How can we be smarter about teaching students to read?

Kevin: And today, I’m joined by Dr. Maria Murray to find out. Dr. Maria Murray is the founder and CEO of the Reading League, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the awareness, understanding, and use of evidence-aligned reading instruction. Prior to founding the Reading League, Dr. Murray was an associate professor at SUNY Oswego, where she taught courses on literacy assessment and intervention. She is passionate about the prevention and remediation of reading difficulty for students. Today, she joins us to discuss the important connection between research and practice when it comes to literacy education. Dr. Murray, welcome to the show.

Maria: Thank you. I’m honored to have been invited. This is going to be a great opportunity.

Kevin: All of America is talking about reading loss. They’re talking about math deficits, but this idea of reading has been such a fundamental challenge for American schools for so many years. I want to talk about that, but before I do, talk a little bit about some of those other things that you were doing before you got into reading.

Maria: I was interested in history, political science, et cetera. And so, I became a secondary social studies teacher and was stunned at my students who could not read. I blamed it on them not trying; in my mind, I didn’t say it to them, that they weren’t trying hard enough. I did not understand that that could even be a thing. I thought, “I’ll see if my master’s degree could help me to address this concern,” because I knew they weren’t getting the content as other students were. And I landed in the place of Dr. Bonita Blackman, who was my advisor, and coordinated multiple studies for her, NIH-funded, federally funded studies, here in Syracuse area schools, in Syracuse City schools. I got to meet teachers who were doing that work for us and with us, and I learned as much from the teachers as I did from Dr. Blackman and our work.

But now, the blips on my radar were starting to concern me, because as soon as a study ended, a study that was wildly successful in teaching children to read,who had been previous non-readers, of teaching the teachers how to do that.once the study was over, you can guess what happened. It was over. There was no one in the district to say, “Wait, let’s continue doing that.” It just ended. Congress spent a lot of money for many years — decades — on this research across the country in many universities.

And at some point they said, “Let’s send a producer to create a film and show us what is happening out there.” They sent a producer to Syracuse. He spent a summer here with the children and families that had been in our studies — one particular study, excuse me. And that became a movie, a film, a 10-minute film called “When Stars Read.” That’s still on YouTube. But I got to see what happens after the end of a long day of school, where you’ve not succeeded in this challenge. You’re now in second or third grade, and you are not reading on grade level. And I got to see that, when they go home, that doesn’t end. There are video games you can’t play. There are friendships you can’t navigate. There’s bullying that you’ve just faced all day. There’s homework to be done, and you start to want to run away, hide, disappear, but not be invisible, and start acting out. So, I was getting the understanding that this is even bigger than getting a word off a page. This is a psychological, social, emotional, frightening time for children that’s unnecessary.

Kevin: And it’s also, frankly, Maria, it’s a cultural phenomenon we’re facing in this country, that so many children are not reading at grade level. And just so we’re clear, two-thirds of America’s high school graduates across the board are not at grade level in reading. Many fall off and begin to fall behind by, as you said, third or fourth grade. But for a host of reasons, a far increased number of our students come to school not ready to learn, with these deficits. And I think our edge schools haven’t upgraded their approach to preparing many of our young teachers to teach and engage those students. So, there are so many things to unpack. But when you look at the challenges associated with reading, what’s the starting point for making sure that we get our systems in place to begin to address that need?

Maria: It’s not as simple as just addressing any one thing. We need to, as a society, support educators in providing them with children in advance who are prepared, and during the time that they are working with our children. So, that involves district and school administrators, school boards and school committees to prioritize professional development for themselves and their educators; state departments of education to design responsible rollouts of initiatives, not just, “Here it is, it’s the law. Go do it,” without any preparation or support. When we first started the Reading League, I went around my community, wanting to know who was doing what and where we could fit in. And I know that we are doing amazing things here in Syracuse, and many other cities are in early childhood preparation, in many ways that are needed to make sure children are fed and loved and cared for and their parents have the tools that they need and materials they need and are talking and reading and singing to their children in all ways.

Kevin: As we talk about the Reading League, because you mentioned best practices, and I think the best practices really suggest that we engage students in the right way to teach them to read, particularly those that come to schools with deficits. And there are a whole lot of reading programs. There are a whole lot of mentorship programs. School districts contract with a host of providers, and many don’t meet kids where they are. So let’s step back and talk about the science of reading, which you have really been focused on, because reading is not just reading the words. But it’s also reading comprehension.

I remember years ago, and fortunately, he’s in high school and he is doing well now, but my nephew, when he was four or five, could read several paragraphs and read it cogently, thoroughly, enunciate every word. And you’d ask him what he read; he had no idea. His reading comprehension was nonexistent. Now, since then, he’s doing very well and tracking to go to college. But this science of reading contemplates being able to not just make sure that kids are able to read the words, but cognitively, they can understand what they’re reading and then apply it to help with critical thinking in life. So let’s talk about the science of reading.

Maria: Absolutely. And I thank you for asking me this because one of the most important jobs we have here at the Reading League in our mission is advancing the understanding of the science of reading. When we talk about the science of reading, what we’re referring to is a vast body of scientifically-based reading research that is interdisciplinary. Meaning it has come from fields such as cognitive psychology, communication sciences and disorders, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and many others. But it has, altogether, over five decades now, produced thousands of studies that have very much converged and confirmed each other’s work and really given us some solid understandings of what helps the most students move the farthest in issues related to reading and writing. But we now know a lot about how proficient reading and writing develop, why some children have difficulty, and then how we can effectively assess and teach and improve reading outcomes and even prevent reading difficulties, which is exciting.

Kevin: Well, let me ask you this, though, Maria. So we understand that the work you’ve done in the Reading League to understand the science of reading is all research-based. And not only are you able to diagnose where kids are falling short, your approach meets them where they are. But how does that compare with the traditional methods being used by most of our traditional schools in reading? Because there’s often a disconnect.

Maria: The science of reading is not just phonics. It is just not just phonemic awareness. It is not an ideology. It’s not a philosophy. It’s not a one size fits all program. One of the things that have been discovered in multiple disciplines is that reading is not a visual memorization process. It seems like it is, because skilled readers like you and skilled readers like me, when we look at a word, it just pops off a page; it looks like we read it as a whole unit. And that idea became popularized, because that’s how it seems reading takes place. That’s, therefore, how we should teach it. And that’s not the case. We now know that your brain and my brain and other skilled reading brains, when we see a word, we actually tend to every single letter in that word. If your I and E were switched in your first name, I would notice that immediately.

So it would still look like Kevin, but I would know it’s not. Because my brain, and we know our brains are amazing machines and computers; it will notice that and pick it up. So we have these understandings. And yet, our instruction still has this approach that kids can intuit things naturally. They can be given a little exposure. They can be guided with little hints instead of explicit instruction. Every other topic that we teach children, why does that involve that explicit instruction, whether it’s math? We don’t let kids figure it out on their own at the earliest stages. We give them multiplication tables and basic math facts and basic operations, and they practice them. When I learn how to play an instrument, my teacher tells me where to put my finger to make a certain note and what that note means when it’s hollow or darkened for a measure or a beat or a key.

When we teach a child how to play a sport like hockey, we teach them how to tie their skates, hold the stick, fall down, get up, cross over, handle the stick. There is someone coaching us along the way with the basics of everything, and yet, in reading, we leave it to chance. So I ask you, why do we wonder why so many of our high school students are graduating without a proficient ability to read? We haven’t done anything about it. We’ve just pushed them through year after year after year, and by the time kids reach third, fourth grade, people are saying, “Well, if they don’t know how to read by now, we can only teach them compensatory strategies. And that’s it.”

Kevin: It almost feels like, by the time a kid gets through middle school, if they’re not reading, the system almost gives up on them, and there’s not really a dedicated focus to engage them in a way that will help them grow and develop their reading. Many feel that, class by class, grade by grade, there should be this mastery approach. But at some point in time, and this is particularly true if you have deficits in reading or math, you’ve got to individualize it and coach kids along the way, so that … Some kids may be a step seven, some may be a step two, some may be a step 13, but we know, by the end of the year, everyone’s going to get there. Why can’t we do that?

Maria: I think maybe some of the things leading to that social promotion of, “Well, he didn’t learn or she didn’t learn,” come from a couple issues. One is that there are so many of these students in a class that it just becomes the norm. “That’s just how it is. You’re always going to have these kids who can’t do it.” And then, we blame the child or the child’s family, home, et cetera. We can’t be responsible as educators, as a classroom teacher, et cetera, for a school system, for all of that. What we can be responsible for is early screening. There are so many amazing screenings out now, and I do see a day when we are doing more regularized, if that’s a word, use of screening in pre-K and K. So that’s one big huge thing we can do. That alone should suffice to get about 85% of students reading on grade level.

Kevin: Let’s give teachers the professional development. Let’s give them the resources. Let’s change the classroom approach, so that it’s not “everyone work at the same pace.” But you have this mastery approach, individualized, personalized. And this is a question I really want to know. What advice would you give to teachers and administration leaders on how to provide the best methods to bring their students advancement in reading?

Maria: So yes, Reading League does provide professional development in a unique way, but there are so many others. We have a very vast country and a lot of opportunities for excellent teacher training. What I then advise, after providing some basic understandings, is that that becomes an ongoing part of school culture, that it never ends. And the buy-in and challenge, too, have to be at the administrative level. So we don’t want to see administrators just sign the purchase order and assign a day off for them to go learn 10 hours a year. We want them to be there too. Too often in the past, professional development has involved admins popping in and then popping right back out. But everyone has to say, “I have unfinished learning, and I’m going to be right here with you. And we’re going to learn together and sustain this.”

Kevin: I tell you, that makes a lot of sense. I love your definition of transformation, where it’s not anything additive, but the professional development, the coaching. I think, district leads have to begin that process, but they have to be committed to make it ongoing. So it’s not just the one introductory session, when everyone comes back for the school year or a refresher in January. Let’s make it ongoing. And this idea of making sure that it survives the politics of any school district is equally important. So we could talk forever. I need to have you back to engage more, once you get this done, and I really thank you so much for joining us on What I Want to Know.

Maria: Thank you.

Kevin: Thanks for listening to What I Want to Know. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education. And write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know, using #WIWTK on social media. That’s #WIWTK. For more information on Stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I’m your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining What I Want to Know.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Companies are looking for innovative solutions and we are well positioned to do that. They see that we have an untapped opportunity with our students to build their talent stream. And we’re preparing students with the skills and the certifications in order to do that.

Kevin P. Chavous: This is what I want to know. And today I’m joined by Dr. Sherri Wilson. Dr. Sherri Wilson is the Director of Partnership Development at Stride Incorporated, where she lends her expertise to enhance the company’s health science career pathways. She also establishes national partnerships that lead to employment and post secondary opportunities for students. She joins us today to discuss how we can support students who want to pursue healthcare careers.

Dr. Wilson, welcome to the show. I am really excited to chat with you. And, you know, I’ve known you for a long time since you work at the company, but I also started doing some research and one of the things I was just amazed to find out is your mother was a hidden figure.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Yes, she was.

Kevin P. Chavous: I mean, literally, you know, my wife and I saw that movie. We were blown away as was America, because we all know the story about how many folks of color worked in the background, had the technical expertise to help not just get the space program off the ground, but many of the major achievements we’ve made in this country, get some of those things off the ground. And, so just talk a little bit about that influence on you to know that your mother had this impact at NASA. And what an inspiration that must have been.

Dr. Sherri Wilson:Oh, yes, just I’m just fortunate to be part of her legacy. When we were younger, my sisters and I, my mother tried to tell us about her story. And you know, we really did not realize the impact until as you mentioned, the movie came out and I was watching a preview of the movie. And I said, “Mom, I think you told us about a time when you…” She said, “I didn’t think you wanted to hear it.” And I said, “Well, we’re all ears now.” And so we made her pull out all of her awards and artifacts from that time and I told our pastor and the next thing we knew everything was on the news, sharing her story and just really fortunate to know that she’s being recognized for this work now. She and many other women have laid the foundation, of course, the late Dr. Catherine Johnson was the first, and she laid the groundwork for women like my mother to follow. And so these women at that time were human computers and…

Kevin P. Chavous: Pretty amazing.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: And my mother in particular calculated vehicle trajectories coming from the spacecraft. And she was responsible for those simulations and each simulation she built did about 20 simulations and had a perfect score for all of those test runs. So her work is documented in the Smithsonian and we’re just so proud. We’re just so proud of her and I’m proud to be part of her legacy.

Kevin P. Chavous: Well, and you mentioned legacy, Sherri, I know you and I know your work, you have done an amazing job promoting not just careers in healthcare, but also how one should conduct oneself while engaged in the practice of providing healthcare to our citizens and you chose the nursing profession. You’re president of the Virginia Nurses Association. How were you drawn to that profession? What led you to really want to embark on a career in nursing?

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Thank you for that question, Kevin. So I come from a family of nurses. My grandmother was a nurse. I have aunts and I have grandparents that were midwives. But when I was in high school, I participated in a program called the Medical Explorers, and we had an opportunity, these were students, high school students who were interested in the healthcare field, whatever that was, and we had the opportunity to shadow medical professionals on one day. I had the opportunity to shadow an operating room nurse. And, with permission, I was able to observe a surgery and just observing the caring behaviors of the nurse and the relationship that she built with the patient as well as the family really had an impact on me. And also growing up in New Jersey, which is our nation’s most densely populated state, and having navigating those spaces in healthcare and education really shaped my philosophy on access to quality healthcare and education. And I saw nursing as an opportunity to really make an impact on several levels.

Kevin P. Chavous: Let’s talk about the state of healthcare. One of the main reasons why I wanted you to come on is to chat a little bit about opportunities in health care for our young, this school to career phenomenon which is taking on renewed emphasis around the country. It used to be in schools that, you know, we really focused on the ABCs, reading, writing, counting, and the like. And career was almost viewed as something that you get to when you finish the academic portion of your educational experience. But as you know, now it’s all intertwined. I mean, many young people have a better idea of what they want to do. And plus, with some of the skill development and the socialization skills that take place when you’re in certain career pathways while in school, it’s been highly beneficial, not just for the students, but the employers, specifically as it relates to healthcare, Sherri, talk a little bit about the changes you’ve seen, because if there’s one area I say education is one, but the other one is health care, where there has been dramatic shifts in how we deliver health care, the role of doctors and nurses, some of the expectations, insurance companies, a lot has changed over the last, you know, 5, 10, 15 years. Talk about your observations with respect to those changes, particularly from a nursing perspective.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Absolutely. So I’ve been a nurse for over 25 years and worked in many different settings, hospital, ambulatory care, government, public health, nonprofit, and have definitely seen the changes over the decade. I would say, as you know, technology is a driving force. And it is really transforming the way we do business in healthcare. And companies are really looking at innovative ways to grow their workforce and healthcare in particular. And so there is such an opportunity right now in healthcare, nursing in particular, but healthcare is the fastest growing profession with many opportunities. And so companies are looking for innovative solutions and we are well positioned to do that. They see that we have an untapped opportunity with our students to build their talent stream. And we’re preparing students with the skills and the certifications in order to do that.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah, I want to talk about your role with Stride, as you are the director of partnership development. And to your point, Sherri, there are nearly 2 million jobs available in healthcare every single year. And many of those jobs go unfilled. And I, and frankly, I remember as it relates to nursing, when I was doing some work up with Joe Klein in New York when he was Chancellor of New York Public Schools, I remember him telling me that New York City, and since you’re from New Jersey, you probably had heard this and you probably know it because of your work. They were recruiting nurses from the Philippines and from Asia because they didn’t have enough people enrolled in nursing school in the States. And I found that so hard to believe. Is that still a challenge? School in the States. And I found that so hard to believe. Is that still a challenge?

Dr. Sherri Wilson: It is still a challenge. And so a few of the drivers of course are an aging workforce in nursing. So nurses now are looking at retirement. And then there is also a shortage of nursing educators. And in order to have the capacity to produce the next generation of nurses, we need nurses. There was a burnout among nurses and leaving the profession. So it’s multifactorial. But there’s definitely a need also the aging population is driving, of course, opportunities in the field. So there is still a great job outlook for nurses and I’m so excited that we have so much interest in our company for students that are interested in nursing and health care.

Kevin P. Chavous: What’s interesting, I see the parallels between education and health care in terms of sort of the incredible changes, as you mentioned, driven by technology and also the changes in both areas in terms of, you know, professional development and recruitment. One of the things, we talked about burnout after COVID, we’ve seen similar burnout in the K through 12 education space among teachers. And as I’ve had teachers come on to talk about that from various teachers of the year and various folks who are involved in the teaching profession, they talk about new ways to attract young people to teaching, to sort of fill the gap because of the aging workforce and to let them know what’s possible in the teaching profession. So it taps into the interests, what kind of things are being done to let young people know that nursing is a viable and even a beneficial profession for those who choose it.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Oh, absolutely. So there’s so many initiatives happening right now. First there’s early awareness opportunities. And I’ll just talk a little bit about what we’re doing here at stride, but there are so many other things. We have a national nursing club, soon to be nursing explorers and started that about three years ago during the pandemic to really get students interested and involved. And we were just so surprised about the reaction. We had hundreds of students that were interested and we continue to grow. So we have the nursing club, which is an early awareness program. And what that means is every month we center diverse nurses from across the country and they share their experiences about the profession, what it’s like students have a chance to ask questions. We also have a nursing camp, we just wrapped up our nursing camp this last week and we have another one coming up next week as well. So again, for early awareness. And then there are dual enrollment programs for students that are interested in nursing connected with colleges and universities. So students, if they’re interested, they can take course of pre nursing courses as early as junior year in a nursing program and that can accelerate their trajectory to becoming a nurse. There’s also certifications that students can earn that give them a leg up, if you will. So it exposes them to the field of nursing and healthcare. So they may not want to be a nurse, but there’s other opportunities. Like if they want to be a phlebotomist, medical assistant. And so, these are valuable skills and certifications that students can earn and help them if they’re interested in becoming a nurse.

Kevin P. Chavous: You know, what’s interesting is that it’s amazing to me how many young people take to these career and skill development opportunities. And you mentioned, you know, the nursing program pathway as early as junior in high school, but even some of these middle school kids, just by introducing them to the concept of what a certain career is like in real time and having them interact with folks in the profession to hear about a nurse here from a nurse who talks about his or her day and what they do, it’s made a huge difference. Talk about the perspective of the employers because one of your roles as director of partnership development is to find partners out there, you know folks who in a health care industry nursing profession talk about the perspective of these employers and the benefit they see in having young people be introduced to these opportunities at an early age.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Oh, absolutely. There is a national push right now. And we’re seeing that in our conversations with employers to really engage students very early to grow their talent pipeline. And as early as middle school. And we do have programs that allow students to observe and shadow what it’s like and what they can be in those spaces. And it’s very inspiring to students to have that experience and then have the opportunity to take classes. So they can take healthcare exploration classes as early at in middle school. And then if they find something that they like, they can begin to take courses in that particular healthcare pathway

Kevin P. Chavous: You know, your work is Stride, with the career pathway development that’s taking place. It’s all over the country. Have you found any regions of the country where there’s more of an acute need for these programs? Are you finding that it’s almost becoming a universal acceptance type of thing where the more people hear about it, the more they sort of respond.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Oh, absolutely. It’s definitely a national focus. There are some particular areas, some of our Southern states and some of our Midwest states, particularly as it relates to nursing, where shortages are anticipated. And so really concentrating in those areas, but we’re looking at it from a national perspective. And we have a number of opportunities coming up where we’re working with employers. We have career expos. And so we just had one not too long ago with several employers that were interested in speaking to and connecting with our students. So this year we have another set of expos which is centered around what we call our three E’s, which is and those three E’s are employment. So connecting students with employment opportunities. So we have a number of employers that we will be working with that will be in the spring enrollment, connecting students to post secondary enrollment experiences and opportunities. And that’s coming up in the fall and enlistment. So we have students that are interested in the armed forces and connecting them with those opportunities. So healthcare in all of those three E’s, it will be highly represented as well as other pathways that students are enrolled in. as well as, uh, other pathways, uh, that students are enrolled [00:20:00] in.

Kevin P. Chavous: So, Sherri, I have one last question. This is what I really want to know. And that is, there are a lot of school administrators or leaders listening, there are parents who are listening to this show and they may wonder how do you get started with the idea of creating some type of introductory program to young people who may be interested in health care. So, the question I have is, how do schools start to at least begin that process of introducing kids to health care? To this potential career opportunity.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: So one of the things that really helps is having an advisory council. So many of our schools have advisory councils with employers from the various sectors that provide input on the job outlook for various jobs in those particular regions. And so that helps with connecting students with those opportunities and building those partnerships. So, one of the big pieces is having those advisory groups or advisory councils for the schools that help to drive those experiences for students.

Kevin P. Chavous: That makes a lot of sense because oftentimes in education, you know, educators have their view of how things should get started. Sometimes there’s a disconnect between, you know, the theoretical and the practical, what really is happening on the ground. And to have those advisors makes a lot of sense. Sherri Wilson, look, you’re doing amazing work, not just a stride, but you’re doing work for a growing number of young people who are interested in healthcare profession, keep doing what you’re doing and thanks for joining us on what I want to know.

Dr. Sherri Wilson: Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

Kevin P. Chavous: Thanks for listening to What I Want to Know. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. So you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education and write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using hashtag WIWTK on social media. That’s hashtag WIWTK. For more information on stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I’m your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining What I Want to Know.