May 5, 2025 • 52 mins
What happens when adolescents lose their passion for reading, and how do we bring it back? Dr. Valcine Brown, a veteran educator who recently completed her PhD in education, is tackling this challenge head-on with innovative research and classroom practices.
Reading used to be magic. Remember that feeling of getting lost in a book? Too many adolescents don't – they find reading "boring," a sentiment Dr. Brown has found to be universal across different countries. Her research explores how "mirror books" – literature where students see aspects of their identity reflected – might rekindle that lost love of reading. Through careful measurement of reading attitudes across academic and recreational contexts, she's uncovering insights that challenge traditional approaches to literacy education.
Dr. Brown's own educational journey – earning her bachelor's degree over seven years while raising children as a single mother – informs her compassionate, practical approach. Her innovative credit recovery program allows students to demonstrate mastery through performance tasks rather than retaking entire classes, helping dozens of students catch up on missing credits each semester.
What does the future hold for adolescent literacy? Dr. Brown suggests more research, more student choice, and more interventions beyond third grade. The good news? Sometimes the solution is as simple as 15 minutes of daily reading in a student's "zone of proximal development" – starting where they are and growing from there.
Ready to transform how we approach adolescent literacy? Subscribe to hear more conversations with innovative educators challenging the status quo and creating better outcomes for all students.
You can reach Dr. Valcine Brown using the following social media platform:
Website: https://drvalcinebrown.live-website.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Speak Up International with Rita Burke
and Elton Brown.
As a matter of fact, vibrant,energetic conversations with
individuals that we consider tobe community builders, and today
is no exception.
We have with us Dr ValcineBrown, who is a veteran educator
(00:45):
who is passionate aboutadolescent literacy.
Dr Valcine recently completedher PhD in education and
instruction and will bepresenting her work at a
convention very soon.
Her passion she is committed toincreasing literacy in
adolescents, to increasingliteracy in adolescents and to
our listeners.
(01:05):
I want to welcome Dr ValcineBrown to speak of international.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you so much, both Rita and Elton Brown, for
having me on here.
I appreciate you both so much.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk to
you.
What inspired you to focus onadolescent literacy?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
and just thinking about my passion for reading
growing up that never left me,even in adulthood, and teaching
(01:53):
students who just were notpassionate about reading at all,
and a lot of them saying thatthey don't like reading, they
find it boring, and thatactually takes us into what I
find the biggest challenge to beis that they don't enjoy
reading.
One of the things that'simportant to me is to try to
(02:14):
help them kindle or even find orfor most of them, it's
rekindling that love of readingand helping them find things
that they're passionate aboutreading.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So I'm wondering you talk about adolescents and their
reluctance to read and the factthat they don't enjoy it.
Do you think this is universal?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yes, I do think it's universal.
I don't think it's as much of aproblem, say, in the UK as it
is here.
When I was working on my PhD,one of the things I found is
that over in Europe they do anannual survey about reading
attitudes and finding out whatpeople are enjoying reading, and
(03:04):
they've noticed a little bit ofa dip, but it's not been as
significant here.
But I also want to say that wedon't study it as much here as
they do over in the UK, so Idon't know if there might be a
correlation there.
Universally, I'm finding in theresearch that other places are
experiencing the same.
One of the research articles Ifound from New Zealand was
(03:28):
talking about students sayingthat they found reading to be
boring.
So I think it's universal.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yes, and I agree.
I think it is universal.
It's not just in one section ofthe world or down the street,
it's everywhere.
So how does literacy impact astudent's long-term academic and
economic success?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I think that it has a negative impact on it If we get
aside from what we talk aboutattitude towards reading but we
just focus on what we know asour Lexile level scores.
We do find that there is acorrelation to lower
socioeconomic static with thosewho have lower reading levels
(04:29):
with those who have lowerreading levels.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So I'm hearing, then correct me if I'm wrong the
connection between socioeconomiclevels and interest and
attitude towards reading.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Not attitude.
Lexile levels.
Those are two.
Yes, my apologies for not beingclear.
We can look at lexile level asin literacy Can a person read
versus attitude towards reading,which is something different.
There is a correlation betweenLexile level, ability to read
and economic status.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So what are some of the key findings from your PhD
research on adolescent literacyand how do they challenge
existing perceptions?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
My dissertation was on attitude towards reading, not
so much lexile level, and whatI did find is that exposure
towards mirror books doesimprove attitude towards reading
.
Now I'm going to back up alittle bit to go forward.
Whenever I say the term mirrorbooks, a lot of people say what
is that?
(05:31):
Mirror books are books throughwhich someone can see themselves
reflected, either racially,culturally, religious-wise,
sexual orientation whatever allof the facets through which we
view ourselves, there'ssomething within that book that
they're able to see reflectedwithin themselves.
And so the survey that I use,the SARA Survey of Adolescent
(05:57):
Reading Attitude, breaks downattitude towards reading in four
different components.
There's academic print,academic digital, there's
recreational print andrecreational digital, and I did
my study by having my core groupas well as my testing group.
(06:19):
Now my treatment group is thegroup that I gave the mirror
books to.
So both of the groups took theSARA Survey of Adolescent
Reading Attitude.
That gave us a holistic scoreand then the sub scores for
those different sections, theirattitude towards reading.
We did six weeks of sustainedsilent reading in which the
(06:43):
treatment group was given mirrorbooks and the non-treatment
group was just given books ofhigh interest books, but not
books that I quantified asmirror books based on the
demographics of the school whereI did the study.
At the end of the six weeks, Iagain gave both the groups the
(07:05):
sera and what I found is thatwithin the treatment group those
who were exposed to mirrorbooks there was an improvement
in attitude towards recreationalprint and there was a small dip
in attitude towardsrecreational digital, which is
(07:25):
your social media.
Now, those changes were notconsidered, or did not measure,
statistically significant, butthere was a shift in the
numerical value.
So while I left and said maybethere's something here because
the change was not consideredstatistically significant, I
(07:46):
have to go back to the drawingboard and ask myself some
additional questions andpossibly do another study in the
future.
Some of those questions mightbe what if I chose books that I
thought the students might seeas mirror books, but they didn't
see themselves reflected?
So, in that regard, could Ithen ask students to give me a
(08:09):
list of books they might like toread that they do see as mirror
books, and then see if thatchanges their attitude towards
reading?
Or another thing is maybe sixweeks wasn't long enough.
Maybe if it was six or sevenmonths, there might've been a
statistically different shift.
So while I left with an ideathat maybe there's something to
(08:35):
this because the measurementwasn't statistically significant
, I can't actually say Quite adeep and wide study.
Yes, yeah.
So when I say I'm passionateabout it, you certainly sound
(09:02):
passionate about it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Now you somehow became an educator, and I want
you to talk to us about what wasbehind that decision to become
an educator.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I was a late in life person who came to teaching, and
so I like to say I came throughit through a circuitous route.
I really didn't wasn't surewhat I wanted to do when I
originally left high school.
I went to college and tried acouple of different measures,
but it wasn't anything thatreally struck me and drew my
(09:29):
love and my passion.
And it wasn't until myadulthood, where I was a
stay-at-home mom with threechildren.
I was running a home daycareand I was making my own
curriculum, for my two oldestwere going to school at the time
.
So I was at home with myyoungest and two other children
(09:50):
who were in my daycare and Istarted putting together
curriculum based on phonics andgrouping together projects and
things like that.
And I discovered, I said, I'mreally good at this.
I am very good at puttingthings together thematically,
the kids are loving what I'mdoing and that was what cued me
(10:10):
in that I would be a goodteacher.
But I knew that my passion forliterature would drive me more
towards just teaching Englishlanguage arts, and at the high
school level, because I love thedeep, rich conversations I can
have with my students aboutliterature.
So that's how I came to be aneducator and I'm 12 years in and
(10:35):
I have to say I still love it.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So how do you see the future of adolescent literacy
evolving and what changes wouldyou like to see as it evolves?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
That is a very tough question and it's hard because
most of the research that isdone on literacy really just
focuses two different areas thatdon't impact adolescent
literacy.
A lot of the interventionstrategies that are studied to
(11:11):
improve students' readingability are for third grade and
below, and then there are somestudies that are focusing on
attitude towards reading, butthey're very few and far between
at the adolescent level.
So I would start by saying weneed more research that focuses
(11:33):
in this area of adolescentliteracy, but it needs to be
divided into lexile level theskill of being able to read and
looking at students' attitudetowards reading and see if we
can find a convergence betweenthose two different aspects of
adolescent literacy.
So I would say any changes thatI'd like to see would be to see
(11:59):
more research in that area,research in that area and then,
of course, depending on what thefindings of the research reveal
to us, I'd like that thosefindings to shape the direction
we're going in with education.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So you told us that you have been in education for
12 years.
Am I correct?
Yes, so what happened beforethen?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I was a stay-at-home mom for about 12 years and then
I went back to school to finish,and that took me about six or
seven years because I wasworking as well as raising
children and I was divorced atthe time, so I was a single
parent on top of that, and so Iworked a plethora of different
(12:48):
part-time jobs, full-time jobs,putting myself through school
until I became an educator.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And just like that, she became the educator.
You make it sound so easy.
I'm sure that it was not thateasy.
There's a saying that sayswhatever you really want.
It takes a lot of pain anddetermination, and so, to see
this huge smile on your face asyou're telling us your
(13:16):
accomplishments, I'm thinking,no, it's got to be a little
difficult than that.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I wouldn't say there was any pain, but there were
certainly challenges.
And for me like I like toemphasize that it took me seven
years just to get a bachelor's.
So that to me was one of thestruggles, in that I couldn't
just go for four years and bedone Working part time jobs,
raising children.
I had to go part time.
(13:41):
So seven years just to get mybachelor's degree and then I did
do my credentialing program inone year.
So that was a blessing.
So I would say for me it wasn'treally a pain.
I didn't experience any pain,but there was the struggle and
the juggling of the multiplefacets of my life while staying
(14:04):
focused and passionate aboutwhat I wanted to do.
And the interesting thing aboutthat is while I was in working
on my bachelor's degree, at thetime there was the teacher
shortage in layoff 2006, sevenand eight.
And I remember a well-meaningfriend saying are you sure you
(14:25):
want to go back to school toteach?
Look at all these layoffs.
You're not going to have a job.
But my faith was such that Iwas like other people not going
to have a job, but I'm going tohave a job.
I don't know about them and itwas.
I just knew that I was going tobe, this was my passion, this
(14:46):
was my calling, and I knew itwas for me.
So I think that's a part of mydriving focus, as well as my
focus for the light at the endof the tunnel.
I just there was no doubt in mymind that I was meant to teach.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Two very important points for me that you made.
One is that it took you sevenyears to get your bachelor's,
and the next is that someone wastrying to discourage you from
pursuing what your dream was.
I know somebody that it tookthem 10 years to get their
(15:32):
undergraduate degree and everyso often they have to encourage
her and to say to her it's okay,because sometimes she sees that
as a burden.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, and that's sad that sometimes people may be
well meaning, but as wellmeaning as they may be, there
are consequences to the wordsthat they share of doubt I was
having some problems there yeahand then the next thing is that
(16:04):
you tend to allow people todiscourage you.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
And I know someone who was an older person as well
Older he might have been, abouthis late 20s, early 30s and he
was going to segue intoeducation and the Sunday before
his class started, a friendwhose husband was a teacher was
saying I wouldn't go intoeducation either because jobs.
(16:31):
And he said his luck is not myluck, I'm going after it, and
absolutely no regrets.
He pursued education and becamequite an excellent educator for
high school students.
So we've got to be so mindfulof the people who mean, don't
they?
They mean really well, theythink they're encouraging and
(16:53):
supporting, but they don't haveyour dream.
But this is what I want to talkto us about what did you enjoy
most about that process?
The PhD process?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Oh, I think what I enjoyed most about the process
was falling in love withresearch.
I never anticipated beingfilled with such driving
questions that fueled hours andhours of pouring over various
(17:29):
peer-reviewed journal articles,annotating, taking notes and
letting these ideas justjuxtapose and settle in my mind.
Very early in my PhD program Ican't remember what course it
was, but we were supposed topull together some research that
(17:50):
we thought might be beneficialtowards whatever we were going
to research.
They were checking that we knewhow to pull peer review journal
articles, we knew how tojuxtapose texts within a short
paper.
And my professor replied backthis was very thorough, very
(18:11):
concise.
You will make an excellentresearcher someday.
And I read that and thought Idon't want to be no researcher.
I just I want to answer to thisquestion.
That's it, just this question.
And, as I mentioned, this wasearly on and as I continued the
(18:33):
journey of finding more peerreview journal articles and
getting more questions, I waslike, oh, I'm turning it to a
researcher.
Now here I am done with mydissertation, finished my PhD,
and I have more studies that I'mplanning.
So that teacher knew betterthan me.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It could have been worse, like maybe having to go
into the bowels of Egypt and digup dead bones I mean dead
bodies and things I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Definitely that's not for me.
Me in a library, and I will bevery happy.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
If I have a choice, then I'll go with you.
I would much rather go thatroute.
So how do you feel technologyhas influenced adolescence
literacy, and tell me or give mea positive and a negative.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Okay, positive and negative.
Okay, one of the negatives hasto be the use of AI and students
plagiarizing using AI.
That is definitely a negativeand unfortunately I've caught a
few students who were doing thatand I have to give them a zero
(19:56):
because I have a no plagiarismpolicy in my classroom.
I tell students don't do it.
You think I'm not going tocatch you?
I am going to catch you.
I've been reading your writingall year long.
You don't think that I canrecognize your voice and your
(20:18):
tone, your point of view.
Come on now and I tell them Isaid if you plagiarize, I'm
giving you a zero.
No, you can't redo it and I'mgoing to call your parent.
So that would be the bad part.
One of the good parts is havingthe ability to use technology to
(20:39):
shift on a dime, and what Imean by that is there are some
times where you come up withsome ideas of a thematic lesson
you're putting together for yourstudents and it does not go
over.
It is not as well received asyou might think.
You are excited putting ittogether and when you start
implementing it, your students'eyes just glaze over and they're
(21:01):
looking at you.
You're like okay, let merethink this, and especially
within my AP classes that Iteach.
One of my students said some ofthese things, they're just so
old I don't find them useful.
Today I said okay, what topicwould you like to study?
(21:21):
They gave me some suggestions.
I said, okay, we have to finishthis unit because I need time
to plan, but let's finish thisunit and our next unit will be
based upon that and I willincorporate some newer text.
So being able to do a deep diveacross the Internet, find
essays from reliable sourcesthat I can group together around
(21:45):
the topic that they want todiscover, and then be able to
apply the AP literature or theAP Lang standards to question
them and help them discover thenuances of what we're looking
through I cannot imagineteaching prior to having access
(22:06):
to the internet, having thatability to make that shift.
Now the students are happybecause they're reading about
something they're interested in.
I'm happy because we're stillgoing over the standards.
We're still doing the thingsthat we need to do academically
to prepare you and get theskills that you need.
So it was a win-win for Goahead.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, go ahead, Rita.
Does that reading somethingthey're happy with?
Is that what your mirror booksspeak to?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Partially, yes, but for these particular students,
what they were asking, teresaand I wish I could remember this
was my AP Lang students, so wewere predominantly reading
nonfiction texts.
So it's your essays that talkabout either climate change or
(23:06):
something or that nature.
And there was a particulartopic and my apologies, I can't
remember that they wanted toresearch.
So for them it wasn't so much amirror book, but it was just a
topic of interest.
Mirror books would tend to besome aspect of a student's life
that does impact their life andthat could be anything from race
(23:27):
to gender to religion, and thatcould be both fiction and
nonfiction.
But this particularconversation with my students,
it wasn't necessarily a meretopic but something they wanted
to learn about, learn more about.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So what advice would you give educators who want to
be more intentional aboutfostering literacy in their
classrooms?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I would give two pieces of advice one to the
teachers and one to theadministrators and the district.
I am very fortunate to work ina district where we have a lot
of choice in what text we use inour ELA classrooms.
They are unwavering on makingsure that we are focused on
(24:22):
standards and all of the Englishteachers are totally fine with
that.
So the first piece of advice todistricts would be to give more
freedom and license to theprofessionals that you have
hired.
Trust them to be able to dotheir job.
Do not have an unrealisticexpectation of them to be
(24:46):
synchronized across theclassrooms.
Everybody's reading the samething at the same time.
Classrooms everybody's readingthe same thing at the same time.
This group of students may notwant to read that.
And now you've initiated a tugof war, a push and a pull
between the students and theteacher.
That did not need to happen.
That's the first piece.
The second teachers just becausesomething was exciting to you
(25:11):
when you were reading it in highschool doesn't mean it's going
to be exciting to your students.
It's OK to say and I've done itand I just shared an example of
it I put together somethinglike oh my God, this is going to
be amazing and my students arelike no, it's OK to self-reflect
, to say that didn't go over theway I thought it was.
(25:32):
Ok, new plan.
And there's power in that wedon't have to appear to have all
the answers.
It's okay if we can say uh-oh,I made a mistake, that's okay,
let's fix it.
Or this didn't turn out the wayI thought it would, let's do
better.
So that would be the two pieceof advice.
Teachers be flexible, give yourstudents choice.
(25:57):
Choice is very important andthat's another aspect, that of
Research that I came across thepower of choice.
Students are much more investedwhen they are given choice.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh, we're doing it again.
Go ahead, Rita.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I like that, that students deserve to be given
choice, absolutely.
You talked about, maybe, apiece of literature that someone
may be excited about, and whathave you Talk to us about
(26:38):
authors or books that excitedyou?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh, that's always one of the hardest things for me.
I read everything from Greektragedies to fiction to
nonfiction you name it.
I love to read it.
So it's very hard for me tonarrow it down to just a few
(27:03):
authors that excite me.
I'm going to try genre.
I love David Baldacci.
I love the fiction drama thathe writes, police dramas and FBI
(27:30):
dramas.
Those are really good when ittalking about some of the the
fire next time.
That's a huge accolade for me.
Once I read it, I'm done.
I'm moving on to the next scene.
But I've read that twice.
I also really appreciate what'sescaping me now.
Who's on that bookshelf overthere?
(27:52):
I also love juvenile fiction.
I read it because I want to beabreast of books that I can
bring in as possible things formy students to be interested in.
So A Cat Named Dewey that wasreally cute, yeah.
(28:13):
So it's really hard for me tonarrow it down.
I think I've done the best Ican, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So it's really hard for me to narrow it down.
I think I've done the best Ican.
Well, one of the authors thatwe interviewed a while back says
that there is no, there's, no,there isn't any good girl book
or a boy book.
There's only good books.
And this sounds like yourphilosophy blends right into
that, which is incredible, Iwill admit.
(28:42):
So what resources or strategieswould you recommend to students
who are struggling withliteracy but they're not getting
the support that they need?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I would say that would be a piece of advice I'd
give to both parents andstudents.
Unfortunately, there are timeswhere students try to advocate
for themselves and adults don'tlisten because they just view
them as a child.
You don't know what's best, Iknow what's best, and that's an
(29:17):
unfortunate circumstance.
So I would say parents, be astaunch advocate for your child.
If your child comes home andsays, hey, I really need help
with this and I don't feel likeI'm getting the help that I need
, they can partner together andwork with the educational system
in order to help that studentget the help that they need.
(29:39):
If they can get access to areading specialist who can help
them.
There may be an underlined issuethat hasn't been diagnosed,
such as dyslexia or something ofthat nature, and that would be
a start to establish whether ornot there is something out of
the realm that needs to be dealtwith first.
(30:01):
Or are they just a slow readerand they need to get back to the
basics of the skills in orderto build upon there.
Providing that there aren't anyoutline issues such as dyslexia
or an undiagnosed issue withliteracy, then I would say 15
minutes a day, find somethingwithin your realm of reading and
(30:25):
just grow and stretch beyondthat and begin to read more
advanced books.
Don't start with the hard stuff.
Don't do that to yourself.
Start with something withinyour realm.
They call it the zone ofproximal development.
It's the area where a studentcan read comfortably by
themselves and understand, andthe more exposure they give
(30:49):
themselves within that zone ofproximal development, the higher
that zone begins to climb.
We can't do it overnight bystressing ourselves out and
reaching beyond that zone ofproximal development.
Start where you are and just beconsistent about reading.
15-20 minutes a day will do alot to improve reading skills,
(31:13):
providing there aren't anyoutlying issues.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
You mentioned, I think you said was it outlining
issues or issues outside of thesituation?
Issues, problems, are youtalking about?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Like dyslexia.
There, unfortunately, arepeople who get into middle
school or high school andthey've never been diagnosed.
There may be ADHD right when Iwas diagnosed as an adult with
ADHD.
Now my ADHD in women tends tomanifest itself differently than
(31:57):
it does in boys.
So a boy might have troublesitting down for 15 minutes and
reading if the story doesn'tgrab him right away, whereas
with women we often aren't orgirls, I should say, often
aren't diagnosed with ADHDbecause our symptoms don't
exhibit themselves.
We're not up running around andhaving the outward signs of
(32:20):
hyperactivity.
Instead, our hyperactivity isall in our mind.
That just won't shut down.
So it's very possible that ayoung man could have ADHD.
It hasn't been diagnosed andmaybe he needs some coping
mechanisms or that's not my areaof expertise, but working with
a specialist could help get himon track.
(32:43):
We just never know how.
There are other things notconnected to reading could
impact reading.
I mean having ADHD myself, butit was never a problem for me to
sit down and read.
So that's to me is odd, but italso will.
After I've read something, Ican sit and think about it for
(33:06):
hours.
So it's very interesting thatthere could be issues outside of
reading that impact.
Reading that impact reading.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
We're having this enlightening, inspiring
conversation with Dr ValcineBrown and, based on what you're
telling us, I'm drawing someconclusions that you're
determined, you're ambitious,you're progressive.
No question about that from myperspective.
Now tell us three things thatyou admire about Dr Val
(33:41):
Seenbrough.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Oh, what do I admire?
I admire that if I make amistake, I will own up to it and
make changes and move forward.
Make changes and move forward.
Another thing I admire aboutmyself is my ability to learn
(34:03):
new things.
I, over the last eight years,have taken up homesteading.
So I started with a garden.
Three years later, which isfive years ago, I got chickens
and now I have this homesteadthing going on.
And that was just throughwatching YouTube videos, getting
books and following bloggerswho talk about homesteading.
And now here I am on my ownhomesteading journey and I make
(34:27):
TikToks about homesteading andpeople really appreciate my
content.
The other thing is I admiremyself as a mother.
My children are my world.
They're grown, they're adults.
They'll always be my babies andI can look at our life and our
(34:49):
relationship, which my childrenare 25, 29, and almost 30.
29, and almost 30.
And even as adults.
I look at them and therelationship we have and I am so
proud of the foundation that Ilaid, that we have built this
(35:10):
relationship on together and Ilove it.
My 25-year old, my youngest, mydaughter, she'll call and say,
oh, I just want to run this, PaiYu.
I was like, oh yeah, I lovethat.
She values my opinion and itcan be anything from I helped
her pick out a rug for her housethe other day, and the other
(35:34):
thing is we talked aboutinvesting and saving for
retirement.
So it's the important things,as well as the smaller things
that are just our moments, thatwe have because of the
foundation we laid.
I laid, so I admire myself as amother.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Well, you are certainly blessed to have
daughters that are grown andhave left the nest, as it were,
that are grown and have left thenest, as it were, and they
still want to stay connected totheir mom and in their lives,
and it's a very special thingbecause many parents don't get
to experience that with theirchildren.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
That is true.
Yes, my two oldest are my boysand then my youngest is my
daughter.
I am very blessed and fortunateto have the relationship with
them that I do.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I am so if you were to implement one policy change
in secondary education based onyour research, whatever that may
be, what would it be and why?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
We have to bring intervention into the middle
schools and high schools.
Most of the readingintervention that I researched
actually pretty much all of itwas just done at the primary
levels, k through third grade.
Now we realize that there are alot of secondary students which
(37:04):
is middle school and highschool that are not reading at
the level that they should bereading.
Okay, we see that there's aneed, but yet we don't offer
intervention.
Make that make sense.
So that would be the one thingI would say we have to extend
reading intervention into wellbeyond third grade.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So you would write that as a policy, as something
that needed to be implemented tohelp those individuals, those
children, those young people toachieve their goals?
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Absolutely, talk to us, please, about what's the
best piece of advice you haveever been given oh, the best
piece of advice came from mygrandmother and it extended
beyond the realm of what she wastalking about.
(38:09):
My mother, my grandmother,always said never be.
She said, teach yourself theprinciple of saving.
I don't care if it's a nickel,I don't care if it's a nickel, I
don't care if it's a dime.
You start somewhere and youteach yourself the principle and
then you'll be able to go fromthere.
Now that advice worksdefinitely financially, but it
(38:31):
also extends outside of financesteaching yourself principles
and starting where you are andgrowing and building from there.
So I think that it's more aboutself-discipline, teaching
yourself principles and thengrowing from there.
(38:52):
Absolutely, that's the bestadvice I've ever been given, and
I don't necessarily think sheintended that advice to extend
beyond discussing finances, butit did.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing.
It makes me smile justlistening to the warmth between
you and your children, which isabsolutely wonderful.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout you preparing to present
your research at the ARENA 2025?
(39:33):
Can you talk to us?
A little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes.
So once I had completed mydissertation, my dissertation
chair said ERA's opening up theopportunity for people to
present their research.
I really think that yourresearch would be right on point
for the areas that they'regoing to be discussing.
I said okay, and we wentthrough the process.
(39:59):
Her and I truncated a hundredpage dissertation down into just
a few pages five or six pagesand I submitted it and they
selected it.
I was one of over 11,000submissions that they received
over 11,000 submissions thatthey received and I think they
(40:20):
only selected 120 of us.
So I was in a very smallpercentage, and being accepted
meant you were going to be doingan iPoster, which is a digital
poster with all your findings onit, where people can come and
go and look at it.
Once they told me I'd beenaccepted for that, they extended
an additional opportunity toallow about 25 of us, I believe,
(40:45):
to also do what they call ane-lightning TED Talk, and this
is you presenting your researchin about three to four minutes
and taking a minute or two ofQ&A, and so I submitted for that
and they selected me for thattoo.
So not only am I presenting mydissertation in the
(41:06):
iPresentation format, but Iactually get to speak about my
research and it's being at it'sat AERA, which stands for
American Education ResearchAssociation, and so it'll be in
(41:26):
Denver, Colorado later thismonth.
How does it feel?
Oh, it feels surreal, I have tosay.
Thousands of people are goingto this convention and this will
be the first time that I'vespoken, I think, to an audience
that large.
I've sang in front of largecrowds, a couple of thousand
people but this is the firsttime presenting research, so I'm
(41:51):
definitely looking forward toit.
I'm excited, a little bitnervous.
I'm already thinking about whatI'm going to wear.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yes, I'm excited for it too.
That must be quite, quite afascinating thing to be involved
with, to be one of thepresenters.
You've got a book, and I'd likefor you to share with us what
that book is about.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yes, it is called Credit Recovery Through
Demonstration of Mastery.
Now, this started as a programon our campus.
It's in our third year ofrunning.
Traditionally, when a studentdoesn't pass a class that they
need for graduation, there'sonly two methods for them to
(42:38):
recover those missing creditsthey sit through the class again
, taking it face-to-face, orthey take it online through
online credit recovery, andthose were the methods that my
school was predominantly using.
But we came into an issue wherewe learned that some of the
students were cheating whentaking it through online credit
(43:00):
recovery.
They were finding the answersonline and teachers are about
second chances, but we're notabout cheating.
So I had an extra period.
One of the classes I had gotcollapsed because there was a
mix-up in the band schedule anda lot of the students who were
(43:23):
in that AP class needed to moveto the band class that was being
in the same period and it wasonly going to be four students
left in the class.
You can't have rich academicdiscussions with just four
people.
So they collapsed that classand I had this extra period.
So I went to my administratorand they didn't need to level
(43:46):
out any other classes and giveme another either ninth, tenth
or eleventh grade class.
So I said listen, I have thisidea and I pitched it to her
about doing credit recovery.
It's based on mastery.
Our 9th, 10th and 11th gradeEnglish classes had already been
doing work on aligning ourskills.
(44:07):
What do students need to havemastered by the end of the first
semester of ninth grade to besuccessful, the second semester
of ninth grade to be successful,the first semester of 10th?
So when we had aligned thoseskills, a lot of those are
performance tasks that a studentcould show demonstration of
(44:27):
mastering and be able to recovercredit.
When you took a class at ninthgrade, you may not have grasped
those skills then.
It took you a little longer.
But through the continualexposure of same skills in 10th
grade, 11th grade oh okay, Ihave it now.
(44:47):
I've now mastered 11th gradestandards I eventually caught up
.
Why should I go back and sitthrough the class again when I
can just give you?
You can give me the performancetask.
I can sit and perform them infront of you where you know I'm
not cheating, and I can recoverthose credits.
I didn't have the skills then,but I have them now and my admin
(45:09):
was very supportive.
They said absolutely, if yourteam is on board with it.
Yes, so I went and pitched itto the English language arts
department.
I said, hey, we've already donethis work to align our skills.
What if we can put togetherperformance tasks that students
can recover credit?
We make sure they're notcheating.
Here's some rules we're goingto set in place.
(45:31):
They said, ok, put it togetherand let us see what it looks
like.
So for about a week and a half,I used that period where I
didn't have any students puttogether all the resources or
performance tasks, went back,pitched it to the 11th grade, to
the ELA team, and they loved it.
They said, yeah, we can signoff on this.
(45:51):
So we started doing creditrecovery.
So within that period where Idon't have students assigned to
that class, I would call in ahandful of students at a time
and I would say you need torecover credit for your second
semester of ninth grade.
In order to recover that credit, I need you to do these five
things.
I'm going to call you in andeach time I call you in, you're
(46:14):
going to do one of those fivethings and when you're done with
them, I'm going to grade them,average the score.
If you pass, I'm going to sendit back to your teacher of
record.
They're going to review it,ensure that indeed you did
master the skills.
They'll sign off on it andyou're going to recoup those
credits.
And it has been very successful.
(46:35):
It has been very successful.
We got started with it a littlebit late that first semester
only, because it was first my APclass.
Then it collapsed.
And then putting together theresources, getting everyone's
approval, we started in Octoberof that year.
We had about 45 studentsrecover credit that first year.
(46:56):
Then the next year we had about60, 65 students recover credit
in English language arts.
Now with it it's third year andit's running like a whale oil
machine.
We had nearly 60 studentsrecover credit in ELA just the
first semester mister.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Wow, an amazing success story and an uplifting
way of bringing our conversationto a close.
It has been a joy having thistime just to talk to you about
your passions passionsadolescent literacy and
(47:45):
education, research and yourinsights that you were able to
give us, and then the future ofliteracy.
I think we touched on that abit and I just found the entire
conversation to be uplifting,and I think individuals who
listen to this will find this tobe uplifting.
Rita, do you have something youwant to add to that?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
As you know, on Speak Up International, we seek to
inspire, educate and inform, andthere's no question that our
guest today, dr Valcine Brown,has helped us to meet those
goals, and I need to say thankyou, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Thank you so much, ms Rita Burke, for having me on
Elton Brown.
I appreciate you both so muchfor taking the time and creating
this platform where educatorscan come and speak up and uplift
and encourage their felloweducators.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Thank you.
By the way, I'm sure there's abook cooking.
As soon as the masses can getto it, please let us know.
We would love to have yetanother conversation with you on
Speak Up International.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Thank you for tuning in to Speak Up International.
If you wish to contact ourguest, ms Valcine Brown, please
be prepared to submit your name,your email address and the
reason why you wish to contactMs Valcine Brown at
(49:22):
wwwdrvalcinebrownlive-websitecom.
Ms Valcine Brown has othersocial media accounts you can
use to connect to her that willbe listed in the description
section on Spotify and othersocial media platforms.
(49:45):
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Speak up international.
Don't miss our next episode.
Join us again on speak upexclamation point international,
where we aim to inspire, toinform, educate and entertain
our audience.
Welcome to.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Speak Up International with Rita Burke
and Elton Brown.
As a matter of fact, vibrant,energetic conversations with
individuals that we consider tobe community builders, and today
is no exception.
We have with us Dr ValcineBrown, who is a veteran educator
(00:45):
who is passionate aboutadolescent literacy.
Dr Valcine recently completedher PhD in education and
instruction and will bepresenting her work at a
convention very soon.
Her passion she is committed toincreasing literacy in
adolescents, to increasingliteracy in adolescents and to
our listeners.
(01:05):
I want to welcome Dr ValcineBrown to speak of international.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you so much, both Rita and Elton Brown, for
having me on here.
I appreciate you both so much.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk to
you.
What inspired you to focus onadolescent literacy?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
and just thinking about my passion for reading
growing up that never left me,even in adulthood, and teaching
(01:53):
students who just were notpassionate about reading at all,
and a lot of them saying thatthey don't like reading, they
find it boring, and thatactually takes us into what I
find the biggest challenge to beis that they don't enjoy
reading.
One of the things that'simportant to me is to try to
(02:14):
help them kindle or even find orfor most of them, it's
rekindling that love of readingand helping them find things
that they're passionate aboutreading.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So I'm wondering you talk about adolescents and their
reluctance to read and the factthat they don't enjoy it.
Do you think this is universal?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yes, I do think it's universal.
I don't think it's as much of aproblem, say, in the UK as it
is here.
When I was working on my PhD,one of the things I found is
that over in Europe they do anannual survey about reading
attitudes and finding out whatpeople are enjoying reading, and
(03:04):
they've noticed a little bit ofa dip, but it's not been as
significant here.
But I also want to say that wedon't study it as much here as
they do over in the UK, so Idon't know if there might be a
correlation there.
Universally, I'm finding in theresearch that other places are
experiencing the same.
One of the research articles Ifound from New Zealand was
(03:28):
talking about students sayingthat they found reading to be
boring.
So I think it's universal.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yes, and I agree.
I think it is universal.
It's not just in one section ofthe world or down the street,
it's everywhere.
So how does literacy impact astudent's long-term academic and
economic success?
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I think that it has a negative impact on it If we get
aside from what we talk aboutattitude towards reading but we
just focus on what we know asour Lexile level scores.
We do find that there is acorrelation to lower
socioeconomic static with thosewho have lower reading levels
(04:29):
with those who have lowerreading levels.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So I'm hearing, then correct me if I'm wrong the
connection between socioeconomiclevels and interest and
attitude towards reading.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Not attitude.
Lexile levels.
Those are two.
Yes, my apologies for not beingclear.
We can look at lexile level asin literacy Can a person read
versus attitude towards reading,which is something different.
There is a correlation betweenLexile level, ability to read
and economic status.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So what are some of the key findings from your PhD
research on adolescent literacyand how do they challenge
existing perceptions?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
My dissertation was on attitude towards reading, not
so much lexile level, and whatI did find is that exposure
towards mirror books doesimprove attitude towards reading
.
Now I'm going to back up alittle bit to go forward.
Whenever I say the term mirrorbooks, a lot of people say what
is that?
(05:31):
Mirror books are books throughwhich someone can see themselves
reflected, either racially,culturally, religious-wise,
sexual orientation whatever allof the facets through which we
view ourselves, there'ssomething within that book that
they're able to see reflectedwithin themselves.
And so the survey that I use,the SARA Survey of Adolescent
(05:57):
Reading Attitude, breaks downattitude towards reading in four
different components.
There's academic print,academic digital, there's
recreational print andrecreational digital, and I did
my study by having my core groupas well as my testing group.
(06:19):
Now my treatment group is thegroup that I gave the mirror
books to.
So both of the groups took theSARA Survey of Adolescent
Reading Attitude.
That gave us a holistic scoreand then the sub scores for
those different sections, theirattitude towards reading.
We did six weeks of sustainedsilent reading in which the
(06:43):
treatment group was given mirrorbooks and the non-treatment
group was just given books ofhigh interest books, but not
books that I quantified asmirror books based on the
demographics of the school whereI did the study.
At the end of the six weeks, Iagain gave both the groups the
(07:05):
sera and what I found is thatwithin the treatment group those
who were exposed to mirrorbooks there was an improvement
in attitude towards recreationalprint and there was a small dip
in attitude towardsrecreational digital, which is
(07:25):
your social media.
Now, those changes were notconsidered, or did not measure,
statistically significant, butthere was a shift in the
numerical value.
So while I left and said maybethere's something here because
the change was not consideredstatistically significant, I
(07:46):
have to go back to the drawingboard and ask myself some
additional questions andpossibly do another study in the
future.
Some of those questions mightbe what if I chose books that I
thought the students might seeas mirror books, but they didn't
see themselves reflected?
So, in that regard, could Ithen ask students to give me a
(08:09):
list of books they might like toread that they do see as mirror
books, and then see if thatchanges their attitude towards
reading?
Or another thing is maybe sixweeks wasn't long enough.
Maybe if it was six or sevenmonths, there might've been a
statistically different shift.
So while I left with an ideathat maybe there's something to
(08:35):
this because the measurementwasn't statistically significant
, I can't actually say Quite adeep and wide study.
Yes, yeah.
So when I say I'm passionateabout it, you certainly sound
(09:02):
passionate about it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Now you somehow became an educator, and I want
you to talk to us about what wasbehind that decision to become
an educator.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I was a late in life person who came to teaching, and
so I like to say I came throughit through a circuitous route.
I really didn't wasn't surewhat I wanted to do when I
originally left high school.
I went to college and tried acouple of different measures,
but it wasn't anything thatreally struck me and drew my
(09:29):
love and my passion.
And it wasn't until myadulthood, where I was a
stay-at-home mom with threechildren.
I was running a home daycareand I was making my own
curriculum, for my two oldestwere going to school at the time
.
So I was at home with myyoungest and two other children
(09:50):
who were in my daycare and Istarted putting together
curriculum based on phonics andgrouping together projects and
things like that.
And I discovered, I said, I'mreally good at this.
I am very good at puttingthings together thematically,
the kids are loving what I'mdoing and that was what cued me
(10:10):
in that I would be a goodteacher.
But I knew that my passion forliterature would drive me more
towards just teaching Englishlanguage arts, and at the high
school level, because I love thedeep, rich conversations I can
have with my students aboutliterature.
So that's how I came to be aneducator and I'm 12 years in and
(10:35):
I have to say I still love it.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So how do you see the future of adolescent literacy
evolving and what changes wouldyou like to see as it evolves?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
That is a very tough question and it's hard because
most of the research that isdone on literacy really just
focuses two different areas thatdon't impact adolescent
literacy.
A lot of the interventionstrategies that are studied to
(11:11):
improve students' readingability are for third grade and
below, and then there are somestudies that are focusing on
attitude towards reading, butthey're very few and far between
at the adolescent level.
So I would start by saying weneed more research that focuses
(11:33):
in this area of adolescentliteracy, but it needs to be
divided into lexile level theskill of being able to read and
looking at students' attitudetowards reading and see if we
can find a convergence betweenthose two different aspects of
adolescent literacy.
So I would say any changes thatI'd like to see would be to see
(11:59):
more research in that area,research in that area and then,
of course, depending on what thefindings of the research reveal
to us, I'd like that thosefindings to shape the direction
we're going in with education.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So you told us that you have been in education for
12 years.
Am I correct?
Yes, so what happened beforethen?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I was a stay-at-home mom for about 12 years and then
I went back to school to finish,and that took me about six or
seven years because I wasworking as well as raising
children and I was divorced atthe time, so I was a single
parent on top of that, and so Iworked a plethora of different
(12:48):
part-time jobs, full-time jobs,putting myself through school
until I became an educator.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And just like that, she became the educator.
You make it sound so easy.
I'm sure that it was not thateasy.
There's a saying that sayswhatever you really want.
It takes a lot of pain anddetermination, and so, to see
this huge smile on your face asyou're telling us your
(13:16):
accomplishments, I'm thinking,no, it's got to be a little
difficult than that.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I wouldn't say there was any pain, but there were
certainly challenges.
And for me like I like toemphasize that it took me seven
years just to get a bachelor's.
So that to me was one of thestruggles, in that I couldn't
just go for four years and bedone Working part time jobs,
raising children.
I had to go part time.
(13:41):
So seven years just to get mybachelor's degree and then I did
do my credentialing program inone year.
So that was a blessing.
So I would say for me it wasn'treally a pain.
I didn't experience any pain,but there was the struggle and
the juggling of the multiplefacets of my life while staying
(14:04):
focused and passionate aboutwhat I wanted to do.
And the interesting thing aboutthat is while I was in working
on my bachelor's degree, at thetime there was the teacher
shortage in layoff 2006, sevenand eight.
And I remember a well-meaningfriend saying are you sure you
(14:25):
want to go back to school toteach?
Look at all these layoffs.
You're not going to have a job.
But my faith was such that Iwas like other people not going
to have a job, but I'm going tohave a job.
I don't know about them and itwas.
I just knew that I was going tobe, this was my passion, this
(14:46):
was my calling, and I knew itwas for me.
So I think that's a part of mydriving focus, as well as my
focus for the light at the endof the tunnel.
I just there was no doubt in mymind that I was meant to teach.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Two very important points for me that you made.
One is that it took you sevenyears to get your bachelor's,
and the next is that someone wastrying to discourage you from
pursuing what your dream was.
I know somebody that it tookthem 10 years to get their
(15:32):
undergraduate degree and everyso often they have to encourage
her and to say to her it's okay,because sometimes she sees that
as a burden.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, and that's sad that sometimes people may be
well meaning, but as wellmeaning as they may be, there
are consequences to the wordsthat they share of doubt I was
having some problems there yeahand then the next thing is that
(16:04):
you tend to allow people todiscourage you.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
And I know someone who was an older person as well
Older he might have been, abouthis late 20s, early 30s and he
was going to segue intoeducation and the Sunday before
his class started, a friendwhose husband was a teacher was
saying I wouldn't go intoeducation either because jobs.
(16:31):
And he said his luck is not myluck, I'm going after it, and
absolutely no regrets.
He pursued education and becamequite an excellent educator for
high school students.
So we've got to be so mindfulof the people who mean, don't
they?
They mean really well, theythink they're encouraging and
(16:53):
supporting, but they don't haveyour dream.
But this is what I want to talkto us about what did you enjoy
most about that process?
The PhD process?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Oh, I think what I enjoyed most about the process
was falling in love withresearch.
I never anticipated beingfilled with such driving
questions that fueled hours andhours of pouring over various
(17:29):
peer-reviewed journal articles,annotating, taking notes and
letting these ideas justjuxtapose and settle in my mind.
Very early in my PhD program Ican't remember what course it
was, but we were supposed topull together some research that
(17:50):
we thought might be beneficialtowards whatever we were going
to research.
They were checking that we knewhow to pull peer review journal
articles, we knew how tojuxtapose texts within a short
paper.
And my professor replied backthis was very thorough, very
(18:11):
concise.
You will make an excellentresearcher someday.
And I read that and thought Idon't want to be no researcher.
I just I want to answer to thisquestion.
That's it, just this question.
And, as I mentioned, this wasearly on and as I continued the
(18:33):
journey of finding more peerreview journal articles and
getting more questions, I waslike, oh, I'm turning it to a
researcher.
Now here I am done with mydissertation, finished my PhD,
and I have more studies that I'mplanning.
So that teacher knew betterthan me.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It could have been worse, like maybe having to go
into the bowels of Egypt and digup dead bones I mean dead
bodies and things I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Definitely that's not for me.
Me in a library, and I will bevery happy.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
If I have a choice, then I'll go with you.
I would much rather go thatroute.
So how do you feel technologyhas influenced adolescence
literacy, and tell me or give mea positive and a negative.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Okay, positive and negative.
Okay, one of the negatives hasto be the use of AI and students
plagiarizing using AI.
That is definitely a negativeand unfortunately I've caught a
few students who were doing thatand I have to give them a zero
(19:56):
because I have a no plagiarismpolicy in my classroom.
I tell students don't do it.
You think I'm not going tocatch you?
I am going to catch you.
I've been reading your writingall year long.
You don't think that I canrecognize your voice and your
(20:18):
tone, your point of view.
Come on now and I tell them Isaid if you plagiarize, I'm
giving you a zero.
No, you can't redo it and I'mgoing to call your parent.
So that would be the bad part.
One of the good parts is havingthe ability to use technology to
(20:39):
shift on a dime, and what Imean by that is there are some
times where you come up withsome ideas of a thematic lesson
you're putting together for yourstudents and it does not go
over.
It is not as well received asyou might think.
You are excited putting ittogether and when you start
implementing it, your students'eyes just glaze over and they're
(21:01):
looking at you.
You're like okay, let merethink this, and especially
within my AP classes that Iteach.
One of my students said some ofthese things, they're just so
old I don't find them useful.
Today I said okay, what topicwould you like to study?
(21:21):
They gave me some suggestions.
I said, okay, we have to finishthis unit because I need time
to plan, but let's finish thisunit and our next unit will be
based upon that and I willincorporate some newer text.
So being able to do a deep diveacross the Internet, find
essays from reliable sourcesthat I can group together around
(21:45):
the topic that they want todiscover, and then be able to
apply the AP literature or theAP Lang standards to question
them and help them discover thenuances of what we're looking
through I cannot imagineteaching prior to having access
(22:06):
to the internet, having thatability to make that shift.
Now the students are happybecause they're reading about
something they're interested in.
I'm happy because we're stillgoing over the standards.
We're still doing the thingsthat we need to do academically
to prepare you and get theskills that you need.
So it was a win-win for Goahead.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, go ahead, Rita.
Does that reading somethingthey're happy with?
Is that what your mirror booksspeak to?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Partially, yes, but for these particular students,
what they were asking, teresaand I wish I could remember this
was my AP Lang students, so wewere predominantly reading
nonfiction texts.
So it's your essays that talkabout either climate change or
(23:06):
something or that nature.
And there was a particulartopic and my apologies, I can't
remember that they wanted toresearch.
So for them it wasn't so much amirror book, but it was just a
topic of interest.
Mirror books would tend to besome aspect of a student's life
that does impact their life andthat could be anything from race
(23:27):
to gender to religion, and thatcould be both fiction and
nonfiction.
But this particularconversation with my students,
it wasn't necessarily a meretopic but something they wanted
to learn about, learn more about.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
So what advice would you give educators who want to
be more intentional aboutfostering literacy in their
classrooms?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I would give two pieces of advice one to the
teachers and one to theadministrators and the district.
I am very fortunate to work ina district where we have a lot
of choice in what text we use inour ELA classrooms.
They are unwavering on makingsure that we are focused on
(24:22):
standards and all of the Englishteachers are totally fine with
that.
So the first piece of advice todistricts would be to give more
freedom and license to theprofessionals that you have
hired.
Trust them to be able to dotheir job.
Do not have an unrealisticexpectation of them to be
(24:46):
synchronized across theclassrooms.
Everybody's reading the samething at the same time.
Classrooms everybody's readingthe same thing at the same time.
This group of students may notwant to read that.
And now you've initiated a tugof war, a push and a pull
between the students and theteacher.
That did not need to happen.
That's the first piece.
The second teachers just becausesomething was exciting to you
(25:11):
when you were reading it in highschool doesn't mean it's going
to be exciting to your students.
It's OK to say and I've done itand I just shared an example of
it I put together somethinglike oh my God, this is going to
be amazing and my students arelike no, it's OK to self-reflect
, to say that didn't go over theway I thought it was.
(25:32):
Ok, new plan.
And there's power in that wedon't have to appear to have all
the answers.
It's okay if we can say uh-oh,I made a mistake, that's okay,
let's fix it.
Or this didn't turn out the wayI thought it would, let's do
better.
So that would be the two pieceof advice.
Teachers be flexible, give yourstudents choice.
(25:57):
Choice is very important andthat's another aspect, that of
Research that I came across thepower of choice.
Students are much more investedwhen they are given choice.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh, we're doing it again.
Go ahead, Rita.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I like that, that students deserve to be given
choice, absolutely.
You talked about, maybe, apiece of literature that someone
may be excited about, and whathave you Talk to us about
(26:38):
authors or books that excitedyou?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh, that's always one of the hardest things for me.
I read everything from Greektragedies to fiction to
nonfiction you name it.
I love to read it.
So it's very hard for me tonarrow it down to just a few
(27:03):
authors that excite me.
I'm going to try genre.
I love David Baldacci.
I love the fiction drama thathe writes, police dramas and FBI
(27:30):
dramas.
Those are really good when ittalking about some of the the
fire next time.
That's a huge accolade for me.
Once I read it, I'm done.
I'm moving on to the next scene.
But I've read that twice.
I also really appreciate what'sescaping me now.
Who's on that bookshelf overthere?
(27:52):
I also love juvenile fiction.
I read it because I want to beabreast of books that I can
bring in as possible things formy students to be interested in.
So A Cat Named Dewey that wasreally cute, yeah.
(28:13):
So it's really hard for me tonarrow it down.
I think I've done the best Ican, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So it's really hard for me to narrow it down.
I think I've done the best Ican.
Well, one of the authors thatwe interviewed a while back says
that there is no, there's, no,there isn't any good girl book
or a boy book.
There's only good books.
And this sounds like yourphilosophy blends right into
that, which is incredible, Iwill admit.
(28:42):
So what resources or strategieswould you recommend to students
who are struggling withliteracy but they're not getting
the support that they need?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
I would say that would be a piece of advice I'd
give to both parents andstudents.
Unfortunately, there are timeswhere students try to advocate
for themselves and adults don'tlisten because they just view
them as a child.
You don't know what's best, Iknow what's best, and that's an
(29:17):
unfortunate circumstance.
So I would say parents, be astaunch advocate for your child.
If your child comes home andsays, hey, I really need help
with this and I don't feel likeI'm getting the help that I need
, they can partner together andwork with the educational system
in order to help that studentget the help that they need.
(29:39):
If they can get access to areading specialist who can help
them.
There may be an underlined issuethat hasn't been diagnosed,
such as dyslexia or something ofthat nature, and that would be
a start to establish whether ornot there is something out of
the realm that needs to be dealtwith first.
(30:01):
Or are they just a slow readerand they need to get back to the
basics of the skills in orderto build upon there.
Providing that there aren't anyoutline issues such as dyslexia
or an undiagnosed issue withliteracy, then I would say 15
minutes a day, find somethingwithin your realm of reading and
(30:25):
just grow and stretch beyondthat and begin to read more
advanced books.
Don't start with the hard stuff.
Don't do that to yourself.
Start with something withinyour realm.
They call it the zone ofproximal development.
It's the area where a studentcan read comfortably by
themselves and understand, andthe more exposure they give
(30:49):
themselves within that zone ofproximal development, the higher
that zone begins to climb.
We can't do it overnight bystressing ourselves out and
reaching beyond that zone ofproximal development.
Start where you are and just beconsistent about reading.
15-20 minutes a day will do alot to improve reading skills,
(31:13):
providing there aren't anyoutlying issues.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
You mentioned, I think you said was it outlining
issues or issues outside of thesituation?
Issues, problems, are youtalking about?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Like dyslexia.
There, unfortunately, arepeople who get into middle
school or high school andthey've never been diagnosed.
There may be ADHD right when Iwas diagnosed as an adult with
ADHD.
Now my ADHD in women tends tomanifest itself differently than
(31:57):
it does in boys.
So a boy might have troublesitting down for 15 minutes and
reading if the story doesn'tgrab him right away, whereas
with women we often aren't orgirls, I should say, often
aren't diagnosed with ADHDbecause our symptoms don't
exhibit themselves.
We're not up running around andhaving the outward signs of
(32:20):
hyperactivity.
Instead, our hyperactivity isall in our mind.
That just won't shut down.
So it's very possible that ayoung man could have ADHD.
It hasn't been diagnosed andmaybe he needs some coping
mechanisms or that's not my areaof expertise, but working with
a specialist could help get himon track.
(32:43):
We just never know how.
There are other things notconnected to reading could
impact reading.
I mean having ADHD myself, butit was never a problem for me to
sit down and read.
So that's to me is odd, but italso will.
After I've read something, Ican sit and think about it for
(33:06):
hours.
So it's very interesting thatthere could be issues outside of
reading that impact.
Reading that impact reading.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
We're having this enlightening, inspiring
conversation with Dr ValcineBrown and, based on what you're
telling us, I'm drawing someconclusions that you're
determined, you're ambitious,you're progressive.
No question about that from myperspective.
Now tell us three things thatyou admire about Dr Val
(33:41):
Seenbrough.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Oh, what do I admire?
I admire that if I make amistake, I will own up to it and
make changes and move forward.
Make changes and move forward.
Another thing I admire aboutmyself is my ability to learn
(34:03):
new things.
I, over the last eight years,have taken up homesteading.
So I started with a garden.
Three years later, which isfive years ago, I got chickens
and now I have this homesteadthing going on.
And that was just throughwatching YouTube videos, getting
books and following bloggerswho talk about homesteading.
And now here I am on my ownhomesteading journey and I make
(34:27):
TikToks about homesteading andpeople really appreciate my
content.
The other thing is I admiremyself as a mother.
My children are my world.
They're grown, they're adults.
They'll always be my babies andI can look at our life and our
(34:49):
relationship, which my childrenare 25, 29, and almost 30.
29, and almost 30.
And even as adults.
I look at them and therelationship we have and I am so
proud of the foundation that Ilaid, that we have built this
(35:10):
relationship on together and Ilove it.
My 25-year old, my youngest, mydaughter, she'll call and say,
oh, I just want to run this, PaiYu.
I was like, oh yeah, I lovethat.
She values my opinion and itcan be anything from I helped
her pick out a rug for her housethe other day, and the other
(35:34):
thing is we talked aboutinvesting and saving for
retirement.
So it's the important things,as well as the smaller things
that are just our moments, thatwe have because of the
foundation we laid.
I laid, so I admire myself as amother.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Well, you are certainly blessed to have
daughters that are grown andhave left the nest, as it were,
that are grown and have left thenest, as it were, and they
still want to stay connected totheir mom and in their lives,
and it's a very special thingbecause many parents don't get
to experience that with theirchildren.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
That is true.
Yes, my two oldest are my boysand then my youngest is my
daughter.
I am very blessed and fortunateto have the relationship with
them that I do.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I am so if you were to implement one policy change
in secondary education based onyour research, whatever that may
be, what would it be and why?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
We have to bring intervention into the middle
schools and high schools.
Most of the readingintervention that I researched
actually pretty much all of itwas just done at the primary
levels, k through third grade.
Now we realize that there are alot of secondary students which
(37:04):
is middle school and highschool that are not reading at
the level that they should bereading.
Okay, we see that there's aneed, but yet we don't offer
intervention.
Make that make sense.
So that would be the one thingI would say we have to extend
reading intervention into wellbeyond third grade.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
So you would write that as a policy, as something
that needed to be implemented tohelp those individuals, those
children, those young people toachieve their goals?
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Absolutely, talk to us, please, about what's the
best piece of advice you haveever been given oh, the best
piece of advice came from mygrandmother and it extended
beyond the realm of what she wastalking about.
(38:09):
My mother, my grandmother,always said never be.
She said, teach yourself theprinciple of saving.
I don't care if it's a nickel,I don't care if it's a nickel, I
don't care if it's a dime.
You start somewhere and youteach yourself the principle and
then you'll be able to go fromthere.
Now that advice worksdefinitely financially, but it
(38:31):
also extends outside of financesteaching yourself principles
and starting where you are andgrowing and building from there.
So I think that it's more aboutself-discipline, teaching
yourself principles and thengrowing from there.
(38:52):
Absolutely, that's the bestadvice I've ever been given, and
I don't necessarily think sheintended that advice to extend
beyond discussing finances, butit did.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing.
It makes me smile justlistening to the warmth between
you and your children, which isabsolutely wonderful.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout you preparing to present
your research at the ARENA 2025?
(39:33):
Can you talk to us?
A little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes.
So once I had completed mydissertation, my dissertation
chair said ERA's opening up theopportunity for people to
present their research.
I really think that yourresearch would be right on point
for the areas that they'regoing to be discussing.
I said okay, and we wentthrough the process.
(39:59):
Her and I truncated a hundredpage dissertation down into just
a few pages five or six pagesand I submitted it and they
selected it.
I was one of over 11,000submissions that they received
over 11,000 submissions thatthey received and I think they
(40:20):
only selected 120 of us.
So I was in a very smallpercentage, and being accepted
meant you were going to be doingan iPoster, which is a digital
poster with all your findings onit, where people can come and
go and look at it.
Once they told me I'd beenaccepted for that, they extended
an additional opportunity toallow about 25 of us, I believe,
(40:45):
to also do what they call ane-lightning TED Talk, and this
is you presenting your researchin about three to four minutes
and taking a minute or two ofQ&A, and so I submitted for that
and they selected me for thattoo.
So not only am I presenting mydissertation in the
(41:06):
iPresentation format, but Iactually get to speak about my
research and it's being at it'sat AERA, which stands for
American Education ResearchAssociation, and so it'll be in
(41:26):
Denver, Colorado later thismonth.
How does it feel?
Oh, it feels surreal, I have tosay.
Thousands of people are goingto this convention and this will
be the first time that I'vespoken, I think, to an audience
that large.
I've sang in front of largecrowds, a couple of thousand
people but this is the firsttime presenting research, so I'm
(41:51):
definitely looking forward toit.
I'm excited, a little bitnervous.
I'm already thinking about whatI'm going to wear.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yes, I'm excited for it too.
That must be quite, quite afascinating thing to be involved
with, to be one of thepresenters.
You've got a book, and I'd likefor you to share with us what
that book is about.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yes, it is called Credit Recovery Through
Demonstration of Mastery.
Now, this started as a programon our campus.
It's in our third year ofrunning.
Traditionally, when a studentdoesn't pass a class that they
need for graduation, there'sonly two methods for them to
(42:38):
recover those missing creditsthey sit through the class again
, taking it face-to-face, orthey take it online through
online credit recovery, andthose were the methods that my
school was predominantly using.
But we came into an issue wherewe learned that some of the
students were cheating whentaking it through online credit
(43:00):
recovery.
They were finding the answersonline and teachers are about
second chances, but we're notabout cheating.
So I had an extra period.
One of the classes I had gotcollapsed because there was a
mix-up in the band schedule anda lot of the students who were
(43:23):
in that AP class needed to moveto the band class that was being
in the same period and it wasonly going to be four students
left in the class.
You can't have rich academicdiscussions with just four
people.
So they collapsed that classand I had this extra period.
So I went to my administratorand they didn't need to level
(43:46):
out any other classes and giveme another either ninth, tenth
or eleventh grade class.
So I said listen, I have thisidea and I pitched it to her
about doing credit recovery.
It's based on mastery.
Our 9th, 10th and 11th gradeEnglish classes had already been
doing work on aligning ourskills.
(44:07):
What do students need to havemastered by the end of the first
semester of ninth grade to besuccessful, the second semester
of ninth grade to be successful,the first semester of 10th?
So when we had aligned thoseskills, a lot of those are
performance tasks that a studentcould show demonstration of
(44:27):
mastering and be able to recovercredit.
When you took a class at ninthgrade, you may not have grasped
those skills then.
It took you a little longer.
But through the continualexposure of same skills in 10th
grade, 11th grade oh okay, Ihave it now.
(44:47):
I've now mastered 11th gradestandards I eventually caught up
.
Why should I go back and sitthrough the class again when I
can just give you?
You can give me the performancetask.
I can sit and perform them infront of you where you know I'm
not cheating, and I can recoverthose credits.
I didn't have the skills then,but I have them now and my admin
(45:09):
was very supportive.
They said absolutely, if yourteam is on board with it.
Yes, so I went and pitched itto the English language arts
department.
I said, hey, we've already donethis work to align our skills.
What if we can put togetherperformance tasks that students
can recover credit?
We make sure they're notcheating.
Here's some rules we're goingto set in place.
(45:31):
They said, ok, put it togetherand let us see what it looks
like.
So for about a week and a half,I used that period where I
didn't have any students puttogether all the resources or
performance tasks, went back,pitched it to the 11th grade, to
the ELA team, and they loved it.
They said, yeah, we can signoff on this.
(45:51):
So we started doing creditrecovery.
So within that period where Idon't have students assigned to
that class, I would call in ahandful of students at a time
and I would say you need torecover credit for your second
semester of ninth grade.
In order to recover that credit, I need you to do these five
things.
I'm going to call you in andeach time I call you in, you're
(46:14):
going to do one of those fivethings and when you're done with
them, I'm going to grade them,average the score.
If you pass, I'm going to sendit back to your teacher of
record.
They're going to review it,ensure that indeed you did
master the skills.
They'll sign off on it andyou're going to recoup those
credits.
And it has been very successful.
(46:35):
It has been very successful.
We got started with it a littlebit late that first semester
only, because it was first my APclass.
Then it collapsed.
And then putting together theresources, getting everyone's
approval, we started in Octoberof that year.
We had about 45 studentsrecover credit that first year.
(46:56):
Then the next year we had about60, 65 students recover credit
in English language arts.
Now with it it's third year andit's running like a whale oil
machine.
We had nearly 60 studentsrecover credit in ELA just the
first semester mister.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Wow, an amazing success story and an uplifting
way of bringing our conversationto a close.
It has been a joy having thistime just to talk to you about
your passions passionsadolescent literacy and
(47:45):
education, research and yourinsights that you were able to
give us, and then the future ofliteracy.
I think we touched on that abit and I just found the entire
conversation to be uplifting,and I think individuals who
listen to this will find this tobe uplifting.
Rita, do you have something youwant to add to that?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
As you know, on Speak Up International, we seek to
inspire, educate and inform, andthere's no question that our
guest today, dr Valcine Brown,has helped us to meet those
goals, and I need to say thankyou, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Thank you so much, ms Rita Burke, for having me on
Elton Brown.
I appreciate you both so muchfor taking the time and creating
this platform where educatorscan come and speak up and uplift
and encourage their felloweducators.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Thank you.
By the way, I'm sure there's abook cooking.
As soon as the masses can getto it, please let us know.
We would love to have yetanother conversation with you on
Speak Up International.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Thank you for tuning in to Speak Up International.
If you wish to contact ourguest, ms Valcine Brown, please
be prepared to submit your name,your email address and the
reason why you wish to contactMs Valcine Brown at
(49:22):
wwwdrvalcinebrownlive-websitecom.
Ms Valcine Brown has othersocial media accounts you can
use to connect to her that willbe listed in the description
section on Spotify and othersocial media platforms.
(49:45):
Your voice has the power toinspire, influence and ignite
change.
We'd love to hear your story.
We invite you to connect to usby sending your message that
(50:10):
includes your name, company ororganization name, the valuable
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Crush your next interview withconfidence.
Speak Up International's experttraining will have you shining
in the spotlight.
Email us at info atspeakuppodcastca to claim your
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(50:32):
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You can also reach us usingFacebook, instagram, twitter and
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Use Spotify or your favoritepodcast platform and search for
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(50:52):
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speaking up by joining.
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As a member of our Patreongroup, you will gain access to a
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We are working on providing youearly access to new episodes
(51:36):
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