Nadine Gaab and Carla Small - EarlyBird Education

Nadine Gaab and Carla Small, co-founders of EarlyBird Education, speak passionately about their mission to support young people, parents and teachers in the early identification and prevention of reading disorders and dyslexia.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk.I'm Mike Christian from the early Bird Education
website. Children who don't transition fromlearning to read to reading to learn face
a lifetime of risks. Seventy percentof those reading below average in first grade

(00:24):
will still be reading below average ineighth grade. A child who doesn't read
is vulnerable to feelings of shame,failure, inadequacy, and depression. Twenty
percent of the population struggles with symptomsof dyslexia. Early Bird Education is committed
to bringing research to practice, improvingscreening efficacy, lowering barriers to access,

(00:49):
and as a result, significantly increasingthe number of students who are reading at
grade level by third grade. Abberight, Well, hello everyone, Nice
to have you. We're here todaywith Nadine gob and Carla Small, both

(01:12):
of early Bird Education. Nadine isa co founder and scientific advisor for early
Bird. She's also an Associate Professorof Education at Harvard University, and Carla
is also a co founder and inthe CEO of early Bird. Carla led
the Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children'sHospital, where early Bird was first developed

(01:33):
and validated. Nice to have bothof you with us. Thank you thank
you, Thank you for having us. Maybe a good place to start is
just to have each of you talka little bit about your backgrounds. Yeah.
Yeah, So my name is NadineGup and I'm associate professor here at
the Harvard of Education. But I'vebeen at Harvard for many, many years,
and i was working at the BostonChildren's Hospital prior to coming here to

(01:57):
the ED school. At the LostChildren's Hospital, I've been doing a lot
of work on the intersection of howbrains learn and what happens if they learn
in an atypical way, all withinthe Learning Disability framework. And Kala had
accelerator call in October i think twentyseventeen asking for ideas coming out of the

(02:23):
DA and faculty at the hospital onyou know what kind of you know,
innovative ideas are out there and thenlead to a new you know, changes
for kids and make the lives ofchildren better. And so that's when I
applied for it. Got it?How about you, Carla? Yeah,

(02:44):
So I was, as you said, I was running the accelerator of Boston
Children's Hospital. Prior to that,I was working as a consultant in healthcare
and had been in a startup beforethat at Children's the Accelerator, not well
known but certainly important people, businesspeople and technologists building out the ideas of
doctors, nurses and researchers and spinningthem out into ventures so that they can

(03:07):
get out of the labs and intouse. And Early Bird was one of
thirty projects in the portfolio that Iwas managing. But my youngest has dyslexia,
and so for me, it wasalways my favorite project. And it
really saw the importance of the impactthat we could have with this, as
well as really believed in the scienceand the technology behind this. So when

(03:29):
it came time to launch the venture, as we always do, I actually
formed the company with Nadine and ourthird co founder, Yakav Pesher, out
of the Florida Center for Reading Research. And it's just really important to me
to think about how we can transformkids' lives. Yeah, that's great.
And then when you talk about dyslexia, there are an array of different challenges

(03:52):
that young people can face in reading. Maybe just talk a little bit about
those and then we'll focus maybe moreon dyslexia. But yeah, so dyslexia
is a problem with word reading.So that's the core problem that kids have,
But there is a variety of problemsthat you can see prior to you

(04:15):
know, actually you know, startingto decode words. And so that's where
we built Earl Bird around. Andthere is a variety of problems that you
can have because you struggle with wordreading, such as real influency or you
know, comprehending what you read.But if you think about the core problem,

(04:35):
it is with an you know,unexplained difficulty with you know, decoding
single words often also with spelling thatgoes you know, hand in hand with
it, right, And dyslexia isa specific sort of diagnosis for young people
who just could be for anybody andrealize not just young people. But it's

(04:57):
a specific diagnosis or is it aserial of different symptoms and conditions that lead
to maybe the umbrella term of dyslexia. This is just to clarify for our
listeners. Yeah, it's in effectabout three to twelve percent of children,
and it's a specific learning disability withthe neurobiological origin. So I'm a neuroscientist
by training, which is characterized bydifficulties with accurate, so correct and or

(05:24):
fluent word reading as well as poorspelling and decoding abilities. So it's very
specific and it's not like a varietyof things that lead to dyslexia. But
that doesn't mean that there are someearly, you know, markers that will
tell us if someone is an increasedrisk for developing dyslexia, right, and

(05:46):
what are some of those increased signsor markers? As you say, yeah,
So, I think in order toanswer this we have to go a
little bit. You know, howreading develops. And if you ask one
hundred people when does reading development start, you get about one hundred different answers,
But you usually hear it's like,oh, maybe when kindergarten starts.

(06:06):
Oh no, wait, maybe whenkids are exposed to letters. Oh no,
maybe when they start learning oral language. And so, if you think
about it, learning to read startsin utero because the fundamental milestones for learning
to read are sound and language processing, and those start as early as in
utero. So if you think that, if you think of reading starting as

(06:30):
early as in utero, the firstfour years of reading development are then oral
language development. Right, So youlearn which are the sounds that are part
of your language or languages if youpulp put the sounds together, what is
the meaning, what are the rules, what do you use language in which
different social situations? And so ifyou look at early dentification of children at

(06:54):
risk, you know most of thesemarkers are in the oral language, mapping
these sounds onto letters, the namesof letters. There's things like non word
repetition, which is I give youa made a word that follows the rules
of the English language and ask youto repeat the word back, which paps

(07:14):
into like you know, phonological workingmemory. But there is many other aspects,
but most of them are actually notassociated as much with actually reading or
letters. As you know many peoplebelieve, right and when do the signs
or the markers of dyslexia start toemerge with the child, Nadine, we'll

(07:36):
certainly talk about sort of the sciencebehind it. I can talk about my
personal experience. So, my youngestMatthew was diagnosed officially at age eight with
having dyslexia, but honestly, Icould have told you when he was three.
And I think this is often thecase for parents and caregivers, that
they observe some behavior that doesn't makesense to them. In my case,

(07:57):
Matthew was my third child. Hewasn't learning like his older siblings. And
you know, when he went toschool, he first of all, super
bright kid, could debate philosophy withhis older brother and you know, talk
circles around you if it involved science. But when he went to school,
he had trouble grasping the alphabet.And while his friends were learning to read,
he was not. And you know, we can talk about the social,

(08:18):
emotional, mental health impacts of that, but you see children as young
as five years old having you know, self esteem issues if they're not keeping
up. But the manifestation for usand our family was three, and it's
because he was having trouble with thealphabet when other kids were learning it,
having trouble putting sounds together that inways that made sense, rhyming. And

(08:39):
then some you know, odd thingsthat sometimes when you talk to parents of
children with dyslexia may or may notbe correlated, but trouble following directions,
tying shoes and things like that.So you notice as a parent often that
there's something amiss, but you don'tknow what it is. And it's not
just visual, it's how the brainprocesses that type of information. Yeah,
it's actually a big myth that dyslexiahas anything to do with the visual system,

(09:01):
right, So it's not related atall to like letter reversals or writing
the letters backwards right, or seeingthe letters dance on the line. So
that's the myth, and it's verypersistent, and it's still many people and
you just you know, stop someoneon the street and ask them what is
dyslexia? Would give you this,you know, inaccurate definition. No,

(09:24):
it is a language based learning difference, learning disability, so it is you
know, rooted deeply in oral language. So we see, you know,
early signs of putting sounds together.Can give you three words and you just
tell me which two sound alike,which is difficult for those maybe remembering the

(09:46):
names of favorite made up characters thatthey or OTV characters, especially if they
have made up sounds that they twitchthese sounds. So there's you know a
variety of these kinds of you know, issues you see early on often related
to also mapping the sounds onto theletters. So you know, we often
see problems remembering the names of lettersor remembering what sounds are associated with a

(10:13):
certain letters letter combination. No,it has not nothing to do with the
visual system, and I think theinteresting thing is Nadine's work with the functional
MRIs and what you're able to showit is just fascinating. Nadine. Yeah,
yeah, So we do a lotof work where we have infants who
are risks to develop problems with readingor not, and then we track them

(10:35):
for like ten more years, andwe look at the brand development, the
language development, you know, andwe look at these trajectories and how early
do the developmental trajectories diverging kids whosubsequently develop problems with reading versus not.
And so we see, you know, many of these you know trajectories start

(10:56):
diverging very early at like one anda half two years old of the brain,
but also some behavioral oral language markers. And then we ask questions like
what is it in the environment,and you know, it seems to be
protective off you know, these divergenttrajectories or who can tell us more?

(11:16):
Like you know, you know thelanguage at home and you know half that
you read to your child which doesnot cause dyslexia at all, but it
can be a helpful tool in childrenwho are at risk. And now I
know Early Bird you both started itfocused on early detection, early intervention of

(11:37):
dyslexia, Carla, like, andI know what inspired you because you had
you had a child that had dyslexia. But together and maybe these there are
three co founders, how did youall collectively come together and decide to start
Early Bird. You obviously were passionateabout this and coming at it from different
directions, but how did you endup starting it? Yeah? I have

(11:58):
been doing the research, really fundedresearch on you know, the brand development
alto behavioral development for many many yearsprior to this, and when I did
professional development in school, so Italked about these you know, early markers
and maybe differences in the brain andkids who have this lexia. The number

(12:20):
one question was always like, so, you know, how can we find
these kids? How can we findthese kids early? Can we prevent dyslexia?
And so, you know that wasalways like something that like, you
know, made me sad that Ididn't have a solution for this, right
so I could tell them exactly youknow, all this you know developmentally going

(12:41):
you know, in a different direction. But I didn't have a solution.
And so when this call came fromthe accelerator, I'm like, I have
to put this, you know inand I think that technology can actually help
us, you know, solve thisand develop a tool that helps seaters to
identify children early, but not notonly this, but also empower them to

(13:01):
actually know know what to do inresponse to these early screenings. And at
the same time, I was workingwith the Coding Dyslexia and other group.
So I'm pushing through legislation related toearly identification and screening. The pushback always
God is, well, now,it's great that we have a lot that
we need to find these kids early, but I have no idea how to

(13:22):
find them early, coming from educators, and even if I would know how
to find them early, I haveno idea what to do with these kids
because that wasn't part of my teacherprep or teacher training or professional development.
I think the really critical thing iswhat we're doing is we're leveraging artificial intelligence.
We're leveraging that amazing the science ofhow the brain learns to read,

(13:43):
and the cutting edge research that doctordoctor Pesher are doing. And then also
gamification. So what we haven't talkedabout is that Early Bird is a fun
game that kids enjoy playing. We'vehad sixty thousand children play the game,
and we hear repeatedly teachers saying tous they finished the game and they asked
they could play again, which isnot your typical in school assessment experience.
And that's really important because this isall about getting to children early to identify

(14:09):
those at risk and built into earlyBird our algorithms that predict which kids are
really at risk. And then,as Nadine said, the next steps resources
for teachers for what to do aboutit. And then what is early What
age is the ideal age to actuallydo the assessment. Yeah, so we
start at age four in pre Kand then once you've done the assessment,
I assume that individual young people havedifferent needs in terms of what the course

(14:33):
of action might be your treatment beyondthat. So how does that all work?
You've done the assessment, and thenwhat it's really exciting because we now
offer early Bird also at home,So we have early Bird at home so
families can reach out to us directlyand get support, but we're also making
it available in schools, and inschools you have teachers and educators working with

(14:54):
the children and early Bird is themost comprehensive assessment out there. So when
a teacher child plays a game,but what the teacher gets back is a
comprehensive review of those child strengths andweaknesses across all of the critical milestones of
foundational reading and prereading skills. Sothe teacher knows exactly how to group those
children, what to do with them, and how to be efficient in it.

(15:16):
So don't waste time on vocabulary withthis group of kids. They've mastered
that, but spend time on blendingand deletion because they need help with that.
We actually have an end to enddyslexia solution, so we can help
the parent understand, like me,maybe you had a hunch. You think
something's wrong, Think something's up.Your child's not learning the way other kids
are learning. We can confirm thatwe do the assessment that predicts whether or

(15:37):
not they're at risk for dyslexia,and then we also have now built out
a game that provides that critical earlyinstruction. I think the big strength is
that you know teachers know know exactlywho's in their classroom and know exactly from
all these milestones and reading. Youknow that you have the master becoming as
a successful reader. You know whichmilestones to child reach yet and which ones

(16:00):
are they still working on. Sosome kids may have reached the vocabulary milestones,
but others may not, and soyou know, knowing this is really
empowering and also then telling teachers howyou actually teach this with lesson plants and
add on videos, et cetera.I think the statistic we're most proud of

(16:21):
across early Bird is seventy three percentof the teachers that have used early Bird
have identified a child that would otherwisehave gone undetected. And we talk about
finding them when they're four and fiveand six years old, when you can
really rewire the brain for their longterm reading success. That makes us very
excited. What makes the early Birdassessment tools so unique? I know you're
incorporated AI into it. I'm surethere's other technology that incorporates AI. But

(16:45):
what makes it so effective and sounique compared to maybe other tools to do
that assessment. It's a couple ofthings. It is AI, and we
also have voice AI in there aswell, so it's automatically scoring, so
the teachers don't need to spend timeadministering the test and listening and scoring it.
It's automatic. It's the predictive algorithm. It's the comprehensiveness of it,

(17:06):
so you get really a full viewof that child and then that fun game
that really makes a difference for children. And as part of the value that
you bring to parents and teachers,you also give them a plan of action
going forward in terms of the areasto address. Maybe talk about that just
a little bit. Yeah, soit was really really important to me from
the you know, first application Iput in that we can't just build like

(17:30):
a you know, a game andfind kids without actually you know, having
a plan in place where we dowith these kids in order to mitigate the
risk and prevent reading difficulties. Andso we from the start we're thinking about
the response to screening. We callit evidence based response to screening as much

(17:53):
as how we actually find these kids. And it was also really important to
us that it is you know,powerworwing teachers. So it's a built in
professional development platform that can last formany many years and can be you know,
really updated with the news research.And then you also make this assessment
tool available to families directly, right, how would they then you provide the

(18:18):
program to the families also or isthis something that they would work in tandem
with their child's teacher on. Wedo work directly with the family, which
you know, again this has alwaysbeen a priority of mind, having gone
on that five year journey without muchadvice in those five years. So what
we can do is we connect thefamily with a literacy specialist. They'll do
that assessment which gives a lot ofdetail information about a child strengths and weaknesses.

(18:41):
And I'll say one thing about that. Often, if you have a
child who's struggling with reading, there'sa lot of emphasis on what they can't
do, but it's really important toalso understand what they can do. So
the families that are working with EarlyBird at Home have the opportunity to speak
regularly with a literacy specialist who knowstheir child and thanks and weaknesses. And
then we have that instruction which iswhat we call the Pip School game because

(19:04):
Pip is our character, the friendlytwo can that you see in our logo
and who guides the children on thejourney as part of the gaming experience.
And children come to love Pip bythe time they've spent a little bit of
time with them, and Pip takesthem on a journey through various instructional pathways
that give them the skills that theyneed. The foundational skills and they develop
mastery along the way so that theycan feel like and we can share with

(19:26):
the parents how the child is progressing. We had a story last week a
family that was using early Bird athome and they wrote to us really unsolicited,
just because they were so pleased toshare that the child we're reading at
home time had been a battle historicallyand the child had made so much progress
on early Bird at home that itwas a joyful time that they would all

(19:47):
sit down together and read together becauseof the progress that the sun had made.
So it's individual treatment. But isdyslexia in itself curable or is it
just something that you have to manageall that the one has to manage all
the time. Family teacher and theperson no diagnose with dyslexia. Yeah,
that's a really good question I getall the time. So I am very

(20:10):
confident saying that dyslexia is preventable.We just need to catch it early,
and we need to identify, youknow, individuals at risk and then you
know, give them what they needin order to prevent a reading difficulty.
And so it's very similar to preventativemedicine. So we all embrace preventative medicine.

(20:33):
You find kids early, you don'ttell them they you know, have
like no sav age four. Youjust say the child has not reached all
her their milestones yet, so weneed to like do something in order for
them to like reach their mouthstones.So you identify a at risk and then
you do preventative approaches like you woulddo in medicine. An ultimate goal is

(20:55):
for the child not to develop butreading difficulty, and often that goes with
mental health issues reading difficulty, Sowe are not just preventing reading and disability,
we are also preventing the mental healthand psychological, economic, and vocational
negative outcomes that we often see withreading disabilities. And I'm sure many of

(21:17):
our listeners have experienced dyslexia on somelevel, either in their family with children,
no people that have children with dyslexia. What if you don't catch it
early? What happens then? Ifyou don't get the early bird early assessment
and you know the child's ten ortwelve years old, is it still possible

(21:37):
to bring in some of these interjectionsor that you had talked about to make
improvement or is it much more difficultso you could definitely make a lot of
improvement. You can make improvement asa fifty year old who's struggling with reading,
and they have many great examples ofthis. But it's going to be
much further and there are several reasons. One main reason is that the brain
is a lot more plastic for languagethen the younger we are. We see

(22:02):
much higher effect sizes in younger kids. The other big reason is it's really
hard to catch up if your classmatesare reading Harry Potter and you can't even
decode a single word. So bringingyou there outside of the classroom or within
the classroom and accessing what's taught inthe class at the same time, it's
just, you know, really reallyhard at almost having two or three jobs

(22:26):
at the same time, you know, in elementary school. And I think
the third reason is the you know, the mental health. We often see
like higher rates of anxiety or depression, We see higher rates of externalizing behaviors
in kids, and we often seelow self esteem and so it makes a
lot of sense. Yeah, soearly identification is the key to making it

(22:51):
much more effective in terms of treatment. Yes, I read on your I
think this was on your website.Sixty three percent of fourth graders in the
United States reading below AID level,which is a remarkable stat to me.
Through advocacy efforts, you are tryingto reduce the gap between the science and
policy making. That sounds really important. It's an advocacy of function. Maybe

(23:11):
tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I think it's really important
that we change the system on ourlevels, right, So we need to,
you know, change the system howwe identify children. We need to
change the system of how we trainour teachers in order to react to it.
You can put good legislation in place, you know, if it's not

(23:33):
implemented well or if there's no toolsto implement it, it's completely useless.
And I think that's you know,the tricky point to like, you know,
make sure we have good tools andgood implementation strategies to make this work.
And the advocacy work, is itmostly communication type of work? Yeah,
yeah, thanks for asking. No, we actually do a lot of

(23:55):
advocacy work on the ground. Sowe do work through these grassloads organizations with
bigger national organizations like the National Centerfor Proving Literacy or the National Center for
Learning Disabilities, the International Dyslexia Association. Yeah, that's great. So maybe
just a last couple of questions aboutEarly Bird. You started this company from

(24:19):
scratch, not that long ago,five years ago, four or five years
ago, something like that. Sowhat's next. You've impacted clearly thousands of
young people for the bet for thebetter in that short period of time.
What's on the docket for the nextyear or two for early Burn? Yeah,
thanks for asking. It has beenan amazing ride. We first run

(24:41):
market in twenty twenty one. We'renow used in districts and half the states
across the country, and we're excitedto continue to grow that because we realized
that we really are having an impacton children's lives and finding them really is
important. I would say one thingthat's really we're really focused on is what
Na Deane talked about a bit,which is the that you can prevent dyslexia.
People don't really appreciate that, andso we're trying to get the word

(25:04):
out that there's real value in findingit early. So, in particular with
our early Bird at home, forany parent who just suspects having that hunch
confirmed early on, or really gettinga little more information about how it is
your child is likely to be successfulas a reader or not is really important,

(25:26):
and as Nadine said, to preventtakes two things, early identifaification and
good instruction, and that's really whatwe're focusing on and what we're able to
do. And that's happening in schoolsas well. We support them with the
assessment. They do good work,you know, hopefully working with the kids
with all the information we give them. It's happening at homes with early Bird
with the assessment and PIP school,so we're really excited about that. The

(25:48):
other thing I think people don't appreciateis the prevalence is pretty high with dyslexia
and if you have dyslexia in thefamily, likelihood is one and two that
your child has it, So reallygrabbing onto that sort of parent hunt early
on is really important. Yeah,that's great advice. And so last question
or last comment, how can ourlisteners find out more about early Bird?

(26:11):
Great? Yeah, thanks for askingEarlybird Education dot com and they can go
there and learn more about what we'redoing in schools and learn about more what
we're doing in the home front aswell, and go directly to purchase if
they're interested in the home assessment andthe home instruction. Thank you. So
much. I really appreciate it.You're doing wonderful work and I think it's

(26:32):
so important and I hope this getsthe message out a little broader way.
So thanks again. Well that's allfor this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting
you to join us again next weekon What's at Risk. Also check out
our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dotcom what's on your mind? Send us

(26:55):
your thoughts, comments and questions toWhat's at Risk at gmail dot com.
That's one word, What's at Riskat gmail dot com. Thank you.
A big thank you to our producer, Ken Carberry of Chart Productions.