February 26, 2025 • 52 mins
This episode invites you into an eye-opening conversation about transforming reading instruction. Host Stacy Hurst, along with co-hosts Donnell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny, sits down with literacy expert Margaret Goldberg to challenge the outdated practice of three cueing—a method that once dominated classrooms but falls short of scientific backing. Margaret shares her personal journey from the challenges of remote teaching during the pandemic to pioneering research partnerships that underscore the power of structured literacy and systematic phonics. Discover how bridging the gap between theory and classroom practice can empower educators, enhance student reading outcomes, and reshape our approach to literacy education.
Tune in for a candid discussion that not only questions old methods but also lights the way for innovative, evidence-based teaching practices.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Narrator (00:03):
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell Pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:48):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst, and I'mjoined by Donell pons and
Lindsay Kemeny, and for those ofyou who been listening this
season, you know that we arehighlighting the idea
perspectives journal that iscelebrating the 75th
anniversary. And today we have avery special guest.
Lindsay Kemeny (01:10):
I'm so excited to have Margaret Goldberg here
with us. Welcome Margaret. Soglad to be with you guys, and we
are going to be talking abouther article that she wrote with
Reed lion scientific researchand classroom practice, how
structured literacy spans thedivide. I love this article, and
(01:32):
you start right off talkingabout how a lot of the content
in this article is the result ofa partnership you forged in 2020
and I to better understand howthe experiences of a scientist
and a teacher could be meldedand used to guide the
application of the science ofreading. So I just thought,
(01:54):
Margaret, we could start off byyou telling us a little bit
about this partnership.
Unknown (02:00):
So it started when I was teaching first grade during
the pandemic, and it was nuts,right? You're teaching on Zoom,
and then you're trying to figureout how to teach, and then also,
like getting the opportunity tomeet with people from all over
the world, because this zoomworld opened up where you could
have meetings and get to knowpeople in a way that really
(02:20):
hadn't been available to usbefore. So at that time, I was
working on a paper with ClaudeGoldenberg, and I don't remember
this at all, but apparently,while we were discussing what we
were seeing happening with thescience of reading movement,
apparently I said, Well, wedon't want another reading
first. And he was like, Really,why not? And started probing and
(02:44):
asking me questions about it andClaude being Claude, he decided
to find the contact informationfor read lion and to put us on a
zoom together, where the threeof us were talking about what
had been learned from readingfirst and no child left behind.
And so I was in this zoomconversation with Reid, who was,
(03:05):
at one point in time, the mostinfluential person in the
science of reading, before itwas ever called that, for a good
span of American currenteducation. And so I was really
floored by the conversation,because he wasn't the arrogant
jerk that I thought he was gonnabe. He was actually really nice
(03:28):
and humble and asked goodquestions and listened to me and
like seemed to get a lot of outof the conversation. And I was
completely surprised by this,and so we ended up forming a
partnership to work on anotherarticle that we did together,
and then we were working on apresentation for Ida, which we
did recently, like we've done afew things since then, and I
(03:52):
think I've kind of realized thathe is the exemplar of what I
most want researchers to be ableto do, which is to have
productive conversations withteachers as equals.
Lindsay Kemeny (04:05):
Oh, yeah, totally. And, I mean, I so
agree, and I think that isthat's the problem, right? Is
this gap, and so we need tolisten to each other. So I think
that's huge. So I love that youstarted, you know, this
relationship with him years ago.
Unknown (04:21):
I think part of it is, yes, we have a gap, definitely,
but some of the efforts to spanthe gaps have felt a little
unequal in footing, where itmight be, like the researchers
are the experts, and they'regoing to tell the information to
teachers, and teachers need tofigure out what to do with it,
and this felt really different,because this was teachers have
(04:43):
questions and want to knowthings from researchers who can
help answer those questions,that we can talk about how to
refine instruction. And feltlike Reed really cared about
what was actually happening inmy classroom and the logistics
of it, the real life, kinds ofthings that get in the way of
the best. Its plans. So in thatway, it felt a little bit
different.
Donell Pons (05:05):
So Margaret, you've said some really interesting
things that I hope people caughton to. One was this, this zoom.
There's one of these positivethings that can happen with zoom
as you get to meet people youmaybe never would be able to
before. So I love hearing apositive out of zoom, because
there's a lot of challenges. Theother piece that I think is
really interesting. Youmentioned a few movements or
things that people mightremember about reading, and one
(05:25):
of those, No Child Left Behind,and some others, and I remember
getting profiled, for lack of abetter word as a parent, because
I had a child with dyslexia whowas quickly picked up in
preschool, and using funds fromNo Child Left Behind, I had home
visits, but the on the groundpiece, this piece that was
missing, somebody somewhere hadmade a decision, maybe in good
faith, but on the ground, itwasn't working, because I had
(05:47):
someone come visit who didn'thave a clue what they were
seeing, because there wereindicators I didn't know I was
looking for help, but theydidn't have the answers for me
either. So you've hit on somereally key pieces there,
Margaret and that piece about wemight have good intentions, but
then there can be folks on theground, like yourself and others
who can help inform and say, buthere's what it really looks
like. I love that explain that alittle bit better, because you
(06:08):
said Reed was willing to listen.
Well, it started
Unknown (06:11):
with us talking about three healing because I think
part of the thing I was tryingto pull out of him was, Is it
possible that all of No ChildLeft Behind and reading first
was actually intended to uprootthree kiwi, and I had just had
no idea that was when I wasgetting my credential, it was
(06:33):
the start of my teaching career.
And he said, Yes. And I waslike, whoa. Because, like, a lot
of people have thought likeEmily hanford's podcast was the
first time they had ever heardabout this. And that's true for
a lot of veteran teachers whohad been teaching during No
Child Left Behind and readingfirst. And I was like, Wait, so
that's what this was all about.
(06:54):
And he's like, Yeah, I saidsomething along the lines. Well,
then why didn't you just tellus, like, why didn't you just
come out and say there's somestuff that you're doing that
doesn't work to teach kids howto read. Here's what the
research shows, and like, get usto where we are now faster. And
his answer totally floored me.
It was, I didn't want to bedisrespectful to teachers. You
(07:16):
guys know so much you know aboutyour students, you know about
your classroom, you know aboutthe parameters that you're
working in. You understand yourcontext. Who am I as an outsider
to come in and start aconversation with this is what
you're doing wrong? And hetalked about how His hope was
that if he just helped teachersunderstand more effective
(07:39):
methods of teaching, then wewould pick up those methods, use
them, see they were working, andlet the less effective stuff go.
And obviously it didn't work outthat way, but realizing that
that was the intentioncompletely caught me off guard.
Lindsay Kemeny (07:55):
I love that that was the intention. Did you know?
No,
Stacy Hurst (08:02):
and I live very through it. Yeah, weird. It
Lindsay Kemeny (08:05):
reminds me of when, like, I was taking a class
with my sister, who was ateacher at the time too, and she
was like, teachers need explicitinstruction too. Like, just tell
us. Like, tell us. So it kind ofmakes me think of that, Stacy,
were you going to say something?
I was
Stacy Hurst (08:22):
just going to say I lived through that as well. We
actually had a reading firstdistrict in southeastern Utah
that ended up with amazingresults from the of course, they
literally had Louisa Moatscoming and training the teachers
as well. But I remember hearingabout that and thinking, Well,
(08:43):
that sounds interesting. Iwonder what they're doing. And I
had this really. I did haveaccess to the National Reading
Panel, so I was actuallyteaching phonics was my focus at
the time, but I had all theseother messaging about three
cueing and balanced literacythat we should have been doing,
right? And so I don't think atthe time, for me, there wasn't
(09:07):
enough cognitive dissonance,frankly. And I think having that
been explicitly stated wouldhave created it, and so we would
have probably worked a littlemore efficiently to figure that
out. So I wish as you weretalking, I'm like, oh, did we
have access to that? Was Wassomebody saying that somewhere?
(09:27):
And we just didn't know.
Lindsay Kemeny (09:29):
So I want to talk more about with three
cueing. So, you know, threecueing is this idea, if you're
listening in and not sure, threecueing is this idea that readers
use various cues to figure outthe words as they're reading,
and so it's using context or thesin or syntax most popular the
(09:50):
pictures. Look at the picture.
Does it give you a clue? Andwell, I would just love for you
to kind of share how you came tounderstand the problem with
three cueing, because I think.
Was really interesting.
Unknown (10:01):
I'll try to tell it concisely, because I feel like
people may have already heard metalk about this before in more
detail, but basically, I washired as a balanced literacy
coach and interventionist, and Ihad been teaching for probably
close to 10 years as a fourthgrade teacher, and I had felt
really successful with balancedliteracy. So I went into a
(10:23):
school where only between twoand 3% of the kids were reading
proficiently, and my job was toroll out the kind of instruction
that had worked at my highperforming school. And it didn't
take long before I realized thatwas not going to work for a
variety of different reasons,including one time a teacher was
teaching a lesson where she wastalking about, like, we're all
(10:47):
good readers, some of the kidscalled out, no, we're not like.
The cultural divide wasinherent, and so the
intervention program that hadbeen purchased for me to teach
was lli just grounded in thethree cueing system. We were
supposed to be doing the Fontesand Pinel benchmark assessment
system grounded in three cueing.
We're supposed to roll out unitsof study grounded in three
(11:07):
cueing like it was everythingour district was all about at
that time. And as I wasteaching, and as I was testing
kids and talking with teachers,what I realized was that when we
talked with students, what theywould say is, the hard part of
reading is the words, and weweren't doing very much to help
them with that hard part ofreading. And I realized I really
(11:29):
had no clue how to help a kidwith the words, because I would
say things like, sound it out ortry it, and they'd look at me
and be like, I don't know, andyou didn't teach me how. And so
I ended up realizing I needed tolearn phonics, and I needed to
learn how to teach phonics.
Luckily, there was a structuredphonics program that was on the
(11:52):
shelves of the school had beenpurchased with a grant and never
implemented, because we, theteachers, had never received
training in it. So I startedteaching some groups of students
explicitly and systematically,and I kept my ll groups going.
So I had two parallel tracks ofinstruction going on in my
intervention room. And what Irealized was with the kids that
(12:15):
I was teaching guided readingand through cueing, what was
happening was they were becomingmore and more dependent on me.
They would get to a word theydidn't know, and they were
trying so many differentstrategies all at once, it was
overwhelming, and they wouldlook at me and just pray that I
would help them and tell themwhat the word was. And what
happened with the kids that Iwas teaching the sound out words
is they were becoming thosecapable, confident readers who
(12:38):
wanted to take their books andgo find some place to cuddle up
and read their books. And Irealized the kids in the groups,
they were all similar to eachother. What was different was me
and what I was explaining tothem about how to approach
reading. So I started doing awhole lot of research, trying to
find out, like, Why does, why dosome methods seem to be working
(12:59):
better than others? What's knownabout how many kids I should
expect to be successful readersby the end of first grade?
Because that was the focus of myintervention. How do we read
words? Is the sounding outthing? A reliable strategy? All
sorts of questions like that,and it was before all of the
stuff related to making thescience of reading accessible,
(13:22):
accessible to teachers, had cometo light. So this is before the
reading Lake. This is before anyof the conferences that most of
us go to now. It was before theFacebook groups, all of that.
And so I was reading thesereally tense scientific
articles, and like trying tomake sense of it, and what I
realized was there was thislanguage that I hadn't been
(13:44):
taught like, I didn't actuallyknow terms that were being used
in the scientific literature. Ididn't know how to understand,
like even the kinds of studiesthat were being described. So I
started studying really hardevery single night, trying to
figure stuff out, and talkingwith the teachers I worked with,
which was really helpful. Itmeant I had to summarize, I had
(14:06):
to explain, I had to develop myown PDS, to try to describe,
like, this is how fluency isdeveloped. This is how I'm
understanding it. And I feellike, when I look back on that,
it was probably the hardestroute on to understanding this
stuff, but it did make me reallypassionate about trying to
explain it more clearly andexcessively to teachers.
Lindsay Kemeny (14:28):
I'm curious why in the first place, you decided
to do the two tracks with yourstudents, like, why didn't you
just jump all in to the, youknow, the systematic phonics? Or
were you not sure and try. And
Unknown (14:42):
I had people. This was a balanced literacy district. I
as a coach and interventionist.
I had a coach who was anadministrator who came in to
watch me teach. We were supposedto do Lesson Study. It was kind
of like a Reading Recoveryexperience, but using lli, it
was in my job description. Thecurriculum I was supposed to
teach and train teachers in waswritten into the job
(15:02):
description, so you
Lindsay Kemeny (15:05):
kind of did it in secret. Yeah, totally.
Unknown (15:08):
It wasn't until, at some point, I was talking with
the other first grade teachersat my school, and they were
like, the only kids in thisschool who are learning how to
read are the ones that you'resinging, and it's only some of
the kids that you're teaching,students had that teachers, oh,
a teacher. So they were like,gonna change the way we're
teaching, and you need to stopteaching lli. And I was like,
(15:31):
Oh, now I have a cover, becausecoaches are supposed to be
responsive to teachers needs,right? If teachers are asking
something from you, you can'tsay no. So now I had my cover
for the administrators
Lindsay Kemeny (15:44):
who were watching me. Wow. Well, how
powerful that the teachersrealized that you know and you
know, and then wanted to change.
Well, what's
Unknown (15:54):
funny is this ties back to the earlier conversation we
were having about read that isexactly what he thought would
happen is that if teachers sawmore effective instruction, we
would let the other strategiesgo. Right?
Lindsay Kemeny (16:07):
Yeah, wow. So what advice would you give
someone who is in a situationwhere they are, hey, they're
supposed to be teaching in a waythat they know is not aligned
with research? What would yousay to them.
Unknown (16:21):
I mean, it's trickier than like, obviously what I want
to say is, do what I did and bedefiant and teach the way that
you know about closer to orteach the way you know about
like, obviously that's, that'sthe thing that I want to say.
But I actually know it's a lotmore complicated than that. I
know that alignment across aschool is one of the most
important things to ensurestudent success. So if one
(16:42):
teacher closes their door andwas like, I'm using a different
scope and sequence, I'm usingdifferent teaching methods, the
chances of the kids actuallyhaving a really great experience
of kindergarten, followed byfirst grade, followed by second
grade, that's going to beconsistent and ensure that
they're mastering thefoundational skills that they
need. It's not as great if we gorogue. And so I think now I kind
(17:08):
of look at it as how can we makethose kinds of changes together
at a pace that allows the adultsto make sense of what we're
doing, why we're doing it, andto be in step with each other so
that no kid ends up having adifferent experience at the
school because of the lottery ofwho your particular teacher was
at any particular year. I don'tknow. I kind of never thought I
(17:31):
would say that, but it's whereI'm at now. Does that make you
think you do disagree?
Lindsay Kemeny (17:39):
Well, I know it's hard because I'm like,
because I am a teacher, and I'mjust thinking, you know, if the
whole system, if their wholeschool, is like that, I still
would be like, I'm closing mydoor and I'm gonna try to make
changes, but I'm not gonna keepteaching this, you know, because
I know it's not helpful. Sowouldn't anything be but it's
(18:00):
hard because, like you said, thealignment is going to be huge,
but if you're aligned tosomething that doesn't work,
that's not going to work either.
So
Stacy Hurst (18:08):
yeah, and Margaret, I saw you and your principal
present was at the readingleague conference. I think that
we went to that whole sessionwas so fascinating to me,
because together, you guysreally highlighted those
challenges at the very specificjunctures that everybody
experiences them. What I think Iloved most about how you were
(18:29):
talking about the change thatyou systemically were helping to
make together was the amount oftime that it takes, and you were
very candid about that. And Ifeel like sometimes,
systemically, we're looking forsilver bullets or and the quick
answer is, close your door anddo what you know is best, right?
(18:50):
But it's not sustainable. Whatadvice would you give? And
Lindsay just highlighted thistoo, and I know I went from
teaching first grade as well tobeing a literacy coach, and it
wasn't until I was responsible,in a sense, for that school wide
data that I started reallyseeing those patterns. They may
leave my class doing well, butthen in second and third grade,
(19:13):
is that sustainable? What advicewould you give to people working
within that system who aretrying to make changes that are
aligned.
Unknown (19:23):
It depends on what the issue is. I feel like, if the
issue is that you don't have agood scope and sequence for
foundational skills, like,that's the perfect kind of
professional learningopportunity to all get together
and all look at it and be like,Okay, what's missing? Why is it
missing? Where are we, you knowprogress monitoring to make sure
that kids are mastering theseskills. What's our school wide
(19:44):
system for making sure that wecan ensure that every single kid
is we know where they are on thescope and sequence, and we know
where they need to go, likethose kinds of problems you can
solve together as a team. I feellike when it comes down to
you're looking at the individuallesson plan. Hands, and they're
not super strong. That's adifferent question, where you're
trying to figure out, well, whatexactly is missing from our
(20:06):
program, and sometimes you don'tknow that until you've taught it
with fidelity for a year. Andlike, I never thought I would
say that, like, you actuallyneed to try it, and you need to
give it a whole hearted attemptin order to be able to know
where the gaps really are. I saythat as somebody who refused to
do that a few times in my life,because I was like, I know
(20:27):
better. I'm looking at this. Idon't like it. I'm gonna make
those changes. And then, like, acouple of times I was like, Oh
man, that's why they had us dothat. Like, I never did it. Now
I'm gonna have to back up andput that back. You know, just
looking at it and being like Iprobably should have given it a
more wholehearted try and thenhave the conversation of how
these lesson plans need to besupplemented or augmented in a
(20:51):
way that's coherent. You don'tknow that when you're new
Donell Pons (20:55):
to it. Well, I appreciate that one. Margaret,
thank you so much for sayingthat one is the time that's
needed often, right. In order todo this kind of work, we want
quick results, we feel thepressure. We want to be able to
show something, and yet it doestake some time to get this
right. I really appreciate that.
Lindsay Kemeny (21:13):
What about someone that's holding on to
those beliefs? How do youinteract with them most
Unknown (21:17):
of the time? I acknowledge how much sense. A
lot of those make right, like ifyou actually think about it,
there's a reason why thosebeliefs were generated. They
were generated because peoplewere operating just with their
own experience of what readingfeels like for them, and their
observations of what they wereseeing and the kids in front of
them. And so they make sense. Weknow differently because we know
(21:41):
of things that were discoveredthrough the brain scans and
through the research that wasnot done in classrooms in some
instances, or was done inclassrooms, right? Like a good
portion of that kind of clinicalresearch was interventions that
were done in classrooms, but ina way with greater intensity
than a classroom teacher usuallyis able to provide. So usually,
(22:03):
what I try to do is acknowledgewhy those things make sense and
admit that I used to think them.
So, for example, the belief thatgood readers don't process every
letter and every word. Like,yeah, I totally thought that,
because as I read, it doesn'tfeel like I'm making, you know,
like the cognitive connectionbetween individual letters and
(22:24):
words, it feels like I'm justwatching a story unfolds. And if
you ask me to find wheresomething happened in a book,
I'm gonna go back and it's gonnafeel like I'm skimming and
scanning and trying to find thesection of the text, like that
idea that that reading isskimming is it makes sense based
on our own experience. I'mtrying to think of some of the
(22:46):
other ones. Like there are allsorts of beliefs that people
have that aren't actually trueabout how good skilled readers
read, because we underestimatethe amount of automaticity that
we have with some of thosefoundational lower level skills.
But I feel like one of thethings I most often do is say,
like, Oh yeah, totally. Ithought that too. It made sense
(23:09):
to me. Here's what I thought. Isthat what you're thinking and be
like, and then actually Ilearned something different.
This is the thing that Ilearned, and this is how I think
about it. Now, does that come upfor you guys? Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay Kemeny (23:23):
And the thing with three cueing is that for
some students, it really doesn'tmatter. You can do three cueing
and they'll learn because,because they're gonna learn no
matter what. Yep, right? Yep.
And so I think that's wheresometimes they hold on to that,
because they're thinking, Well,I've done this, and it worked,
and you might not even realizeit. It didn't work for most of
(23:44):
your students, if you're, like,in K and one, because if they're
just using those predictable,repetitive texts, it works. It
sounds like they're reading. Soyou really have to, like, look
closer, or once they have, youknow, harder texts, then you
realize they've been relying onthose and they're not reading.
Yeah.
Unknown (24:03):
Or even worse than that, you have the experience
like me, which was it didn't getuncovered in third and fourth
and fifth grade, right? Like Iwas the product of whole
language. I was never taught howto read using phonics. I was
never taught how to spell. Iread a ton, a ton, a ton, and I
figured out through statisticallearning quite a lot about how
(24:27):
our written language works. Butthen when I was an adult, and I
had been teaching for 10 years,and I was trying to figure out
about how skilled reading works,and I'm reading all of these
scientific articles that hadwords that I had never seen
before, I had no idea how totackle those words. I started
realizing that I could notretain the names of the
researchers. I couldn't retainthe vocabulary that I had never
(24:50):
encountered before. I was havinga hard time being able to spell
some of the words that I hadseen in print, but I like, just,
I was like, I have no idea. Whatthe order of the letters are. I
think these letters are in theword, but like how to put them
in place. And it wasn't until Istarted reading about three
cueing and how we use context topredict words, and how we're
(25:13):
going to draw from the wordsthat we know and put them in the
place of what the unfamiliarword is, that I started
realizing, oh my gosh, that'show I read. And when I started
teaching my first graders,systematically and explicitly
how to decode words, I startedrealizing that there weren't all
these science like silentletters in English. Like, oh my
(25:36):
gosh, I G, H is a way to spell,yeah. Like, I had no idea. I
just thought G and H wereusually silent, like in a word,
like ghosts, you know, I had noclue, no clue. And so I was
learning along with them. Andthere was a period of time
where, like, I got all up in myhead and I could not read
(25:56):
without paying attention to thespelling patterns that were in
the text that I was reading. AndI was like, Oh my gosh, I've
killed the joy of reading formyself, like how I was afraid I
was gonna do for my kids. Andthankfully, automaticity, it's
real. And once you've got it,you can go back to the
experience of, like, justgetting lost in the in a text.
(26:19):
But to say more concisely, Ithink there are a lot of adults
who think that three cueing waseffective for them, and if they
look instead at how well theyspell and what they do when they
encounter unfamiliar words,they'll realize I don't have a
problem with memory. It's notthat other people are just
smarter than me, or that theyknow things that I don't know.
(26:41):
I'm actually not drawing out asmuch meaning from the text,
because I'm relying on thesepretty laborious strategies of
predicting and guessing andconfirming my guesses. And if
you can actually unlearn thosehabits, which you can, it took
me a little while, but you can,then all of a sudden, you can
read as well as those people whoseem to have really great
(27:02):
memories.
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Donell Pons (27:47):
know, Margaret, I have, gosh, I appreciate so many
things you've said. I hope ourlisteners are catching every bit
of this, and we'll listen to it,because I'm going to. But you
also mentioned in your article agroup of people that we kind of
touched on but haven't talkedabout much, and I loved what you
said. And it's parents andguardians of children who are
struggling with reading and someof the shame and blame that goes
on when we're not teachingappropriately because we can't
(28:10):
get there. And so then it thiskind of dialog shifts to well,
what are you doing at home? Whataren't you doing? What could you
be doing more of tell us alittle bit about that. Because,
boy, I really appreciated that.
Unknown (28:20):
Um, I think that that tends to happen because teachers
are working as hard as we can,like there is no way to work
harder than you are when you aretrying to manage 25, six year
olds, especially on a day liketoday, where we have Rainy Day
recess like it could not youcan't work any harder. So you
can work smarter. You can workin concert with the other
(28:43):
teachers at your grade level andwith the teachers above and
below you. You can work withgood leadership. You can be part
of a team like there are allsorts of things that we can do
to be able to make the job thatwe're trying to do more
manageable so we're able tofocus on the good stuff, on the
right stuff that's going to makea difference for kids, but I
feel like a lot of times theblame happens because teachers
(29:04):
feel like we have tried as hardas we can, and we're at our wits
end, and you're like, I needhelp. And it's true, you need
help, but the help you needisn't necessarily just for the
parents to read out loud totheir kids more often, or for
like parents to provide moresupport with homework or
whatever it is, sometimes whatyou need is from your colleagues
to try to figure out is themethod of instruction that we're
(29:26):
using working and if so great,how do we know? And if not, what
are we going to do about it?
Lindsay Kemeny (29:34):
Yeah, I always think of it as like I as the
teacher. I'm going to do theheavy lifting, I'm going to do
the heavy lifting, I'm going todo the instruction, and I would
love parent support, becausethey're going to need more
support practice reading, so ifyou can listen to them as
they're reading, like, that'swonderful, but it's more it's on
me. Like, I feel like it's moreon me. And sometimes I think it
(29:58):
gets shifted the. Reason thischild is having a hard time is
because the parents won't fillin the blank. You know what I
mean? And it's just like, it'sgot to be and it's hard because
we do have a lot on our plate,but it's like, okay, it's, it's
my job, and I'm not going toshift the blame to someone else,
which sometimes gets and I can.
I've experienced this as like, aparent too, right? With a son
(30:18):
with dyslexia, where and myself,like, I really was like, Oh my
gosh, like, what I I'm doing allthe same things I did with my
older boys, and he's notlearning, whereas I kind of
before incorrectly thought, Iguess, you know, if students
struggled, I kind of thought,Well, if the parent was working
(30:39):
with them, you know. And I mean,I feel sad that I think that.
And then it took me doing allthe stuff, probably working with
my son, you know, more thananyone else, and he still
struggled. So it really like,
Unknown (30:56):
yeah, and I think part of it too is if we understand
what we're asking the parentsfor like, asking a parent to
teach their child how to read.
For me as a public schoolteacher, I don't think that
that's appropriate. I think it'smy job to do that at school, but
where I really appreciate parentsupport is when it comes down to
that kind of distributedpractice that we need where,
like, we only have between myschool between 830 and three
(31:19):
o'clock to be able to provideinstruction. But for some kids,
they need more opportunities topractice, and it would be really
great if they can get itdistributed in those later
hours, three o'clock to bedtime, a few sprinkled reads of
the text that we were doing inschool. Or some, you know, for
our little ones, like moreopportunities to practice saying
the names of our letters orwhatever it is that we need, but
(31:41):
that's different than teaching,like when what we're asking for
is help with additionalopportunities to practice.
That's different than yourasking a parent to take on the
primary responsibility to teachkids what to do with the words
that are in the text, or any ofthe other tasks that might come
up.
Lindsay Kemeny (32:00):
And that's why, like, I do those take home
decodable books, because if Ijust say, hey, practice at home,
they're not going to have thekind of text for a first grader
that they need to be practicing,because you go to the library
and all those beginning textsare repetitive, predictable
texts where they have to use thethree cueing system. So set
those parents up for success by,you know, sending home something
(32:24):
that they can practice.
Stacy Hurst (32:26):
Yeah, I think it's for parents and for teachers
too, right? When you get in asituation where you're kind of
mystified, why isn't thisstudent progressing? I'm working
as hard as I can, and whether ornot they think the parents have
something to do with it, justthe resources they have access
to as a teacher to help get tothe bottom of how to help that
(32:47):
student, and let alone providethe parents with, like Lindsay
was just saying, adequate andand the appropriate resources as
well. I teach in higher ed now.
I'm teaching pre serviceteachers, and I very quickly
realized there are some things Ican literally pontificate about,
but I have to back it up withsomething like that, because I
(33:08):
realized that I was telling mystudents, telling is not
teaching. I realized the this ison you. You're the teacher. You
need to, like Lindsay wassaying, do the heavy lifting.
The second you have a studentwho's struggling, you need to
look at what you're doing yourpractices. But then I realized
very quickly, I need to helpthem to know the resources to go
to. And Marga, I know you havetalked a lot about systems
(33:31):
you've worked in, and I feellike you really are like an
ideal literacy coach. I was notan ideal literacy coach, but I
do remember there were teacherswho were willing to reach out to
me and say, what, you know, helpme figure this out, and others
who were maybe too prideful todo that right, like I'm the
(33:55):
teacher, I can figure this out.
And so I guess my question foryou would be, I'm trying to
teach my students early on, goto your literacy coach. You need
to be friends with them and thespeech and language pathologist
and use your resources. But whatdo you do as a coach, or anyone
who's in a coaching positionwith those teachers who might
(34:17):
feel a little reticent to reachout?
Unknown (34:20):
I feel like there's a couple of different models that
happen for coaching, and the onethat I was first taught doesn't
work. And that model is you justwork with the willing, and it's
kind of like therapy, like youask the teacher, what's the
thing that you're really wantingto explore in their practice?
And then they tell you, and thenyou're like, the person who
listens to them and helps them,like, work on this thing that
(34:42):
they were wanting to work on.
And the reason why that doesn'twork is because everybody is
trying the best that they can,and most people don't actually
know the thing that they need.
If they knew the thing that theywould need, they probably would
have done it already, like askthe colleague next door to them
to help them with that thing. Sothe. Idea that we're supposed to
all figure out our ownimprovement plan. Actually, it
(35:04):
just doesn't work. The otherreason why it doesn't work is
because some people are alreadymaxed out, and they're like, I
don't actually want to talk toyou, like, how is this going to
be useful to me or something?
And so that doesn't work either,because then you're only
coaching the support some of thekids in the school and some of
the kids are not actually goingto receive the help that you
have to give because the teacheris not feeling open to it or up
(35:26):
for and so I've had experiencewith that method of coaching. I
know it's really popular, and Idefinitely don't recommend it.
Am I
Stacy Hurst (35:35):
doing that was the one i Yes, yeah. It was
training, yeah.
Unknown (35:39):
So that kind of inquiry, best inquiry, first
kind of approach. Then there'sanother kind of coaching, which
is implementation coaching, orstudent focused coaching. And
both of those are like, we havea thing we're trying to do
school wide. So we're trying toimplement this curriculum school
wide, or we're trying to improveour student data school wide.
(36:01):
And so then you actually have aproject that has been determined
for you by school leadership,hopefully the principal and the
instructional leadership team.
And that makes it so everybodyis in need of coaching, and it
makes it so that it just becomesa normal part of the school day
to have help. It's a normal partof conversation and the lunch
(36:24):
room or after school or whateverit is. I was talking with a
first grade teacher who wasmeeting with her mentor teacher
who's helping her clear hercredential, and she was saying,
like, I feel kind of nervousbecause you're going to come in
and you're going to watch mewhile I'm teaching. And I
overheard this, and I was like,I was in your room yesterday.
(36:45):
What do you mean? Nervous? Justlike you don't count that point
where you're like, everybodyexpects you to be in their room.
Everybody expects that you'reeither waiting for them to ask
for help, or you're gonna, like,jump in where it's needed, or
you're circulating and listeningto kids, and you're gonna talk
to them afterwards about whatyou noticed in the students,
(37:06):
like, it's just normal.
Stacy Hurst (37:09):
Yeah, that's great, and that is assuming
administrative support too,
Unknown (37:16):
so yes, and collegial respect and trust and a shared
vision for trying to get betterlike I think that's one of the
things that I have noticed now.
I've worked at a variety ofdifferent schools, it feels like
the most important thing for aschool to be able to get better
is to be humble, and when theprincipal is humble, when the
instructional leadership team iswanting to learn together, when
(37:39):
all of the teachers in theschool are part of a culture
that's grounded in we are alwaystrying to get better because our
kids deserve that, it makes itmuch more conducive to coaching.
Stacy Hurst (37:52):
Yes, Margaret, I
Lindsay Kemeny (37:53):
wish you were my coach. Oh, fun. Okay, so in the
article, towards the end, yousay, or you end read lion
together say. That brings usback to our an important goal of
this article to demonstrate thatcollaboration between scientists
(38:14):
and classroom teachers is nonnegotiable if the successful
implementation of evidence basedreading approaches such as
structured literacy is to beachieved. So what do you think
that collaboration should looklike?
Unknown (38:31):
I'm still figuring it out in collaboration with
researchers. So for example, myschool has a partnership with
the sail lab out ofMassachusetts General Hospital
and our primary researcher thereis Tiffany Hogan, and her team
is really helpful because theyhave an understanding of
implementation science, likethat's one of her areas of
interest. And what I notice inour conversations is that it's
(38:56):
quite different than when I'vetalked with other scientists. So
sometimes, when you talk with ascientist and they tell you,
like, this is how you should doit. It's going to be an
intervention like this. It'sgoing to be you and the kid, one
on one, and this is what you'regoing to do, or something like
that. And you're like, whatabout the other 24 kids? They
don't have an answer for it. Orthey're like, hi, I don't really
(39:18):
think about that. Or, like, isthere some way that someone else
in your school could do, youknow, like, they'll and you're
like, No, like, that's actuallyjust that's not how it works
here. Whereas, when I talk withTiffany or the people that are
part of this project with us,they look at things instead of
(39:39):
being problems, like, there area barrier to implementation.
What can we do to help youfigure out how to get over that
barrier? And so some of thethings are like, how do we make
sure that tier one instructionis as strong as it possibly can
be, so that then we're reducingthe needs for tier two
instruction? How do we make itso that tier two instruction is
really easy? To implement it.
What do we need and what doteachers need in terms of, like,
(40:02):
really clear lesson plans inorder to understand exactly
what's necessary? Like, thosekinds of solutions are much
easier to find when you haveresearchers who don't see the
real life of a school as aninconvenience, and instead, they
see it as the place where thework needs to take root.
Lindsay Kemeny (40:21):
It's exciting.
We talked about Dr Tiffany Hoganand how she said at Big Sky, you
know, teachers are the ultimateimplementation scientists. And I
was just really, I don't know,excited by that, and it's true,
like implementation science iswhere it's at, and so neat when
you are, you know, working rightthere with the scientists in the
classroom. I mean, I just thinkthat's where we're going to
(40:43):
really help a lot of teachers,educators. Yeah,
Unknown (40:50):
one of the things that Reid said, he said so many
things that kind of blew mymind, and this one I'm still
recuperating from, it was in thescience, in the controls
experience of a scientificstudy, they will find out that
something is hugely impactful.
And this is the thing, whetherit's the medicine, whether it's
the intervention, whether it'sthe habit, whatever it is like
(41:12):
there is the innovation that isgoing to make a difference for
the problem you're trying tofix, and then when it's released
to people to do in the normalway of life, whether that's out
of school or it's just like, youknow, it's a something to help
you with your health. Sosomething that you're supposed
to just take at home or do onyour own, efficacy drops down to
(41:35):
40% and so when you think aboutthat, like, it makes so much
sense, and like, a controlledmedical trial when it comes down
to taking a prescription, forexample, like how people it's
not going to run exactly how itdid when it was in the
controlled experience of like,someone disseminating the
medication to the person at theexact same time every single
(41:56):
day, in the confines. That'sactually also true for reading
interventions, that when theyare implemented by the
researcher or the person who istrained by the researcher, and
it's happening in a containedenvironment, like a quiet room,
and it is happening with a greatdeal of intensity, and there
aren't any interruptions, andit's for this many weeks, for
(42:16):
this many minutes, it's all likeall of that is going to have a
huge impact. And then when youhand over the same thing to a
classroom teacher who hasassemblies and has Rainy Day
recess and has the other kidswho are trying to, like, need
attention, or like someonestubbed their toe, or whatever
it is, like, all those thingsare actually going to make it so
that the intervention declinesin its impact, and for us to be
(42:39):
able to acknowledge then it'sgonna have to be, not only
created in the lab experience,but also we need help in the
implementation in the real lifecontext of the school in order
to ensure that it actually is anintervention that's worth doing
and is gonna be possible To getgood effects with
Donell Pons (43:01):
Wow, that is so important. I kind of want to
pause a minute and say, did weall get that? Did we catch it?
That's really your heartbreak
Unknown (43:09):
is frustrating, and it's also pretty exciting when
you start realizing, like, Okay,so there's lots of things that
we know in theory ought to work,but if what our focus is now is
on in the the implementation inthe classroom or school
building, what do we need to doin order to ensure that it's
effective? Yeah,
Donell Pons (43:27):
and also, Margaret makes all those touch points
we've talked about throughoutthis conversation that much more
important that we've attended tothose moments where we can have
a good interaction betweenparent and educator. They have a
relationship in that classroom.
They're getting appropriatesupport as parents at home as
well. You're getting what youneed in the classroom, your
colleagues. That makes all ofthat so much more important,
doesn't
Lindsay Kemeny (43:48):
it? Something else I love. You're talking
about science in this article,and how it doesn't take sides,
but rather illuminates a path. Ilove that phrase, and then the
next part, I think, is soimportant for all of us, if new
data confront and overturn longheld assumptions and beliefs
even about structured literacy,we need to make changes that
(44:09):
reflect this new information,not succumb to confirmation
bias. Yeah,
Unknown (44:16):
yeah. So I think this kind of connects to I can't
remember if it made the cut inthe article. At some point we
had something. It either made itor didn't make it. We were
talking about the differencebetween the science of reading
lower case s, lower case r,versus the SOR movement. And the
SOR movement is pretty narrow,and if we instead look at this
(44:40):
as a huge shift that's happeningin the education profession, and
we're looking at teachingdifferently, and we're looking
at the role of the teacher beingdifferent, like that. We are
getting ongoing support andtraining. We are adjusting
practice based on new findings,where research practice
partnerships are guiding thework. Together. Like, that's a
(45:01):
very different job than the jobthat used to exist. Of you go,
you get your credential, you gettrained, then you get
curriculum, you implement that,and you close your door unless
they make you come out for astaff meeting. Like, this is a
very different way of us seeingour job. And I think one of the
things that Reid did a reallygood job of explaining to me is
(45:24):
that we have to stop thinkingwe've got it all figured out
right right now. There are lotsof people who want to say, like,
I was doing some things wrong,maybe, or I'm brand new teaching
and I have have men no mistakes,but what I'm doing right now,
this is the thing, and thechances of what we're doing
right now actually being thething that will ensure all kids
(45:45):
in our country become skilledreaders. It's not great. So that
means we're going to have tofocus on getting better and
better for decades to come, longpast the science of reading
movement fading.
Donell Pons (45:58):
Gosh, Mark, that's okay. Again, another powerful
one. You're full of them. Today,it's made me think of holding my
grandchild. So my one of mychildren, we've had our first
grandchild. It's amazing. Wehave dyslexia in our family.
Profile as I'm holding thatlittle one, first thing that
comes to mind when I'm lookingat him as I'm thinking, what can
I learn that will make hisexperience learning to read be
(46:18):
different, even after all theeffort I put into helping my
child learn to read, helping myhusband recover and receive
reading instruction, I'm stillthinking about, how can I make
his experience even better? Soit is that don't hold on to
those ideas. I'm hoping there issomething that's going to blow
my mind. I'm going to say, Wow,this is amazing. We have to have
that in us every day, right? Beexcited about what could be
Yeah?
Unknown (46:39):
And if anyone's telling you they've got it all figured
out. They're wrong
Stacy Hurst (46:44):
well, and that's the nature, and that's the
nature of the scientific method,or science. It's never done. We
are always going to be refiningour knowledge and hopefully not
upending it every decade. But,
Unknown (47:01):
yeah, definitely asking more questions, getting those
questions answered in ways thatare useful. And then hopefully
there will be a time when we getcurriculum that is more
effective, and so then we'reable to see what happens when we
implement at scale, and thenfind out the things that we
still have questions about andneed to refine, and then send
into this iterative cycle.
Lindsay Kemeny (47:24):
Margaret, I just think you are a gift to
education, so I am just likeyou, and you are just the
epitome of what we're talkingabout, where you're always
learning and always sharing andand I don't know, I feel so
lucky. I met you back in 2018and it was like the first time I
was on a plane for a long time.
And you remember our flightswere arriving at the same time
(47:47):
in Philadelphia, and you we metup, and I was like, so thankful
for that. And I'm just, I just,I just so admire you. I think
when I first met you, you werecoaching, and then you decided
during COVID To go back to theclassroom and and that just
makes you an even better, youknow, even better at what you
(48:09):
do, at coaching and sharing. Anddo you want to share a little
bit about, you know, the rightto read and maybe your lunch and
lit or anything else where ourlisteners can find you. Well,
Unknown (48:21):
I think what's funny is you're reminding me that Lindsay
referencing a time when she andI were on a panel that Emily
Hanford was facilitating. And Ithink it was right after, at a
loss for words, came out, if Iremember right. But anyway, it
was right before my life hadexploded. I was like, doing my
thing in Oakland, unifiedcoaching, coaching coaches
(48:42):
actually, and like, working on apilot project trying to uproot
the balanced literacy initiativein our district. And when the
podcast came out, leadership isnot and so what happened was I
ended up in this tricky positionof needing to, like, continue
working on the grant that I wasworking on that was focused on
(49:05):
evidence based practices, andthen also deal with a district
that really needed me, or wantedme to, like, stay on message
with the district implementationof balanced literacy. And so
what ended up happening was Istarted feeling like I needed to
write a lot about what washappening. I was blogging about
(49:25):
what my students were doing andhow they were responding to
instruction and stuff, and Ifelt like I needed to do it
anonymously, which is where theright to read project started.
And then Anonymous wasimpossible anymore, and so it
ended up being that there was,like, this new national
(49:45):
conversation about how readinggets taught, and teachers trying
to find each other and trying toshare information. And like, I
just really got excited aboutthe teacher to teacher
communication, because that feltlike what had been different
from previous. Waves of schoolimprovement initiatives. So
that's how the start of theright to read project happens. I
(50:07):
still write for it, and one ofmy favorite things to do is on
Fridays, I get to run the lunchand let which is a group that
assembles every Friday. It'spretty flexible, so whoever is
available and interested will dothe reading before the session
and then come and listen to theresearcher present and ask
questions, and it's exactly whatI feel like has been missing for
(50:31):
a long time. I've felt likethere hasn't been the space for
researchers and practitionersand advocates people are trying
to help teachers, professionaldevelopment providers,
curriculum developers, like, Ifeel like we're not in the same
room often enough to be able tohelp each other out. And coming
back to the beauties of zoom,like it's possible now with
(50:53):
Zoom. So that was lunch andnight you were asking about,
well,
Lindsay Kemeny (50:56):
thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
Margaret. It's fun to talk with
Unknown (50:59):
you. Time flies.
Stacy Hurst (51:00):
We say this a lot on this podcast, but I really
mean it. Today, I could carry onthis conversation for another
hour or two. I feel like wealways have a lot to learn from
each other. And Lindsay wascorrect, we have already learned
so much from you, Margaret, justfrom you being transparent and
reporting about your experiencesin education, I think that's
(51:21):
been very illuminating for manypeople, and definitely inspiring
the messages today that I'mgoing to take into my own
professional practice andtransfer to my students, that
humility is key, and that asteachers, we've said this many
times on Our podcast, we arelearners first, and learning
(51:41):
requires humility where and likeyou said, We're never done.
We're never done. So thank youso much for spending time on
indoor, rainy recess day to talkto us. We really appreciate it,
and to our listeners, we want tothank you for joining us today,
and I know you got as much ormore than we did out of this
(52:02):
conversation, so thank you, andwe hope you'll join us for our
next episode of literacy talks.
Narrator (52:09):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and
resources to support yourjourney in the science of
reading. You.
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell Pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Stacy Hurst (00:48):
Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My
name is Stacy Hurst, and I'mjoined by Donell pons and
Lindsay Kemeny, and for those ofyou who been listening this
season, you know that we arehighlighting the idea
perspectives journal that iscelebrating the 75th
anniversary. And today we have avery special guest.
Lindsay Kemeny (01:10):
I'm so excited to have Margaret Goldberg here
with us. Welcome Margaret. Soglad to be with you guys, and we
are going to be talking abouther article that she wrote with
Reed lion scientific researchand classroom practice, how
structured literacy spans thedivide. I love this article, and
(01:32):
you start right off talkingabout how a lot of the content
in this article is the result ofa partnership you forged in 2020
and I to better understand howthe experiences of a scientist
and a teacher could be meldedand used to guide the
application of the science ofreading. So I just thought,
(01:54):
Margaret, we could start off byyou telling us a little bit
about this partnership.
Unknown (02:00):
So it started when I was teaching first grade during
the pandemic, and it was nuts,right? You're teaching on Zoom,
and then you're trying to figureout how to teach, and then also,
like getting the opportunity tomeet with people from all over
the world, because this zoomworld opened up where you could
have meetings and get to knowpeople in a way that really
(02:20):
hadn't been available to usbefore. So at that time, I was
working on a paper with ClaudeGoldenberg, and I don't remember
this at all, but apparently,while we were discussing what we
were seeing happening with thescience of reading movement,
apparently I said, Well, wedon't want another reading
first. And he was like, Really,why not? And started probing and
(02:44):
asking me questions about it andClaude being Claude, he decided
to find the contact informationfor read lion and to put us on a
zoom together, where the threeof us were talking about what
had been learned from readingfirst and no child left behind.
And so I was in this zoomconversation with Reid, who was,
(03:05):
at one point in time, the mostinfluential person in the
science of reading, before itwas ever called that, for a good
span of American currenteducation. And so I was really
floored by the conversation,because he wasn't the arrogant
jerk that I thought he was gonnabe. He was actually really nice
(03:28):
and humble and asked goodquestions and listened to me and
like seemed to get a lot of outof the conversation. And I was
completely surprised by this,and so we ended up forming a
partnership to work on anotherarticle that we did together,
and then we were working on apresentation for Ida, which we
did recently, like we've done afew things since then, and I
(03:52):
think I've kind of realized thathe is the exemplar of what I
most want researchers to be ableto do, which is to have
productive conversations withteachers as equals.
Lindsay Kemeny (04:05):
Oh, yeah, totally. And, I mean, I so
agree, and I think that isthat's the problem, right? Is
this gap, and so we need tolisten to each other. So I think
that's huge. So I love that youstarted, you know, this
relationship with him years ago.
Unknown (04:21):
I think part of it is, yes, we have a gap, definitely,
but some of the efforts to spanthe gaps have felt a little
unequal in footing, where itmight be, like the researchers
are the experts, and they'regoing to tell the information to
teachers, and teachers need tofigure out what to do with it,
and this felt really different,because this was teachers have
(04:43):
questions and want to knowthings from researchers who can
help answer those questions,that we can talk about how to
refine instruction. And feltlike Reed really cared about
what was actually happening inmy classroom and the logistics
of it, the real life, kinds ofthings that get in the way of
the best. Its plans. So in thatway, it felt a little bit
different.
Donell Pons (05:05):
So Margaret, you've said some really interesting
things that I hope people caughton to. One was this, this zoom.
There's one of these positivethings that can happen with zoom
as you get to meet people youmaybe never would be able to
before. So I love hearing apositive out of zoom, because
there's a lot of challenges. Theother piece that I think is
really interesting. Youmentioned a few movements or
things that people mightremember about reading, and one
(05:25):
of those, No Child Left Behind,and some others, and I remember
getting profiled, for lack of abetter word as a parent, because
I had a child with dyslexia whowas quickly picked up in
preschool, and using funds fromNo Child Left Behind, I had home
visits, but the on the groundpiece, this piece that was
missing, somebody somewhere hadmade a decision, maybe in good
faith, but on the ground, itwasn't working, because I had
(05:47):
someone come visit who didn'thave a clue what they were
seeing, because there wereindicators I didn't know I was
looking for help, but theydidn't have the answers for me
either. So you've hit on somereally key pieces there,
Margaret and that piece about wemight have good intentions, but
then there can be folks on theground, like yourself and others
who can help inform and say, buthere's what it really looks
like. I love that explain that alittle bit better, because you
(06:08):
said Reed was willing to listen.
Well, it started
Unknown (06:11):
with us talking about three healing because I think
part of the thing I was tryingto pull out of him was, Is it
possible that all of No ChildLeft Behind and reading first
was actually intended to uprootthree kiwi, and I had just had
no idea that was when I wasgetting my credential, it was
(06:33):
the start of my teaching career.
And he said, Yes. And I waslike, whoa. Because, like, a lot
of people have thought likeEmily hanford's podcast was the
first time they had ever heardabout this. And that's true for
a lot of veteran teachers whohad been teaching during No
Child Left Behind and readingfirst. And I was like, Wait, so
that's what this was all about.
(06:54):
And he's like, Yeah, I saidsomething along the lines. Well,
then why didn't you just tellus, like, why didn't you just
come out and say there's somestuff that you're doing that
doesn't work to teach kids howto read. Here's what the
research shows, and like, get usto where we are now faster. And
his answer totally floored me.
It was, I didn't want to bedisrespectful to teachers. You
(07:16):
guys know so much you know aboutyour students, you know about
your classroom, you know aboutthe parameters that you're
working in. You understand yourcontext. Who am I as an outsider
to come in and start aconversation with this is what
you're doing wrong? And hetalked about how His hope was
that if he just helped teachersunderstand more effective
(07:39):
methods of teaching, then wewould pick up those methods, use
them, see they were working, andlet the less effective stuff go.
And obviously it didn't work outthat way, but realizing that
that was the intentioncompletely caught me off guard.
Lindsay Kemeny (07:55):
I love that that was the intention. Did you know?
No,
Stacy Hurst (08:02):
and I live very through it. Yeah, weird. It
Lindsay Kemeny (08:05):
reminds me of when, like, I was taking a class
with my sister, who was ateacher at the time too, and she
was like, teachers need explicitinstruction too. Like, just tell
us. Like, tell us. So it kind ofmakes me think of that, Stacy,
were you going to say something?
I was
Stacy Hurst (08:22):
just going to say I lived through that as well. We
actually had a reading firstdistrict in southeastern Utah
that ended up with amazingresults from the of course, they
literally had Louisa Moatscoming and training the teachers
as well. But I remember hearingabout that and thinking, Well,
(08:43):
that sounds interesting. Iwonder what they're doing. And I
had this really. I did haveaccess to the National Reading
Panel, so I was actuallyteaching phonics was my focus at
the time, but I had all theseother messaging about three
cueing and balanced literacythat we should have been doing,
right? And so I don't think atthe time, for me, there wasn't
(09:07):
enough cognitive dissonance,frankly. And I think having that
been explicitly stated wouldhave created it, and so we would
have probably worked a littlemore efficiently to figure that
out. So I wish as you weretalking, I'm like, oh, did we
have access to that? Was Wassomebody saying that somewhere?
(09:27):
And we just didn't know.
Lindsay Kemeny (09:29):
So I want to talk more about with three
cueing. So, you know, threecueing is this idea, if you're
listening in and not sure, threecueing is this idea that readers
use various cues to figure outthe words as they're reading,
and so it's using context or thesin or syntax most popular the
(09:50):
pictures. Look at the picture.
Does it give you a clue? Andwell, I would just love for you
to kind of share how you came tounderstand the problem with
three cueing, because I think.
Was really interesting.
Unknown (10:01):
I'll try to tell it concisely, because I feel like
people may have already heard metalk about this before in more
detail, but basically, I washired as a balanced literacy
coach and interventionist, and Ihad been teaching for probably
close to 10 years as a fourthgrade teacher, and I had felt
really successful with balancedliteracy. So I went into a
(10:23):
school where only between twoand 3% of the kids were reading
proficiently, and my job was toroll out the kind of instruction
that had worked at my highperforming school. And it didn't
take long before I realized thatwas not going to work for a
variety of different reasons,including one time a teacher was
teaching a lesson where she wastalking about, like, we're all
(10:47):
good readers, some of the kidscalled out, no, we're not like.
The cultural divide wasinherent, and so the
intervention program that hadbeen purchased for me to teach
was lli just grounded in thethree cueing system. We were
supposed to be doing the Fontesand Pinel benchmark assessment
system grounded in three cueing.
We're supposed to roll out unitsof study grounded in three
(11:07):
cueing like it was everythingour district was all about at
that time. And as I wasteaching, and as I was testing
kids and talking with teachers,what I realized was that when we
talked with students, what theywould say is, the hard part of
reading is the words, and weweren't doing very much to help
them with that hard part ofreading. And I realized I really
(11:29):
had no clue how to help a kidwith the words, because I would
say things like, sound it out ortry it, and they'd look at me
and be like, I don't know, andyou didn't teach me how. And so
I ended up realizing I needed tolearn phonics, and I needed to
learn how to teach phonics.
Luckily, there was a structuredphonics program that was on the
(11:52):
shelves of the school had beenpurchased with a grant and never
implemented, because we, theteachers, had never received
training in it. So I startedteaching some groups of students
explicitly and systematically,and I kept my ll groups going.
So I had two parallel tracks ofinstruction going on in my
intervention room. And what Irealized was with the kids that
(12:15):
I was teaching guided readingand through cueing, what was
happening was they were becomingmore and more dependent on me.
They would get to a word theydidn't know, and they were
trying so many differentstrategies all at once, it was
overwhelming, and they wouldlook at me and just pray that I
would help them and tell themwhat the word was. And what
happened with the kids that Iwas teaching the sound out words
is they were becoming thosecapable, confident readers who
(12:38):
wanted to take their books andgo find some place to cuddle up
and read their books. And Irealized the kids in the groups,
they were all similar to eachother. What was different was me
and what I was explaining tothem about how to approach
reading. So I started doing awhole lot of research, trying to
find out, like, Why does, why dosome methods seem to be working
(12:59):
better than others? What's knownabout how many kids I should
expect to be successful readersby the end of first grade?
Because that was the focus of myintervention. How do we read
words? Is the sounding outthing? A reliable strategy? All
sorts of questions like that,and it was before all of the
stuff related to making thescience of reading accessible,
(13:22):
accessible to teachers, had cometo light. So this is before the
reading Lake. This is before anyof the conferences that most of
us go to now. It was before theFacebook groups, all of that.
And so I was reading thesereally tense scientific
articles, and like trying tomake sense of it, and what I
realized was there was thislanguage that I hadn't been
(13:44):
taught like, I didn't actuallyknow terms that were being used
in the scientific literature. Ididn't know how to understand,
like even the kinds of studiesthat were being described. So I
started studying really hardevery single night, trying to
figure stuff out, and talkingwith the teachers I worked with,
which was really helpful. Itmeant I had to summarize, I had
(14:06):
to explain, I had to develop myown PDS, to try to describe,
like, this is how fluency isdeveloped. This is how I'm
understanding it. And I feellike, when I look back on that,
it was probably the hardestroute on to understanding this
stuff, but it did make me reallypassionate about trying to
explain it more clearly andexcessively to teachers.
Lindsay Kemeny (14:28):
I'm curious why in the first place, you decided
to do the two tracks with yourstudents, like, why didn't you
just jump all in to the, youknow, the systematic phonics? Or
were you not sure and try. And
Unknown (14:42):
I had people. This was a balanced literacy district. I
as a coach and interventionist.
I had a coach who was anadministrator who came in to
watch me teach. We were supposedto do Lesson Study. It was kind
of like a Reading Recoveryexperience, but using lli, it
was in my job description. Thecurriculum I was supposed to
teach and train teachers in waswritten into the job
(15:02):
description, so you
Lindsay Kemeny (15:05):
kind of did it in secret. Yeah, totally.
Unknown (15:08):
It wasn't until, at some point, I was talking with
the other first grade teachersat my school, and they were
like, the only kids in thisschool who are learning how to
read are the ones that you'resinging, and it's only some of
the kids that you're teaching,students had that teachers, oh,
a teacher. So they were like,gonna change the way we're
teaching, and you need to stopteaching lli. And I was like,
(15:31):
Oh, now I have a cover, becausecoaches are supposed to be
responsive to teachers needs,right? If teachers are asking
something from you, you can'tsay no. So now I had my cover
for the administrators
Lindsay Kemeny (15:44):
who were watching me. Wow. Well, how
powerful that the teachersrealized that you know and you
know, and then wanted to change.
Well, what's
Unknown (15:54):
funny is this ties back to the earlier conversation we
were having about read that isexactly what he thought would
happen is that if teachers sawmore effective instruction, we
would let the other strategiesgo. Right?
Lindsay Kemeny (16:07):
Yeah, wow. So what advice would you give
someone who is in a situationwhere they are, hey, they're
supposed to be teaching in a waythat they know is not aligned
with research? What would yousay to them.
Unknown (16:21):
I mean, it's trickier than like, obviously what I want
to say is, do what I did and bedefiant and teach the way that
you know about closer to orteach the way you know about
like, obviously that's, that'sthe thing that I want to say.
But I actually know it's a lotmore complicated than that. I
know that alignment across aschool is one of the most
important things to ensurestudent success. So if one
(16:42):
teacher closes their door andwas like, I'm using a different
scope and sequence, I'm usingdifferent teaching methods, the
chances of the kids actuallyhaving a really great experience
of kindergarten, followed byfirst grade, followed by second
grade, that's going to beconsistent and ensure that
they're mastering thefoundational skills that they
need. It's not as great if we gorogue. And so I think now I kind
(17:08):
of look at it as how can we makethose kinds of changes together
at a pace that allows the adultsto make sense of what we're
doing, why we're doing it, andto be in step with each other so
that no kid ends up having adifferent experience at the
school because of the lottery ofwho your particular teacher was
at any particular year. I don'tknow. I kind of never thought I
(17:31):
would say that, but it's whereI'm at now. Does that make you
think you do disagree?
Lindsay Kemeny (17:39):
Well, I know it's hard because I'm like,
because I am a teacher, and I'mjust thinking, you know, if the
whole system, if their wholeschool, is like that, I still
would be like, I'm closing mydoor and I'm gonna try to make
changes, but I'm not gonna keepteaching this, you know, because
I know it's not helpful. Sowouldn't anything be but it's
(18:00):
hard because, like you said, thealignment is going to be huge,
but if you're aligned tosomething that doesn't work,
that's not going to work either.
So
Stacy Hurst (18:08):
yeah, and Margaret, I saw you and your principal
present was at the readingleague conference. I think that
we went to that whole sessionwas so fascinating to me,
because together, you guysreally highlighted those
challenges at the very specificjunctures that everybody
experiences them. What I think Iloved most about how you were
(18:29):
talking about the change thatyou systemically were helping to
make together was the amount oftime that it takes, and you were
very candid about that. And Ifeel like sometimes,
systemically, we're looking forsilver bullets or and the quick
answer is, close your door anddo what you know is best, right?
(18:50):
But it's not sustainable. Whatadvice would you give? And
Lindsay just highlighted thistoo, and I know I went from
teaching first grade as well tobeing a literacy coach, and it
wasn't until I was responsible,in a sense, for that school wide
data that I started reallyseeing those patterns. They may
leave my class doing well, butthen in second and third grade,
(19:13):
is that sustainable? What advicewould you give to people working
within that system who aretrying to make changes that are
aligned.
Unknown (19:23):
It depends on what the issue is. I feel like, if the
issue is that you don't have agood scope and sequence for
foundational skills, like,that's the perfect kind of
professional learningopportunity to all get together
and all look at it and be like,Okay, what's missing? Why is it
missing? Where are we, you knowprogress monitoring to make sure
that kids are mastering theseskills. What's our school wide
(19:44):
system for making sure that wecan ensure that every single kid
is we know where they are on thescope and sequence, and we know
where they need to go, likethose kinds of problems you can
solve together as a team. I feellike when it comes down to
you're looking at the individuallesson plan. Hands, and they're
not super strong. That's adifferent question, where you're
trying to figure out, well, whatexactly is missing from our
(20:06):
program, and sometimes you don'tknow that until you've taught it
with fidelity for a year. Andlike, I never thought I would
say that, like, you actuallyneed to try it, and you need to
give it a whole hearted attemptin order to be able to know
where the gaps really are. I saythat as somebody who refused to
do that a few times in my life,because I was like, I know
(20:27):
better. I'm looking at this. Idon't like it. I'm gonna make
those changes. And then, like, acouple of times I was like, Oh
man, that's why they had us dothat. Like, I never did it. Now
I'm gonna have to back up andput that back. You know, just
looking at it and being like Iprobably should have given it a
more wholehearted try and thenhave the conversation of how
these lesson plans need to besupplemented or augmented in a
(20:51):
way that's coherent. You don'tknow that when you're new
Donell Pons (20:55):
to it. Well, I appreciate that one. Margaret,
thank you so much for sayingthat one is the time that's
needed often, right. In order todo this kind of work, we want
quick results, we feel thepressure. We want to be able to
show something, and yet it doestake some time to get this
right. I really appreciate that.
Lindsay Kemeny (21:13):
What about someone that's holding on to
those beliefs? How do youinteract with them most
Unknown (21:17):
of the time? I acknowledge how much sense. A
lot of those make right, like ifyou actually think about it,
there's a reason why thosebeliefs were generated. They
were generated because peoplewere operating just with their
own experience of what readingfeels like for them, and their
observations of what they wereseeing and the kids in front of
them. And so they make sense. Weknow differently because we know
(21:41):
of things that were discoveredthrough the brain scans and
through the research that wasnot done in classrooms in some
instances, or was done inclassrooms, right? Like a good
portion of that kind of clinicalresearch was interventions that
were done in classrooms, but ina way with greater intensity
than a classroom teacher usuallyis able to provide. So usually,
(22:03):
what I try to do is acknowledgewhy those things make sense and
admit that I used to think them.
So, for example, the belief thatgood readers don't process every
letter and every word. Like,yeah, I totally thought that,
because as I read, it doesn'tfeel like I'm making, you know,
like the cognitive connectionbetween individual letters and
(22:24):
words, it feels like I'm justwatching a story unfolds. And if
you ask me to find wheresomething happened in a book,
I'm gonna go back and it's gonnafeel like I'm skimming and
scanning and trying to find thesection of the text, like that
idea that that reading isskimming is it makes sense based
on our own experience. I'mtrying to think of some of the
(22:46):
other ones. Like there are allsorts of beliefs that people
have that aren't actually trueabout how good skilled readers
read, because we underestimatethe amount of automaticity that
we have with some of thosefoundational lower level skills.
But I feel like one of thethings I most often do is say,
like, Oh yeah, totally. Ithought that too. It made sense
(23:09):
to me. Here's what I thought. Isthat what you're thinking and be
like, and then actually Ilearned something different.
This is the thing that Ilearned, and this is how I think
about it. Now, does that come upfor you guys? Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay Kemeny (23:23):
And the thing with three cueing is that for
some students, it really doesn'tmatter. You can do three cueing
and they'll learn because,because they're gonna learn no
matter what. Yep, right? Yep.
And so I think that's wheresometimes they hold on to that,
because they're thinking, Well,I've done this, and it worked,
and you might not even realizeit. It didn't work for most of
(23:44):
your students, if you're, like,in K and one, because if they're
just using those predictable,repetitive texts, it works. It
sounds like they're reading. Soyou really have to, like, look
closer, or once they have, youknow, harder texts, then you
realize they've been relying onthose and they're not reading.
Yeah.
Unknown (24:03):
Or even worse than that, you have the experience
like me, which was it didn't getuncovered in third and fourth
and fifth grade, right? Like Iwas the product of whole
language. I was never taught howto read using phonics. I was
never taught how to spell. Iread a ton, a ton, a ton, and I
figured out through statisticallearning quite a lot about how
(24:27):
our written language works. Butthen when I was an adult, and I
had been teaching for 10 years,and I was trying to figure out
about how skilled reading works,and I'm reading all of these
scientific articles that hadwords that I had never seen
before, I had no idea how totackle those words. I started
realizing that I could notretain the names of the
researchers. I couldn't retainthe vocabulary that I had never
(24:50):
encountered before. I was havinga hard time being able to spell
some of the words that I hadseen in print, but I like, just,
I was like, I have no idea. Whatthe order of the letters are. I
think these letters are in theword, but like how to put them
in place. And it wasn't until Istarted reading about three
cueing and how we use context topredict words, and how we're
(25:13):
going to draw from the wordsthat we know and put them in the
place of what the unfamiliarword is, that I started
realizing, oh my gosh, that'show I read. And when I started
teaching my first graders,systematically and explicitly
how to decode words, I startedrealizing that there weren't all
these science like silentletters in English. Like, oh my
(25:36):
gosh, I G, H is a way to spell,yeah. Like, I had no idea. I
just thought G and H wereusually silent, like in a word,
like ghosts, you know, I had noclue, no clue. And so I was
learning along with them. Andthere was a period of time
where, like, I got all up in myhead and I could not read
(25:56):
without paying attention to thespelling patterns that were in
the text that I was reading. AndI was like, Oh my gosh, I've
killed the joy of reading formyself, like how I was afraid I
was gonna do for my kids. Andthankfully, automaticity, it's
real. And once you've got it,you can go back to the
experience of, like, justgetting lost in the in a text.
(26:19):
But to say more concisely, Ithink there are a lot of adults
who think that three cueing waseffective for them, and if they
look instead at how well theyspell and what they do when they
encounter unfamiliar words,they'll realize I don't have a
problem with memory. It's notthat other people are just
smarter than me, or that theyknow things that I don't know.
(26:41):
I'm actually not drawing out asmuch meaning from the text,
because I'm relying on thesepretty laborious strategies of
predicting and guessing andconfirming my guesses. And if
you can actually unlearn thosehabits, which you can, it took
me a little while, but you can,then all of a sudden, you can
read as well as those people whoseem to have really great
(27:02):
memories.
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(27:26):
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Donell Pons (27:47):
know, Margaret, I have, gosh, I appreciate so many
things you've said. I hope ourlisteners are catching every bit
of this, and we'll listen to it,because I'm going to. But you
also mentioned in your article agroup of people that we kind of
touched on but haven't talkedabout much, and I loved what you
said. And it's parents andguardians of children who are
struggling with reading and someof the shame and blame that goes
on when we're not teachingappropriately because we can't
(28:10):
get there. And so then it thiskind of dialog shifts to well,
what are you doing at home? Whataren't you doing? What could you
be doing more of tell us alittle bit about that. Because,
boy, I really appreciated that.
Unknown (28:20):
Um, I think that that tends to happen because teachers
are working as hard as we can,like there is no way to work
harder than you are when you aretrying to manage 25, six year
olds, especially on a day liketoday, where we have Rainy Day
recess like it could not youcan't work any harder. So you
can work smarter. You can workin concert with the other
(28:43):
teachers at your grade level andwith the teachers above and
below you. You can work withgood leadership. You can be part
of a team like there are allsorts of things that we can do
to be able to make the job thatwe're trying to do more
manageable so we're able tofocus on the good stuff, on the
right stuff that's going to makea difference for kids, but I
feel like a lot of times theblame happens because teachers
(29:04):
feel like we have tried as hardas we can, and we're at our wits
end, and you're like, I needhelp. And it's true, you need
help, but the help you needisn't necessarily just for the
parents to read out loud totheir kids more often, or for
like parents to provide moresupport with homework or
whatever it is, sometimes whatyou need is from your colleagues
to try to figure out is themethod of instruction that we're
(29:26):
using working and if so great,how do we know? And if not, what
are we going to do about it?
Lindsay Kemeny (29:34):
Yeah, I always think of it as like I as the
teacher. I'm going to do theheavy lifting, I'm going to do
the heavy lifting, I'm going todo the instruction, and I would
love parent support, becausethey're going to need more
support practice reading, so ifyou can listen to them as
they're reading, like, that'swonderful, but it's more it's on
me. Like, I feel like it's moreon me. And sometimes I think it
(29:58):
gets shifted the. Reason thischild is having a hard time is
because the parents won't fillin the blank. You know what I
mean? And it's just like, it'sgot to be and it's hard because
we do have a lot on our plate,but it's like, okay, it's, it's
my job, and I'm not going toshift the blame to someone else,
which sometimes gets and I can.
I've experienced this as like, aparent too, right? With a son
(30:18):
with dyslexia, where and myself,like, I really was like, Oh my
gosh, like, what I I'm doing allthe same things I did with my
older boys, and he's notlearning, whereas I kind of
before incorrectly thought, Iguess, you know, if students
struggled, I kind of thought,Well, if the parent was working
(30:39):
with them, you know. And I mean,I feel sad that I think that.
And then it took me doing allthe stuff, probably working with
my son, you know, more thananyone else, and he still
struggled. So it really like,
Unknown (30:56):
yeah, and I think part of it too is if we understand
what we're asking the parentsfor like, asking a parent to
teach their child how to read.
For me as a public schoolteacher, I don't think that
that's appropriate. I think it'smy job to do that at school, but
where I really appreciate parentsupport is when it comes down to
that kind of distributedpractice that we need where,
like, we only have between myschool between 830 and three
(31:19):
o'clock to be able to provideinstruction. But for some kids,
they need more opportunities topractice, and it would be really
great if they can get itdistributed in those later
hours, three o'clock to bedtime, a few sprinkled reads of
the text that we were doing inschool. Or some, you know, for
our little ones, like moreopportunities to practice saying
the names of our letters orwhatever it is that we need, but
(31:41):
that's different than teaching,like when what we're asking for
is help with additionalopportunities to practice.
That's different than yourasking a parent to take on the
primary responsibility to teachkids what to do with the words
that are in the text, or any ofthe other tasks that might come
up.
Lindsay Kemeny (32:00):
And that's why, like, I do those take home
decodable books, because if Ijust say, hey, practice at home,
they're not going to have thekind of text for a first grader
that they need to be practicing,because you go to the library
and all those beginning textsare repetitive, predictable
texts where they have to use thethree cueing system. So set
those parents up for success by,you know, sending home something
(32:24):
that they can practice.
Stacy Hurst (32:26):
Yeah, I think it's for parents and for teachers
too, right? When you get in asituation where you're kind of
mystified, why isn't thisstudent progressing? I'm working
as hard as I can, and whether ornot they think the parents have
something to do with it, justthe resources they have access
to as a teacher to help get tothe bottom of how to help that
(32:47):
student, and let alone providethe parents with, like Lindsay
was just saying, adequate andand the appropriate resources as
well. I teach in higher ed now.
I'm teaching pre serviceteachers, and I very quickly
realized there are some things Ican literally pontificate about,
but I have to back it up withsomething like that, because I
(33:08):
realized that I was telling mystudents, telling is not
teaching. I realized the this ison you. You're the teacher. You
need to, like Lindsay wassaying, do the heavy lifting.
The second you have a studentwho's struggling, you need to
look at what you're doing yourpractices. But then I realized
very quickly, I need to helpthem to know the resources to go
to. And Marga, I know you havetalked a lot about systems
(33:31):
you've worked in, and I feellike you really are like an
ideal literacy coach. I was notan ideal literacy coach, but I
do remember there were teacherswho were willing to reach out to
me and say, what, you know, helpme figure this out, and others
who were maybe too prideful todo that right, like I'm the
(33:55):
teacher, I can figure this out.
And so I guess my question foryou would be, I'm trying to
teach my students early on, goto your literacy coach. You need
to be friends with them and thespeech and language pathologist
and use your resources. But whatdo you do as a coach, or anyone
who's in a coaching positionwith those teachers who might
(34:17):
feel a little reticent to reachout?
Unknown (34:20):
I feel like there's a couple of different models that
happen for coaching, and the onethat I was first taught doesn't
work. And that model is you justwork with the willing, and it's
kind of like therapy, like youask the teacher, what's the
thing that you're really wantingto explore in their practice?
And then they tell you, and thenyou're like, the person who
listens to them and helps them,like, work on this thing that
(34:42):
they were wanting to work on.
And the reason why that doesn'twork is because everybody is
trying the best that they can,and most people don't actually
know the thing that they need.
If they knew the thing that theywould need, they probably would
have done it already, like askthe colleague next door to them
to help them with that thing. Sothe. Idea that we're supposed to
all figure out our ownimprovement plan. Actually, it
(35:04):
just doesn't work. The otherreason why it doesn't work is
because some people are alreadymaxed out, and they're like, I
don't actually want to talk toyou, like, how is this going to
be useful to me or something?
And so that doesn't work either,because then you're only
coaching the support some of thekids in the school and some of
the kids are not actually goingto receive the help that you
have to give because the teacheris not feeling open to it or up
(35:26):
for and so I've had experiencewith that method of coaching. I
know it's really popular, and Idefinitely don't recommend it.
Am I
Stacy Hurst (35:35):
doing that was the one i Yes, yeah. It was
training, yeah.
Unknown (35:39):
So that kind of inquiry, best inquiry, first
kind of approach. Then there'sanother kind of coaching, which
is implementation coaching, orstudent focused coaching. And
both of those are like, we havea thing we're trying to do
school wide. So we're trying toimplement this curriculum school
wide, or we're trying to improveour student data school wide.
(36:01):
And so then you actually have aproject that has been determined
for you by school leadership,hopefully the principal and the
instructional leadership team.
And that makes it so everybodyis in need of coaching, and it
makes it so that it just becomesa normal part of the school day
to have help. It's a normal partof conversation and the lunch
(36:24):
room or after school or whateverit is. I was talking with a
first grade teacher who wasmeeting with her mentor teacher
who's helping her clear hercredential, and she was saying,
like, I feel kind of nervousbecause you're going to come in
and you're going to watch mewhile I'm teaching. And I
overheard this, and I was like,I was in your room yesterday.
(36:45):
What do you mean? Nervous? Justlike you don't count that point
where you're like, everybodyexpects you to be in their room.
Everybody expects that you'reeither waiting for them to ask
for help, or you're gonna, like,jump in where it's needed, or
you're circulating and listeningto kids, and you're gonna talk
to them afterwards about whatyou noticed in the students,
(37:06):
like, it's just normal.
Stacy Hurst (37:09):
Yeah, that's great, and that is assuming
administrative support too,
Unknown (37:16):
so yes, and collegial respect and trust and a shared
vision for trying to get betterlike I think that's one of the
things that I have noticed now.
I've worked at a variety ofdifferent schools, it feels like
the most important thing for aschool to be able to get better
is to be humble, and when theprincipal is humble, when the
instructional leadership team iswanting to learn together, when
(37:39):
all of the teachers in theschool are part of a culture
that's grounded in we are alwaystrying to get better because our
kids deserve that, it makes itmuch more conducive to coaching.
Stacy Hurst (37:52):
Yes, Margaret, I
Lindsay Kemeny (37:53):
wish you were my coach. Oh, fun. Okay, so in the
article, towards the end, yousay, or you end read lion
together say. That brings usback to our an important goal of
this article to demonstrate thatcollaboration between scientists
(38:14):
and classroom teachers is nonnegotiable if the successful
implementation of evidence basedreading approaches such as
structured literacy is to beachieved. So what do you think
that collaboration should looklike?
Unknown (38:31):
I'm still figuring it out in collaboration with
researchers. So for example, myschool has a partnership with
the sail lab out ofMassachusetts General Hospital
and our primary researcher thereis Tiffany Hogan, and her team
is really helpful because theyhave an understanding of
implementation science, likethat's one of her areas of
interest. And what I notice inour conversations is that it's
(38:56):
quite different than when I'vetalked with other scientists. So
sometimes, when you talk with ascientist and they tell you,
like, this is how you should doit. It's going to be an
intervention like this. It'sgoing to be you and the kid, one
on one, and this is what you'regoing to do, or something like
that. And you're like, whatabout the other 24 kids? They
don't have an answer for it. Orthey're like, hi, I don't really
(39:18):
think about that. Or, like, isthere some way that someone else
in your school could do, youknow, like, they'll and you're
like, No, like, that's actuallyjust that's not how it works
here. Whereas, when I talk withTiffany or the people that are
part of this project with us,they look at things instead of
(39:39):
being problems, like, there area barrier to implementation.
What can we do to help youfigure out how to get over that
barrier? And so some of thethings are like, how do we make
sure that tier one instructionis as strong as it possibly can
be, so that then we're reducingthe needs for tier two
instruction? How do we make itso that tier two instruction is
really easy? To implement it.
What do we need and what doteachers need in terms of, like,
(40:02):
really clear lesson plans inorder to understand exactly
what's necessary? Like, thosekinds of solutions are much
easier to find when you haveresearchers who don't see the
real life of a school as aninconvenience, and instead, they
see it as the place where thework needs to take root.
Lindsay Kemeny (40:21):
It's exciting.
We talked about Dr Tiffany Hoganand how she said at Big Sky, you
know, teachers are the ultimateimplementation scientists. And I
was just really, I don't know,excited by that, and it's true,
like implementation science iswhere it's at, and so neat when
you are, you know, working rightthere with the scientists in the
classroom. I mean, I just thinkthat's where we're going to
(40:43):
really help a lot of teachers,educators. Yeah,
Unknown (40:50):
one of the things that Reid said, he said so many
things that kind of blew mymind, and this one I'm still
recuperating from, it was in thescience, in the controls
experience of a scientificstudy, they will find out that
something is hugely impactful.
And this is the thing, whetherit's the medicine, whether it's
the intervention, whether it'sthe habit, whatever it is like
(41:12):
there is the innovation that isgoing to make a difference for
the problem you're trying tofix, and then when it's released
to people to do in the normalway of life, whether that's out
of school or it's just like, youknow, it's a something to help
you with your health. Sosomething that you're supposed
to just take at home or do onyour own, efficacy drops down to
(41:35):
40% and so when you think aboutthat, like, it makes so much
sense, and like, a controlledmedical trial when it comes down
to taking a prescription, forexample, like how people it's
not going to run exactly how itdid when it was in the
controlled experience of like,someone disseminating the
medication to the person at theexact same time every single
(41:56):
day, in the confines. That'sactually also true for reading
interventions, that when theyare implemented by the
researcher or the person who istrained by the researcher, and
it's happening in a containedenvironment, like a quiet room,
and it is happening with a greatdeal of intensity, and there
aren't any interruptions, andit's for this many weeks, for
(42:16):
this many minutes, it's all likeall of that is going to have a
huge impact. And then when youhand over the same thing to a
classroom teacher who hasassemblies and has Rainy Day
recess and has the other kidswho are trying to, like, need
attention, or like someonestubbed their toe, or whatever
it is, like, all those thingsare actually going to make it so
that the intervention declinesin its impact, and for us to be
(42:39):
able to acknowledge then it'sgonna have to be, not only
created in the lab experience,but also we need help in the
implementation in the real lifecontext of the school in order
to ensure that it actually is anintervention that's worth doing
and is gonna be possible To getgood effects with
Donell Pons (43:01):
Wow, that is so important. I kind of want to
pause a minute and say, did weall get that? Did we catch it?
That's really your heartbreak
Unknown (43:09):
is frustrating, and it's also pretty exciting when
you start realizing, like, Okay,so there's lots of things that
we know in theory ought to work,but if what our focus is now is
on in the the implementation inthe classroom or school
building, what do we need to doin order to ensure that it's
effective? Yeah,
Donell Pons (43:27):
and also, Margaret makes all those touch points
we've talked about throughoutthis conversation that much more
important that we've attended tothose moments where we can have
a good interaction betweenparent and educator. They have a
relationship in that classroom.
They're getting appropriatesupport as parents at home as
well. You're getting what youneed in the classroom, your
colleagues. That makes all ofthat so much more important,
doesn't
Lindsay Kemeny (43:48):
it? Something else I love. You're talking
about science in this article,and how it doesn't take sides,
but rather illuminates a path. Ilove that phrase, and then the
next part, I think, is soimportant for all of us, if new
data confront and overturn longheld assumptions and beliefs
even about structured literacy,we need to make changes that
(44:09):
reflect this new information,not succumb to confirmation
bias. Yeah,
Unknown (44:16):
yeah. So I think this kind of connects to I can't
remember if it made the cut inthe article. At some point we
had something. It either made itor didn't make it. We were
talking about the differencebetween the science of reading
lower case s, lower case r,versus the SOR movement. And the
SOR movement is pretty narrow,and if we instead look at this
(44:40):
as a huge shift that's happeningin the education profession, and
we're looking at teachingdifferently, and we're looking
at the role of the teacher beingdifferent, like that. We are
getting ongoing support andtraining. We are adjusting
practice based on new findings,where research practice
partnerships are guiding thework. Together. Like, that's a
(45:01):
very different job than the jobthat used to exist. Of you go,
you get your credential, you gettrained, then you get
curriculum, you implement that,and you close your door unless
they make you come out for astaff meeting. Like, this is a
very different way of us seeingour job. And I think one of the
things that Reid did a reallygood job of explaining to me is
(45:24):
that we have to stop thinkingwe've got it all figured out
right right now. There are lotsof people who want to say, like,
I was doing some things wrong,maybe, or I'm brand new teaching
and I have have men no mistakes,but what I'm doing right now,
this is the thing, and thechances of what we're doing
right now actually being thething that will ensure all kids
(45:45):
in our country become skilledreaders. It's not great. So that
means we're going to have tofocus on getting better and
better for decades to come, longpast the science of reading
movement fading.
Donell Pons (45:58):
Gosh, Mark, that's okay. Again, another powerful
one. You're full of them. Today,it's made me think of holding my
grandchild. So my one of mychildren, we've had our first
grandchild. It's amazing. Wehave dyslexia in our family.
Profile as I'm holding thatlittle one, first thing that
comes to mind when I'm lookingat him as I'm thinking, what can
I learn that will make hisexperience learning to read be
(46:18):
different, even after all theeffort I put into helping my
child learn to read, helping myhusband recover and receive
reading instruction, I'm stillthinking about, how can I make
his experience even better? Soit is that don't hold on to
those ideas. I'm hoping there issomething that's going to blow
my mind. I'm going to say, Wow,this is amazing. We have to have
that in us every day, right? Beexcited about what could be
Yeah?
Unknown (46:39):
And if anyone's telling you they've got it all figured
out. They're wrong
Stacy Hurst (46:44):
well, and that's the nature, and that's the
nature of the scientific method,or science. It's never done. We
are always going to be refiningour knowledge and hopefully not
upending it every decade. But,
Unknown (47:01):
yeah, definitely asking more questions, getting those
questions answered in ways thatare useful. And then hopefully
there will be a time when we getcurriculum that is more
effective, and so then we'reable to see what happens when we
implement at scale, and thenfind out the things that we
still have questions about andneed to refine, and then send
into this iterative cycle.
Lindsay Kemeny (47:24):
Margaret, I just think you are a gift to
education, so I am just likeyou, and you are just the
epitome of what we're talkingabout, where you're always
learning and always sharing andand I don't know, I feel so
lucky. I met you back in 2018and it was like the first time I
was on a plane for a long time.
And you remember our flightswere arriving at the same time
(47:47):
in Philadelphia, and you we metup, and I was like, so thankful
for that. And I'm just, I just,I just so admire you. I think
when I first met you, you werecoaching, and then you decided
during COVID To go back to theclassroom and and that just
makes you an even better, youknow, even better at what you
(48:09):
do, at coaching and sharing. Anddo you want to share a little
bit about, you know, the rightto read and maybe your lunch and
lit or anything else where ourlisteners can find you. Well,
Unknown (48:21):
I think what's funny is you're reminding me that Lindsay
referencing a time when she andI were on a panel that Emily
Hanford was facilitating. And Ithink it was right after, at a
loss for words, came out, if Iremember right. But anyway, it
was right before my life hadexploded. I was like, doing my
thing in Oakland, unifiedcoaching, coaching coaches
(48:42):
actually, and like, working on apilot project trying to uproot
the balanced literacy initiativein our district. And when the
podcast came out, leadership isnot and so what happened was I
ended up in this tricky positionof needing to, like, continue
working on the grant that I wasworking on that was focused on
(49:05):
evidence based practices, andthen also deal with a district
that really needed me, or wantedme to, like, stay on message
with the district implementationof balanced literacy. And so
what ended up happening was Istarted feeling like I needed to
write a lot about what washappening. I was blogging about
(49:25):
what my students were doing andhow they were responding to
instruction and stuff, and Ifelt like I needed to do it
anonymously, which is where theright to read project started.
And then Anonymous wasimpossible anymore, and so it
ended up being that there was,like, this new national
(49:45):
conversation about how readinggets taught, and teachers trying
to find each other and trying toshare information. And like, I
just really got excited aboutthe teacher to teacher
communication, because that feltlike what had been different
from previous. Waves of schoolimprovement initiatives. So
that's how the start of theright to read project happens. I
(50:07):
still write for it, and one ofmy favorite things to do is on
Fridays, I get to run the lunchand let which is a group that
assembles every Friday. It'spretty flexible, so whoever is
available and interested will dothe reading before the session
and then come and listen to theresearcher present and ask
questions, and it's exactly whatI feel like has been missing for
(50:31):
a long time. I've felt likethere hasn't been the space for
researchers and practitionersand advocates people are trying
to help teachers, professionaldevelopment providers,
curriculum developers, like, Ifeel like we're not in the same
room often enough to be able tohelp each other out. And coming
back to the beauties of zoom,like it's possible now with
(50:53):
Zoom. So that was lunch andnight you were asking about,
well,
Lindsay Kemeny (50:56):
thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
Margaret. It's fun to talk with
Unknown (50:59):
you. Time flies.
Stacy Hurst (51:00):
We say this a lot on this podcast, but I really
mean it. Today, I could carry onthis conversation for another
hour or two. I feel like wealways have a lot to learn from
each other. And Lindsay wascorrect, we have already learned
so much from you, Margaret, justfrom you being transparent and
reporting about your experiencesin education, I think that's
(51:21):
been very illuminating for manypeople, and definitely inspiring
the messages today that I'mgoing to take into my own
professional practice andtransfer to my students, that
humility is key, and that asteachers, we've said this many
times on Our podcast, we arelearners first, and learning
(51:41):
requires humility where and likeyou said, We're never done.
We're never done. So thank youso much for spending time on
indoor, rainy recess day to talkto us. We really appreciate it,
and to our listeners, we want tothank you for joining us today,
and I know you got as much ormore than we did out of this
(52:02):
conversation, so thank you, andwe hope you'll join us for our
next episode of literacy talks.
Narrator (52:09):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and
resources to support yourjourney in the science of
reading. You.
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