's den.'''
Gilmore, a warm and determined woman, is an educator with more than 30 years' experience. When she says she understands the desperation parents feel as they search, often in vain, to find answers for their struggling children, it is against a backdrop of family heartache.
She is the driving force behind the Catholic Education Office's decision to launch the contentious Arrowsmith Program - developed by Canadian Barbara Arrowsmith Young to ''rewire'' the brain by exploiting its plasticity - in Sydney next year.
Gilmore has spent the past two years carefully researching the program, offered in 36 schools in Canada and the US, as part of her job. What she saw impressed her so much she packed up her life and took her son to Ontario to see if his brain could be changed. In the past 10 months, she has watched Robert's life turn around.
''The change is phenomenal for us,'' she says. ''People might think that its not so great but anyone that knows Robert would say its phenomenal. I've seen it firsthand. I am passionate about Barbara's work now and I just can't not have it as part of my life. It's changing so many lives.''
The director of curriculum at the Catholic Education Office, Seamus O'Grady, knows he has made a bold decision to embrace the Arrowsmith program.
No shortage of people are telling him he is making a mistake. Some of the most vocal come from his own ranks: academics and educators who are sceptical of the claim that it is possible to address learning disabilities by identifying and strengthening weak cognitive capacities with specific exercises.
''We are aware that there are kids who we are not reaching despite trying the traditional methods,'' O'Grady says. ''You've got to find some success for every kid. Some of them are technically gifted but can't express it through the kind of ways we traditionally teach and learn. The question is, can we do more for these kids?'''
A group of 20 students in years 9 and 10 will take part in a two-year research and development project based at a new learning centre in Lewisham. The program, which has operated in Canadian and US schools for the past 30 years, was devised by Arrowsmith Young after she overcame severe learning difficulties by devising specific exercises based on neuroscientific research.
These exercises are unusual, varying from students working at computer screens with 10-handed clocks to sitting with a patch over one eye tracing Hindu script, forcing the weaker side of the brain to work. They are designed to challenge the underperforming parts of the brain.
''I know firsthand the pain of struggling with learning disabilities, the toll on self-esteem and the doors that are closed … I tried to kill myself at age of 13 just before I discovered the research,'' Arrowsmith Young says.
She is protective of the program's integrity, pointing to studies on her website that show its effectiveness, deflecting criticism by saying any new breakthrough will encounter pockets of resistance.
''We have research, we have nine or 10 studies on the website and they are all showing the same thing using different measures, using different designs using different analysis,'' she says. ''Two studies were deemed acceptable enough to be accepted at the American Psychological Association as poster sessions.''
She estimates she has helped about 4000 children and adults with learning disabilities, including a group of 25 Australians now enrolled in Vancouver.
In her book The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, Arrowsmith Young recounts the stories of about 30 children and adults who overcame learning difficulties by performing her cognitive exercises.
Since the book was published in Australia in May, many parents have looked to her as a potential saviour, someone who can unlock their children from the frustration of living with a learning disability.
Gilmore understands the scepticism about the program. ''It is very, very different to what we do in schools but when you look at the science of neuroplasticity and the research that the program is built on, it makes a lot of sense,'' she says.
Like many students struggling with learning difficulties, her son is a bright teenager of above-average intelligence. As a young boy he had significant speech problems that left him sounding as though he was learning English as a second language, with his grammar back to front. He also experienced mental blocks that left him unable to comprehend what he had just read.
Life became a series of reminders, lists and checklists on the wall to get through the simplest of tasks, such as packing a school bag.
Despite her extensive experience in education, Gilmore watched helplessly as Robert fell into deep despair. It makes his small triumphs during the past 10 months even more compelling.
She and Robert arrived in Toronto on New Year's Eve, where he joined an Arrowsmith school in Peterborough, two hours away, in a class with five other Australians.
''From day one there was change in Rob's attitude,'' Gilmore says. ''From being a boy who would sometimes refuse to go to school and was frustrated and unhappy, he would arrive home full of excitement.''
After six weeks, she noticed things had started to click into place. One evening, while working at her desk, she asked him to put the kettle on. He came back with a cup of tea.
''That wouldn't have happened before. I would have had to have taken him through the steps to make me a cup of tea or he wouldn't have realised that putting on the kettle meant I was going to have cup of tea - but he put all those steps together,'' she says. ''I was flabbergasted when he turned up beside me. I didn't say anything but in my head I was thinking, 'That's unbelievable.'''
He started to pick up words he had never noticed before in his favourite Star Wars film, catch a bus to the YMCA on his own, and make noticeable improvements in his writing and reading.
The biggest test, however, came when they flew home in July for the Canadian summer school break.
''I took home a different child; people could see it straight away,'' she says. ''He is so happy; he's confident. That happiness and that confidence started on day one in the school because he was free of the burdens of the academics.''
Her belief in the program is so strong she will relinquish her role with the Catholic Education Office to become the Arrowsmith representative in Australia.
Barbara Arrowsmith Young will speak at three Melbourne events on November 19 and 20. See arrowsmithschool.org.
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