February 21, 2024 • 51 mins
Dr. Maria Murray, President and CEO of the Reading League joins us to discuss the awareness, understanding, and the use of evidence-aligned reading instruction. Their group facilitates collaborations and connects the findings from the science of reading to the practices of multiple stakeholders within the education, publishing, and policy communities. For more: www.thereadingleague.org
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Are you ready to embark on an adventure through the world of words?
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Join us on the Reading Revolution and let's explore the exciting world of literacy together.
Hello and welcome to the Reading Revolution, a podcast dedicated to early childhood reading
and literacy for all. We've got a great guest coming up for you today. Dr. Maria Murray,
the founder and CEO of the Reading League, will be our guest. We're going to be talking about
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all things classrooms, curriculum, and getting young learners to be young, right readers.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory. And again, if you want to play along at home, check out their website
while we're having our awesome discussion, thereadingleague.org. Dr. Murray, thank you
so much for being here with us today. We appreciate you taking some time out. It is our pleasure to
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have you here on the Reading Revolution. It's a pleasure to be here and congratulations on
your new podcast. Thank you for having me. And it only exists with folks like you who are good leaders.
Yes, I can take some time and share my thoughts on literacy. So, podcasts are a big deal. They are.
They are. Honestly, you know, when we decided to talk about this in the way that we do with customers
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and the way we do in other outreach efforts, like this is a no brainer. Let's invest a little bit
of time here. Get some great guests on and see where it takes us. That's the beauty of having
these conversations is they're organic. Let them happen and, you know, maybe inspire some folks to
get involved in what we're talking about. Literacy is just so important on so many levels.
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Yeah, it sure is. So, if you could, could you introduce yourself to our audience? Talk a little
bit about your background and then we'll delve into the Reading League and what's going on and
what it's all about. I'd be happy to. So, my name is Maria Murray and I am talking to you from
Syracuse, New York. I'm at the Reading League's headquarters here and I am from Syracuse, been
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born right up the street in the hospital here and have worked in the central New York area my whole
life in one capacity or another, many hats related to education and literacy, especially reading,
instruction and reading science. So, my passion comes from my why and my why is the fact that
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reading, like you had just said, literacy is critically important. We can get into that if
you'd like. All that it manifests and my why is teachers who are responsible for children,
who it's a human right to know how to read and we know how to do it right and I want all educators
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to be empowered with that knowledge and know that it exists and know how to implement it successfully
because these are beautiful souls, these little babies and to deprive them of a chance to know
how to read and all that comes from knowing how to read is just something I can't imagine
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tolerating. So, that's why we do what we do here. It's a mission that's easy to love.
So, coming from the world of academia, I know that you were a professor at SUNY Oswego.
Yes. What was the transition from teaching to, hey, I want to start an organization, a non-profit.
It's focused on this. How did that happen? That's a fantastic question and one that I chuckle about
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all the time. How did this happen? I am always fascinated by people's, like how did you get to
be there, Joshua? Was this in your great plan? Many of us start out in something hesitantly or
deliberately and the time goes on and you turn here and you take a turn here and you get directed
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down there and before you know it, you're somewhere that you had never dreamed of. Life is very good
here. I'll be here till the end of my working career or till the day I die happily. But I went
into academia. I started out in secondary social studies and my high school students that I was
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starting to work out very day, one of meeting students, they can't read very well. They can't
read very well. They aren't reading. They're refusing to read. They can't handle the workload.
So I looked up this thing called learning disabilities that I was hearing as a result of
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wondering what's going on. And right here at Syracuse University is Dr. Bonita Blackman and
that changed my entire plan for the better. So she was a scientist. She's retired now and her
career was built on the shoulders of giants as well and prevention and remediation of reading
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difficulties was her research passion. So I caught that bug from her in my masters and between my
masters and doctorate, I started to work at coordinating her studies. So she's the brain
child behind the study. She writes the grant. She runs the studies. But someone has to coordinate
all the bolts of getting into the schools, communicating with the schools, communicating
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with the teachers, the parents, the spreadsheets, the data. We had labs and computers. And so I
coordinated those studies and met scientists and I was hooked. And I'm like, wow, Yale Dyslexia
Center, Haskins Laboratories in Connecticut, Florida Center for Reading Research, going to
D.C. in conferences and seeing these people stand up and say such amazing things. And I thought,
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this is amazing. But then I learned after those studies get published, who reads them?
Other scientists because they're not written for the practitioner. The knowledge is for the
practitioner. The findings, the cool things, how the brain reads, how the brain has difficulties
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reading sometime, why that is, how we can remediate it and catch kids up, and how we can prevent
reading difficulties by identifying some issues early on. These things we've known for a long time
from many different disciplines, coming to the same consensus. So if that's why they're doing
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the research, why aren't those things known in the schools? Wow. That's a big problem.
You're going from that, hey, this is all great in a vacuum, but how can you actually let this
trickle down and get into the classroom? So I guess from my assumption, that's what the
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Reading League is focused on, is getting that knowledge into the classroom.
Bingo. We're a knowledge broker. So if you go on Wikipedia, if you're listening to this,
and you got a computer, look up knowledge broker. That's exactly what we are, a person or an
organization that takes the findings from the people who do the finding and brings it to the
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practitioner. Because I think all research, medical research, breast cancer research,
get it to the doctors. A better and safer way to get dental x-rays, get it to the dentist. I'm
doing a lot of medical models, but construction, architecture, weight loads. I mean, there's people
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learning engineering, how we can have better and more fulfilling and longer, healthier lives,
and all of that. But the education, and there's some irony, right? Education, the whole word means,
educating people isn't reading a big part of that. And how can education have never had
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this knowledge get into it? They always say, research takes about seven years to get into
practice. Well, how come decades have gone by? What's that about? So the hard truth,
this is not an opinion, this is the truth, because I experienced it in my time, 10 years at one
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university or the other. And I would say almost every person you speak to that has an experience
in a school of education will say that the science of reading, the body of knowledge
that comes from a scientific way of knowing about things, cause and effect and correlations
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and things like that, that come from experimental study, they have not typically been conducted
in schools of education. They've been conducted in school psychology, cognitive psychology,
neuroscience, communication sciences and disorders. And so there's never been a cross
disciplinary reaching out. And therefore, people responsible for teaching educators
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don't even know about it. Problem is. I'm thinking, because I've read some statistics
and you'd be a better person to actually bring some of those up about literacy and the failures
that we're seeing. Reading is such a fundamental aspect of life, of education, of any subject that
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a student is studying. How has it come to this where we're looking at it saying, these kids are
growing up and they can't read. Shouldn't that be something that should be focused on from the
minute that they're born? And we just seem to have been overlooking that for the longest time.
Well, I don't think you could find anybody on a corner street and put a microphone to their
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face and say, do you think reading is not important? I think it's unanimous that reading is important
and necessary. I know that there's been this reading crisis for a long time where we only
have about one third of our students reading proficiently, meaning on grade level. And they
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can independently read something on grade level and understand it. That means two thirds of students
cannot, by the way, which is alarming. That's the problem. And the statistics are even worse
if we're talking about black and brown children, right? The numbers are even more dismal.
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So we can all agree that reading is important. Almost all of us can agree there's a problem.
Some people will say, no, there's no crisis. This is something that's being made up by those
science of reading zealots. Our students are doing just fine in our district. Well, if that's the
case, if someone says that, ask them how the bottom 20% of their students are doing. Do they
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close those gaps? Do they move out of that bottom 20%? Or do they just trudge along and then
eventually barely graduate or don't graduate at all? So there's a lot of hidden truths and hidden
or overt excuses being made, all in the name of I don't even know what. You can always blame money.
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You can blame pride. You can blame people just not knowing. You don't know what you don't know.
You don't know what you don't know and so on. So I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question, but it's easy to get off topic when we discuss this for me.
And your camera just went off. I don't know if you're...
Actually, I was just going to say...
Making sure you're there.
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Yeah, I'm going to take a quick break here. So right before when I asked that last question,
my camera is off.
Oh, that's fine. I can still talk to you.
No, yeah, you can, but we need it for... There we go. Okay, I'm back. Yay. It didn't disappear.
As long as I was still on and... So I said as long as you can still...
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Yeah, I would let you know if I couldn't hear you. So just making sure that we're A-okay before we move on. We're good, right?
No, no, you're fine. That does answer the question. I'll follow up real quick with my
interesting analogy that I...
Oh, good.
Okay, what do we got here? And that's the beauty of recording this without going live is we can do
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all these sorts of things and...
Yeah, I remember the first time I did a television interview, like you get... It's seven minutes long.
It feels like it's two seconds.
Yep.
You sit down, they throw the lights on and you're like, so if I mess up, I can change my answer.
Nope.
Live to keep like, oh, gosh.
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That was not okay.
All right. I think we're good to go here.
Okay, so I'm just going to go right back into what we were talking about, when we were looking for
things to sort of blame. But I guess I would think about sometimes when I'm looking at these
kinds of numbers and these sorts of... I want to say crises without getting too crazy when we're
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talking about education, but it reminds me of the person who doesn't go to the dentist because they
don't want to hear what's wrong. It's kind of figuring out what we can do to make sure I don't
have to keep coming back to the dentist.
Yes. Perfect analogy. We all have a relative's like, I don't want to hear it. If I don't go,
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I won't know.
Exactly. And that's kind of a scary place to be when we're talking about children who are going
to grow up and need to be productive members of society and whatever they choose to be doing
to be productive in that society.
Right.
And low literacy is one of the top, if not the top, public health crises in our nation. Public
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health doesn't just mean what we imagine when we think of health. We think of our physical health,
our emotional health. It's the health of our nation's finance. If you aren't a reader,
if you have low literacy, you are typically unemployed or underemployed. Therefore, you are
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not earning income that you can buy things with, so you're not paying a lot of sales tax into the
system. You're also probably not earning a lot of income tax that you're paying into the system.
And you're also probably in need of public assistance, so money is coming out of the system
to you. Now, I hate to be crude and make this about dollars and cents, but when you think about,
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hey, why do all of our presidents and politicians prioritize reading? They seem to know a lot about
it. No, they don't know anything about it other than the bottom line. And when you have a lot of
children dropping out of school at 15, 16 years old, what do they do? Where do they go? What do
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they become? Fill in the blanks. It's grim. So now you have that's the prison pipeline we're talking
about. When you can't read, there's a pipeline right to prison because you're in a fight for
survival now, and you're not going to have the ability to have that American dream of a career
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that gives you your basic needs, maybe some extra things, maybe a family, maybe a roof to call your
own, if that's your typical dream. You can't have that. So you're disenfranchised from society,
community. We see low volunteerism, low voting, high imprisonment, high teenage pregnancy,
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high dependency on public assistance and services. So it's a public health tragedy, honestly. And
I'm just going to jump to the truth that there's pretty much with very little exception, small
percentage of exception, one reason why someone doesn't know how to read. Simple, put it on a,
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put it on a coffee mug. It's because they aren't taught. They have not been taught.
They have not been taught. And here we go back to that whole thing. Well,
why didn't that teacher do it? Didn't he or she want to do it? No, they had many teachers preschool.
A lot of kids are going through universal pre-k, kindergarten, first, second, third. We have 12 to
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14, 15 years in a school system and we can't manage to teach basic code and world, you know, about
our delicious world. It makes no sense. So it's not that they don't care. You don't go into teaching
for the money. You go into it because you, you want to teach. You love children. You want to impart
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knowledge to them. And so if you aren't doing it, A, it's because no one taught you how yourself
back up to higher ed, up river, right? B, you learned how, but the system you're hired into
doesn't provide you the support or the materials to do it because we know there's also a problem of
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publishers providing what people want. And if people don't know what they want and they think
they want something that's pretty ineffective and has never worked, you're going to keep selling it
to them because there's billions to be had. So in truth, Joshua, like this is very complex. I don't
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know a better way to say it. I guess say it simply, it's complex. It's not just higher ed
getting them to convince to include some of this in their syllabi and programs. It's not just making
sure the teachers get it. It's not just making sure the publishers clean up their act and only provide,
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you know, programs and approaches that have been shown to really assist the brain and develop
in that reading brain, reading self. It's more, it's teacher certification. It's making sure
that schools give ongoing professional development. Nobody runs a whole full career
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doing X, Y, or Z from what they learned in college. You get maybe a little bit of X and then
Y, Z and so on in your career. You know, you learn on the job. How about ensuring that our
state legislators, you know, include support. If we roll out initiatives, make sure that they are
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rolled out responsibly. So there are a number, I'm going to cheat here and go to this call to action
for all stakeholders. This is from the reading league's defining guide, which people can download
for free or get one on our website if you like paper copies. But educators have to embrace
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opportunities to learn about the science of reading and reflect upon their practice. District
and school administrators, that is a big one because typically school administrators never
learned this. Their programs do not include it. You can make some phone calls to area colleges and
ask. They maybe used to be a high school physics teacher and now they're an elementary principal,
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right? School boards, those are the people who hire the administrators. The administrators are
those who hire the teachers, right? They have to prioritize that professional development for
themselves and so that they can best support the educators and coaching and resources.
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State departments of education and schools of education, pediatricians, they do a lot of
wonderful work helping to screen for early health related things, but they have to learn how to
prioritize screening of early speech and language developmental milestones for reading,
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red flags. Curriculum publishers, federal agencies and private foundations, let's please continue to
fund research and policymakers. Professional literacy organizations like the reading league
and others have to continue providing resources. And reading scientists keep investigating and
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also translating. And finally, parents and last but never least, parents and caregivers take an
active part and make sure that those schools and school systems are embracing evidence. So,
there's, see how complex that is. So how does the reading league take all of those
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kind of challenges on or opportunities, I guess we would be a better word. How do you get that
kind of messaging out to such a vast group of people? And I mean, think of just the districts
in New York State alone, now times that by 50. How does the reading league get this messaging
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out to the people it means the most to or should mean the most to? Thank you. Great question. No,
I don't think anyone's ever asked it in that way. We have a hashtag, it takes a league. So what is
the whole framework of a league is anyone who has skin in the game. So any reading league, anything
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is never going to be designed, developed or promoted or delivered by just one stakeholder group.
It's not just ivory tower finger wagging. It's not pitchfork wielding this or that. You know,
we are many, many our logo in and of itself demonstrates, you know, coming together in a
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circle around reading instruction and issues related to reading instruction, with all different
kinds of levels of expertise and something to add to the to the cause. So how we do it is,
at first, our only intent, and our primary audience is, like I said at the beginning,
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educators, the people responsible, whether you're a tutor, in a private tutoring,
in a place where new immigrants coming in, who need to learn adult volunteer programs, you know,
if someone needs to learn how to teach someone to read, that's our main audience. And how we
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have done that is live events, conference, the reading league journal. My gosh, we have an online
academy for for taking what we call knowledge blocks, not not classes per se. These are not
their virtual cameras on and they are synchronous, not asynchronous. I love asynchronous learning, but
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it's awful tempting to go put a load of laundry in or take a call, you know, turn your camera off.
This is pretty intensive with an expert. So we find ways to get to educators, our best and our
goal is our professional development partnerships with schools. A lot of people don't know we do
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this yet. We are building it carefully in a way that there's the highest possible expertise in
delivery and consistency in the delivery. And so we have, oh, approaching 100 school district
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partners across the country. But you know, there's thousands and thousands, right? There's plenty of
work to be done. How do they all get reached? We also have a state chapter network, which is
something we can't imagine ever not having like there is no reading league without our chapters.
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And so we currently have 29 state chapters and every year we bring on five more. So next 2024,
we'll have 34 state chapters who are their own nonprofit 501c3 organizations. They're required
to do at least three, they're free to do more, but they're volunteers. So they do such a beautiful
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job of delivering professional development for educators in their states and beyond. It's always
online. So you can sign on to one in Virginia, one that's happening in New Mexico and so forth. So
last year, over 250 Reading League state chapter leaders worked with their teams to develop over
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200 sessions in one year alone. That's a lot. And so that's just going to keep growing. So that's
kind of the main ways that we get knowledge to teachers, whether we're directly in their schools,
them coming to us for online work, going to our conferences or state chapter events.
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What we're also mindful of is those stakeholders. So just last October, many people listening
probably are aware that we launched this compass is what we call it. And that's readingleague.org
backslash compass, great way to learn a lot quickly. So a compass is not a map, a map tells
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you exactly how to go somewhere, but a compass will point you in the right direction. So I have
I have examples of administrators again, I just talked to an administrator in New York State,
who was a student of mine 10 years ago, he's now as elementary school principal. And he's a little
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frustrated, because he's in a district that is not exactly embracing the science of reading,
they're fine as they are no thank you. So it's like, what do I do? How do I, you know, where can I
start? And we went on to the compass together, under he clicked on the administrator compass point.
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And it just takes you through everything. An explanation of how important admins are called
their call to action. Everything from videos from other administrators, papers, they can read
podcasts, they can listen to audio docs, you name it, steps they can take. So I told them spend some
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time in there and call me back in two weeks, and we'll keep going. But the compass is a phenomenal
tool that we're very proud of. I think in when we announced it in October, just in the month of
October alone, we had God, I don't know how many 1000s of individuals go on that place. And it's
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been very helpful. So state ed departments are using it. It's got the only interactive
map of the United States, you can click on any state you want. And the kind of legislation
or initiative you're looking for. And it lights up, you know, like, if you click on early screening
legislation, you click on that, and you'll see all the states that have that. And you can make
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your selections. Do the state chapters have a playbook or guidelines that come from the reading
league? Or are they allowed to kind of do the thing? Or is it you know, where I'm going with
that question? Is it free fall or is there structure? Free fall. That's no, I'm smiling big,
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because I remember when we first got asked, we need we need a chapter here, we need a chapter
in our state. And like, what? No, we can't do that. How does one do such a thing? Well, we examine
many, many models. How does Alzheimer's Association do it? How does Disluck International
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Dyslexia Association? What are their models? What do they require? And then we thought, this is why
I'm laughing and smiling kind of like, how are we gonna keep quality control? And I'm just so proud
because, like, if you knew these chapter leaders and get them in a room, I just want to shrink back
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in the corner and listen to them like they are experts. They are brilliant. They get it. They are
living the mission. They are exemplifying the mission. And so quality control has never come
up as an issue. They put on events that are amazing. We do support them with things like
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assets, design assets, logos, colors, what basic website setup, we have monthly meetings and our
amazing state chapter director, Andrea Setmire in Indianapolis, she provides monthly meetings
with whatever they need. Maybe they need help with fundraising. Maybe they choose to have
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events with two or three other state chapters. But really, we're there to support them. And
it's a heavy lift because we know that they are all volunteers. We were there ourselves
when we first started out. We did not leave our jobs that minute. We kind of did this on the side.
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So I love when they go arm in arm with maybe their IDA branch person or their decoding
dyslexia group people and they work together to put on an event in their state. But no,
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it's not, it's a very good model that we're happy with and they seem to feel very well supported
and the second we hear someone doesn't feel supported, it becomes a concern here and we fix it.
Are there any facets of curriculum that are kind of tried and true when it comes to
getting someone on the road and pathway to reading? It seems like you have folks who are,
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well, this is what we've always done. This is what really works. And there always seems to be an
education, a new way to do things.
Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, but do you have any of those tried and trues that you'd like
to share with your district saying, hey, you know, this is really what's effective in your classroom?
Right. Okay, that's easy. And first of all, for people who may not know what is the science of
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reading, so that's why we made this defining guide. I think it's a good way to start.
Finding guide. I haven't even mentioned what it is, have I?
Well, there's no better time than the present.
No, there's no better time. And you're all going to have to be blown away with this definition.
It's so sick. I'm just being sarcastic. The science of reading is a vast interdisciplinary
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body of scientifically based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.
So if you think about it, that definition and the word science of reading, the word to pay
attention to is science. We're talking about findings from a certain kind of research.
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So then this defining guide talks about the type of question being asked determines the
method of research. If there are questions about the causal relationships between what kind of
instruction works and student outcomes, hopefully better ones, well, that's those kinds of questions
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are best answered with a scientific or experimental research design. In our world, there are many
valuable ways of knowing about something. You can learn about psychology. You can delve into the
brain itself, the structure. You can go into become more spiritual pursuits, like just what
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happens in our brains. Anyway, qualitative studies, observational studies, case studies,
those are all also equally valuable. And they are very good ways of knowing about why a particular
student does this, an individual student, or why Mrs. Jones's class seems to blah, blah, blah.
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But if you want to know about tens of thousands of students, that's different.
But taken all together, we need all kinds of research. The problem is that this kind has been
sidelined. So we have to really get it out there. And what the science of reading is not, it's not a
philosophy. It's not a pendulum swing. So a lot of people say, well, it'll be something else in 10
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years. No, the way science works is that it kind of is a rock and it thuds. It gets heavy. It's
heavier and more refined, more defined. You polish the rock, you chisel it. Maybe the rock gets
bigger because of some heated up thing or whatever. But what really swings is our approaches to
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teaching. And it swings a lot when there are philosophies or theories being bandied about.
So for instance, the word revolution behind you or the word road on your
mic arm there. When I look at those words, they just pop into my head. I don't have to sound them
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out. It seems very much that when I look at those words, they just are read as whole chunks.
And I ask anyone else listening right now to look down at print and try not to read it. You can't
not read print once you're a skilled reader. So unfortunately, because it seems like every time
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we read, we just look at, we read the word as a whole chunk. We have been for a long, long, long,
long, long time teaching reading as whole words. So sending kids home with index cards, you know,
sending kids home with index cards. You know, here's 100 words you need to know before
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kindergarten's out. Or having word walls, you know, under the letter C that has a cat on it for
C. You have the word city. Hmm, that's weird. C doesn't say C in city. Or the word child. Hmm,
C doesn't say C. So a lot of our instruction has is a little head scratchy, right? It's like, hmm,
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why are we teaching it this way? It doesn't seem to really be yielding great outcomes either. So
the science, I have a small sampling to answer your question. The instructional practices that
are aligned with the findings from that kind of research are that instruction in letter knowledge,
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obviously the sounds and names of our letters, and phonemic awareness, that's the sounds that those
letters represent are absolutely critical. And that's a no brainer. However, I am very,
I have a lot of time under my belt, having been in schools where they never taught phonemic
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awareness, although this was something that was learned about in like the 70s. So I was
in schools in the 80s and 90s and 2000s where they hadn't even touched it yet. It took a while,
they're getting there. Instruction has to be explicit and systematic. So it has to,
we don't leave it to chance. A lot of our instruction in schools is very child centered,
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a lot of choice, a lot of incidental learning, instead of explicitly pointing out how the
language is represented by print. And then we want to have kids practicing all these things in
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connected text that gives them opportunities to practice exactly what we just taught,
starting with basic words, building up to more complex patterns, and making sure that kids can
read accurately and automatically. And a lot of the text in the past has been anything but that,
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a lot of guess reading. So it would be a lot of predictable text with a sentence stem,
I see a blank in the sky, all the kids have to do is practice, know that sentence. And then the blank
has a picture on the page. I see a bird in the sky. I see a cloud in the sky. I see a plane in the
sky. I see a hippopotamus in the sky. They don't even have to read hippopotamus because there's a
(39:12):
picture of one. So that's what we've qualified as reading, just looking at the whole word.
You see in classrooms a lot where the word is outlined with a shape as though that's going to
cue you in by shape, but the word happy and hoppy and hippy, you know, they all have the same shape.
(39:34):
You know, so anyway, instructional practices then have really included visual memorization of full
words guessing from context and picture cues. So that's getting the word off the page. Some of
those, those are some samples. There's also instructional practices aligned with language
(39:56):
comprehension. So it's very aligned with the evidence base to do read alouds from a variety
of more complex texts. So before kids can read, we should be reading to them. And that builds
their knowledge about words and their world and vocabulary. So how else are you going to learn
(40:19):
words like coax and exhausted and suspicious and sinister and, you know, stagnant. Like you don't
hear those words in everyday language, but you get those from, believe it or not, children's texts.
Robust conversations to develop academic language and all kinds of other vocabulary and grammatical
(40:47):
pieces that help words on a page make sense. And then, yeah, there's a whole bunch of other
instruction that has gone against those basic tenets. So nothing, I hear myself,
I hear myself and I know I'm not saying anything that would surprise an outsider.
(41:13):
It makes perfect sense what I'm saying, doesn't it? Absolutely. And it's funny,
I'll take a minute to joke. All those words you just said, except stagnant describe behaviors
and the way that I deal with my five-year-old daughter. How so? Suspicious, folks, you know,
those all fit right into my life right now. Anyway, get back to the podcast.
(41:34):
Well, that makes sense then that they're in children's books because those are fun for
kids to hear that mom had to coax her back into bed or the kids were making a commotion out in
the hall, you know. It's quiet, but it's kind of suspicious, yes. Yes. I did want to ask a quick
question here as we start to wind the podcast down. You know, we're talking about these methods,
(41:56):
the methodology behind reading. How important has it or maybe it isn't at all when it comes to
subject matter and the different audiences that are learning to read? Does that play a large role?
So you mean like different contents? Exactly. Oh, for sure. Without even saying, absolutely. So
(42:19):
when we're in what should be happening too is you don't want to be learning to read in a vacuum of
just learning to read. You should be learning to read about skeletal systems, electricity,
weather patterns, different cultures, and you name it. You know, there's you should be
learning social studies, history, science of all kinds, math with while you're also reading.
(42:49):
And then I think the second part of your question was different audiences. So
are you talking about adults and teenagers and? Sure, 100% because we know that the reading issues
and the literacy issues we're seeing in this country probably start obviously at the early
years, but what happens when you are now 14 or you are 28 and you're still struggling to read?
(43:11):
Obviously very, very different audiences. Yeah, and I'm not happy to respond that it's bleak.
It's very bleak because it's I don't want anyone listening to this to think bleak means impossible.
I mean, it's bleak because the by the time you're in intermediate, elementary, and especially middle
(43:40):
school and especially especially high school and beyond the people responsible for teaching you
have a curriculum and it does not include basic literacy and I'm sorry reading instruction. So
there is not likely unless there's a special ed program that really does build up your reading.
(44:02):
No matter where you're coming from, maybe you're still even at a kindergarten or first grade level.
You're going to have to be in a school where they prioritize that and have educators willing to do
it. I know if I drive in probably any direction, I know I'm thinking of one high school in particular
(44:23):
about 50 minutes or so from here. I don't know. I know that they have 200 students reading at a
second grade level and this is a high school. So what do you do? Do you stop the presses? Do you
say we're going to just not give you your content but teach you how to read it yourself?
(44:50):
And to me the converse is even an uglier. Well, I guess that's the ugliest situation. I might
did it backwards. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure. I'm not sure. We'll have to figure this out. How's that person reading at a second,
(45:13):
third, fourth grade level going to do. Are they going to be okay? And having learned the content
about photosynthesis and music and all that, how that helps them survive that. I don't know. This
(45:33):
This keeps me up.
It hurts my jaw.
It hurts my heart.
I'm not alone in that.
This isn't something that's impossible to take on.
That there have been results and this is something that we can look forward to as being, there
is a solution.
There is something that we can do to correct this.
(45:56):
Yeah.
So we have literally got the answer to low literacy.
And now we just have to make sure it gets out to everyone and gets done with an intentional
urgency.
These children are so smart.
I say this all the time.
These kids know every Pokemon.
I don't even know if Pokemon are popular anymore.
I think they're still on the shows, but they know what they morph into and their power
(46:21):
levels.
They know World Wrestling Federation wrestlers and their stats.
There's baseball, their basketball, their heroes, their music.
They know things.
If their dad's a hunter, they know all about ducks or deer.
But we can't manage to get them basic print concepts in preschool and kindergarten.
(46:45):
That's unacceptable.
And being able to hear sounds and speech and discern them and apply that in some simple
books has to be part of a day with intentionality and urgency.
If kids aren't getting it, we have to use the most valid and reliable assessments that
really indicate who's in trouble with accuracy and diagnosis for us what to do.
(47:13):
There has to be an answer.
What do they need tomorrow right now that I can give them?
And then we do that and we keep an eye on them.
And that's the ticket.
And then we don't let them go second, third, fourth grade not reading.
We just don't let that happen.
That has to be a no, not on my watch.
And that's the kind of talk I want to hear from all administrators.
(47:35):
They need to stand up and say, I have unfinished learning as well.
And I'm going to be there with you.
Let's learn together.
Not on my watch.
No way.
So how can anyone get involved with the Reading League?
What's the easiest way for them to reach out to you?
Whether they are an administrator, whether it's a family, a parent, a guardian that's
(47:59):
also interested in what they can do, how do they get involved?
The Compass is fantastic.
Go to the Compass.
Read your part.
If your part isn't there yet, stay tuned.
We will be adding more Compass points this year, especially for parents and caregivers.
Parents right now, if you have littles that are learning to read, we do have a free television
(48:23):
show called the Reading League's Reading Buddies.
It has its own website that is on a soft launch right now, but I'll tell it to you anyway.
It's trlreadingbuddies.org is the website.
You can also watch it for free on YouTube.
(48:45):
We've got, I think, close to 300 or 30,000 followers on that YouTube channel already.
So that is a phenomenal way to learn.
Print how to form letters, what the letters, the sounds, how to put them together, how
to blend them, how to segment them, and so forth.
(49:05):
So that's fantastic.
The website will have a lot of downloads that parents can use coming soon to print.
The kids can earn little badges for every sound they learn.
It's really cute.
Really alphabet tears, real cute, beautiful children from here from Syracuse.
(49:25):
You can call your PBS station and have them pick it up for free.
They will know how to get it.
And yeah, I guess that's for parents and family members, other stakeholders.
Go to the readingleague.org and get a copy of the Science of Reading Defining Guide.
(49:50):
Send it to your school board.
Send it to your administrators.
Ask everyone you know to read, or I'm sorry, listen to the audio podcast by Emily Hanford
called Sold a Story.
It's a multi-part audio podcast that was in like the top whatever's of podcasts or whatever
(50:12):
in 2023.
Social media groups, the Reading League has some.
If you're an educator, get the Reading League Journal.
Come to our conference.
I mean we just tell us.
There's a lot going on.
Yeah, we have an info website on their website.
By all means contact us if there's something I didn't answer.
(50:39):
We are happy to hear from you.
And we consider the League.
Don't talk about it as you or yours.
You know, don't say what are you doing at the Reading League.
What are we doing?
Sure.
It's ours.
It's us.
So we like that kind of social movement language.
Well, that wraps right back to something that you said in the beginning of the podcast about
skin in the game.
(50:59):
And we all have skin in the game.
And the work that you're doing is phenomenal.
And we were asked, everybody who's listening, go check out the Reading League.
And Dr. Orbe, thank you so much for being part of the Reading Revolution.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
I love it.
I hope you've enjoyed your time too.
I really have.
I love your name, Reading Revolution.
Great.
Thanks, you guys.
Thank you.
(51:20):
All right.
Great.
All right, everybody, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Reading Revolution.
Keep staying tuned on your favorite platforms for podcasting.
We've got a lot of great guests coming up in the coming weeks.
We will see you then.
The next time we're here on the Reading Revolution.
My name is Josh Gregory.
I am your humble host.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for joining us.
(51:40):
We'll see you next time.
Are you ready to embark on an adventure through the world of words?
(00:03):
Join us on the Reading Revolution and let's explore the exciting world of literacy together.
Hello and welcome to the Reading Revolution, a podcast dedicated to early childhood reading
and literacy for all. We've got a great guest coming up for you today. Dr. Maria Murray,
the founder and CEO of the Reading League, will be our guest. We're going to be talking about
(00:24):
all things classrooms, curriculum, and getting young learners to be young, right readers.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory. And again, if you want to play along at home, check out their website
while we're having our awesome discussion, thereadingleague.org. Dr. Murray, thank you
so much for being here with us today. We appreciate you taking some time out. It is our pleasure to
(00:45):
have you here on the Reading Revolution. It's a pleasure to be here and congratulations on
your new podcast. Thank you for having me. And it only exists with folks like you who are good leaders.
Yes, I can take some time and share my thoughts on literacy. So, podcasts are a big deal. They are.
They are. Honestly, you know, when we decided to talk about this in the way that we do with customers
(01:10):
and the way we do in other outreach efforts, like this is a no brainer. Let's invest a little bit
of time here. Get some great guests on and see where it takes us. That's the beauty of having
these conversations is they're organic. Let them happen and, you know, maybe inspire some folks to
get involved in what we're talking about. Literacy is just so important on so many levels.
(01:32):
Yeah, it sure is. So, if you could, could you introduce yourself to our audience? Talk a little
bit about your background and then we'll delve into the Reading League and what's going on and
what it's all about. I'd be happy to. So, my name is Maria Murray and I am talking to you from
Syracuse, New York. I'm at the Reading League's headquarters here and I am from Syracuse, been
(01:59):
born right up the street in the hospital here and have worked in the central New York area my whole
life in one capacity or another, many hats related to education and literacy, especially reading,
instruction and reading science. So, my passion comes from my why and my why is the fact that
(02:24):
reading, like you had just said, literacy is critically important. We can get into that if
you'd like. All that it manifests and my why is teachers who are responsible for children,
who it's a human right to know how to read and we know how to do it right and I want all educators
(02:47):
to be empowered with that knowledge and know that it exists and know how to implement it successfully
because these are beautiful souls, these little babies and to deprive them of a chance to know
how to read and all that comes from knowing how to read is just something I can't imagine
(03:13):
tolerating. So, that's why we do what we do here. It's a mission that's easy to love.
So, coming from the world of academia, I know that you were a professor at SUNY Oswego.
Yes. What was the transition from teaching to, hey, I want to start an organization, a non-profit.
It's focused on this. How did that happen? That's a fantastic question and one that I chuckle about
(03:39):
all the time. How did this happen? I am always fascinated by people's, like how did you get to
be there, Joshua? Was this in your great plan? Many of us start out in something hesitantly or
deliberately and the time goes on and you turn here and you take a turn here and you get directed
(04:00):
down there and before you know it, you're somewhere that you had never dreamed of. Life is very good
here. I'll be here till the end of my working career or till the day I die happily. But I went
into academia. I started out in secondary social studies and my high school students that I was
(04:24):
starting to work out very day, one of meeting students, they can't read very well. They can't
read very well. They aren't reading. They're refusing to read. They can't handle the workload.
So I looked up this thing called learning disabilities that I was hearing as a result of
(04:45):
wondering what's going on. And right here at Syracuse University is Dr. Bonita Blackman and
that changed my entire plan for the better. So she was a scientist. She's retired now and her
career was built on the shoulders of giants as well and prevention and remediation of reading
(05:10):
difficulties was her research passion. So I caught that bug from her in my masters and between my
masters and doctorate, I started to work at coordinating her studies. So she's the brain
child behind the study. She writes the grant. She runs the studies. But someone has to coordinate
all the bolts of getting into the schools, communicating with the schools, communicating
(05:34):
with the teachers, the parents, the spreadsheets, the data. We had labs and computers. And so I
coordinated those studies and met scientists and I was hooked. And I'm like, wow, Yale Dyslexia
Center, Haskins Laboratories in Connecticut, Florida Center for Reading Research, going to
D.C. in conferences and seeing these people stand up and say such amazing things. And I thought,
(06:00):
this is amazing. But then I learned after those studies get published, who reads them?
Other scientists because they're not written for the practitioner. The knowledge is for the
practitioner. The findings, the cool things, how the brain reads, how the brain has difficulties
(06:21):
reading sometime, why that is, how we can remediate it and catch kids up, and how we can prevent
reading difficulties by identifying some issues early on. These things we've known for a long time
from many different disciplines, coming to the same consensus. So if that's why they're doing
(06:43):
the research, why aren't those things known in the schools? Wow. That's a big problem.
You're going from that, hey, this is all great in a vacuum, but how can you actually let this
trickle down and get into the classroom? So I guess from my assumption, that's what the
(07:04):
Reading League is focused on, is getting that knowledge into the classroom.
Bingo. We're a knowledge broker. So if you go on Wikipedia, if you're listening to this,
and you got a computer, look up knowledge broker. That's exactly what we are, a person or an
organization that takes the findings from the people who do the finding and brings it to the
(07:25):
practitioner. Because I think all research, medical research, breast cancer research,
get it to the doctors. A better and safer way to get dental x-rays, get it to the dentist. I'm
doing a lot of medical models, but construction, architecture, weight loads. I mean, there's people
(07:47):
learning engineering, how we can have better and more fulfilling and longer, healthier lives,
and all of that. But the education, and there's some irony, right? Education, the whole word means,
educating people isn't reading a big part of that. And how can education have never had
(08:10):
this knowledge get into it? They always say, research takes about seven years to get into
practice. Well, how come decades have gone by? What's that about? So the hard truth,
this is not an opinion, this is the truth, because I experienced it in my time, 10 years at one
(08:31):
university or the other. And I would say almost every person you speak to that has an experience
in a school of education will say that the science of reading, the body of knowledge
that comes from a scientific way of knowing about things, cause and effect and correlations
(08:54):
and things like that, that come from experimental study, they have not typically been conducted
in schools of education. They've been conducted in school psychology, cognitive psychology,
neuroscience, communication sciences and disorders. And so there's never been a cross
disciplinary reaching out. And therefore, people responsible for teaching educators
(09:24):
don't even know about it. Problem is. I'm thinking, because I've read some statistics
and you'd be a better person to actually bring some of those up about literacy and the failures
that we're seeing. Reading is such a fundamental aspect of life, of education, of any subject that
(09:45):
a student is studying. How has it come to this where we're looking at it saying, these kids are
growing up and they can't read. Shouldn't that be something that should be focused on from the
minute that they're born? And we just seem to have been overlooking that for the longest time.
Well, I don't think you could find anybody on a corner street and put a microphone to their
(10:12):
face and say, do you think reading is not important? I think it's unanimous that reading is important
and necessary. I know that there's been this reading crisis for a long time where we only
have about one third of our students reading proficiently, meaning on grade level. And they
(10:35):
can independently read something on grade level and understand it. That means two thirds of students
cannot, by the way, which is alarming. That's the problem. And the statistics are even worse
if we're talking about black and brown children, right? The numbers are even more dismal.
(11:01):
So we can all agree that reading is important. Almost all of us can agree there's a problem.
Some people will say, no, there's no crisis. This is something that's being made up by those
science of reading zealots. Our students are doing just fine in our district. Well, if that's the
case, if someone says that, ask them how the bottom 20% of their students are doing. Do they
(11:26):
close those gaps? Do they move out of that bottom 20%? Or do they just trudge along and then
eventually barely graduate or don't graduate at all? So there's a lot of hidden truths and hidden
or overt excuses being made, all in the name of I don't even know what. You can always blame money.
(11:49):
You can blame pride. You can blame people just not knowing. You don't know what you don't know.
You don't know what you don't know and so on. So I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question, but it's easy to get off topic when we discuss this for me.
And your camera just went off. I don't know if you're...
Actually, I was just going to say...
Making sure you're there.
(12:09):
Yeah, I'm going to take a quick break here. So right before when I asked that last question,
my camera is off.
Oh, that's fine. I can still talk to you.
No, yeah, you can, but we need it for... There we go. Okay, I'm back. Yay. It didn't disappear.
As long as I was still on and... So I said as long as you can still...
(12:31):
Yeah, I would let you know if I couldn't hear you. So just making sure that we're A-okay before we move on. We're good, right?
No, no, you're fine. That does answer the question. I'll follow up real quick with my
interesting analogy that I...
Oh, good.
Okay, what do we got here? And that's the beauty of recording this without going live is we can do
(12:51):
all these sorts of things and...
Yeah, I remember the first time I did a television interview, like you get... It's seven minutes long.
It feels like it's two seconds.
Yep.
You sit down, they throw the lights on and you're like, so if I mess up, I can change my answer.
Nope.
Live to keep like, oh, gosh.
(13:14):
That was not okay.
All right. I think we're good to go here.
Okay, so I'm just going to go right back into what we were talking about, when we were looking for
things to sort of blame. But I guess I would think about sometimes when I'm looking at these
kinds of numbers and these sorts of... I want to say crises without getting too crazy when we're
(13:36):
talking about education, but it reminds me of the person who doesn't go to the dentist because they
don't want to hear what's wrong. It's kind of figuring out what we can do to make sure I don't
have to keep coming back to the dentist.
Yes. Perfect analogy. We all have a relative's like, I don't want to hear it. If I don't go,
(13:57):
I won't know.
Exactly. And that's kind of a scary place to be when we're talking about children who are going
to grow up and need to be productive members of society and whatever they choose to be doing
to be productive in that society.
Right.
And low literacy is one of the top, if not the top, public health crises in our nation. Public
(14:19):
health doesn't just mean what we imagine when we think of health. We think of our physical health,
our emotional health. It's the health of our nation's finance. If you aren't a reader,
if you have low literacy, you are typically unemployed or underemployed. Therefore, you are
(14:43):
not earning income that you can buy things with, so you're not paying a lot of sales tax into the
system. You're also probably not earning a lot of income tax that you're paying into the system.
And you're also probably in need of public assistance, so money is coming out of the system
to you. Now, I hate to be crude and make this about dollars and cents, but when you think about,
(15:07):
hey, why do all of our presidents and politicians prioritize reading? They seem to know a lot about
it. No, they don't know anything about it other than the bottom line. And when you have a lot of
children dropping out of school at 15, 16 years old, what do they do? Where do they go? What do
(15:27):
they become? Fill in the blanks. It's grim. So now you have that's the prison pipeline we're talking
about. When you can't read, there's a pipeline right to prison because you're in a fight for
survival now, and you're not going to have the ability to have that American dream of a career
(15:52):
that gives you your basic needs, maybe some extra things, maybe a family, maybe a roof to call your
own, if that's your typical dream. You can't have that. So you're disenfranchised from society,
community. We see low volunteerism, low voting, high imprisonment, high teenage pregnancy,
(16:20):
high dependency on public assistance and services. So it's a public health tragedy, honestly. And
I'm just going to jump to the truth that there's pretty much with very little exception, small
percentage of exception, one reason why someone doesn't know how to read. Simple, put it on a,
(16:43):
put it on a coffee mug. It's because they aren't taught. They have not been taught.
They have not been taught. And here we go back to that whole thing. Well,
why didn't that teacher do it? Didn't he or she want to do it? No, they had many teachers preschool.
A lot of kids are going through universal pre-k, kindergarten, first, second, third. We have 12 to
(17:08):
14, 15 years in a school system and we can't manage to teach basic code and world, you know, about
our delicious world. It makes no sense. So it's not that they don't care. You don't go into teaching
for the money. You go into it because you, you want to teach. You love children. You want to impart
(17:33):
knowledge to them. And so if you aren't doing it, A, it's because no one taught you how yourself
back up to higher ed, up river, right? B, you learned how, but the system you're hired into
doesn't provide you the support or the materials to do it because we know there's also a problem of
(17:58):
publishers providing what people want. And if people don't know what they want and they think
they want something that's pretty ineffective and has never worked, you're going to keep selling it
to them because there's billions to be had. So in truth, Joshua, like this is very complex. I don't
(18:21):
know a better way to say it. I guess say it simply, it's complex. It's not just higher ed
getting them to convince to include some of this in their syllabi and programs. It's not just making
sure the teachers get it. It's not just making sure the publishers clean up their act and only provide,
(18:44):
you know, programs and approaches that have been shown to really assist the brain and develop
in that reading brain, reading self. It's more, it's teacher certification. It's making sure
that schools give ongoing professional development. Nobody runs a whole full career
(19:08):
doing X, Y, or Z from what they learned in college. You get maybe a little bit of X and then
Y, Z and so on in your career. You know, you learn on the job. How about ensuring that our
state legislators, you know, include support. If we roll out initiatives, make sure that they are
(19:35):
rolled out responsibly. So there are a number, I'm going to cheat here and go to this call to action
for all stakeholders. This is from the reading league's defining guide, which people can download
for free or get one on our website if you like paper copies. But educators have to embrace
(19:56):
opportunities to learn about the science of reading and reflect upon their practice. District
and school administrators, that is a big one because typically school administrators never
learned this. Their programs do not include it. You can make some phone calls to area colleges and
ask. They maybe used to be a high school physics teacher and now they're an elementary principal,
(20:20):
right? School boards, those are the people who hire the administrators. The administrators are
those who hire the teachers, right? They have to prioritize that professional development for
themselves and so that they can best support the educators and coaching and resources.
(20:41):
State departments of education and schools of education, pediatricians, they do a lot of
wonderful work helping to screen for early health related things, but they have to learn how to
prioritize screening of early speech and language developmental milestones for reading,
(21:03):
red flags. Curriculum publishers, federal agencies and private foundations, let's please continue to
fund research and policymakers. Professional literacy organizations like the reading league
and others have to continue providing resources. And reading scientists keep investigating and
(21:26):
also translating. And finally, parents and last but never least, parents and caregivers take an
active part and make sure that those schools and school systems are embracing evidence. So,
there's, see how complex that is. So how does the reading league take all of those
(21:48):
kind of challenges on or opportunities, I guess we would be a better word. How do you get that
kind of messaging out to such a vast group of people? And I mean, think of just the districts
in New York State alone, now times that by 50. How does the reading league get this messaging
(22:08):
out to the people it means the most to or should mean the most to? Thank you. Great question. No,
I don't think anyone's ever asked it in that way. We have a hashtag, it takes a league. So what is
the whole framework of a league is anyone who has skin in the game. So any reading league, anything
(22:32):
is never going to be designed, developed or promoted or delivered by just one stakeholder group.
It's not just ivory tower finger wagging. It's not pitchfork wielding this or that. You know,
we are many, many our logo in and of itself demonstrates, you know, coming together in a
(22:54):
circle around reading instruction and issues related to reading instruction, with all different
kinds of levels of expertise and something to add to the to the cause. So how we do it is,
at first, our only intent, and our primary audience is, like I said at the beginning,
(23:17):
educators, the people responsible, whether you're a tutor, in a private tutoring,
in a place where new immigrants coming in, who need to learn adult volunteer programs, you know,
if someone needs to learn how to teach someone to read, that's our main audience. And how we
(23:38):
have done that is live events, conference, the reading league journal. My gosh, we have an online
academy for for taking what we call knowledge blocks, not not classes per se. These are not
their virtual cameras on and they are synchronous, not asynchronous. I love asynchronous learning, but
(24:05):
it's awful tempting to go put a load of laundry in or take a call, you know, turn your camera off.
This is pretty intensive with an expert. So we find ways to get to educators, our best and our
goal is our professional development partnerships with schools. A lot of people don't know we do
(24:27):
this yet. We are building it carefully in a way that there's the highest possible expertise in
delivery and consistency in the delivery. And so we have, oh, approaching 100 school district
(24:49):
partners across the country. But you know, there's thousands and thousands, right? There's plenty of
work to be done. How do they all get reached? We also have a state chapter network, which is
something we can't imagine ever not having like there is no reading league without our chapters.
(25:10):
And so we currently have 29 state chapters and every year we bring on five more. So next 2024,
we'll have 34 state chapters who are their own nonprofit 501c3 organizations. They're required
to do at least three, they're free to do more, but they're volunteers. So they do such a beautiful
(25:35):
job of delivering professional development for educators in their states and beyond. It's always
online. So you can sign on to one in Virginia, one that's happening in New Mexico and so forth. So
last year, over 250 Reading League state chapter leaders worked with their teams to develop over
(25:58):
200 sessions in one year alone. That's a lot. And so that's just going to keep growing. So that's
kind of the main ways that we get knowledge to teachers, whether we're directly in their schools,
them coming to us for online work, going to our conferences or state chapter events.
(26:24):
What we're also mindful of is those stakeholders. So just last October, many people listening
probably are aware that we launched this compass is what we call it. And that's readingleague.org
backslash compass, great way to learn a lot quickly. So a compass is not a map, a map tells
(26:49):
you exactly how to go somewhere, but a compass will point you in the right direction. So I have
I have examples of administrators again, I just talked to an administrator in New York State,
who was a student of mine 10 years ago, he's now as elementary school principal. And he's a little
(27:13):
frustrated, because he's in a district that is not exactly embracing the science of reading,
they're fine as they are no thank you. So it's like, what do I do? How do I, you know, where can I
start? And we went on to the compass together, under he clicked on the administrator compass point.
(27:36):
And it just takes you through everything. An explanation of how important admins are called
their call to action. Everything from videos from other administrators, papers, they can read
podcasts, they can listen to audio docs, you name it, steps they can take. So I told them spend some
(28:03):
time in there and call me back in two weeks, and we'll keep going. But the compass is a phenomenal
tool that we're very proud of. I think in when we announced it in October, just in the month of
October alone, we had God, I don't know how many 1000s of individuals go on that place. And it's
(28:28):
been very helpful. So state ed departments are using it. It's got the only interactive
map of the United States, you can click on any state you want. And the kind of legislation
or initiative you're looking for. And it lights up, you know, like, if you click on early screening
legislation, you click on that, and you'll see all the states that have that. And you can make
(28:52):
your selections. Do the state chapters have a playbook or guidelines that come from the reading
league? Or are they allowed to kind of do the thing? Or is it you know, where I'm going with
that question? Is it free fall or is there structure? Free fall. That's no, I'm smiling big,
(29:14):
because I remember when we first got asked, we need we need a chapter here, we need a chapter
in our state. And like, what? No, we can't do that. How does one do such a thing? Well, we examine
many, many models. How does Alzheimer's Association do it? How does Disluck International
(29:35):
Dyslexia Association? What are their models? What do they require? And then we thought, this is why
I'm laughing and smiling kind of like, how are we gonna keep quality control? And I'm just so proud
because, like, if you knew these chapter leaders and get them in a room, I just want to shrink back
(29:57):
in the corner and listen to them like they are experts. They are brilliant. They get it. They are
living the mission. They are exemplifying the mission. And so quality control has never come
up as an issue. They put on events that are amazing. We do support them with things like
(30:21):
assets, design assets, logos, colors, what basic website setup, we have monthly meetings and our
amazing state chapter director, Andrea Setmire in Indianapolis, she provides monthly meetings
with whatever they need. Maybe they need help with fundraising. Maybe they choose to have
(30:47):
events with two or three other state chapters. But really, we're there to support them. And
it's a heavy lift because we know that they are all volunteers. We were there ourselves
when we first started out. We did not leave our jobs that minute. We kind of did this on the side.
(31:10):
So I love when they go arm in arm with maybe their IDA branch person or their decoding
dyslexia group people and they work together to put on an event in their state. But no,
(31:30):
it's not, it's a very good model that we're happy with and they seem to feel very well supported
and the second we hear someone doesn't feel supported, it becomes a concern here and we fix it.
Are there any facets of curriculum that are kind of tried and true when it comes to
getting someone on the road and pathway to reading? It seems like you have folks who are,
(31:56):
well, this is what we've always done. This is what really works. And there always seems to be an
education, a new way to do things.
Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, but do you have any of those tried and trues that you'd like
to share with your district saying, hey, you know, this is really what's effective in your classroom?
Right. Okay, that's easy. And first of all, for people who may not know what is the science of
(32:23):
reading, so that's why we made this defining guide. I think it's a good way to start.
Finding guide. I haven't even mentioned what it is, have I?
Well, there's no better time than the present.
No, there's no better time. And you're all going to have to be blown away with this definition.
It's so sick. I'm just being sarcastic. The science of reading is a vast interdisciplinary
(32:49):
body of scientifically based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.
So if you think about it, that definition and the word science of reading, the word to pay
attention to is science. We're talking about findings from a certain kind of research.
(33:12):
So then this defining guide talks about the type of question being asked determines the
method of research. If there are questions about the causal relationships between what kind of
instruction works and student outcomes, hopefully better ones, well, that's those kinds of questions
(33:38):
are best answered with a scientific or experimental research design. In our world, there are many
valuable ways of knowing about something. You can learn about psychology. You can delve into the
brain itself, the structure. You can go into become more spiritual pursuits, like just what
(34:01):
happens in our brains. Anyway, qualitative studies, observational studies, case studies,
those are all also equally valuable. And they are very good ways of knowing about why a particular
student does this, an individual student, or why Mrs. Jones's class seems to blah, blah, blah.
(34:28):
But if you want to know about tens of thousands of students, that's different.
But taken all together, we need all kinds of research. The problem is that this kind has been
sidelined. So we have to really get it out there. And what the science of reading is not, it's not a
philosophy. It's not a pendulum swing. So a lot of people say, well, it'll be something else in 10
(34:51):
years. No, the way science works is that it kind of is a rock and it thuds. It gets heavy. It's
heavier and more refined, more defined. You polish the rock, you chisel it. Maybe the rock gets
bigger because of some heated up thing or whatever. But what really swings is our approaches to
(35:16):
teaching. And it swings a lot when there are philosophies or theories being bandied about.
So for instance, the word revolution behind you or the word road on your
mic arm there. When I look at those words, they just pop into my head. I don't have to sound them
(35:38):
out. It seems very much that when I look at those words, they just are read as whole chunks.
And I ask anyone else listening right now to look down at print and try not to read it. You can't
not read print once you're a skilled reader. So unfortunately, because it seems like every time
(36:04):
we read, we just look at, we read the word as a whole chunk. We have been for a long, long, long,
long, long time teaching reading as whole words. So sending kids home with index cards, you know,
sending kids home with index cards. You know, here's 100 words you need to know before
(36:26):
kindergarten's out. Or having word walls, you know, under the letter C that has a cat on it for
C. You have the word city. Hmm, that's weird. C doesn't say C in city. Or the word child. Hmm,
C doesn't say C. So a lot of our instruction has is a little head scratchy, right? It's like, hmm,
(36:53):
why are we teaching it this way? It doesn't seem to really be yielding great outcomes either. So
the science, I have a small sampling to answer your question. The instructional practices that
are aligned with the findings from that kind of research are that instruction in letter knowledge,
(37:20):
obviously the sounds and names of our letters, and phonemic awareness, that's the sounds that those
letters represent are absolutely critical. And that's a no brainer. However, I am very,
I have a lot of time under my belt, having been in schools where they never taught phonemic
(37:43):
awareness, although this was something that was learned about in like the 70s. So I was
in schools in the 80s and 90s and 2000s where they hadn't even touched it yet. It took a while,
they're getting there. Instruction has to be explicit and systematic. So it has to,
we don't leave it to chance. A lot of our instruction in schools is very child centered,
(38:05):
a lot of choice, a lot of incidental learning, instead of explicitly pointing out how the
language is represented by print. And then we want to have kids practicing all these things in
(38:25):
connected text that gives them opportunities to practice exactly what we just taught,
starting with basic words, building up to more complex patterns, and making sure that kids can
read accurately and automatically. And a lot of the text in the past has been anything but that,
(38:47):
a lot of guess reading. So it would be a lot of predictable text with a sentence stem,
I see a blank in the sky, all the kids have to do is practice, know that sentence. And then the blank
has a picture on the page. I see a bird in the sky. I see a cloud in the sky. I see a plane in the
sky. I see a hippopotamus in the sky. They don't even have to read hippopotamus because there's a
(39:12):
picture of one. So that's what we've qualified as reading, just looking at the whole word.
You see in classrooms a lot where the word is outlined with a shape as though that's going to
cue you in by shape, but the word happy and hoppy and hippy, you know, they all have the same shape.
(39:34):
You know, so anyway, instructional practices then have really included visual memorization of full
words guessing from context and picture cues. So that's getting the word off the page. Some of
those, those are some samples. There's also instructional practices aligned with language
(39:56):
comprehension. So it's very aligned with the evidence base to do read alouds from a variety
of more complex texts. So before kids can read, we should be reading to them. And that builds
their knowledge about words and their world and vocabulary. So how else are you going to learn
(40:19):
words like coax and exhausted and suspicious and sinister and, you know, stagnant. Like you don't
hear those words in everyday language, but you get those from, believe it or not, children's texts.
Robust conversations to develop academic language and all kinds of other vocabulary and grammatical
(40:47):
pieces that help words on a page make sense. And then, yeah, there's a whole bunch of other
instruction that has gone against those basic tenets. So nothing, I hear myself,
I hear myself and I know I'm not saying anything that would surprise an outsider.
(41:13):
It makes perfect sense what I'm saying, doesn't it? Absolutely. And it's funny,
I'll take a minute to joke. All those words you just said, except stagnant describe behaviors
and the way that I deal with my five-year-old daughter. How so? Suspicious, folks, you know,
those all fit right into my life right now. Anyway, get back to the podcast.
(41:34):
Well, that makes sense then that they're in children's books because those are fun for
kids to hear that mom had to coax her back into bed or the kids were making a commotion out in
the hall, you know. It's quiet, but it's kind of suspicious, yes. Yes. I did want to ask a quick
question here as we start to wind the podcast down. You know, we're talking about these methods,
(41:56):
the methodology behind reading. How important has it or maybe it isn't at all when it comes to
subject matter and the different audiences that are learning to read? Does that play a large role?
So you mean like different contents? Exactly. Oh, for sure. Without even saying, absolutely. So
(42:19):
when we're in what should be happening too is you don't want to be learning to read in a vacuum of
just learning to read. You should be learning to read about skeletal systems, electricity,
weather patterns, different cultures, and you name it. You know, there's you should be
learning social studies, history, science of all kinds, math with while you're also reading.
(42:49):
And then I think the second part of your question was different audiences. So
are you talking about adults and teenagers and? Sure, 100% because we know that the reading issues
and the literacy issues we're seeing in this country probably start obviously at the early
years, but what happens when you are now 14 or you are 28 and you're still struggling to read?
(43:11):
Obviously very, very different audiences. Yeah, and I'm not happy to respond that it's bleak.
It's very bleak because it's I don't want anyone listening to this to think bleak means impossible.
I mean, it's bleak because the by the time you're in intermediate, elementary, and especially middle
(43:40):
school and especially especially high school and beyond the people responsible for teaching you
have a curriculum and it does not include basic literacy and I'm sorry reading instruction. So
there is not likely unless there's a special ed program that really does build up your reading.
(44:02):
No matter where you're coming from, maybe you're still even at a kindergarten or first grade level.
You're going to have to be in a school where they prioritize that and have educators willing to do
it. I know if I drive in probably any direction, I know I'm thinking of one high school in particular
(44:23):
about 50 minutes or so from here. I don't know. I know that they have 200 students reading at a
second grade level and this is a high school. So what do you do? Do you stop the presses? Do you
say we're going to just not give you your content but teach you how to read it yourself?
(44:50):
And to me the converse is even an uglier. Well, I guess that's the ugliest situation. I might
did it backwards. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure. I'm not sure. We'll have to figure this out. How's that person reading at a second,
(45:13):
third, fourth grade level going to do. Are they going to be okay? And having learned the content
about photosynthesis and music and all that, how that helps them survive that. I don't know. This
(45:33):
This keeps me up.
It hurts my jaw.
It hurts my heart.
I'm not alone in that.
This isn't something that's impossible to take on.
That there have been results and this is something that we can look forward to as being, there
is a solution.
There is something that we can do to correct this.
(45:56):
Yeah.
So we have literally got the answer to low literacy.
And now we just have to make sure it gets out to everyone and gets done with an intentional
urgency.
These children are so smart.
I say this all the time.
These kids know every Pokemon.
I don't even know if Pokemon are popular anymore.
I think they're still on the shows, but they know what they morph into and their power
(46:21):
levels.
They know World Wrestling Federation wrestlers and their stats.
There's baseball, their basketball, their heroes, their music.
They know things.
If their dad's a hunter, they know all about ducks or deer.
But we can't manage to get them basic print concepts in preschool and kindergarten.
(46:45):
That's unacceptable.
And being able to hear sounds and speech and discern them and apply that in some simple
books has to be part of a day with intentionality and urgency.
If kids aren't getting it, we have to use the most valid and reliable assessments that
really indicate who's in trouble with accuracy and diagnosis for us what to do.
(47:13):
There has to be an answer.
What do they need tomorrow right now that I can give them?
And then we do that and we keep an eye on them.
And that's the ticket.
And then we don't let them go second, third, fourth grade not reading.
We just don't let that happen.
That has to be a no, not on my watch.
And that's the kind of talk I want to hear from all administrators.
(47:35):
They need to stand up and say, I have unfinished learning as well.
And I'm going to be there with you.
Let's learn together.
Not on my watch.
No way.
So how can anyone get involved with the Reading League?
What's the easiest way for them to reach out to you?
Whether they are an administrator, whether it's a family, a parent, a guardian that's
(47:59):
also interested in what they can do, how do they get involved?
The Compass is fantastic.
Go to the Compass.
Read your part.
If your part isn't there yet, stay tuned.
We will be adding more Compass points this year, especially for parents and caregivers.
Parents right now, if you have littles that are learning to read, we do have a free television
(48:23):
show called the Reading League's Reading Buddies.
It has its own website that is on a soft launch right now, but I'll tell it to you anyway.
It's trlreadingbuddies.org is the website.
You can also watch it for free on YouTube.
(48:45):
We've got, I think, close to 300 or 30,000 followers on that YouTube channel already.
So that is a phenomenal way to learn.
Print how to form letters, what the letters, the sounds, how to put them together, how
to blend them, how to segment them, and so forth.
(49:05):
So that's fantastic.
The website will have a lot of downloads that parents can use coming soon to print.
The kids can earn little badges for every sound they learn.
It's really cute.
Really alphabet tears, real cute, beautiful children from here from Syracuse.
(49:25):
You can call your PBS station and have them pick it up for free.
They will know how to get it.
And yeah, I guess that's for parents and family members, other stakeholders.
Go to the readingleague.org and get a copy of the Science of Reading Defining Guide.
(49:50):
Send it to your school board.
Send it to your administrators.
Ask everyone you know to read, or I'm sorry, listen to the audio podcast by Emily Hanford
called Sold a Story.
It's a multi-part audio podcast that was in like the top whatever's of podcasts or whatever
(50:12):
in 2023.
Social media groups, the Reading League has some.
If you're an educator, get the Reading League Journal.
Come to our conference.
I mean we just tell us.
There's a lot going on.
Yeah, we have an info website on their website.
By all means contact us if there's something I didn't answer.
(50:39):
We are happy to hear from you.
And we consider the League.
Don't talk about it as you or yours.
You know, don't say what are you doing at the Reading League.
What are we doing?
Sure.
It's ours.
It's us.
So we like that kind of social movement language.
Well, that wraps right back to something that you said in the beginning of the podcast about
skin in the game.
(50:59):
And we all have skin in the game.
And the work that you're doing is phenomenal.
And we were asked, everybody who's listening, go check out the Reading League.
And Dr. Orbe, thank you so much for being part of the Reading Revolution.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
I love it.
I hope you've enjoyed your time too.
I really have.
I love your name, Reading Revolution.
Great.
Thanks, you guys.
Thank you.
(51:20):
All right.
Great.
All right, everybody, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Reading Revolution.
Keep staying tuned on your favorite platforms for podcasting.
We've got a lot of great guests coming up in the coming weeks.
We will see you then.
The next time we're here on the Reading Revolution.
My name is Josh Gregory.
I am your humble host.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for joining us.
(51:40):
We'll see you next time.
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