S8 E8: The plea to preserve deep reading, with Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

A name known throughout the literacy world, Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D., has published over 170 scientific articles and four books focusing on the science of the reading brain. In this episode she discusses the reading brain in a digital context and delves into some of the tensions around literacy instruction in the present moment, including the Science of Reading beyond just phonics, the plea to preserve deep reading, and literacy and screens. She also talks about the topics she’s most focused on and the ones she feels are most pressing in general when it comes to research on the brain and literacy. And she ends with an impassioned message to teachers, expressing her deep respect and gratitude.

Show notes:

• Book: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
• Book: Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century: The Literary Agenda
• Book: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World 
• Listen: Maryanne Wolf on The Ezra Klein Show

Quotes:

“What I would say to any teacher of balanced literacy: Let us bring our best selves and expand our knowledge. We both have things we can learn from each other. ” —Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

“Pass on why you learned to be a teacher. Pass it on to your students. Let’s make that next generation of teachers truly excited about what we can do to release the potential of every child.” —Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

Episode Content Timestamps*

2:00: Introduction: Who is Maryanne Wolf?
7:00: Cognitive neuroscience and how it relates to early childhood literacy
14:00: Elements kids aged 0-5 need to develop before build the reading circuits in the brain
21:00: Maryanne’s first book, Proust and the Squid
27:00: Maryanne’s third book, Reader Come Home
31:00: The reading brain in the digital age: What screens do to the reading brain
43:00: Maryanne Wolf and the Science of Reading movement
48:00: Discussing presentation with the Teachers College
55:00: Most important topics in the evolving world of reading research
58:00: Maryanne’s message to teachers of deep gratitude and respect 

*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Reading as we know it, and as we love it, is in
the beginning of a set ofchanges that none of us can
fully know or predict, but wemust understand what we have.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading, the podcast fromAmplify, where the science of
reading lives. This season ofthe podcast has been all about
knowledge and knowledgebuilding. On this episode, I'm
excited to go deep into thescience of the reading brain.
We'll explore how the humanbrain developed to read the

(00:37):
effects of reading in a digitalcontext and much more. My guest
is cognitive scientist MaryanneWolf. She's the director of U
UCLA's , center for Dyslexia,diverse Learners and Social
Justice, and the author of over170 publications and books,
including Proust in The Squid,the Story and Science of the

(00:59):
Reading, brain and Reader ComeHome, the Reading Brain in a
Digital World. On this episode,Wolf discusses her research and
shares what she's focused onnext, in the evolving world of
reading research, I thinkyou'll learn a lot about the
reading brain and much morefrom this conversation with Dr.
Maryanne Wolf. Dr. MaryanneWolf, thank you so much for

(01:23):
joining us on today's episode.
It's such an honor to have youhere.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Thank you. It's a pleasure for me, I have to say
this is one of those rainylugubrious days, and I thought,
what do I have to look forwardto? Susan .

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Well , that's, that's lovely. Thank you very
much for that. Wow. Um, I can'timagine that any of our
listeners don't know who youare, but perhaps there's the
one or two out there. So Iwould love if you could give
yourself an introduction andtell our listeners just a
little bit about yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, the technical description is that I am the
director of the Center forDyslexia, diverse Learners and
Social Justice in the School ofEducation and Information
Studies at UCLA . I'm also partof what is called the
collaborative betweenUniversity of California and

(02:20):
California State University onNeuroscience, diversity and
Learning. So those are mytitles, , but the real,
I guess, person behind thetitles or underlying the titles
is a mother, a mother of onewonderful, wonderful man. I , I

(02:42):
wanna say boy, but I can't.
He's a man , who isdyslexic and is one of, I
think, one of our finest youngartists. Of course, that's the
mother. And then I'm also themother of a son who is
Dysgraphic, and he's beenworking at Google and now a
different , uh, a startup forstartups. So we have two very

(03:07):
different sons who have givenme a lifelong set of examples
of what the educational systemis and is not doing to help our
diverse learners. So the firstthing I would say is that my
job is a teacher. My job is toteach teachers. My job is to

(03:30):
ensure that everyoneunderstands that literacy is
one of the most important andtruly amazing inventions. It's
a marvel that the species evercreated, and it serves as a
foundation for releasing thepotential of all those who

(03:51):
learn to read. So my first realjob, other than being the
mother, is to be a teacher. Todo that, I have to be a
researcher, and I have to be anadvocate for children around
the world. I think Susan, youknow, that perhaps my greatest
honor was to become anacademician , um, a member of

(04:17):
what is called the PontificalAcademy of Science. And we are
a group of 80 who truly try totackle the world's most
pressing issues that impact thelives of the poor, the
disenfranchised , um, refugees.
But my particular role is tobring neuroscience and

(04:38):
education to how we affectchildren's lives. So all of
that is basically mother,teacher, researcher, child
advocate, but underlying allthat, was a child who
so loved to read books that,that became my lens on the

(05:00):
world. And I actually, beforeneuroscience, have two degrees
in English literature thatreally infused my desire to be
of service. Hmm . I spent abouta year, first in a Peace Corps
like setting, and then twoyears in inner city schools
where I came right up againstwhat happens when children do

(05:27):
not learn to read in ruralHawaii. It meant they would
become, if they did not learnto read almost like the
indentured servitude of theirparents in inner city schools
in the mainland. I just watchedhow many, especially middle
school boys drop out and becomea shadow of what they could

(05:52):
have become. All of thatchanged me into the teacher,
the researcher, the advocate.
Hmm . That's lovely. So how'sthat

Speaker 2 (06:01):
? Well, you know, for our listeners, I'm
just gonna do a little behindthe scenes. We always do a tech
check, and Martin, usually atMartin's, our producer, he
usually asks , um, just tell mea little bit about what you had
for breakfast or for lunch. AndMaryanne Wolf was the first
person who actually, instead ofanswering that question,
recited Emily Dickinson. So,congratulations,

(06:24):
,

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Emily Dickinson is so much more interesting than
an egg .

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Oh , this is so true. Well, you know, thank you
so much for the work that youdo, and I know I'm gonna ask a
really, really, really basicquestion, but I think it's so
important to level set us interms of what we're going to
talk about later. But I wouldlove if you could explain what
a cognitive neuroscientist isand how in the world the work

(06:52):
relates to children andlearning to read and write.
Because cognitiveneuroscientists, it sounds so,
I don't know, technical anddifficult to understand.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Uh , and it's anything. But , um, if you can
imagine, let's say when I, Iwas in the Harvard Reading Lab
years ago for my graduate work,and we didn't have a name, you
know, we were calledneuropsychologists. We were
called educators. And then thefield of neuroscience really
was beginning at that time, andit brought together multiple

(07:25):
fields like linguistics, childdevelopment, neurology,
neuropsychology, and out ofthat large, if you will, range
of, of different disciplines, agroup was determined to study
the cognitive processes, likeattention, memory, how all of

(07:47):
these processes were part ofsome of the most important
cognitive inventions that thespecies has ever designed.
Those are things like numeracyand literacy. And so a
cognitive neuroscientiststudies how cognitive processes

(08:10):
come together to make a circuitor set of circuits. Mm-hmm .
for theseimportant inventions. These,
and they're cognitiveinventions. Reading. And I ,
you know, this Susan, the firstline of my first book for the
public posts and the squid waswe were never born to read.

(08:31):
Right? But the reality is, whenyou unpack that sentence, well,
how did we do it then? If weweren't born to read? Well, we
did it because of the brainsmarvelous design features that
allowed us to take cognitiveprocesses and put them together

(08:53):
with affective processes, Maoriprocesses, linguistic
processes, all of thosetogether and make a circuit. So
a cognitive neuroscience is asubset of neuroscience in
general that studies how thesecognitive inventions pull

(09:15):
together what we know about theparts. So the reading brains
parts are, you know, for thefirst five years they're
growing independently. But whenwe learn to read, we put a very
important brain design featuretogether . We are able to take

(09:37):
old parts. I, I love thisactually for , as I get older,
we take old parts and put themtogether in new ways to form
something new. I mean, that isa beautiful design. And that
plus neuro, what's calledneuronal recycling, where we
take some of those parts thatwere originally used to

(10:00):
recognize a face, recognize anobject. We take those parts,
and this is the work of StenLus Juan in Paris. And we take
those parts in regions of thebrain that were originally, as
I said, used for somethingelse, and we recycle them and
we use them to recognizeletters, numbers, symbols, et

(10:20):
cetera. Mm-Hmm . So twoprinciples, being able to take
older parts, rearrange them,and make whole new circuits or
sets of circuits and neuronalrecycling, that's, these are
principles that cognitiveneuroscientists use to study
things like reading. Now I'mgonna end this little passage

(10:41):
by saying, what's that got todo with how we teach
? Why is it important?
Well, it's important because ifyou understand the parts of the
reading brain and how theydevelop, you will have a much
better way of ensuring that ourparents, between zero and five

(11:02):
in our educators, know thatthey are to be helping develop
those parts. They're notconnected, they're not
connected yet. But each ofthose parts, like language
processes, cognitive processes,social emotional , we are
developing a knowledge of what,even between zero and five , we

(11:24):
can do better to then have thisplatform of processes together
that we can assess at five andknow, ah , this child is
terrific in let's say parts oneto four, but five is really
needs our work. So it helps usfigure out what is a profile of

(11:47):
a child's characteristics thatbecome the reading brain before
reading starts. And thatinformation helps us teach
individual children with theirindividual needs better. Mm-Hmm
, . Now , I'llgive you one last example. As
you know, I study dyslexia.
Yeah . I wanna know what atypical brain is, and I wanna

(12:08):
know what the brainorganization of an individual
with dyslexia is. I take thatinformation and I have with my
colleagues, and this was allfunded by N-I-C-H-D in these
terribly hard randomizedcontrol treatment studies. I ,
your audience doesn't wannahear that, but , we

(12:29):
take this information, thisinformation, and we say, okay,
how do we build the bestintervention that will address
why the interesting differentorganizations of individuals
with dyslexia are notconnecting those parts. So if
you know enough of this, youcan still do a really good job,

(12:52):
but you can do an even betterjob when you understand the
reading brain.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Alright . I have a follow up question on that one,
because you said when kids arezero to age five, before we
start building the readingcircuits, there , there are
these elements or these thingswe need to develop. Can you
tell us what those things are?

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Oh, absolutely. So one of the most exciting things
that I get to do is give oneminute and two minute radio
interviews, , and peoplesay , you have two minutes to
change the lives of children . So tell us what the
parents should do. So what theparents should do is talk to
their children, read to theirchildren every single night,

(13:32):
make it a ritual of fun andsing. And a lot of people have
an unexpected reaction to whenI say sing. But what I mean is
all of this helps develop thelanguage system. The language
system has many parts. I wannahelp your listeners by giving

(13:53):
them an ignominious acronym,. Wow,

Speaker 2 (13:58):
That's a big word.
.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Possum p you , you are developing the pH names of
the language, the tiniest useof sounds, and you're
developing prosody , which isthe melody. I only wish that I
could have your listeners knowthat their children at four
months are even before,sometimes as early as six

(14:21):
weeks. I have one child who atsix weeks, David would go , uh
oh . So he would imitate themelody of the sounds. So
parents, while you think yourchild has not a clue to what
you're saying, that's only halftrue. Mm-Hmm . Your child is

(14:42):
capturing the melody over time,it , that child is capturing
the particular phoning ofwhatever the first language or
second language is. Hmm . Sothe p is for the phonology,
the, the sound system. The oWhen you're reading your child,
of course they don't know whatyou're saying in the beginning,

(15:04):
but they are gradually doingall kinds of things. They are
looking at these Mm , thesevisual patterns. They have no
idea what a letter is, but theyare learning the conventions of
print. Uh, Susan, did you everread Goodnight Moon?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh, yes, yes. And to my children. Yes. Yes,

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Absolutely. And now the real question is, did they
at some points tell you, mom,you skipped ?

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Oh, yes. 'cause

Speaker 1 (15:32):
You had read 100 times in the Great Green Room
where it was a telephone and ared balloon and a cow jumping
over the moon. And the littlemouse, of course, is on
different pages, and you haveread it 96 times and you skip a
page and they mom go back.
Well, they are capturing theconventions of print, how it

(15:55):
moves in our language or inEnglish left to right in
Hebrew, right to left in up thelanguage, up to , I mean, you,
you get it. You're gettingconventions. You're also
getting the idea that thoselittle squiggly things have to
do with words. You don't knowexactly the connection, but
you're making them. So theorthographic element of possum

(16:17):
is that you're learning theconventions of a print. Mm-Hmm
. a book. Mm-Hmm.
. The SS iswhat's really, really
important, stands for semanticsand syntax. The kids who have
books read to them, have adifferent brain in the language

(16:38):
regions. They are getting themeanings gradually represented
of these words. And with theparent who is catching on that
they understand or don'tunderstand certain words.
There's an interaction betweenparent and child that's
beautiful. It's dialogic, ifyou will, but they're learning

(17:00):
the how words work. And they'relearning that words, even
though they have not a clueabout syntax, they are getting
the earliest aspects ofgrammar. I mean, one of my
teachers, two of my teacherswere the Chomsky's, Noam and
Carol . And, you know, Chomskysaid, what child ever learned

(17:23):
or heard Wented , of coursethey did it , or God , they
didn't hear that. But what theywere doing was capturing
syntactic knowledge andapplying it cognitively. So
when we read to our children,they are getting the rules of
how language works. They'regetting the meanings. And the

(17:45):
last thing is the, youultimately, as they get to be
five and six, they learn the tounderstand. And that's a
cognitive concept. Thealphabetic principle that words
have sounds, and the soundshave letters that symbolize
them. Hmm . And the m mostpeople don't know what a

(18:09):
morphine is, but a morphine isthe smallest unit of meaning.
And lo and behold, our kidshave about 20 to 30 morphemes
already by the time they're twoor three. If their parents are
like the ed, the er, the assets, et cetera . Nobody knows that
they're giving their childrenmorphemes. But they are every

(18:30):
time they read and speak. Andthe singing part is because
singing and music, you wouldthink it helps melody in
speech. Well, yes it does. Buteven more so, it's getting
after the rhythm of speech andthat rhythm are intervals of
time that later have a lot tooffer. The brain is learning

(18:54):
how to, in fact, have timingmechanisms for language, and
that ultimately will help buildthe child's reading system. We
have data in kindergartners whoget music every day , versus
the ones who get, you know,once a week and pitiful at

(19:14):
that. And the ones who getmusic every day in some just
modest form of training inmusic, they do better in
reading.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
So all these are things that parents can do. But
those books, you know, I Ididn't even say half of what
those books think of the socialemotional lessons they get from
George and Martha and Frog andToad , and then later
Charlotte's Webb . These are,this is the Moral laboratory
Mm-Hmm . That we want ourchildren to have because they

(19:46):
have begun through story toleave themselves and think
about what the feelings ofothers are. Has our society
ever needed that capacity morethan now, Susan?

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Isn't that true?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you spoke alittle bit about your very
first book, Proust in TheSquid, and it's really
considered a classic. Yeah .

Speaker 1 (20:14):
, who would think, huh?

Speaker 2 (20:17):
That's so cool. For our , for our listeners who
aren't familiar with it, canyou, well, first of all, I'd
love to know why you wrote it,what the motivation was, but
also a little bit of what it'sabout.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So it has a very unusual title. It does first in
the Squid, the Story andScience of the Reading Brain.
And really it's a metaphor. Andin an analogy, it's a metaphor
for pros belief that at theheart of reading, we leave the

(20:50):
author's wisdom behind todiscover our own. So Proust
insight into reading is soimportant for that book and for
me, because it was, it was forme, two insights, and I'll come
to the squid in a second . Okay. But the two insights from
Proust were that one reading isabout building this sanctuary

(21:15):
of thought, a place for our ownbest thoughts. Where what the
author gives us is like a Petridish for our own best thinking,
our, our hopes. But thatrequires a reflective
contemplative aspect to readingthat will come, I'm sure in

(21:38):
another part of our interview,to the fact that there's an
atrophying of that reflectivecapacity. Mm-Hmm.
. Mm-Hmm . . Butwhen I wrote the book, I had
two aspects of Prost in mind.
One was this amazing beliefthat it is the, the foundation
or a place where we can go tobuild from the author to our

(22:02):
own novel thought and insights.
But the second part of Proustwas, he called it the reading
is that fertile miracle ofcommunication that takes place
in the midst of solitude. Now,just think of that fertile,
fertile communication, both inproof in the Squid, but even

(22:25):
more obviously in reader. Comehome. My last book, I believe
that the best thing that weauthors can do is give a
dialogue, a means forcommunicating to the reader.
And this dialogue is what Ihoped all of my, my my , I

(22:47):
have, I have several books thatare edited, but the three books
that I wrote, only two of whichare really read. There's a book
for Oxford Press that nobodyreads . I guess you know what
has to do a few things forOxford Press . They ,
it was for their Englishprofessors, and I'm sure their
English professors read it. Butthese other two were really my

(23:10):
attempt to communicate a bodyof beautiful knowledge about
reading and alogia for thepower of reading and what it
does for people who take it forgranted. Mm-Hmm . And when I
wrote Proston The Squid, it wasan alogia for the beauty and

(23:31):
the, the miracle that readingcan give every person who
learns to connect, not just,you know, the decoding kind of
brain. You get the informationfine. No, no, no. But to think
deeply about what we read as achange agent. So Proston the

(23:54):
squid took me seven years towrite. Wow. I was a mom and I
could only, you know, write itnight a little bit in the
summers. So it took sevenyears. And I think people look
at this and laugh, but I wroteit totally by hand, ,

Speaker 2 (24:12):
That's impressive.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
And I did it because I was an old English major for
whom the act of writing firstbefore typewriter, before a
laptop was, you know, it gaveme a certain rhythm of conation
, if you will, a rhythm ofthought and slowed me down so
that I could be sure that itreflected the layers of meaning

(24:39):
that I hoped to convey to thereader, to elicit their layers
of meaning. So always thisreciprocal relationship between
what I wanted people to knowand love about reading. Mm-Hmm
.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
That's so lovely.
And you know, what I love aboutProust and the squid is that
you, you really take anddevelop an understanding of a
scientific understanding ofreading and writing. Might I
say literacy? Yes . But you doit in a context that is

(25:18):
accessible and motivating andreally beautiful to see it as
something that is a lifelonggift as opposed to let's just
learn how kids read in a verysort of cold. And, and so if
the listeners haven't read thatbook, it's one you have read
because it is just beautifuland lovely. So thank you for
that gift to the world.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Thank you. It was, you know, it was a gift to me
too , um, at just very one sadnote. Um, I was very sick at
one point during that timeperiod, and I felt I have given
the world my children, I'vegiven the world what I've

(26:00):
taught, but nobody but thosestudents ever got what I know.
And so the book was my hope togive people what I know and
love. And so luckily Irecovered. I'm fine. It's, you
know , years and years ago. Butat that time, I realized what a
book does to the author. Youknow, it gives you an

(26:23):
opportunity to feel that nomatter what you have, given
what you know as best you canto others.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Hmm mm-Hmm .
. That'sbeautiful. And you followed
that up then in a similartheme, it's sort of an
extension or a continuationwith reader come home, which
dives into a more moderncontext. Would you like to talk
a little bit more about that?
Yes .

Speaker 1 (26:49):
So Reader Come home really began in the last
chapter of Prost and the Squid . And it , there's a
kind of a irony and a , a badjoke on me , , because
here I finished what Iconsidered, you know, the great
Alogia for how wonderfulreading is. And this was 2000,

(27:11):
it was published at the end of2007. Okay . Beginning of 2008,
but I have to turn it in rightalmost a year before.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
And I realized that I had been ripped Van Winkle
, that all all I'mwriting is changing right now
under our fingertips. So I hadto rewrite the beginning and
the end so that it wouldreflect the fact that reading
as we know it, and as we loveit, is in the beginning of a

(27:47):
set of changes that none of uscan fully know or predict, but
we must understand what wehave. Mm-Hmm . .
And so I ended up really withthe hope that people would not
let go of what we had. So topreserve what we had, but

(28:11):
Reader come home actually wasthe third in the series. As I
said, Oxford University Presshad something that they really
wanted for teachers, professorsof English literature to
understand the reading brain. Iwrote that at the Center for
Advanced Study BehavioralSciences at Stanford as a
sabbatical. And I was verypleased with it. And then

(28:34):
nobody read it. .

Speaker 2 (28:36):
So this is book number two.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
This is number two.
It's called Tales of Literacyfor the 21st Century. You've
never heard of it, Susan,

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Right? I have not. I have not. I'm so sorry. I feel
terrible.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Has nobody has , you know, Oxford English professors
have, it's their literaryagenda series . But I'd done
all this research for it, andthen I thought, and the
research is changing andchanging and changing, and so I
thought I had one moresabbatical like experience at
the, what's called Cass bs ,the Center for Advanced Study .
And I thought, I have to giveit to the world. This is

(29:10):
becoming one of the most, ifyou will, pernicious invisible
threats to reading as well asone of the great advantages,
because it both increases whatyou can read, but potentially
short circuits how you read. Mm. And so reader come home, I

(29:31):
thought, we are on the frontierof knowledge. We have a lot of
knowledge already that's quiteominous in terms of children
reading on the screen all thetime. And so I thought, I have
to write this as an epistolarybook where I am giving my
knowledge, but I know thereader, especially the reader

(29:53):
of the future, would have moreknowledge. Mm-Hmm . So we would
have to have a dialogue. So Imade it a set of letters that
would give the reader at thatmoment and the reader of the
future, a chance to, to arguewith me. Thomas Aquinas says ,
iron sharpens iron. Well, Iwanted the iron of the reading

(30:13):
brain at that moment in timeand my increased understanding
of what I call deep reading tobe in print and the iron. You
can sharpen it, you can changeit, but here is what we know
and reader beware. And so itbecame, for me, both an

(30:36):
awakening of what was changingin the reading brain if we're
on the screen all the time. Andwhat happens is that the
reading brain is certainlycapable of what I call deep
reading. And I'll explain thatin one second. But it is

(30:58):
tending to hasten and skimm .
So the eye movement researchshows us that when we're on a
screen, often as not, we do anf sample, the first line,
sample the middle, and then godown, get the bottom or a Z,

(31:19):
and the Z we sample the firstpart and we zoom downward spot,
word spot, word spot, and thengo to the bottom and get the
point , so to speak. Hmm . Now,for all those of you who know
how hard writing is, what youhave done to the author is Skip

(31:39):
, half of the creativework that went into making what
Italo Calvino , the greatItalian writer said, is the
basically calls it most used ,the , the perfect word, the
most important way to expressyour thought, and how much time
that takes to really try yourhardest to get there. Well,

(32:02):
when we skimm, we skimm threethings that are worrisome to
me. One, we don't giveattention to details. Mm-Hmm.
and let's say agood mystery like by Joel D
Care , we're not gonna get someof the most important details
he put in there because youskimmed and haven't gotten

(32:25):
them. We, that's, I'm , I'msomewhat facetious, but only
somewhat. Mm-Hmm. because the sequencing of
details is necessary tounderstand the plot. And Ann
Mangan and the E Read networkin Europe really show us how
skimming does in fact, shortcircuit our ability to get

(32:47):
those details and the sequenceof the plot. We know that from
a search. Mm-Hmm. . The second thing is related
to Elvino . We, we miss beauty.
David Brooks actually wrote anessay a few years ago, and it
was called, at Some PointBeauty Went Missing in How We

(33:10):
Read. Mm-Hmm. .
And he was so Right. He hadn'tread my book. He actually has
read it by now, which is hequoted me once, you know? Yeah
. My heart went pounding.
. But thereality is that for those of us
who truly see the written wordas not just information, but as

(33:34):
an attempt to use the text toevoke all kinds of feelings,
feelings of understanding theother, perspective taking
Mm-Hmm . Understanding beautyand feeling beauty. And the
novelist, Marilyn Robinson oncewrote that beauty is a part of

(33:57):
what makes written language innovels alive. So a lot of times
when you skip and skimm, younot only miss details, you miss
beauty and you miss the chanceto really enter, absorb the
print so much that you pass thetheologian, John Gen always

(34:19):
says this pass over into theperspective of others. That's
the second thing that goesmissing. The third, you know,
if I had to rank them inimportance, the third is the
most important. And that iswhen you skimm and word spot
and miss details and missperspective taking , you are

(34:40):
not getting a true ability tobe critically analytic of the
multiple layers possibly therethat you are missing by
skimming. Mm . So if I had torank what's most worrisome to
me, it's that our public isbeing anesthetized by the

(35:06):
screen to just get theinformation, you know? Yeah .
You're , you're just sort ofdulled into get it done, get it
done, get it done. So youhasten along and you actually
short circuit the reading braincircuitry. You don't give
attention to, to what I beganwith the Prussian idea of the

(35:30):
inner sanctuary. You not onlydon't give time for that,
that's the ultimate, but thepen ultimate is critical
analysis and empathy. Hmm . Andyou are shortcircuiting both.
Hmm . So deep reading is a setof processes. We, you know, a
lot of times people just saycomprehension. Well ,

(35:52):
comprehension is much more thanone word. Right. It's analogy.
Yeah . It's backgroundknowledge. Yeah . It's empathy
perspective, taking inference,induction deduction, critical
analysis. And finally, onlyfinally if we get there this
Prussian sanctuary. So youcan't do all those interactive

(36:14):
processes if you're skimming,skimming, skimming. Hmm . You
could do some of them and youdo get information. Mm-Hmm .
that's what weboth do most of our day. You
know, I'm like everybody else,but you will have things go
missing the more you skimm andthe more the skimming takes
over how you read. Hmm . Nowthat does not mean you can't

(36:39):
use deep reading on a screen.
Of course you can't. But I askthe reader, in reader come home
to ask one question before theyread. Why are you reading it?
What is your intention here? Ifit's just a , a really a
skimming of the information tojust get that under your belt,

(37:01):
fine. Use the screen for sixhours a day. But those things
that are important, I print outHmm . Those things that really
need my scrutiny. Mm-Hmm .
, I absolutelyuse print, whether it's a book
and a lot of books are sent tome to review or, you know, do a
blurb for Mm-Hmm .

(37:22):
. And I say tothem, send me both. Send me
both. I make a quick assessmentwhether or not I can do this
book. Mm-Hmm . And then if it'ssomething that I really know I
have to study and give a blurbfor, then I have the text. Hmm
. Interesting. I will saycaveat, there are those who

(37:44):
have no time, and yet theirintention requires that. And a
wonderful Bruce Sunstein is alawyer in an intellectual
rights lawyer, intellectualproperty rights lawyer in
Boston. And he wrote me abeautiful letter about deep
reading and how as a lawyer, hehas to do so much work on the

(38:05):
screen. And he says what hedoes, he freezes it. Oh , he
freezes it. And he says he willstudy a paragraph like that. So
that's as deep as I, I wantanybody to go. So there are
different things that you cando to establish deep reading
regardless of device, and wewill have devices we have no

(38:25):
idea about. That's why my hopeis that reader come home
becomes a classic too . Yeah .
So it becomes a dialogue withthe future readers. You know,
10 years from now when ourdevices have changed, you know,
there'll be so many devicesYeah . That we will use that
are different from what we havenow. But please preserve the

(38:46):
deep reading brain.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
We'll be right back for this knowledge focus season
of the podcast. We've asked thefinalist for last year's
Science of Reading star awardsto offer some of their thoughts
and advice on knowledgebuilding throughout this
season. We've been sharing someof their insights. This time
we're hearing from AndreaMason, an academic

(39:09):
interventionist from CountyLine Elementary School in
Georgia. Andrea was a finalistfor the 2023 Rookie of the Year
award, and she shared heradvice for young educators.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
I think the first thing that I would advise the
new teachers to do is to lookto other teachers in their
building for help and forsupport. Um, look to your
veteran teachers. Look toteachers that you see doing
things that you would like tobe able to incorporate into
your classroom. Ask them if youcould come and observe them.
Talk to your administratorsabout giving you an opportunity

(39:45):
to have coverage in yourclassroom so that you could go
and observe. I think seeingthings in action in other
classrooms is a great way tothen take that new learning and
incorporate it into what you'redoing in your classroom.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
That was Andrea Mason. An academic
interventionist from CountyLine Elementary School in
Georgia. Applications are nowopen for the third annual
Science of Reading Star awards. Find out more information and
submit a nomination atamplify.com/soar-star-awards.

(40:21):
And now back to ourconversation with Dr. Maryanne
Wolf. You know what I loveabout that book reader come
home? Is that you actuallydon't, it's not an either or
for you. Right. It's like youneed to understand how to
interact with text differently.
I love that you said you needto understand your purpose for
reading. Mm-Hmm . . But recognizing the fact that

(40:44):
we actually have to do both.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
We have to do both, and we do both. I did a , I did
another podcast like, not likethis, but sort of , um,
not all the Science of Reading,but On Reader Come Home, it was
with Ezra Klein last year.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Oh. With Ezra Klein . It's a great podcast. We'll
link our listeners in the shownotes to that one because it
was really, really great.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
It was, it was truly one of my favorite podcasts.
And it was in part because hedid his homework so well, just
like you do Susan, but he did atest of himself. Yep . He read
one letter on print and oneletter on the screen, and he
experienced for himself thedifference. And so it's not

(41:31):
ever either or. Mm-Hmm.
, you can't bebecause we are in a digital
culture, but that means all themore that we must be vigilant.
Mm-Hmm. .

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Hmm . Well, you're , I was gonna say your two books,
but now your three books, nowthat I know you have three
doesn't

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Matter. Now what's gonna read that one?

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Oh, we're , but we're gonna link our listeners
in the show notes, so that'llsee all three. Okay . Um ,
they're really all about thoughthis complexity of the reading
and the writing process. And soI'm wondering how you feel like
you fit into this Science ofReading movement.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Well, , that's an easy one. I'm in the
middle of it, , becausethe neuroscience of reading is
one of the many things that, ifyou will, infuses the science
of reading. Now, the realproblem is that a lot of people
think the science of readingjust means phonics. And they

(42:32):
have no idea that the scienceof reading is this evolving
body of knowledge that's reallyhistorically very long and
much, much more than thinkingthat it says you have to use
phonics. Now, I have justfinished some very tough talks

(42:53):
with people who don't like, orin the past didn't believe
phonics was necessary.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Right. and

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Worse . But , um, I think what I want
people to understand is thatthe science of reading involves
an entire historical and stillevolving body of knowledge.
When we talk about science ofreading to, let's say some
teachers who really have neverhad to study it, they have the

(43:25):
false assumption that it meansyou have to use phonics. Well,
the reality is that that is apart. Mm-Hmm . of
a series of studies. Reed Lyonwas one of the great amazing
people at N-I-C-H-D whoencouraged people like me,
Maureen Lovett, Robin Morris,my colleagues, to say, look,

(43:48):
you guys, you've been doing allthis. Maybe we could call it
bench work on reading. Whatabout your implementation and
intervention? Right, right.
Yeah . Now, people have tounderstand that the science of
reading includes 20 years ofintervention studies by people
like us. Mm-Hmm. . And the last thing that the
program that I created out ofthat N-I-C-H-D movement was an

(44:14):
expanded version offoundational skills.
Foundational skills aren't justdecoding and fluency.
Underlying fluency are allthese things that I said
earlier were possum Mm-Hmm.
. Mm-Hmm.
. And that meansthat meaning grammar,
morphology, all of thatunderstanding orthographic

(44:36):
letter patterns, understandingalphabetic knowledge in
addition to phonics, but veryimportantly, connected and
integrated. That's what part ofour contribution to the science
of reading showed us. That ifyou do just business as usual
in an average school day, okay,you're gonna get decent scores.

(44:59):
Not nothing to write homeabout, but decent, you'll
probably miss about 30% of yourkids Hmm . Are 20 mm-Hmm .
certainly you'llmiss the kids who are dyslexic,
those 10% mm-Hmm mm-Hmm . Butyou'll miss the next 20%
probably. But if you add aphonics, a systematic
structured phonics program,you're gonna really make sure

(45:21):
many more kids are, are readingwell. But if you add what we
call multi confidentialinterventions, and that's a
tough word, but people shouldreally learn it,
multi-component stands for allthe parts of the reading brain.
Hmm . Okay . The science ofreading is not reducible to

(45:42):
phonics, but nor does it everneglect its systematic
integrated use. And the realproblem, you know, I always say
that everybody, as we make, youknow, these various pendulum
swings, we always make thesehuge mistakes. The mistake in

(46:02):
balance literacy and the wholelanguage was to ignore the
importance of thesefoundational skills. Mm-Hmm.
, the people whoonly look at one or two of
those foundational skills arenot increasing the knowledge of
the whole. Hmm . So if I haveto make one mistake, it's

(46:23):
definitely phonics. No questionabout it. But why should you,
why shouldn't you expand yourknowledge here? Yeah. And the
people over here, the , youknow, to ignore phonics was a
huge issue. Huge, huge , hugedestructive. What has to happen
is that everybody has to expandtheir knowledge. And if we do a

(46:46):
good job, we can really bridgeand bring together the
expertise of these, all theseteachers. Let no teacher feel
disenfranchised, let no teacherfeel that they have wasted
their life because they didn'tdo X or Y. That's not what
science, the emerging, evolvingscience tells us. We really

(47:09):
have to be systematic.
Absolutely systematic. We haveto be structured, we have to
integrate all of thesefoundational skills with story.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Hmm . Hmm . That's beautiful. Which, you know, the
next question I was gonna askyou is Okay, let's talk a
little bit about thispresentation that you did with,
I think Teachers collegereunion or something. No . You
, you took, you took a littleheat for that. Can you talk
about why you decided to do it?
Maybe it was more than a littlebit of a heat, huh?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Uh, yeah. Uh, the , the , uh, and let's put it this
way. There was heat that wasworried for me. Ah , and then
there was heat that was, oh myGod, what is a , what do we
need to hear about science ? So there were two
different forms of heat, and Iactually feel like it was the

(48:00):
best thing that I've been askedto do in a long time. So,
teachers college, the PresidentThomas Bailey and Mary Aaron
Worth , and at the time whenthe first in dictation came was
from Lucy Calkins. Mm-Hmm .
. Um , there wasa lot of controversy, and I

(48:22):
remember writing her andsaying, I accept this, but I
will accept it with the caveatthat I don't endorse any
program. Mm-Hmm . Including myown Bel program. I don't
endorse, when I'm talkingscience and giving a science
presentation, I am only ascientist and child advocate.

(48:47):
And so I had to establish thatthere was no endorsing of, of
any program. Any program.
Mm-Hmm. . Butthere were those who believed
that the science of readingfirst should always be
classified as the phonicsadvocates. Mm-Hmm . So, my job

(49:12):
was to really teach the readingbrain to people who had never
heard about a reading braincircuit, had no sense that it
had anything to do with them,them themselves. They were
already teaching very well, agood 60% of their kids. They

(49:33):
knew, many of them knew theyneeded more, but some of them
felt that the pendulum swingwas so wild and so oppositional
and aggressive in some places,that they had even more of a
zealous adherence to what theythought was the best for their

(49:54):
children. And they reallythought it was best. And so I
wasn't unaware that people feltthey were doing the right
thing. And my job was to helpgradually bring them to a
desire to expand theirknowledge. And that's what
teachers are doing for theirchildren. And that's what we
need to do for each other. Weneed to expand our knowledge of

(50:18):
what foundational skills are.
We need to expand our knowledgeof how to integrate. And I had
to step on a lot of toes. Oneof the toes is cherry picking .
A lot of districts are outthere saying, okay, we'll do
this phonics. And so they throwin Yeah . Something the
teachers haven't been trainedproperly, and so they're cherry

(50:40):
picking . Mm-Hmm .
little here,little there. That's not
structured. And often it's noteven sufficiently explicit. So
it's certainly not thesystematic, the systematicity
of how we wanna learn. So thisrequires a lot of learning, but
it's beautiful learning. Andonce you look at it as

(51:01):
something exciting, I quotedRka , um, be a beginner, always
a beginner . And Ireally meant that for them and
for me too. My newest work onRavo is incorporating all of
these emphases on social,emotional and asset-based
learning. So I'm learning alongwith everybody. Mm-Hmm .

(51:22):
. That's , that'sthe nature of what we do. And I
get so excited about, you know,the changes in how we
understand dyslexia. Dyslexiais heterogeneity. It's not just
one kind of impediment orchallenge. And it's not,
without looking at all theequity issues in a child's

(51:45):
educational background, there'sso many things that are helping
us understand, not justdyslexia, but struggling
readers. Whether it's for covidor language impoverishment, our
background, our poor teaching,the behaviors are looking like
they're dyslexic. Right? Yeah.
So what we do in ourinterventions and in our

(52:07):
diagnosis and assessment fordyslexia and in our research,
is helpful for everybody. Hmm .
And that's what I want thebalance literacy teachers to
know so that they can do abetter job with the kids that
they know they weren't able toreach. Hmm . So I want them to
feel good about what they aredoing for all their children.

(52:31):
Hmm . That's lovely. So Ireally, really ultimately thank
that opportunity to give theteachers College Saturday
reunion talk. And then I gave adialogue with Lucy Calkins.
Mm-Hmm . , uh,for her. She has a , these

(52:53):
things I don't know much about,but it was called a
club . And I really, I , Ididn't know a whole lot, but ,
um, you know, what I said toher and what I would say to any
teacher of balanced literacy,let us bring our best selves
and expand our knowledge. Hmm .
And we both have things that wecan learn from each other. Hmm

(53:17):
. And it's a bridge, but it hasto be a bridge that's explicit,
systematic, and structured. Andintegrated. Yeah. That bridge
exists in, its, its earlystages right now. Hmm . And I
have a lot of hope, but, youknow, of course I'm in the
science of reading. I've beenworking on the science of

(53:38):
reading since my dissertationat the Harvard Reading Lab on
the word review process , youknow, oh my God. My whole life
. So it's kind of ajoke that, if any, well, it's
not a joke, but I think thereal hope for all of us is that

(53:59):
science can be for all.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah. And science is for all. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
It's for all. It's for all.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
What , what are you thinking about, speaking of
science, the most importanttopic? If you're thinking
about, you know, this evolvingworld of reading research ,

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Um , my group is part of a collaborative, as I
said , uh, university ofCalifornia and California , uh,
state university. We reallyneed to get this information
into pre-service, into theteaching of new teachers.
Mm-Hmm. . So we'reworking in the collaborative on
a set of modules on dyslexia ,uh, and on screening on

(54:43):
multilingual learners. Anothervery, very, very important
topic. Multilingual bidialectical, Julie Washington
and, and Sean Robinson . And ohmy gosh, there's so, so , I , I
, all these names are coming inmy head. Weaver . I
mean, I keep , I keep thinkingall these beautiful people who
are working on, how do we getthis in places where equity is

(55:07):
our major issue. We can't letany fourth grader out of our
hands Yeah. Without making themfluent comprehenders. And we
are, so what do we do? We'vegotta make sure our middle
school teachers really havemore resources that's in
pre-service, and that's inprofessional development. So

(55:28):
when I said I'm a mother and ateacher first , um, and then
I'm a researcher, and then I'man advocate , um, and then I'm
an old English major . Iwant all of that to come
together in our look atrejuvenating the intellectual

(55:49):
and emotional and social livesof our teachers. They have been
given what society failed to doupon their shoulders. And so
they have to write all the illsthat society failed, and at the
same time be the best ofteachers, and to be expected to

(56:10):
have all this knowledge and allthis training. And a lot of
times they're trained on onething, one year, one next, and
that Mm-Hmm . We, we have to doa better job from the start
with our pre-service, and wehave to give the best
professional development. AndSusan, that's your job. You're

(56:32):
part of that. You are part ofthat professional development
of our teachers. I love that.
That's why I agreed to do this.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Thank you. And we are so honored that you agreed
to do it, because we knowyou're very busy . Um ,
and you're working very hardwith all your research. And so
we're just honored. Before wego, any final words for, for
those that are working everyday, day in, day out, helping
students learn how to read andwrite,

Speaker 1 (57:03):
I will tell you, I give you my deepest debt of
gratitude. Um, I began my workas a teacher. I know how hard
it is. I actually got colitis,my third year .

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Yeah, I did. And it's because of all the things
that are expected. And that wasin an inner city school with 45
seventh and eighth graders in aclassroom. Mm-Hmm .
. I'll neverforget the pressures that
teachers have, and I, I, I askyou is remember, never forget

(57:41):
that you are doing a profoundservice. And it is often just
like reading taken for grantedand not given the full honor
and recognition and respect andadmiration for what you do. I,
as a reading researcher, saluteyou. I give you my deepest

(58:03):
thanks for what you're doing,and I want you to pass it on.
Pass on why you learned to be ateacher. Pass it on to your
students. Let's make that nextgeneration of teachers truly
excited about what we can do torelease the potential of every
child. That's your job and myjob. And never lose hope. Never

(58:28):
lose hope, and never stoplearning. .

Speaker 2 (58:31):
What a great ending.
God's

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Me God's godspeed .
That's my last word in my bookand my last word for teachers.
Godspeed.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Thank you again, Dr.
Maryanne Wolf for joining us.
We really appreciate it. It'sbeen such a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Thank you, Susan.
Truly,

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Dr. Maryanne Wolf. She'sthe director of UCLA's Center
for Dyslexia, diverse learnersand Social Justice and
Professor in residence in theSchool of Education and
Information Studies at UCLA .
She's also the author of over170 publications and books. We

(59:08):
can't include all of them, butcheck out the show notes for
links to some of that amazingwork. We'd love to hear your
thoughts on Maryanne's work andthis conversation. Please add
to the conversation in ourFacebook discussion group,
science of Reading. TheCommunity Science of Reading.
The podcast is brought to youby Amplify. For more
information on how amplifyleverages the science of

(59:30):
reading, go to amplify.com/ck anext time on the show, we're
joined by Dr. Hagen Huang for awide ranging conversation.
Filled with useful takeaways.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Knowledge building cannot wait . As you can see,
the reciprocal, the bidirection relation between
knowledge and reading startsfrom the beginning of schooling

Speaker 2 (59:55):
That's coming up next time. Don't miss that. Or
any other upcoming episodes bysubscribing to Science of
Reading the podcast, whereveryou find your podcast. And
while you're there, pleaseconsider giving us a rating and
leaving us a review. Thank youagain for listening.