Episode 116: Working as an Educational Therapist with Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh is a learning specialist and educational therapist who has been in private practice for over 15 years. She works with children in grades 1-12, and covers a wide range of learning difficulties, including dyslexia, ADHD and spectrum disorders. While the emphasis of her work is on remediating learning disabilities in a one-on-one setting, she is also a sought after speaker and community advocate for children and families around learning rights.

In this episode, Dr. Pirayesh and I discuss the need for educators to resist oppressive systems and promote social justice, particularly in the context of disability. She also shares about her project and upcoming book, Difference is Not Deficit, aimed at fostering community and radical love. Pirayesh gives advice for teachers who want to pursue educational therapy to enhance their teaching skills and better support students with learning disabilities.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • What it means to work as an educational therapist

  • How a learning disability is a social justice issue

  • Advice for educators who want to work as educational therapists

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh is a learning specialist and educational therapist who has been in private practice for over 15 years. She holds a bachelor's degree in neuroscience and education from the University of Pittsburgh and a master's degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University, where her work focused primarily on children's development of mathematical thinking and cognitive neuroscience. Dr Pirayesh works with children in grades one through 12, and covers a wide range of learning difficulties, including dyslexia, ADHD and spectrum disorders. While the emphasis of her work is on remediating learning disabilities in a one on one setting, she is also a sought after speaker and community advocate for children and families around learning rights. Welcome! So nice to have you on the show.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Lily Jones

Well, I always start with the same question, which is, tell us about your journey as an educator in any way or direction that feels good to you.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yeah. So I think I came to education in maybe a little bit of a different way than some people. Um, I think it was sort of my destiny, but I was trying to avoid it because I come from a family of educators, my mom, my aunts, so I sort of grew up in that. And I was like, No, I'm going to do something else. And so I went into school, like pre med, and then I was like, No, I don't like this. Then I went into neuroscience, which I did really love, but then immediately brought up questions for me, like, Well, why aren't we connecting things between how the brain learns and how we teach, and I sort of began to make these connections myself in school. But it wasn't until I started working specifically with kids with learning disabilities that I was like, Okay, no, I don't think I can escape this. I am an educator.

Lily Jones

Yes, I love that path. I mean, I love thinking about all the things that you're learning about neuroscience and then, yeah. I mean, I think I've had similar questions about many things related to education, of like, well, we know this, but why are we doing it this way?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Right, right? No, yeah. I mean, that's definitely a recurring theme. Like we we know how to do this, right? We have the research. Other people are taking our research and implementing it. Why aren't we able to, of course, that that was a question that I really explored later in my career, that then, you know, didn't take me off the path, but it added other layers to my path. So, yeah, it's a big recurring theme in education, like, why are we doing it this way? When we know how to do it, right?

Lily Jones

I know. And in some ways, I feel like so many things just become normal, you know, it's just like, oh, well, we're doing it because that's the way we do it. And then we teach the next teachers to do it, and then we do this, you know, like, and it just becomes kind of stuck in a rut. And so I think some of that disruption is just necessary.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

I agree disruption is a good thing, yes, yes,

Lily Jones

yeah. We don't want to get too comfortable. So tell us more about your work now.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

So, um, so I, like I said, I kind of, I fell into working with kids. I actually took the job as just a way to make ends meet until I figured out my next step. And I was like, oh, maybe this is my next step. And at the time, I'd never heard of educational therapy. I had no idea what it was. I didn't come from like, a special education background, none of it, but I was just like, Okay, this is a place where we can really see the research, like, move into practice in a meaningful way. So I think that's one of the big things that attracted me to the field of educational therapy. I mean, as well as working with kids, which in a one on one setting, I really love doing I don't know that I would ever be able to do what teachers do in a classroom. My mom's a classroom teacher. She just retired this year, and I still don't understand how that happens

Lily Jones

It's a lot, yeah.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

But yeah, I sort of just kind of fell into it. And I was like, Okay, well, let me learn more about this. And then just started doing a lot more education and professional development. And so I started my practice with just one, one student, and slowly grew it. And I've been for so long, I've been saying, Oh, I've been in practice for about 15 years. And then the other day I was like, Ah, it's I've been saying that for like, five years. I think it's been longer than that. But I. I don't want to count. So, yeah, so that's how I kind of came into educational therapy. But then kind of halfway, I would say, in my practice, I really started to notice that there was always only one kind of client coming in, and it was, you know, kids whose parents had resources and had the means. And, you know, my own background as a big believer in public education. I'm a first generation immigrant. I come again from a family that, you know, where social justice is a really big, you know, has always been a big issue. And it really started, I really started to have, like a crisis in terms of my work. And I was like, I think I might be contributing to the divide. So I then decided to go back to school again, one because I love school, and I always go back to school, but also because I was like, well, I need to, I need to understand, you know, I just need to, kind of like, wrestle with this question. I think that I still had very naive notions of social justice at the time, like, yes, we can bring this research to everyone. And, you know, why can't we? And but then I, I was very lucky in that, even though I was in a program where, you know, like so many programs are, you know, it's a lot of language that is used, but people don't necessarily walk the talk. I was lucky in that there was someone at the program, Antonia darder, who, you know, I think, is like a true critical educator, and she really kind of forced me to stop and take a look in the mirror, and take a look at myself, and kind of do some of the serious inner work and digging that I think is necessary if you really want to wrestle with these types of questions. And so, you know, from there, I sort of went and it was like depression and whole other crisis after that. But I think you have to go through these, you know, whatever they're called, like the dark. It's sort of these processes that I think that a lot of us shy away from because they are so hard, but if you do, kind of allow yourself to move through it, I think I came out the other side of it with a deep understanding that as an educator, a really, really big part of my job was resistance, resistance to an activism. also kind of the realization that our job as educators really is to try and, you know, to try and be pushed back against the systems that, in so many ways oppress all of society, but in the in the place that I think we can most push back against that is in the classroom. I think educators have incredible power when it comes to that work. So so yeah, so now a lot of my work is kind of based around working with teachers as well as mental health professionals, because I think that you know all of these things, especially in the field that I'm in, everyone kind of is involved in that. So I do a lot of work now around kind of reminding, I think, you know, reminding people about how central activism and and, you know, I really think of it as resistance work is in our work.

Lily Jones

Absolutely, and I think it gives teachers that agency and encouragement to do the things that we know are right, you know, and to take those actions and to move forward in community with other people. Because sometimes it can feel like, depending on where you're teaching, you know, or how close you are to other teachers, or even if you get to see in other teachers classrooms, like, sometimes it can just feel a little isolating, like, oh, I. I'm committed to this or I'm doing this work, but are there other people out there and so building those connections too, I think is so important.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Absolutely, yeah. And I think that because my work is kind of around disability, which is inherently political, that really helps me get some, you know, insights. And the thing is that that is something that every single teacher also deals with in their classroom. So the it's, you know, very fertile grounds for beginning to think about some of these issues.

Lily Jones

So thinking about disability, can you go into a little bit about how disability is a social justice issue?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yeah, you know? I, I really it's interesting, because usually when we think about social justice, especially in the US, we think of it in terms of race, but I think that whether it's race, gender, you know, any of these issues, when you really peel back the layers you do, usually get to ableism and disability, and nowhere is that more true than in the school system. I really think of social justice in terms of our relation to power, our sort of like position to power. And I think in a classroom, you can really, really clearly see these power relations when you're dealing with, you know, specific, I mean all disability, but specifically learning disability, because we're talking about it in the context of schooling and learning. And I think the way that we talk about and teach and deal with and address learning disability, but kind of, in the larger context, difference in classrooms is going to directly translate into how we deal with that in our society at large. And of course, it's a two way thing. I mean, the way that we that we address it in the classroom, is being impacted by the way that we address it in the culture. But again, that's where I think we have a lot of power to push back in the classroom setting. So yeah.

Lily Jones

And even going back to what we were saying about teachers kind of doing the same thing over and over, like, because it's what you're used to, the same thing we can create as teachers, right? Like, if you're creating this kind of microcosm of society in your classroom that maybe is more just than a lot of other places, then hopefully that carries forward, because kids just see it as normal, right? Like, they're like, I'm part of this community. This is what I what I'm part of. This is what I see as valuable, and then they move forward with that as kind of their normal there.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Exactly. And I think that the way that a teacher kind of sets the culture of a classroom is modeling leadership, is modeling social justice leadership. So, yeah, I think it's really, really important.

Lily Jones

So I know that you have this great project, difference, not deficit project, can you tell us about that?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yeah, it's, it's sort of growing into a book now, which I'm really, really excited about. And it's also evolving. It's something that actually grew out of the pandemic. It was a project where, you know, I mean, we were all online, but I was like, interacting with all of my students and clients and families, and everyone was feeling so isolated. And it was sort of like, how can we connect better? And of course, for me, immediately, what comes up is sort of the power of story, and if we share our stories, then you know that will help in that community building. So that's where it sort of started. But now it's kind of evolved into, you know, all of the decolonizing social justice initiatives that I'm trying to put together where really the goal now for me, very specifically, because I do so much training and work with adults, is to create groups and communities where we come together, we discuss these issues, and then everyone can kind of take what we're learning and go into their own community, in their own classroom, in their own clinic, wherever it happens to be, and kind of start from that idea of, you know, difference is not deficit. We need to divest away from our medical models and really try. To create spaces where we're centering radical love and understanding what that means. And I think now more than ever, we need that in our in our countries.

Lily Jones

Absolutely, I'm like, shaking my head very hard. I mean, that's a beautiful way of putting it. And yes, I mean, absolutely needed. So that's exciting about it's becoming a book too. Are you in the process of writing this, or...

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

I'm in the process, and I'm, I'm well past my deadline as one always, but I'm, I'm almost there two more chapters to edits, and then it becomes the editor's problem, not mine,

Lily Jones

Right? You're so close. That's fantastic. Well, I look forward to reading it.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Thank you.

Lily Jones

So going back to educational therapy, can you tell us a little bit about just what it means to be an educational therapist?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yeah, you know, it's a field that a lot of people, I mean, if you live in the west side of Los Angeles, I feel like everyone knows, but like generally people might not know. So an educational therapist, I think the best way to think about it is to think about like what an occupational therapist does, or what a speech language pathologist does, but an educational therapist specifically is someone who's trained to understand learning disability. Is trained to understand how learning happens in the brain, evolves in the brain, where it can break down, and then how to address that. You know, work on remediation, etc. But then also, there's another aspect of it therapy, which I really love, which is to to really be kind of the advocate for the child and the family in systems that are not necessarily set up for for kids who are different. So again, that is another place where I think we can be very active and very kind of politically aware, but generally speaking, you know, at therapy is something that is usually done in the private sector. However, if parents feel that, you know what is happening in the school system is not really addressing their child's needs, then they might be able to, depending on, obviously, all the circumstances, they might be able to get it paid for. But I would say that generally, you a lot of kids who actually are do need speech language, for example, usually graduate into a therapy because obviously all these systems are connected in the brain, so things like, and it's sort of the whole gamut of learning disability, so, and a good at therapist should be able to address, you know, reading disabilities, ADHD, you know, whatever it happens to be. I mean, obviously people have their areas that they're experts in.

Lily Jones

Great and so thinking about working as an educational therapist, what do you think is the most rewarding and the most challenging part of it?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Well, the most challenging, I think I sort of alluded to I struggle with the fact that it's still part of a private economy. And so I think that you know, if you were to enter into the field, you have to be aware of that and to think about ways that you can deal with that. But I think the most, the most rewarding part for me is literally being able to see the results of my work in real time with with students. I mean, they're not a lot of people who can say that about their job. You know, teachers, I think can. But sometimes with teachers, there's so many kids that you don't necessarily get to sort of see that fine tuning of like, when, when a child, like, breaks the reading code and like, the world opens up for them, or they, they really, they really believe you, when, when you you know when you're like, No, you're actually really smart. This is just something that's not working for you. Those are things that you know. I I love about my job.

Lily Jones

Yeah, I mean, that's wonderful. And I think that the relationships that you build with students on a one on one and like, a deep level, must be so rewarding, along with that.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Exactly. And, you know, the way that I work, I get very kind of hands on. I do a lot of home visits when I can. I do work in the home, because I think that's important. I do think that this is a family affair. So, you know, getting to know the family, supporting them through so it is, it is like a really special relationship that you that you build. And, you know, like I said earlier, I don't want to think about kids who. Who I like met in first grade who are now going into college.

Lily Jones

Me neither. My first graders are all graduating college now.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

yeah, but it's lovely when you like, get notes from them and you know, they tell you about their continued successes and all that.

Lily Jones

Yeah, I love that too. I mean, I haven't taught in 12 years, but I still, I taught kindergarten and first grade, and I still stay in contact with a lot of the kids who are now not kids, you know, they're like, 22 or something.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yeah, yeah.

Lily Jones

I had a lunch with one of them who came back from college like he graduated college, and I'm like, No, you're six years old, forever, in my mind, I'm sorry you're not a grown man. So tell us about for educators who might want to be a therapist. What advice do you have for them?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

I would say, do it. I would say do it, because I think that it. I mean, people do it for different reasons. Some people just do it for for supplemental income. I I really think that learning about educational therapy, understanding how learning disabilities work, coming at it from a processing skills view actually makes you a much better teacher. So that, that would be my number one, if I could have it my way. You know, we would just make this part of teacher training curriculum. But to do it, you know, I teach in a program where you can get, I mean, obviously you can get, like a master's in ED therapy, but you can also get a certificate in ED therapy and practice. So when you already have that education background and experience, I think it's just kind of like a pretty relatively easy fit, if you're willing to kind of shift the way, because, I think, unfortunately, in a lot of teacher training, what we teach is curriculum as opposed to learning itself. But if you're willing to make that shift, I think it's it can be a really powerful tool as a teacher. And then, of course, you know, it can also add to your repertoire, I guess,

Lily Jones

yeah, both sides help each other. Yeah, right, absolutely right.

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

And I was going to say, I think that the other good thing about having classroom teachers come into the field is that classroom teachers kind of understand how these things actually happen in a classroom setting. Or, yeah, they bring in a great wealth of knowledge and information that's also important for the field.

Lily Jones

Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us. BB, it's awesome to get to know you and to hear more about your journey. Can you tell people how they can connect with you?

Dr. Bibi Pirayesh

Yes, I think the two best ways is either through LinkedIn, where I try to say, stay somewhat active. So that's one good way. And another way is through my websites. It's, it's kind of a long website. It's www, dot one of one kids.org, and all of my information, social media, email, phone number, everything's on there.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. And we'll put the links in the show notes as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones