February 1, 2023 • 40 mins
Black children in America are in a reading crisis, and it’s getting worse. In a 2022 national reading assessment, only 33% of all U.S. 4th and 8th graders scored at a competent reading level, and for Black students, that competency score dropped to 17%. These scores are lower than the last national reading assessment in 2019. In the face of this crisis, how do we ensure our children can beat the odds and become good readers? Carol dives into this important topic with early literacy expert Maya Smart. Maya’s new book, Reading for Our Lives: A Literary Action Plan from Birth to Six, is a practical guide to raising skilled, confident readers. In this episode Maya talks with Carol about how and why parents need to focus on reading from day one. She explains the impact of engaging even the youngest children in conversation, and offers a detailed action plan to help young children get reading ready. She and Carol also talk about the importance of proper parent-teacher communication about your child’s reading progress, and steps to take if your child is falling behind. Listen to this conversation to gain the skills you need to raise strong readers. Follow us at @GroundControlParenting and on groundcontrolparenting.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello and welcome the Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. I am
so happy to welcome Maya pain Smart to the podcast today.
Maya is a booklover and educator and an author whose
(00:27):
book Reading for Our Lives, a Literacy Action Plan from
Birth to Six, gives parents practical tips for raising confident,
fluent readers. Her website, Maya Smart dot com provides tips
and tools for parents to nurture, support, and advocate for
their children's quests to become strong readers. Maya graduated with
honors from Harvard University and received a master's degree in
(00:47):
journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern. She holds a
faculty appointment and educational policy and leadership in the College
of Education at Marquette University. She and her husband, Shaka Smart,
head men's basketball coach at Marquette, have a daughter, Zora,
who is eleven. Welcome to Ground Control Parenting, Maya, thank
you so much for having Really happy to have you
and I'm so glad that Nancy read our mutual friend
(01:10):
who has also been on the podcast Connected Us, So
I can't wait to talk with you about all the
great work that you're doing to help parents with one
of their most important responsibilities, helping their children become good,
confident readers. Now, I imagine most parents know how important
it is that their children learned to read, but most
don't have an intuitive sense of how to help them
(01:30):
master this really critical skill. But now, thanks to your
research and all the tools and tips you gathered in
this book, they have a roadmap. So I want to
hear all about it. So let's get started. I'd like
to start with asking you how and where you grew up.
I always like to ask parents about their childhood memories.
So where did you grow up and can you give
us your earliest memories of becoming a reader. Yes, I
(01:53):
grew up in Akron, Ohio. Prior to that, I was
in Kent, Ohio up until preschool. So my mom worked
entire career at Kent State University. So a lot of
my early memories are related to things at that university.
They had a Virginia Hamilton's conference and so she would
always bring home those wonderful children's books, and so I
just grew up surrounded by just wonderful books that showed
(02:16):
images of black children. And then when we moved to Akron,
when I was in kindergarten, I have vivid memories of
Air's Branch Library, which was a former physicians home that
had become a library. So it was just the absolute
coziest place to read. And so I remember walking in
there to the kids section. I made the right turn
when you came in the front door, and would just
(02:38):
spend so much time. My neighbor was a librarian there,
So I just have so many memories of being surrounded
by books and reading books. I don't have many memories
actually of being read too, although I know I must
have been so funny you say that I too have
really really strong memories of being in our public library.
I grew up in Queens and when I was really
(02:59):
young and my mom was a reading teacher, and we
would take me to the library all the time, and
as you described it, I can see where I would
go to the children's section to find books. That is
I mean, I know you do a lot of work
in libraries, and there is nothing better than just being
able to walk into that house of books and pick
one out and get to take one home. So it
(03:20):
sounds like you did. You grew up physically with a
lot of books around you, where your parents avid readers
as well. My mom definitely was. I think that my
dad was also, but less books and literature for him.
It was more practical books. He was a lawyer, so
I remember he had a giant, giant Webster's Dictionary in
his office and it was on a podium all by itself,
(03:41):
and when I would ask him questions about things, he
would say, win in doubt, look it up. So I
just I spent a lot of time thumbing through this
giant thing, which is of course unimaginable for kids today
because they can look up things on their computers or
you know a parent which is opened their phone and
look something up. But there was this giant book with
center stage in his office us And then I remember
a few other books on his shelf, things like how
(04:04):
to win friends and influence people, or the Power of
Positive Thinking. So those sort of kind of classic help
some help books. Yeah, del Carnegie, I remember, I certainly
knew we had those on our shelves as well. So
let's fast forward. Now, you you grew up in this
book rich environment, and were you an interested reader? I mean,
did you do you remember loving to read when you
(04:25):
were growing up? I? I do remember loving it. I'm
an only child, and I'm the kind of only child
that to this day I can sit and read a
book all day and be perfectly happy in a chair
as a child with a hot chocolate or something, and
as an adult with tea or coffee and just them
completely content and read a wide range of things, so literature,
(04:46):
but also how two things, and memoirs and all the
different genres. I just love books and reading. And then
as a child in elementary school, remember having wonderful teachers
who really encouraged me to write, and so those two
things kind of went hand in hand for me as well.
So I always thought I would be a writer, but
didn't know that I would write about reading. Still, let
(05:06):
me ask you you, maybe you're younger than I am.
You may not have had this in your school, but
when you were growing up, did they have those um?
I think it was Scholastic. Do they have the book
sales where you would get a sheet to fill out
and you could order books and then they would come
in the classroom you would fill out yet, Yes, that
was so exciting. You would fill out a sheet. This.
I'm sure this doesn't happen anymore. I mean, I hope
(05:27):
it does, but it's all probably digital. But you'd get
a sheet and sort of like an order path and
you could check off your from home. You've been told
how many books you could order, and then give them
sheet back, and then weeks would go by, and then suddenly,
but just as you've forgotten all about it, you get
it's like a present of books. So I wonder if
that actually still happens. Yes, I definitely have that memory
(05:50):
of sort of flipping through the little paper catalog. It
was the material of newsprint, if I remember correctly, and
you kind of check off your selections. But we didn't
have many bookstores, and the way that there are cute
independent bookstores with different vibes now, then we had be
Dalton bookseller Walden Books in the shopping mall is where
I remember those smaller bookstores. So when you're in those
(06:13):
little bookstores, there's kind of a limited selection. So I
would read every book in a series, you know, all
the Babysitters Club, all the Sweet Valley High, all the
Fear Street, whatever whatever they had. Yeah, those are great,
great memories. Let's fast forward now. So now you have
a darling baby girl, and you have said that you
wished you'd had this book when your daughter was very young.
(06:36):
So how did you approach reading with her? And how
soon did you approach reading with her? I started from
day one, as soon as she came home, reading board books.
And I had this collection of wonderful, beautiful children's literature
with you know, gorgeous illustrations and you know, poetic minds.
And an infant, of course, is not getting the full
(06:56):
benefit of the selection of books that I had curated,
and so I just had a lot of questions. I
remember being really comforted by a little board book by
Jabari a seam that went little Princess, Honeydew, Giggly wiggly,
precious Pearl, I'm so glad that you're my girl. And
I would just sit there and rock and read this
one little board book over and over. And I had
(07:16):
a little bit of intensity about it because I wanted
her to be a reader. And I was like, we
have to read every day, and I was like, I'm
sure she doesn't mind the repetition, but I'm a detailed person,
so I think just personality wise. After a couple of
weeks of that, I was like, there has to be
more to it than reading to her to help her
become a reader. So I got curious about the mechanics
(07:39):
of it. What what does it take? So I had
memories of already knowing how to read, so I had
no idea how to teach it if I needed to,
And I didn't know that she would just pick it
up either. So it's just that kind of curiosity, like
if reading these books over and over again isn't enough,
what else do I need to do? Huh? I love
that spirit. So is that what led you to dive
(08:00):
into the research pool of early literacy? It was that
combined with news articles. So she mentioned, I have a
journalism background, and I remember when she was two or three,
coming across a lot of articles about disparities and reading
achievement between black children and white children, and they were
so vast. And of course we know that those are
(08:22):
numbers on average, like on average, black children score lower
than white children in this metric, in that metric, but
I really wanted to know why as a black mom,
what was different about the education our kids were receiving
in school, What was different about their preparation prior to school?
What was going on in all these different kinds of
(08:42):
kindergarten or all the different kinds of preschool programs. I
had my daughter in a monetary program that I loved it.
It had this emphasis on nature and outdoor time and
exploration and you know, practical life skills. They're pouring water
and little jugs and sweeping floor, doing all these things.
But again, I wanted to know, how does this connect
(09:04):
to reading? And they were also doing things like teaching
them cursive. They're tracing sand paper letters that were cursive.
So I'm looking at those sand paper letters and saying
that there's a disconnect between just even the shapes of
letters that they're focused on in school and the print
that I'm reading in the picture books. So I just
had a lot of questions. So it's a combination of
(09:27):
feeling like I needed to be doing more and not
knowing what the more was, and then just deep concern
for black children in general. So then when I put
the two together, it was sort of like, I need
to figure this out for myself, and then whatever I
learned that works, I want to share with other parents,
and so I started with some blog posts and then
got more focused and more serious over time. Wow. That
(09:47):
that is great, and and I love this especially because
it tracks a similar story for me, and that once
I got a lot of information about parenting, I really
want to share it and I love that instinct. And
so it's to everybody's benefit that you had all those questions.
So I've heard you say that one of the most
important things that you hope parents learn from your book
(10:08):
is that it's never too early to start helping your
child to learn to read. I mean, as you said,
you instinctively knew to start as soon as she came home.
And while everybody doesn't know that, some people may think
they can't sit up and look at the book. You
know it's too soon. But can you tell us why
starting really early from day one is so important. There
are two big pieces of it, and so one is
looking at print and kind of mapping those lines and
(10:32):
curves on paper to sounds. But the other enormous piece
of it is vocabulary and background knowledge and things that
contribute to their comprehension. So even if a child when
they're three or four or five or six, or however
they are. When they learn to decode and map the
letters to sound, they can sound out words but still
have no understanding of what they mean, or no understanding
(10:53):
of what they mean when they're together in a sentence
or a paragraph. So building a strong vocabulary is so important,
and that vocabulary is built through conversation, and so as parents,
it's extraordinarily helpful if we talk to babies as if
they understand us, and we pay attention to their gaze
(11:14):
and what they're pointing at and those babbels and respond.
The more we respond, the more they babble, and it
really develops their ability to express themselves verbally. And then
when we get to the point where we understand what
they're saying and they understand what we're saying, it's sort
of a gradual thing. It's not like, you know, on
their second birthday or some particular month they get it.
(11:36):
It's a sort of accumulative process. And so part of
it is building the parent habit of talk and conversation
early so that we're well practiced in it by the
time it really counts. Ah, that's that's interesting, and I
appreciate that I hadn't thought of it that way. I mean,
because to your point, none of us when our babies
are born have all of this information in our head
(11:57):
at the ready, and we have to practice doing what
it takes to to engage them, and so we have
a longer runway if we start as soon as they're born,
so by the time, by the time they're old enough
to respond, we're really good at it. Isn't so? So
you you talk, you talk a lot about this conversation,
as you said, the back and forth, and this I
found really intriguing. And there's been studies that show that
(12:19):
children have to hear a lot of words, but it
sounds as if what you're saying it's not just words,
but it's vocabulary, it's conversation, it's engaging the child in conversation.
Is that right? Absolutely, you got it exactly right. And
I too thought of the advice to talk to your
baby or talk to your toddler as being about what
I was saying, what I was imparting to Zora. But
(12:42):
the learning for the child is really in that exchange
and the dialogue and them attempting to say something in
response when they're cooing and babbling in the beginning, and
as they get older, them listening, understanding what you're saying, responding,
challenging you, elaborating, asking questions. And so if we think
of the talking more about the talking that they're doing,
(13:04):
even before it's in fully fleshed out, complete sentences and
words that we understand. I've overheard recently conversations in the
airport between parents and young children, and they don't seem
to understand really a word of what the little one
is saying. But they're nodding and smiling and encouraging. But
but one day that child will speak clearly enough that
(13:25):
the parent will really understand. But there's so much I
always want to see that. I always want to pull
that parent aside and say, you're doing such a great
job keeping that, because there are also parents who who
aren't talking and think, oh, it's just it's a baby.
They don't understand. Why would I talk to someone that
can't reply yeah, yeah, no, No, that's that's exactly right.
When I read about your talking to this conversation, I'm thinking,
(13:49):
I wonder what that really looks like. But I know
what it looks like. You know, you're when your child
is a day old, you can look at its little
face and say, oh, are you hungry? You sound like hungry,
and then they'll say something, or they'll cry or whatever,
and you can take that response as their conversation and
then just keep going. I mean, people do it with
their animals all the time, so it's it's easy. They
(14:11):
really do. It's easy to do with your your children
as well. And the thing for parents to remember is
that parents speak a lot less than we think we do.
Even parents who do know to engage back and forth
with kids often could do it a bit more if
they had just gotten that insight that this really matters.
You're building their brain, you're nurturing their development. And then
(14:33):
there are other parents. I am a more introverted, quiet parent,
so I think there are sort of temperament personality differences
that impact how much parents speak with kids, and so
we need some public awareness campaigns so that the quiet
parents speak up, you know, I think that's a really
important point. I mean, I'm a natural extrovert, always have been,
and so I was happy to have somebody else to
(14:55):
talk to when the baby came along. But now I
have an array of children in and they range and
from introverted to extroverted, and I appreciate that children people
who are quieter, I mean, a lot of thoughts are
in their head, but they don't speak as much. So
for parents out there that aren't naturally inclined to just
chitter chatter, and in fact may even be annoyed by that.
As a concept, if you think of that, you might
(15:17):
want to think of this as sort of a parenting
role that you should take on for the benefit of
your child, because even if it's not your natural instinct,
it's really helpful for them. You've also talked about the
importance of narration, of talking to children about what's going
on around them. I mean, in an effort I guess
to make conversation. You can just point out things and
(15:37):
if they raise their hand in that direction, you can
sort of talk to them about it. When I'm on
the streets of New York City and I see a
lot of people pushing strollers, you know, with the invariably
there on their phone because the baby is in the carriage,
and there's not a lot of back and forth because
understandably parents think this is some me time because they're
going to a destination. But I often think that would
(15:59):
be a great ratunity to engage with your child as
you pass things. You know, is that a point for narration?
Is that the kind of narration you're talking about? Yes,
And so in the book, I describe an acronym talk
and the TEA is for taking turns, just to remind
people about the importance of exchange and dialogue. And the
A is ask questions because that's a natural way when
(16:20):
you have sort of run out of things to say,
then it's a natural way to prompt their thinking in response.
But the L is for label and point, and so
that's a great one for the parent that's tired and
you're like, I don't have anything else to say but
talk about the blade of grass and how green it
is or how poeny it is. And so, in any situation,
(16:40):
unless you're in a sensory deprivation tank, there's something around
you that has some colors, some shape, some texture, something
that you can talk about. And then the K and
that acronym is just keep the conversation going. And so
I was really thoughtful about the elements of that little
acronym because I was like, what does the research say.
There's a lot of research about parents, moms, the particular
(17:02):
study featured moms, not dad, but moms who asked questions
during story time and how that was correlated positively with
language development and kids. So if people are remembering to
take turns, they're remembering to ask questions, which is another
way of taking turns. If you listen for the answer
and then labeling and pointing, you're also giving them all
(17:22):
that that vocabulary. Early on, they're learning really concrete things,
names and colors and things that they can touch and picture,
but then you can keep labeling and pointing to more
abstract things as they get older. Wow, that's that's great.
I want to ask you about briefly about book reading
because you mentioned that as an important thing. I mean parents.
(17:44):
I think anyone who thinks about raising a reader thinks
about reading to them at some point. But but you note,
as the research has as well, that it's not the
be all end all. If that's all you do, then
you're not necessarily doing enough. So can you just give
us a few tips? Is what parents can do? We
all know parents get tired and they, you know, can't
always read every day, But are there ways that when
(18:05):
they can read to their child they can be more
effective in helping them understand the reading process. I think
that parents can apply that talk acronym to book reading
as well. So as you're reading, you can still label
in point, but you point to the red ball in
the picture, or you point to the title, or you
(18:26):
sort of bring their attention. Particularly once they're around three
and can start to pay attention to letters and distinguish
them from numbers. You can make the book itself the
object of the book a topic of conversation because people
forget that kids have to learn all those things. They
have to learn which way is the right side up,
and that the text goes left to right and from
(18:48):
top to bottom. And you just be surprised by the
number of kids at enter school and not knowing those things.
But it's not hard for a parent to teach about
books about print and then also asking questions about what
you've read to get their engagement and see what they're thinking.
That makes a lot of sense. A quick question about
(19:09):
digital books. So is it important in your estimation that
parents have actual books? I mean, I'm old school. I
love flipping. I mean I love the turning pages in
a book, and so to me, I'd prefer to read
a child a book where you turn the page. But
does it really matter if you've got a kindle and
you're flipping it electronically, does that still have the same impact.
(19:30):
I think it matters with the really little ones because
there's so much they have to learn about turning pages,
and they're developing even just motor skills. And when you're
initially building these book behaviors or book experience, sometimes they're
throwing the book, they're chewing on them. You don't want
them to do that with your iPhone or your kindle
or this device that you've paid hundreds of dollars for.
(19:51):
So I think that we have to let kids explore
the object of the book because it's all about keeping
their attention and engagement. And a book, even those, um
the little books where there's a patch that's scratchy or
a patch that is silky, where they're exploring the textures,
all of those are really valuable learning experiences for little ones.
(20:12):
We forget they have so much to learn. Yeah we do.
We really get to the phase where they need to
dive into devices. Yeah, no, we really do forget that.
Now that you're saying this, it's like, how do you
think they just come out knowing you read left or
right and which way is up. But no, we have
to teach all of them this. We'll be right back
after these messages. Welcome back to the show. I want
(20:35):
to just skip ahead. First of all, I should just
take a quick aside and say, parents, you must get
this book for many reasons. First of all, it's a
really impressive gathering of really important information and then sort
of absorbed and then redistributed in a way that it's
a great how to. And you list six different sort
of areas that parents can focus on. I'm going to
skip ahead to one that you list at the end,
(20:57):
which is advocacy, because you talk about the importance of
focusing on children's reading from a very young age, not
only to help their brain development, but also to help you,
as a parent, become a better advocate for them as
they get into school and get more involved in the
nuts and bolts of reading and the more and the
and becoming stronger and better readers of more complicated material.
(21:19):
So you've got this great roadmap for parents, So how
can they use your book to approach teachers as children
get into school. I mean, if if your child is
reading when they start school, for example, should you bring
this to the teacher's attention, Should you talk about the
kinds of things that you've been doing. Should you expect
that the teacher is going to continue in the same
(21:41):
way in terms of teaching the child reading. I think
it's definitely important for parents to have an open dialogue
with teachers. View it to the extent that you can
as a partnership, and you're all part of this village
that supporting your child, and you get to a point
where the teacher is really with them more than you are,
and of cases, since they're a sleep path the time
(22:02):
that they're with you, but um, it's it is important
to I always encourage parents to remember to give a
positive spin on their child, particularly when they're introducing the
child to a new teacher or a new school, and
leave space for the school or teacher to do their
(22:23):
own assessments and just be curious about the information that
you're receiving back. Because I've definitely heard from parents who
are researchers like me, who know a lot about these subjects,
and sometimes they'll go into the teacher and you know,
download this report and it can it can color the
(22:43):
teachers perspective of your child in ways that you don't anticipate. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I actually have a story about that. My my mom,
as I said, was a teacher and she taught me
to read. I knew how to read by the time
I got to kindergarten. So it's public school, and they
had open school night where the parents come in to
talk to the teachers and see what's going on. And
my mom went into the classroom and talk to my
(23:04):
kindergarten teacher, and before they started talking about me specifically,
they were just teacher to teacher, sort of trading stories
of what the teaching experience has been like. And this
teacher assess, my mother, can you believe somebody taught their
kid to read? You know? I put these slides up
and the kids trying to read the slides ahead of me.
I mean, it's not ridiculous. And so the next day
(23:24):
I was moved to the other kindergarten class. So there's
a there is to your point. Teachers do make impressions,
and sometimes they're not really great ones. But that that
I tell that story also to say that's important for
parents to interact with the teachers so they can just
get a sense of what their perspective is and you
know what the fit is with your child, and to
(23:46):
get a feel for that teacher's capacity too. If your
child is ahead. We often think about children who are
behind and what additional resources may need, but they're also
cases where a child is ahead, and like in your example,
the teachers not willing to teach the child at the
level that the child is at. They're sort of like,
I'm here to teach this grade level material. You're beyond that,
(24:08):
so you know, work on something different, or teach yourself.
You know, my work here is done. So it's good
for parents just to be receptive and observant and listening
to what you're hearing in those parent teacher conferences and
in that back to school night. And I always encourage
parents to read the state standards or the common core
that their state is using to see what grade level
(24:31):
expectations are, what is your child supposed to be able
to know and do at the end of kindergarten or
first grade, Just to have a sense and ask just
a few questions of the teacher about how they help
kids master those things or what they teach of the
child is beyond that, because you're it's there are a
lot of reading. The book is very positive and encouraging
(24:55):
about all the things that parents can do to get
their kids ready for school. But I could write a
whole their book on some of the reading instruction challenges
that they may encounter once kids our school aged. And
so I think, particularly for black and brown parents, she
shouldn't assume that you'll have a teacher who's been well
trained to teach reading and get your child to whatever
(25:15):
in their next level is. We can't assume that. So
we have to be kind of aware of expectations, aware
of where our child is, and then really advocate to
get whatever resources, whether it's remediating if there's an issue,
or enhancements if they're advanced. So that's that's really good advice.
I want to ask you two questions on sort of
in the same vein. One is because as you say that,
(25:38):
when you read your book, you're thinking, oh my gosh,
I'll follow these really thoughtful approaches and my child will
have a leg up. He or she will figure this out.
So what happens if you have, despite your best efforts,
you can't ignite a reading spark in your child. Now
I had my my I have three children the first
one took to it like a duct water. She was
(25:58):
an early reader, and I sort of, okay, yes, this
is the way it goes. And I had these little
books that I um, little books that were designed to
help children read, and she just loved those. And we
so along comes a second child, and I pull out
the books and I remember like it was yesterday. He
said to me, very clearly, I am supposed to learn
to read in kindergarten. When I get to kindergarten, I
(26:20):
will learn to read. Perhaps it wasn't quite that strong.
When did you get that idea if you have to?
Wasn't quite as driden, but his was. His point was,
I would much rather go and play. I really don't
want to do this, and I don't have to do
this because I'm going to get this. But my point
is there's gonna be children that don't take it to it.
I mean, when do you push the panic button? I mean, thankfully,
(26:42):
in this instance, he was right. He learned to read
in kindergarten and sort of took off from there. But
at what point should you be concerned if there's a
slow pace and they're not picking it up. I have
another handy, little acronym for this, and so that one
is when you're trying to levigate these just challenges as
a parent and you're concerned if your child is on
(27:05):
track developmentally, then to kind of help get your bearing straight,
I have a process or framework called GPS, and so
the g IS Guidelines, which really is again looking at
those developmental milestones, looking at the grade level expectations of schools,
and just having an awareness of where kids of your
child's age or grade typically are. So when you're grounded
(27:28):
in that, then in some cases you'll breathe a sigh
of relief and think, Okay, they're exactly there where I
thought they should be, but there where kids typically are,
and then or you may think, oh my goodness, they're
very far behind. Again, those are those guidelines aren't absolute.
It doesn't mean if a child hasn't hit this benchmark
by this year that there are doomed. But it's just
(27:50):
giving you a general sense of how things develop and
what to look out for in different respects. Then the
p IS I think parents should really record and dot
hmit their personal reflections on these things. So journal take notes.
It could be in an app on your phone or
in a notebook, but if you're concerned about something, right
down the specific example, so some parents may think that
(28:13):
their child has a speech issue or some kind of
processing issue, and write the date, the time, and a
little description, so that down the road, when you're with
the pediatrician or the teacher or the preschool teacher, whoever,
you have kind of a specifics of what you're observing
and feeling about what you're observing relative to those guidelines
(28:34):
in general expectations, and then the s IS specialists. I
always recommend that parents talk to your pediatrician, asked for
the referral to the speech therapists or whatever you think
the issue is. I've just talked to so many parents
who felt like something was going on. They didn't know
what it was, but they just kept asking questions and
they found out their child had a hearing issue, but
(28:55):
the child had a speech issue, and all of those things.
Because oral language is so important for reading, we have
to watch those things early. So I always encourage parents
to be proactive. And I've just heard too many stories
of parents who thought there was an issue talking to
a school or an administrator and the person saying, oh,
it's okay. Some kids just take longer. It may be
(29:15):
the case there may be no issue, but there's no
harm in investigating and digging around and and saying because
oftentimes there is an issue. Yeah, yeah, no, that that's
that's good to know. So my final question on this
but the purposes of the podcast, I mean, I could
talk to you about this so much longer. But the
last question I'll ask you today is, so, so you've
(29:35):
raised this reader, You're you've followed the roadmap, and your
child is a happy reader. Do you think there's a
point where as a parent you should step out of
the reading process with your children? Do you think there's
a point at which they're too old to be read
too or where they need to be independently reading where
you shouldn't be a part of their So you've developed
(29:56):
this ritual, I mean, is there a point at which
you need to be some end to it. I don't
think there's a point where you have to step out.
I do think there may be a point where they
push you out. So my daughter now is a middle schooler,
and she won't let me read her essays. She does
not want my opinion, she does not want my edits
or thoughts. So she writes her essays, she turns them in,
(30:19):
and I don't know the result until I see the
grade and the online grade book that the school publishes.
So I know parents who read nightly to their children
all the way through high school. If you have a
high schooler who will let you read to them or
read things to you, what a wonderful, beautiful experience of
just years and years of shared books. And people have
(30:41):
told me stories of book clubs some parents read even
if the child won't let them read aloud to them.
They may read the same books that the child is reading,
just to have that shared conversation and those stories to
talk about and ask questions about and connect over. When
some of my children got the high school, kind of
dove back in And I learned this from a friend.
(31:02):
And when I first heard it, I thought it was
kind of crazy. But then by the time my kids
got to high school, I actually did it. What my
friend told me was that she would read some of
the same books that her son was reading. They would
read it and then get together and discussed it. And
I thought, oh my gosh, what overkill. But when some
of my children got to high school, I found myself
doing this because First of all, it was fun to do,
(31:23):
and then I found it was really helpful to understand
to get a grasp of their reading comprehension, and they're
reading approach even as high school is I mean, it
actually gets important in high school because they're doing a
lot of standardized testing, and reading comprehension is really important
by high school. They if they can read, they they've
got it as a skill set. But that comprehension part
(31:43):
sort of the nuances of the things that are tested,
but not just that are tested, the things that make
you really enjoy books. It's a deeper level and it's
interesting to see how that develops in a in a teenager.
So I would find we'd go through these books, and
I have to confess sometimes I would sneak and get
the cliff notes because I didn't have time to read
all the books at the same time. But anyway, to
(32:04):
just talk about not only what we're reading, but what
do you think about this and what do you think
this character would think? I mean, it was really fun
to engage with these high schoolers and just to hear
about how they grasped things, and frankly, it made me
understand a lot better about how their brains worked, and
instances where that I didn't think they'd read deeply enough
I could try to say, because that's a very I mean,
(32:25):
you're you're walking a really thin line there. If they're letting,
if they're letting you read the same book you're reading,
you really can't critique too much. But it gives you
a good handle because by the time you get to
high school and you're interacting with their teachers and you
really are a partnership trying to figure out sort of
how deeply they can learn. It's great to have this
data in your head as a parent, so so good.
(32:45):
I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that that it's wonderful.
And again then you have all the shared memories of
all the stories and conversations around them that you can
come back to you for years. I agree the picture books,
I would have to say that probably they are much
fonder memories in my mind than they are my children's.
But but yes, I agree, they are fond memories. So
(33:09):
by I, as I said, there's so much more that
I love this topic, I love your treatment of it,
and I'd love to keep going. But I'm going to
close here and I'm going to thank you so much
for spending the time with me, for having this really
great conversation. And I know that parents who are listening
really really appreciate this, your your experience, your advice. You're
pouring it all into this book and giving them a
(33:31):
roadmap to to help their kids. So, but there's one
more thing before we go, and that is I need
you to play the g CP Lightning Round. So there
are four questions. Okay, you're ready, I'm ready. Okay, here
we go. What is your favorite poem or saying? My
favorite saying is one from my dad, and he just
always taught me to frontload my effort and he would say,
(33:54):
work as hard as you can, to learn as much
as you can, as fast as you can. And I
just like that idea because in life, the unexpected things
come up and you can fall behind. So if you
have that head start, that chump start, you're in better
position to recover and be resilient. That's great. I'm guessing
that Zora has heard that from you once or twice.
She hasn't, but I'm going to start telling her she will.
(34:17):
So give me your favorite two children's books. So this
should be easy since you are, you're a book lover.
Your favorite two children's books and they can be um
from your childhood or once that you and Zora enjoyed together.
My favorite children's book from when I was a child,
the one that I would always go directly to and
that ears Branched Library and acron Ohio, is Bringing the
Rain to Compiti Plane, which was just this beautifully illustrated
(34:41):
story about a drought and a father and son kind
of shooting the rain out of a storm cloud. But
there was just beautiful rhythm and repetition and the illustrations
and um, there were drawings of wild animals and this
plane and it was just another world. And I love
that book and read it over and over. Then as
an adult, my favorite children's book is Each Kindness by
(35:03):
Jacqueline Woodson, which is about a new girl in an
elementary school environment and kids kind of teaser and call
her never knew because of her hand me down clothes,
and she's just constantly smiling and trying to find her
way into friendships and eventually just plays alone, like can
never kind of make that in roads with the kids.
(35:24):
She's absent from a few from school for a few days.
The teacher gives a lesson on kindness by dropping some
pebbles in water and showing the kids kind of like
the ripple effect of doing a kind thing. And one
of the girls thinks she's going to smile and be
kind to this girl the next day. But the girl
never comes back to school, her family has moved away.
(35:44):
And it's just to me such as a powerful moving story,
so clearly and succinctly told in a picture book that
should be nice, be kind, be more than nice, be kind,
be warm, be accepting of people. And also that hard
lesson that kids need and adults need to be reminded
of that you don't always get another chance to be better,
(36:05):
to be kind of Wow, that sounds like a great book.
And I mean I'm not surprised, I love Jacquelin Woodson's work,
but wow, that sounds great. Those are great, great answers.
So now we're going to just shift to you as
a mom, and so I need a a mom moment
that you would love to do over. And by that
I mean that you could do you would do differently
(36:26):
if you did it over, and nothing deep, just something
that you wish you could redo. So I remember when
my daughter was very young. We were playing and someone
was being nice, just trying to make conversation and held
up a ball with a word printed on it and
asked her to read the word. And she froze and
she said, like just the name of the first letter.
(36:48):
And in my mind, I'd like flipped out and overreacted.
I'm like, she can't read. But mind you, she was
little and didn't need to be reading, and so I
definitely had like that overreaction and that I wanted her
to be assessed and you know, just going into drive
like she's behind, she's behind. So mom, do over in
the sense of when someone puts your child on the
spot and they're nervous and don't perform, like, don't don't overreact. Yeah, yeah,
(37:13):
I know that. That's I'm sure that impacted you as
much as it impacted her, because I know there's been
many times when I've done things and thought, but I'm
sure she's fine. So give me a moment when you
knew you nailed it as a mom. Well, this one
is sort of a mixed report, but one that comes
to mind is my daughter got into the car after
(37:34):
school one day crying because she had overheard someone saying
something negative about her, and she was really upset and
it was actually an adult in the school. And so I, again,
perhaps over reacting, no type thing. I'm parking, I'm parking
the car, and we're gonna address adults speaking about children
in a school where they, you know, can overhear whatever.
(37:57):
And she, my daughter, stopped me, and she said no,
like through tears, no, no, let me go, Let me go.
And I'm thinking she wants to watch me confront this
adult for you know, my my limited understanding the situation
for this issue. But I paused and I said, why
do you want to go? And she said, I'll do it.
So I was quiet and just walked into the school
(38:18):
with her and was sort of like kind of like
an ally. I wouldn't say advocate because I was silent.
I was just by her side. And she approached this
adult in school through tears and told her what she
had heard, how she felt about it, and why that
person was wrong in their assessment about what they had observed.
And I was so proud of her for just the
(38:43):
strength that she exhibited and advocating for herself even though
she was you know, sensitive and hurt through tears, and
I was proud of myself for stepping aside, and hadn't
occurred to me that she could handle that, and she
handled it better then I could have. Wow, that's a
great story. I just have to ask what was the
(39:04):
adults reaction. She apologized to her good for for what
she has said and her misunderstanding and all things, and
thanked me for bringing her back into the building. Wow,
that's great. That's a great story. And those are all
such great answers. And I thank you so much, Maya
(39:26):
again for being with us today. So everyone make sure
you get the book. It's called Reading for Our Lives,
Maya pain Smart. Thank you so much. Thank you so
much for having me. I'd love this conversation great. Thanks
me to I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and
that you'll come back for more. Please rate, review, and
(39:46):
subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends.
For more parenting info and advice, please check out the
Ground Control Parenting blog at ground control parenting dot com.
You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook at
ground Control Parenting and on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis.
The ground Control Parenting with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is
(40:07):
a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership
with iHeartMedia. Until the next time, take care and thanks
for listening.
Hello and welcome the Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. I am
so happy to welcome Maya pain Smart to the podcast today.
Maya is a booklover and educator and an author whose
(00:27):
book Reading for Our Lives, a Literacy Action Plan from
Birth to Six, gives parents practical tips for raising confident,
fluent readers. Her website, Maya Smart dot com provides tips
and tools for parents to nurture, support, and advocate for
their children's quests to become strong readers. Maya graduated with
honors from Harvard University and received a master's degree in
(00:47):
journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern. She holds a
faculty appointment and educational policy and leadership in the College
of Education at Marquette University. She and her husband, Shaka Smart,
head men's basketball coach at Marquette, have a daughter, Zora,
who is eleven. Welcome to Ground Control Parenting, Maya, thank
you so much for having Really happy to have you
and I'm so glad that Nancy read our mutual friend
(01:10):
who has also been on the podcast Connected Us, So
I can't wait to talk with you about all the
great work that you're doing to help parents with one
of their most important responsibilities, helping their children become good,
confident readers. Now, I imagine most parents know how important
it is that their children learned to read, but most
don't have an intuitive sense of how to help them
(01:30):
master this really critical skill. But now, thanks to your
research and all the tools and tips you gathered in
this book, they have a roadmap. So I want to
hear all about it. So let's get started. I'd like
to start with asking you how and where you grew up.
I always like to ask parents about their childhood memories.
So where did you grow up and can you give
us your earliest memories of becoming a reader. Yes, I
(01:53):
grew up in Akron, Ohio. Prior to that, I was
in Kent, Ohio up until preschool. So my mom worked
entire career at Kent State University. So a lot of
my early memories are related to things at that university.
They had a Virginia Hamilton's conference and so she would
always bring home those wonderful children's books, and so I
just grew up surrounded by just wonderful books that showed
(02:16):
images of black children. And then when we moved to Akron,
when I was in kindergarten, I have vivid memories of
Air's Branch Library, which was a former physicians home that
had become a library. So it was just the absolute
coziest place to read. And so I remember walking in
there to the kids section. I made the right turn
when you came in the front door, and would just
(02:38):
spend so much time. My neighbor was a librarian there,
So I just have so many memories of being surrounded
by books and reading books. I don't have many memories
actually of being read too, although I know I must
have been so funny you say that I too have
really really strong memories of being in our public library.
I grew up in Queens and when I was really
(02:59):
young and my mom was a reading teacher, and we
would take me to the library all the time, and
as you described it, I can see where I would
go to the children's section to find books. That is
I mean, I know you do a lot of work
in libraries, and there is nothing better than just being
able to walk into that house of books and pick
one out and get to take one home. So it
(03:20):
sounds like you did. You grew up physically with a
lot of books around you, where your parents avid readers
as well. My mom definitely was. I think that my
dad was also, but less books and literature for him.
It was more practical books. He was a lawyer, so
I remember he had a giant, giant Webster's Dictionary in
his office and it was on a podium all by itself,
(03:41):
and when I would ask him questions about things, he
would say, win in doubt, look it up. So I
just I spent a lot of time thumbing through this
giant thing, which is of course unimaginable for kids today
because they can look up things on their computers or
you know a parent which is opened their phone and
look something up. But there was this giant book with
center stage in his office us And then I remember
a few other books on his shelf, things like how
(04:04):
to win friends and influence people, or the Power of
Positive Thinking. So those sort of kind of classic help
some help books. Yeah, del Carnegie, I remember, I certainly
knew we had those on our shelves as well. So
let's fast forward. Now, you you grew up in this
book rich environment, and were you an interested reader? I mean,
did you do you remember loving to read when you
(04:25):
were growing up? I? I do remember loving it. I'm
an only child, and I'm the kind of only child
that to this day I can sit and read a
book all day and be perfectly happy in a chair
as a child with a hot chocolate or something, and
as an adult with tea or coffee and just them
completely content and read a wide range of things, so literature,
(04:46):
but also how two things, and memoirs and all the
different genres. I just love books and reading. And then
as a child in elementary school, remember having wonderful teachers
who really encouraged me to write, and so those two
things kind of went hand in hand for me as well.
So I always thought I would be a writer, but
didn't know that I would write about reading. Still, let
(05:06):
me ask you you, maybe you're younger than I am.
You may not have had this in your school, but
when you were growing up, did they have those um?
I think it was Scholastic. Do they have the book
sales where you would get a sheet to fill out
and you could order books and then they would come
in the classroom you would fill out yet, Yes, that
was so exciting. You would fill out a sheet. This.
I'm sure this doesn't happen anymore. I mean, I hope
(05:27):
it does, but it's all probably digital. But you'd get
a sheet and sort of like an order path and
you could check off your from home. You've been told
how many books you could order, and then give them
sheet back, and then weeks would go by, and then suddenly,
but just as you've forgotten all about it, you get
it's like a present of books. So I wonder if
that actually still happens. Yes, I definitely have that memory
(05:50):
of sort of flipping through the little paper catalog. It
was the material of newsprint, if I remember correctly, and
you kind of check off your selections. But we didn't
have many bookstores, and the way that there are cute
independent bookstores with different vibes now, then we had be
Dalton bookseller Walden Books in the shopping mall is where
I remember those smaller bookstores. So when you're in those
(06:13):
little bookstores, there's kind of a limited selection. So I
would read every book in a series, you know, all
the Babysitters Club, all the Sweet Valley High, all the
Fear Street, whatever whatever they had. Yeah, those are great,
great memories. Let's fast forward now. So now you have
a darling baby girl, and you have said that you
wished you'd had this book when your daughter was very young.
(06:36):
So how did you approach reading with her? And how
soon did you approach reading with her? I started from
day one, as soon as she came home, reading board books.
And I had this collection of wonderful, beautiful children's literature
with you know, gorgeous illustrations and you know, poetic minds.
And an infant, of course, is not getting the full
(06:56):
benefit of the selection of books that I had curated,
and so I just had a lot of questions. I
remember being really comforted by a little board book by
Jabari a seam that went little Princess, Honeydew, Giggly wiggly,
precious Pearl, I'm so glad that you're my girl. And
I would just sit there and rock and read this
one little board book over and over. And I had
(07:16):
a little bit of intensity about it because I wanted
her to be a reader. And I was like, we
have to read every day, and I was like, I'm
sure she doesn't mind the repetition, but I'm a detailed person,
so I think just personality wise. After a couple of
weeks of that, I was like, there has to be
more to it than reading to her to help her
become a reader. So I got curious about the mechanics
(07:39):
of it. What what does it take? So I had
memories of already knowing how to read, so I had
no idea how to teach it if I needed to,
And I didn't know that she would just pick it
up either. So it's just that kind of curiosity, like
if reading these books over and over again isn't enough,
what else do I need to do? Huh? I love
that spirit. So is that what led you to dive
(08:00):
into the research pool of early literacy? It was that
combined with news articles. So she mentioned, I have a
journalism background, and I remember when she was two or three,
coming across a lot of articles about disparities and reading
achievement between black children and white children, and they were
so vast. And of course we know that those are
(08:22):
numbers on average, like on average, black children score lower
than white children in this metric, in that metric, but
I really wanted to know why as a black mom,
what was different about the education our kids were receiving
in school, What was different about their preparation prior to school?
What was going on in all these different kinds of
(08:42):
kindergarten or all the different kinds of preschool programs. I
had my daughter in a monetary program that I loved it.
It had this emphasis on nature and outdoor time and
exploration and you know, practical life skills. They're pouring water
and little jugs and sweeping floor, doing all these things.
But again, I wanted to know, how does this connect
(09:04):
to reading? And they were also doing things like teaching
them cursive. They're tracing sand paper letters that were cursive.
So I'm looking at those sand paper letters and saying
that there's a disconnect between just even the shapes of
letters that they're focused on in school and the print
that I'm reading in the picture books. So I just
had a lot of questions. So it's a combination of
(09:27):
feeling like I needed to be doing more and not
knowing what the more was, and then just deep concern
for black children in general. So then when I put
the two together, it was sort of like, I need
to figure this out for myself, and then whatever I
learned that works, I want to share with other parents,
and so I started with some blog posts and then
got more focused and more serious over time. Wow. That
(09:47):
that is great, and and I love this especially because
it tracks a similar story for me, and that once
I got a lot of information about parenting, I really
want to share it and I love that instinct. And
so it's to everybody's benefit that you had all those questions.
So I've heard you say that one of the most
important things that you hope parents learn from your book
(10:08):
is that it's never too early to start helping your
child to learn to read. I mean, as you said,
you instinctively knew to start as soon as she came home.
And while everybody doesn't know that, some people may think
they can't sit up and look at the book. You
know it's too soon. But can you tell us why
starting really early from day one is so important. There
are two big pieces of it, and so one is
looking at print and kind of mapping those lines and
(10:32):
curves on paper to sounds. But the other enormous piece
of it is vocabulary and background knowledge and things that
contribute to their comprehension. So even if a child when
they're three or four or five or six, or however
they are. When they learn to decode and map the
letters to sound, they can sound out words but still
have no understanding of what they mean, or no understanding
(10:53):
of what they mean when they're together in a sentence
or a paragraph. So building a strong vocabulary is so important,
and that vocabulary is built through conversation, and so as parents,
it's extraordinarily helpful if we talk to babies as if
they understand us, and we pay attention to their gaze
(11:14):
and what they're pointing at and those babbels and respond.
The more we respond, the more they babble, and it
really develops their ability to express themselves verbally. And then
when we get to the point where we understand what
they're saying and they understand what we're saying, it's sort
of a gradual thing. It's not like, you know, on
their second birthday or some particular month they get it.
(11:36):
It's a sort of accumulative process. And so part of
it is building the parent habit of talk and conversation
early so that we're well practiced in it by the
time it really counts. Ah, that's that's interesting, and I
appreciate that I hadn't thought of it that way. I mean,
because to your point, none of us when our babies
are born have all of this information in our head
(11:57):
at the ready, and we have to practice doing what
it takes to to engage them, and so we have
a longer runway if we start as soon as they're born,
so by the time, by the time they're old enough
to respond, we're really good at it. Isn't so? So
you you talk, you talk a lot about this conversation,
as you said, the back and forth, and this I
found really intriguing. And there's been studies that show that
(12:19):
children have to hear a lot of words, but it
sounds as if what you're saying it's not just words,
but it's vocabulary, it's conversation, it's engaging the child in conversation.
Is that right? Absolutely, you got it exactly right. And
I too thought of the advice to talk to your
baby or talk to your toddler as being about what
I was saying, what I was imparting to Zora. But
(12:42):
the learning for the child is really in that exchange
and the dialogue and them attempting to say something in
response when they're cooing and babbling in the beginning, and
as they get older, them listening, understanding what you're saying, responding,
challenging you, elaborating, asking questions. And so if we think
of the talking more about the talking that they're doing,
(13:04):
even before it's in fully fleshed out, complete sentences and
words that we understand. I've overheard recently conversations in the
airport between parents and young children, and they don't seem
to understand really a word of what the little one
is saying. But they're nodding and smiling and encouraging. But
but one day that child will speak clearly enough that
(13:25):
the parent will really understand. But there's so much I
always want to see that. I always want to pull
that parent aside and say, you're doing such a great
job keeping that, because there are also parents who who
aren't talking and think, oh, it's just it's a baby.
They don't understand. Why would I talk to someone that
can't reply yeah, yeah, no, No, that's that's exactly right.
When I read about your talking to this conversation, I'm thinking,
(13:49):
I wonder what that really looks like. But I know
what it looks like. You know, you're when your child
is a day old, you can look at its little
face and say, oh, are you hungry? You sound like hungry,
and then they'll say something, or they'll cry or whatever,
and you can take that response as their conversation and
then just keep going. I mean, people do it with
their animals all the time, so it's it's easy. They
(14:11):
really do. It's easy to do with your your children
as well. And the thing for parents to remember is
that parents speak a lot less than we think we do.
Even parents who do know to engage back and forth
with kids often could do it a bit more if
they had just gotten that insight that this really matters.
You're building their brain, you're nurturing their development. And then
(14:33):
there are other parents. I am a more introverted, quiet parent,
so I think there are sort of temperament personality differences
that impact how much parents speak with kids, and so
we need some public awareness campaigns so that the quiet
parents speak up, you know, I think that's a really
important point. I mean, I'm a natural extrovert, always have been,
and so I was happy to have somebody else to
(14:55):
talk to when the baby came along. But now I
have an array of children in and they range and
from introverted to extroverted, and I appreciate that children people
who are quieter, I mean, a lot of thoughts are
in their head, but they don't speak as much. So
for parents out there that aren't naturally inclined to just
chitter chatter, and in fact may even be annoyed by that.
As a concept, if you think of that, you might
(15:17):
want to think of this as sort of a parenting
role that you should take on for the benefit of
your child, because even if it's not your natural instinct,
it's really helpful for them. You've also talked about the
importance of narration, of talking to children about what's going
on around them. I mean, in an effort I guess
to make conversation. You can just point out things and
(15:37):
if they raise their hand in that direction, you can
sort of talk to them about it. When I'm on
the streets of New York City and I see a
lot of people pushing strollers, you know, with the invariably
there on their phone because the baby is in the carriage,
and there's not a lot of back and forth because
understandably parents think this is some me time because they're
going to a destination. But I often think that would
(15:59):
be a great ratunity to engage with your child as
you pass things. You know, is that a point for narration?
Is that the kind of narration you're talking about? Yes,
And so in the book, I describe an acronym talk
and the TEA is for taking turns, just to remind
people about the importance of exchange and dialogue. And the
A is ask questions because that's a natural way when
(16:20):
you have sort of run out of things to say,
then it's a natural way to prompt their thinking in response.
But the L is for label and point, and so
that's a great one for the parent that's tired and
you're like, I don't have anything else to say but
talk about the blade of grass and how green it
is or how poeny it is. And so, in any situation,
(16:40):
unless you're in a sensory deprivation tank, there's something around
you that has some colors, some shape, some texture, something
that you can talk about. And then the K and
that acronym is just keep the conversation going. And so
I was really thoughtful about the elements of that little
acronym because I was like, what does the research say.
There's a lot of research about parents, moms, the particular
(17:02):
study featured moms, not dad, but moms who asked questions
during story time and how that was correlated positively with
language development and kids. So if people are remembering to
take turns, they're remembering to ask questions, which is another
way of taking turns. If you listen for the answer
and then labeling and pointing, you're also giving them all
(17:22):
that that vocabulary. Early on, they're learning really concrete things,
names and colors and things that they can touch and picture,
but then you can keep labeling and pointing to more
abstract things as they get older. Wow, that's that's great.
I want to ask you about briefly about book reading
because you mentioned that as an important thing. I mean parents.
(17:44):
I think anyone who thinks about raising a reader thinks
about reading to them at some point. But but you note,
as the research has as well, that it's not the
be all end all. If that's all you do, then
you're not necessarily doing enough. So can you just give
us a few tips? Is what parents can do? We
all know parents get tired and they, you know, can't
always read every day, But are there ways that when
(18:05):
they can read to their child they can be more
effective in helping them understand the reading process. I think
that parents can apply that talk acronym to book reading
as well. So as you're reading, you can still label
in point, but you point to the red ball in
the picture, or you point to the title, or you
(18:26):
sort of bring their attention. Particularly once they're around three
and can start to pay attention to letters and distinguish
them from numbers. You can make the book itself the
object of the book a topic of conversation because people
forget that kids have to learn all those things. They
have to learn which way is the right side up,
and that the text goes left to right and from
(18:48):
top to bottom. And you just be surprised by the
number of kids at enter school and not knowing those things.
But it's not hard for a parent to teach about
books about print and then also asking questions about what
you've read to get their engagement and see what they're thinking.
That makes a lot of sense. A quick question about
(19:09):
digital books. So is it important in your estimation that
parents have actual books? I mean, I'm old school. I
love flipping. I mean I love the turning pages in
a book, and so to me, I'd prefer to read
a child a book where you turn the page. But
does it really matter if you've got a kindle and
you're flipping it electronically, does that still have the same impact.
(19:30):
I think it matters with the really little ones because
there's so much they have to learn about turning pages,
and they're developing even just motor skills. And when you're
initially building these book behaviors or book experience, sometimes they're
throwing the book, they're chewing on them. You don't want
them to do that with your iPhone or your kindle
or this device that you've paid hundreds of dollars for.
(19:51):
So I think that we have to let kids explore
the object of the book because it's all about keeping
their attention and engagement. And a book, even those, um
the little books where there's a patch that's scratchy or
a patch that is silky, where they're exploring the textures,
all of those are really valuable learning experiences for little ones.
(20:12):
We forget they have so much to learn. Yeah we do.
We really get to the phase where they need to
dive into devices. Yeah, no, we really do forget that.
Now that you're saying this, it's like, how do you
think they just come out knowing you read left or
right and which way is up. But no, we have
to teach all of them this. We'll be right back
after these messages. Welcome back to the show. I want
(20:35):
to just skip ahead. First of all, I should just
take a quick aside and say, parents, you must get
this book for many reasons. First of all, it's a
really impressive gathering of really important information and then sort
of absorbed and then redistributed in a way that it's
a great how to. And you list six different sort
of areas that parents can focus on. I'm going to
skip ahead to one that you list at the end,
(20:57):
which is advocacy, because you talk about the importance of
focusing on children's reading from a very young age, not
only to help their brain development, but also to help you,
as a parent, become a better advocate for them as
they get into school and get more involved in the
nuts and bolts of reading and the more and the
and becoming stronger and better readers of more complicated material.
(21:19):
So you've got this great roadmap for parents, So how
can they use your book to approach teachers as children
get into school. I mean, if if your child is
reading when they start school, for example, should you bring
this to the teacher's attention, Should you talk about the
kinds of things that you've been doing. Should you expect
that the teacher is going to continue in the same
(21:41):
way in terms of teaching the child reading. I think
it's definitely important for parents to have an open dialogue
with teachers. View it to the extent that you can
as a partnership, and you're all part of this village
that supporting your child, and you get to a point
where the teacher is really with them more than you are,
and of cases, since they're a sleep path the time
(22:02):
that they're with you, but um, it's it is important
to I always encourage parents to remember to give a
positive spin on their child, particularly when they're introducing the
child to a new teacher or a new school, and
leave space for the school or teacher to do their
(22:23):
own assessments and just be curious about the information that
you're receiving back. Because I've definitely heard from parents who
are researchers like me, who know a lot about these subjects,
and sometimes they'll go into the teacher and you know,
download this report and it can it can color the
(22:43):
teachers perspective of your child in ways that you don't anticipate. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I actually have a story about that. My my mom,
as I said, was a teacher and she taught me
to read. I knew how to read by the time
I got to kindergarten. So it's public school, and they
had open school night where the parents come in to
talk to the teachers and see what's going on. And
my mom went into the classroom and talk to my
(23:04):
kindergarten teacher, and before they started talking about me specifically,
they were just teacher to teacher, sort of trading stories
of what the teaching experience has been like. And this
teacher assess, my mother, can you believe somebody taught their
kid to read? You know? I put these slides up
and the kids trying to read the slides ahead of me.
I mean, it's not ridiculous. And so the next day
(23:24):
I was moved to the other kindergarten class. So there's
a there is to your point. Teachers do make impressions,
and sometimes they're not really great ones. But that that
I tell that story also to say that's important for
parents to interact with the teachers so they can just
get a sense of what their perspective is and you
know what the fit is with your child, and to
(23:46):
get a feel for that teacher's capacity too. If your
child is ahead. We often think about children who are
behind and what additional resources may need, but they're also
cases where a child is ahead, and like in your example,
the teachers not willing to teach the child at the
level that the child is at. They're sort of like,
I'm here to teach this grade level material. You're beyond that,
(24:08):
so you know, work on something different, or teach yourself.
You know, my work here is done. So it's good
for parents just to be receptive and observant and listening
to what you're hearing in those parent teacher conferences and
in that back to school night. And I always encourage
parents to read the state standards or the common core
that their state is using to see what grade level
(24:31):
expectations are, what is your child supposed to be able
to know and do at the end of kindergarten or
first grade, Just to have a sense and ask just
a few questions of the teacher about how they help
kids master those things or what they teach of the
child is beyond that, because you're it's there are a
lot of reading. The book is very positive and encouraging
(24:55):
about all the things that parents can do to get
their kids ready for school. But I could write a
whole their book on some of the reading instruction challenges
that they may encounter once kids our school aged. And
so I think, particularly for black and brown parents, she
shouldn't assume that you'll have a teacher who's been well
trained to teach reading and get your child to whatever
(25:15):
in their next level is. We can't assume that. So
we have to be kind of aware of expectations, aware
of where our child is, and then really advocate to
get whatever resources, whether it's remediating if there's an issue,
or enhancements if they're advanced. So that's that's really good advice.
I want to ask you two questions on sort of
in the same vein. One is because as you say that,
(25:38):
when you read your book, you're thinking, oh my gosh,
I'll follow these really thoughtful approaches and my child will
have a leg up. He or she will figure this out.
So what happens if you have, despite your best efforts,
you can't ignite a reading spark in your child. Now
I had my my I have three children the first
one took to it like a duct water. She was
(25:58):
an early reader, and I sort of, okay, yes, this
is the way it goes. And I had these little
books that I um, little books that were designed to
help children read, and she just loved those. And we
so along comes a second child, and I pull out
the books and I remember like it was yesterday. He
said to me, very clearly, I am supposed to learn
to read in kindergarten. When I get to kindergarten, I
(26:20):
will learn to read. Perhaps it wasn't quite that strong.
When did you get that idea if you have to?
Wasn't quite as driden, but his was. His point was,
I would much rather go and play. I really don't
want to do this, and I don't have to do
this because I'm going to get this. But my point
is there's gonna be children that don't take it to it.
I mean, when do you push the panic button? I mean, thankfully,
(26:42):
in this instance, he was right. He learned to read
in kindergarten and sort of took off from there. But
at what point should you be concerned if there's a
slow pace and they're not picking it up. I have
another handy, little acronym for this, and so that one
is when you're trying to levigate these just challenges as
a parent and you're concerned if your child is on
(27:05):
track developmentally, then to kind of help get your bearing straight,
I have a process or framework called GPS, and so
the g IS Guidelines, which really is again looking at
those developmental milestones, looking at the grade level expectations of schools,
and just having an awareness of where kids of your
child's age or grade typically are. So when you're grounded
(27:28):
in that, then in some cases you'll breathe a sigh
of relief and think, Okay, they're exactly there where I
thought they should be, but there where kids typically are,
and then or you may think, oh my goodness, they're
very far behind. Again, those are those guidelines aren't absolute.
It doesn't mean if a child hasn't hit this benchmark
by this year that there are doomed. But it's just
(27:50):
giving you a general sense of how things develop and
what to look out for in different respects. Then the
p IS I think parents should really record and dot
hmit their personal reflections on these things. So journal take notes.
It could be in an app on your phone or
in a notebook, but if you're concerned about something, right
down the specific example, so some parents may think that
(28:13):
their child has a speech issue or some kind of
processing issue, and write the date, the time, and a
little description, so that down the road, when you're with
the pediatrician or the teacher or the preschool teacher, whoever,
you have kind of a specifics of what you're observing
and feeling about what you're observing relative to those guidelines
(28:34):
in general expectations, and then the s IS specialists. I
always recommend that parents talk to your pediatrician, asked for
the referral to the speech therapists or whatever you think
the issue is. I've just talked to so many parents
who felt like something was going on. They didn't know
what it was, but they just kept asking questions and
they found out their child had a hearing issue, but
(28:55):
the child had a speech issue, and all of those things.
Because oral language is so important for reading, we have
to watch those things early. So I always encourage parents
to be proactive. And I've just heard too many stories
of parents who thought there was an issue talking to
a school or an administrator and the person saying, oh,
it's okay. Some kids just take longer. It may be
(29:15):
the case there may be no issue, but there's no
harm in investigating and digging around and and saying because
oftentimes there is an issue. Yeah, yeah, no, that that's
that's good to know. So my final question on this
but the purposes of the podcast, I mean, I could
talk to you about this so much longer. But the
last question I'll ask you today is, so, so you've
(29:35):
raised this reader, You're you've followed the roadmap, and your
child is a happy reader. Do you think there's a
point where as a parent you should step out of
the reading process with your children? Do you think there's
a point at which they're too old to be read
too or where they need to be independently reading where
you shouldn't be a part of their So you've developed
(29:56):
this ritual, I mean, is there a point at which
you need to be some end to it. I don't
think there's a point where you have to step out.
I do think there may be a point where they
push you out. So my daughter now is a middle schooler,
and she won't let me read her essays. She does
not want my opinion, she does not want my edits
or thoughts. So she writes her essays, she turns them in,
(30:19):
and I don't know the result until I see the
grade and the online grade book that the school publishes.
So I know parents who read nightly to their children
all the way through high school. If you have a
high schooler who will let you read to them or
read things to you, what a wonderful, beautiful experience of
just years and years of shared books. And people have
(30:41):
told me stories of book clubs some parents read even
if the child won't let them read aloud to them.
They may read the same books that the child is reading,
just to have that shared conversation and those stories to
talk about and ask questions about and connect over. When
some of my children got the high school, kind of
dove back in And I learned this from a friend.
(31:02):
And when I first heard it, I thought it was
kind of crazy. But then by the time my kids
got to high school, I actually did it. What my
friend told me was that she would read some of
the same books that her son was reading. They would
read it and then get together and discussed it. And
I thought, oh my gosh, what overkill. But when some
of my children got to high school, I found myself
doing this because First of all, it was fun to do,
(31:23):
and then I found it was really helpful to understand
to get a grasp of their reading comprehension, and they're
reading approach even as high school is I mean, it
actually gets important in high school because they're doing a
lot of standardized testing, and reading comprehension is really important
by high school. They if they can read, they they've
got it as a skill set. But that comprehension part
(31:43):
sort of the nuances of the things that are tested,
but not just that are tested, the things that make
you really enjoy books. It's a deeper level and it's
interesting to see how that develops in a in a teenager.
So I would find we'd go through these books, and
I have to confess sometimes I would sneak and get
the cliff notes because I didn't have time to read
all the books at the same time. But anyway, to
(32:04):
just talk about not only what we're reading, but what
do you think about this and what do you think
this character would think? I mean, it was really fun
to engage with these high schoolers and just to hear
about how they grasped things, and frankly, it made me
understand a lot better about how their brains worked, and
instances where that I didn't think they'd read deeply enough
I could try to say, because that's a very I mean,
(32:25):
you're you're walking a really thin line there. If they're letting,
if they're letting you read the same book you're reading,
you really can't critique too much. But it gives you
a good handle because by the time you get to
high school and you're interacting with their teachers and you
really are a partnership trying to figure out sort of
how deeply they can learn. It's great to have this
data in your head as a parent, so so good.
(32:45):
I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that that it's wonderful.
And again then you have all the shared memories of
all the stories and conversations around them that you can
come back to you for years. I agree the picture books,
I would have to say that probably they are much
fonder memories in my mind than they are my children's.
But but yes, I agree, they are fond memories. So
(33:09):
by I, as I said, there's so much more that
I love this topic, I love your treatment of it,
and I'd love to keep going. But I'm going to
close here and I'm going to thank you so much
for spending the time with me, for having this really
great conversation. And I know that parents who are listening
really really appreciate this, your your experience, your advice. You're
pouring it all into this book and giving them a
(33:31):
roadmap to to help their kids. So, but there's one
more thing before we go, and that is I need
you to play the g CP Lightning Round. So there
are four questions. Okay, you're ready, I'm ready. Okay, here
we go. What is your favorite poem or saying? My
favorite saying is one from my dad, and he just
always taught me to frontload my effort and he would say,
(33:54):
work as hard as you can, to learn as much
as you can, as fast as you can. And I
just like that idea because in life, the unexpected things
come up and you can fall behind. So if you
have that head start, that chump start, you're in better
position to recover and be resilient. That's great. I'm guessing
that Zora has heard that from you once or twice.
She hasn't, but I'm going to start telling her she will.
(34:17):
So give me your favorite two children's books. So this
should be easy since you are, you're a book lover.
Your favorite two children's books and they can be um
from your childhood or once that you and Zora enjoyed together.
My favorite children's book from when I was a child,
the one that I would always go directly to and
that ears Branched Library and acron Ohio, is Bringing the
Rain to Compiti Plane, which was just this beautifully illustrated
(34:41):
story about a drought and a father and son kind
of shooting the rain out of a storm cloud. But
there was just beautiful rhythm and repetition and the illustrations
and um, there were drawings of wild animals and this
plane and it was just another world. And I love
that book and read it over and over. Then as
an adult, my favorite children's book is Each Kindness by
(35:03):
Jacqueline Woodson, which is about a new girl in an
elementary school environment and kids kind of teaser and call
her never knew because of her hand me down clothes,
and she's just constantly smiling and trying to find her
way into friendships and eventually just plays alone, like can
never kind of make that in roads with the kids.
(35:24):
She's absent from a few from school for a few days.
The teacher gives a lesson on kindness by dropping some
pebbles in water and showing the kids kind of like
the ripple effect of doing a kind thing. And one
of the girls thinks she's going to smile and be
kind to this girl the next day. But the girl
never comes back to school, her family has moved away.
(35:44):
And it's just to me such as a powerful moving story,
so clearly and succinctly told in a picture book that
should be nice, be kind, be more than nice, be kind,
be warm, be accepting of people. And also that hard
lesson that kids need and adults need to be reminded
of that you don't always get another chance to be better,
(36:05):
to be kind of Wow, that sounds like a great book.
And I mean I'm not surprised, I love Jacquelin Woodson's work,
but wow, that sounds great. Those are great, great answers.
So now we're going to just shift to you as
a mom, and so I need a a mom moment
that you would love to do over. And by that
I mean that you could do you would do differently
(36:26):
if you did it over, and nothing deep, just something
that you wish you could redo. So I remember when
my daughter was very young. We were playing and someone
was being nice, just trying to make conversation and held
up a ball with a word printed on it and
asked her to read the word. And she froze and
she said, like just the name of the first letter.
(36:48):
And in my mind, I'd like flipped out and overreacted.
I'm like, she can't read. But mind you, she was
little and didn't need to be reading, and so I
definitely had like that overreaction and that I wanted her
to be assessed and you know, just going into drive
like she's behind, she's behind. So mom, do over in
the sense of when someone puts your child on the
spot and they're nervous and don't perform, like, don't don't overreact. Yeah, yeah,
(37:13):
I know that. That's I'm sure that impacted you as
much as it impacted her, because I know there's been
many times when I've done things and thought, but I'm
sure she's fine. So give me a moment when you
knew you nailed it as a mom. Well, this one
is sort of a mixed report, but one that comes
to mind is my daughter got into the car after
(37:34):
school one day crying because she had overheard someone saying
something negative about her, and she was really upset and
it was actually an adult in the school. And so I, again,
perhaps over reacting, no type thing. I'm parking, I'm parking
the car, and we're gonna address adults speaking about children
in a school where they, you know, can overhear whatever.
(37:57):
And she, my daughter, stopped me, and she said no,
like through tears, no, no, let me go, Let me go.
And I'm thinking she wants to watch me confront this
adult for you know, my my limited understanding the situation
for this issue. But I paused and I said, why
do you want to go? And she said, I'll do it.
So I was quiet and just walked into the school
(38:18):
with her and was sort of like kind of like
an ally. I wouldn't say advocate because I was silent.
I was just by her side. And she approached this
adult in school through tears and told her what she
had heard, how she felt about it, and why that
person was wrong in their assessment about what they had observed.
And I was so proud of her for just the
(38:43):
strength that she exhibited and advocating for herself even though
she was you know, sensitive and hurt through tears, and
I was proud of myself for stepping aside, and hadn't
occurred to me that she could handle that, and she
handled it better then I could have. Wow, that's a
great story. I just have to ask what was the
(39:04):
adults reaction. She apologized to her good for for what
she has said and her misunderstanding and all things, and
thanked me for bringing her back into the building. Wow,
that's great. That's a great story. And those are all
such great answers. And I thank you so much, Maya
(39:26):
again for being with us today. So everyone make sure
you get the book. It's called Reading for Our Lives,
Maya pain Smart. Thank you so much. Thank you so
much for having me. I'd love this conversation great. Thanks
me to I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and
that you'll come back for more. Please rate, review, and
(39:46):
subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends.
For more parenting info and advice, please check out the
Ground Control Parenting blog at ground control parenting dot com.
You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook at
ground Control Parenting and on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis.
The ground Control Parenting with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is
(40:07):
a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership
with iHeartMedia. Until the next time, take care and thanks
for listening.
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