Teaching Matters on NYC Reads, a New Program of New York City Public Schools

Beginning with the 2023-24 school year, New York City Public Schools launched NYC Reads, an initiative to help all students become strong readers. Our guest is Lynette Gustaferro, CEO of Teaching Matters, a partner organization helping the NYC Department of Education reach it’s goals. She explains how NYC Reads returns to an prior model of reading instruction that many of us grew up with. For more, visit teachingmatters.org.

Episode Transcript

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Welcome to Get Connected with Nina delRio, a weekly conversation about fitness,
health and happenings in our community onone oh six point seven Light FM.
Good morning, and thanks for listeningto Get Connected. Beginning with the twenty
twenty three twenty four school year,New York City Public Schools launched NYC Reads
and initiative to help all students becomestrong readers. Our guest is Lynette Guastafaro,

(00:28):
CEO of Teaching Matters, a partnerorganization helping the New York City Department
of Ed reach its goals. Youcan find out more on Teaching Matters at
teachingmatters dot org. And Lynette Guastafaro, thank you for being on Get Connected.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. So we
will definitely talk about NYC Reads,but first let's talk about Teaching Matters.
What is Teaching Matters? What doyou do? The Teaching Matters is a

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nonprofit professional learning organization that partners withschools to ensure that all teachers have supported
professional learning. Mission is to ensurethat all children have equitable access to great
teaching, and we believe for thatto happen, teachers need a lot of
support in the work that they do, especially teachers who are working in some

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of our more marginalized communities where youhave many, many new teachers. So
how and why was Teaching Matters bornin the first place. Teaching Matters was
actually founded over just thirty years agothis year, and in response to the
concern that in our more underserved communities, the teachers that worked in those communities

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often tended to be less experienced,they hadn't had some of the same preparation,
and so the mission of this organizationfrom the very founding was specifically to
work in communities so that we couldwork on the where we could partner with
it with communities that wanted to strengthenthe teaching profession in those communities. Over
the last few years, the focusof the organization has really focused primarily on

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reading and mathematics because these are sortof foundational Counting and reading our key to
sort of lifelong success, and sowe want to make sure the kids get
a really strong start. Just foran example, you've done work in Newark
during the twenty twenty to twenty twentytwo school years. What have been the
results in your experience there? Ithink that that do work obviously went through,

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like all cities are real the challengesof COVID and so kids. What
every city faced was the kids duringthose really important years of kindergarten and first
and second grade. We had awhole crew of kids that started school really
the first time they stepped into schoolwas second grade, and so they missed
those really critical years of reading.And so Newark has had to really look

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hard at its reading instruction and isnow in the process which we have been
working with them on to implement areally systemic approach to a bonyx which is
part of the shift of reading science. And so that's what I would say
you'd see in Newark is this isa real kind of doubling down on the
practices of reading science. That readingscience is something you're bringing to the NYC

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Reads program. What's the situation newYork City public schools? Sort of by
comparison, are they sort of onthe same footing? And to some degree,
so New York is actually over fiveabout five years ago had began to
really pay attention to the reading scienceand at the central level, it began

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to put in a systematic approach tophonics as part of a larger initiative.
But there's an important difference between what'shappening now within YC READS and what was
going on a few years ago.So a few years ago they were put
there were you know, many schoolswere choosing to implement that systematic phonics approach.
What's being done now is very different. What we are doing now is

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across the board. The mayor isguaranteeing a research based reading curricula for every
school. So that means that districtshave a choice of three curricula that they
can pick that have met these standards, and they must adopt it as an
entire your system, which is differentthan school by school choosing to kind of
move towards reading science. So it'slike the next step, but the important

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thing is that step. Many teachershave had some experience, especially in the
Bronx, to some of these approachesfor a number of years. But now
we're really getting serious about how dowe get better together because we're all working
with the same common playbook, theNYC READS program. What are the goals
of this program? The fundamental goalof this program is to ensure that every

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child is leaving second grade, youknow, reading on track that every you
know, the Chancellor said this manytimes, like every parent has a right
and child has a right to atleast we can do is truly every child
is reading in school, that they'resafe and that they're reading when they move
to the higher grade. So it'swe have many, many students that are
moving to upper grades in New Yorkthat are not proficient in reading, and

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that blocks them from all many otherforms of learning. And so it really
really is saying we've got to getthis basic step right early and correct.
And you know, the good newsis is this is not a mystery.
There are some things that we havenot been doing that we can do and
so we will see, you know, an improvement. We did see bumps

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in students' outcomes when systems moved tosystematic phonics approaches. And what that means
is that how a child is taughtto code, like understand the code of
reading is that we talk to reallysimplify it. You know, we think
about reading kind of in two majorparts. So one is sort of like
the decoding aspect, and that we'velearned that kids don't automatically kind of have

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this ability to absorb decoding. There'sa group of children. It's a significant
proportion of children that must be veryexplicitly taught, step by step how to
decode what they read. And itis a code. It's just a code.
And what do you mean by decoding, decoding context, decoding actual sounds.

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There are multiple different pieces to it, but it is at the bottom
line, it's like knowing your lettersounds, knowing like knowing how to put
them together, knowing that set thata letter can have many different sounds,
A short eye and long eye thinks, frankly things that a number of your
listeners, if they're over a certainage, learned in school. And that's
I think one thing that people don'tquite realize is that you know, at

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my age, you know, I'mfifty three, I learned this in school.
This is what I was taught.But this practice disappeared in many,
many schools. And so the ideawas that we had to work on children's
sort of love of reading at alevel that they would sort of we could
teach coding in the context of that. We didn't have to do something that
was considered to maybe demotivate children justfocusing on these sounds. But the reality

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is is that's not true. It'saa doesn't demotivate children. The kids need
to have this really focused time toreally understand decoding, and then they do.
It opens them up to be ableto read books and have a love
reading. And I don't mean tosimplify it like, you know, decoding
first and then comprehension later. Thatis not how it works. They really
go hand in hand. In theseearly year kindergarten teachers are reading complex texts

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to children so they can hear andlearn comprehension through the teacher reading to them,
but they also have to have avery explicit breakdown making sure that they
know every letter sound, they knowhow to put sounds together, that they
can hear syllables in words. There'sa whole number of skills that have to
be explicitly taught and mastered in theseearly years. Our guest is Lynette Guastaferro,

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CEO of Teaching Matters, meeting theneeds and challenges of teachers and students
the effective professional development programs and coaching. They're currently providing coaching services to teachers
across two hundred schools in the Tristate area. For more, visit teachingmatters
dot org. You're listening to getconnected on one oh six point seven light
fm Imina del Rio. Given thestudents that probably need the most attention,

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as you mentioned earlier, students inprobably more difficult districts, is the context
also the material that they're being taughtalso sort of geared towards those students.
And I asked that thinking you're goingto pay more attention if you're actually interested
in the subject, you know,if it's something that relates to your world
versus something that you have no comprehensionof. That's a great question, you

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know. The question of the threemajor curricula that the city selected the terminology
and school right now is are thesecurricula culturally responsive? Right? Do they
reflect the lives of students? AndI think that there has been some feedback
criticism around the degree to which anyone of these curricula does that. They
all they actually do it in differentways and have efforts to but there's no

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there's no perfect curricula. When itcomes to this idea of curricula that can
represent the kids in front of them, a lot of it has to do
with how the teacher really sees theirchildren and really gets to know individually their
students. And that's like one reallyimportant way of making sure that kids can
connect to and find the curriculum relevant. So, you know, the answer
to that is, I think thecity knows that there's work to be done

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with respect to that with that issue. So how are you actually teaching teachers
to teach these subjects in a waythat's different than what happened before. For
when there's there are a number ofshifts that are have to be made in
the teaching and reading. So youknow, in the past, I just
heard a group of teachers who weretalking about like what were the biggest what
did they experience as some of thebiggest changes, And it was interesting to

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me because it wasn't always what Iexpected, but they just talked about like
in the past, they used tohave a conversation with parents about like what
letter their child was on. Youknow, my child is reading a book,
you know, level A, levelB, level C. So parents
had learned this language around these levelbooks and that is not being used anymore
because you know, we're teaching kidsin classrooms with books where they're breaking down

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the knowledge in that book and readingthat whole book together. And then there
are small groups where you're able togo in and really target kids with respect
as their reading level. So it'sjust a switch about, like how do
you what is the emphasis of it. In the past, there was this
idea that kids could learn the wordby looking at the pictures and guests around

(10:03):
context clues. Now we know thatkids really have to decode. We cannot
show children a word and then theysee a picture and the picture looks like
a puppy when the word is dog. It's just it's confusing to children and
it is actually kind of it's aproblem to integrate to use that in instructure.
So these are small shifts in someways, but they are significant changes

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in kind of the daily practices thatteachers have to go to. One of
the most significant changes for the systemis the fact that all the teachers are
now using the same curriculum across thedistrict, and so why is that important?
It changes how teachers can learn.It changes how one student who moves
from one school to another school experiencesthere learning. They're going to now land

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into another school and experience the samecurriculum and the same priorities. New teachers
are going to move into a schooland they're going to be learning the same
playbook as the experienced teachers that building. I think what people are not fully
aware of is that in New York, where the curriculum was selected school by
school, there were some schools thatreally did that well. There were other

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schools where you could go from thirdgrade to fourth grade to fifth grade,
and sometimes kids were reading the sametext on the third grade and the fourth
grade because they hadn't really put togethera cohesive approach. So I can't truss
the most important thing is that we'reworking from a research based common curriculum across
the board. Given that New YorkCity has so many politics involved in the

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Department of Education and often how themayor interacts with the Department of Education,
maybe this isn't your Baileywick. Buthow committed for the long term do you
think New York City is to thisnew process and keeping this program going forward.
So this, I think is oneof the more exciting aspects of this
story, in the sense that theshift to working with common research based curricula

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was something we haven't done in seventyyears in New York now. I think
there was a sense that there wasno political will to do that, and
so people were afraid to make thatchange. But this chancellor said that this
is what kids need and knew thatthe mayor had his back, and so
I was willing to take this verybig risk, right because you know you're

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and then suddenly turns out you knowthe union is behind it, that teachers
are behind it. There are noteveryone was happy about this change. But
if you talk to foundations, ifyou talk to teachers mostly, and you
talk to principles, you'll find thatpeople are ready for this change and there's
a lot of support for it.And I think that if a new mayor
came in right now and decided toswitch it all up, they'd have a

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fight on their hands. So whatshould parents take away from this conversation?
Again, the most important thing forparent to know is that for the first
time they are being guaranteed at thecentral level a research based curriculum, reading
curriculum of falls reading science, andso so if they should rest assured that
that is now in place. Whatthey also might need to know is that

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some of the practices that they mighthave been used to before, like again,
my child is reading out a letterA or a letter B. Just
because those are being changed doesn't meanthat kids are not in small groups potentially
where they're are getting some instruction thatis more targeted to their needs and level.
We haven't thrown the baby out withthe bathwater here where kids are just

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in the same classroom, they're onlyreading the same book and they're not their
individual needs are not being intended to. So what parents need to know from
a school is what is the curriculaand also how is my child doing.
One of the things we know fromresearch is that parents overestimate their children's reading
ability, that they overestimate how welltheir students are doing there, and so

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making sure that the school is providingthem evidence about where my student is and
how they're doing, and not waitinguntil third grade when you get the test
scores back in kindergarten, you know, making sure that the school is giving
them evidence that their student is ontrack first grade second. I just think
that that's a piece that parents often, unless they hear something from the school,

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they may not ask. You shouldask. You should absolutly go in
and make sure that the school cangive you evidence to explain to you what
is my student supposed to be ableto know and do and where are they
The main thing a parent can dofor a child is to read to them
every night for fifteen minutes. Thatis the most powerful thing a parent can
do, Reading to your child andknowing how your child is doing in school

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and not assuming that it's correct orlike the three things that any parents can
really step up. You can findout more about NYC Reads on the New
York City Public School's website and moreabout Teaching Matters at teachingmatters dot org.
Lynette Guastafaro, thank you for beingon to get connected. Thank you very
much. This has been Get Connectedwith Nina del Rio on one O six

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point seven light FM. The viewsand opinions of our guests do not necessarily
reflect the views of the station.If you missed any part of our show
or want to share it, visitour website where downloads and podcasts at one
oh six to seven line at fmdot com. Thanks for listening. M