Episode Transcript

Announcer:

This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson:

Equity. You want it for all your students, but how do you balance equity and differentiation in your reading instruction? And how does that fit into the conversation around the Science of Reading?

I’m Kevin Carlson, and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Just like kids are not the same height, their literacy development pathways are different. So, we have to make room for all different kinds of learners within a Science of Reading framework.

Kevin Carlson:

That is Dr. Rachael Gabriel, author, ILA board member, and Director of the Reading Language Arts Center at the University of Connecticut. Rachael also appeared in Episode 25 of this podcast with Dr. Peter Afflerbach: The Sciences of Reading and the Whole Child.

If you are interested, please do check that out, but here, author and educator Patty McGee speaks with Rachael about equity and the Sciences of Reading.

Patty McGee:

When schools turn toward what Science of Reading has really been highlighting, which is phonological awareness, high-frequency words, decoding, and they put their attention on that, what will we see?

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Well, the first thing you'll see is teachers are going to spend a significant amount of time in training around those subjects. And in some cases that may be necessary and then for some that may be kind of redundant for where they are professionally. And then you'll see the item level knowledge in those areas because those are finite measurement areas. There's only a certain number of sounds. There's only a certain number of ways that we can assess phonemic awareness. You'll see scores on isolated measures go up a little bit. And depending on whether that instruction is well integrated with reading connected text and with writing, you may also see scores in reading overall, or reading in general, go up a little bit. And to whatever extent that focus is not well integrated with reading connected text and with writing, you'll see just those isolated measures. So just measures of phonemic awareness by itself, not reading in general or reading comprehension. Those will go up and others won't. And so that's been the story with the foundational skills focus forever. And there are some folks that say you've got to have that foundation and you have to build on it in order to ever get to real reading, but there's too much evidence at this point. So if we think of the Science of Reading as the accumulation of knowledge in the field, the accumulation of knowledge in the field says that isolated skills have to be integrated immediately. Otherwise, you have what's called a problem of transfer instead of transfer. And that is true whether we're thinking about it in intervention or we're thinking about it as core instruction. We set kids up for a problem of transfer if we don't teach it in integrated ways and immediately integrated ways.

Kevin Carlson:

After the break, the challenge with equity in the Sciences of Reading. Stay with us.

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Patty McGee:

So that brings us right then to the focus of our conversation around equity. So, we know that it can be beneficial for those students that may need that type of instruction. And also, if we are putting all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, there are things that can kind of go awry.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Yeah, totally. Totally.

Patty McGee:

So thinking about those initial outcomes, perhaps we see some positive outcomes at the onset. What are some implications that you have been thinking about, though, around equity and the Science of Reading?

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

So, I think the big challenge with equity in the Science of Reading at the moment has very little to do with the Science of Reading instruction and a lot to do with the implementation of Science of Reading policies. And I don't mean just state policies, although there are some challenges there. I mean even at the school level or at the classroom level, what we decide to spend our time on, what we decide to give students the most feedback and support with, and those sort of miniature policies that govern how the days and hours are spent in a classroom can have differential effects on different people. So I think the story that brought Science of Reading so much public attention was that reading instruction in the U.S. is broken and it should be this other thing instead. And the truth of the matter is there is no one story of reading instruction in the United States and there never has been. Every study that that looks across a state or across several states, let alone across the country, finds tremendous variation in what is taught and how. Connecticut is maybe a good or maybe a bad example because we are a local control state. But I can walk through each district along the shoreline of Connecticut, and I will see a different approach to reading instruction, K-3, in every single district, and in many cases they're separated by like five miles. So there was never this story where like all kids were learning to read the wrong way and Science of Reading is the right way, and so this is going to help. So one of the equity issues is that asking people to make a shift toward a particular set of practices for some districts and states, it's a huge shift and it requires a lot of resources, a lot of time and a lot of retraining. In some places, it's not a shift at all. In some places, they were changing from basically kind of chaotic instruction. It's the best word I can use to describe it, where teachers are kind of reaching for things they don't have a structure to land on. They have to figure it out for themselves in their individual classrooms. And in that case, coming in with a Science of Reading and the sort of strict parameters of what is taught and how using what materials in what order; it's actually a relief. It has a stabilizing effect. It makes it so that people have a clear plan that they can work within and that gives them a structure within which they can be responsive to the students in front of them. But in other cases, people had a pretty coherent set of ways of teaching reading, and that may be in a town five miles down the road, or in some states more than others, or in some districts more than others. All of that has some equity implications. But what we know about kind of mandated policy change is that it happens more frequently and more aggressively in lower resource schools.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

They're taken over, they're told what to do, and next year they're told what to do differently, and then next year they're told what to do differently. They also have this challenge of initiative overload as people are trying to fix them and/or they're trying to fix themselves. So they're always working with a new set of tools for something, whether it's reading or math or social emotional learning. There's always this new set of tools. Sometimes there's layers of new sets of tools on top of each other. And so reading becomes one of six things that I'm trying to do new this year, and/or it becomes the one that seems the most straightforward and concrete. And I've got this sort of Science of Reading label on my curriculum material, so I'm going to teach them exactly as they are. And rest easy with the idea that this is science, and so it's definitely going to work. And then the students in those classrooms have this kind of incoherent trajectory through whatever they were getting in kindergarten and first and second and third. And that doesn't kind of connect and build on itself in a way that makes sense. Teachers are working in kind of an incoherent professional setting because they're getting... they're being asked to do something different all the time rather than allowing allowing them to settle in and expand what they do in order to incorporate new information or elaborate on what they do that works while they quietly sense that the things that don't work.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Instead, the policy environment has been much more prescriptive in a new way and much more limiting. So the trend in the last 5 to 10 years was to give schools more of a menu of options. Here are a few examples, or here are few options of curriculum, materials or curricular approaches and assessments that you can use. But the Science of Reading legislation that uses the term Science of Reading, which means it has to be less than five years old because that term wasn't floating around before then. But that kind of umbrella term that's being used to describe a whole bunch of things by a whole bunch of different people is being written into state law at the moment. In many places it exists or is under discussion or will be under discussion. And these laws have this trend towards not just saying, here's what you should do, but also here's what you're not allowed to do. So really severely limiting what counts as good reading instruction. And no matter where you are on the spectrum of possibilities for reading instruction, when that state law comes down, you have to fit into it. And again, for some students, this is change number 365 of the 365 changes they've had. For some districts, it's a minor shift, and for some it's a major shift. For some, they're having to let go of practices that worked for them in their communities. And for others, it's actually the first time they've had a clear message about what they should be doing, and they really appreciate that.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

And that was the story that came out after the Reading First Impact study said that reading first was not an overall a success. We got all these case studies of districts that said actually it was better than what we had because what we had was so incoherent and was so dependent on teachers to figure it out for themselves. In places where teachers are empowered to be always on a trajectory of professional growth, telling them exactly what to do, kind of designing policy for the lowest common denominator limits their ability to innovate and be responsive. But on the other end of the spectrum, there are teachers whose real strength is in math or whose real strength is in loving children and they're not exactly sure what to do with reading instruction, or they've been in a district where they've been told something different every year, so they hold their knowledge lightly because that's the only professionally responsible thing to do in that situation. And having this sort of like it's this, it's not that there's no other way to do it. And I don't mean to characterize all conversations about Science of Reading that way, but the way state policy that uses that term is being crafted is that way. And so whatever else is going on with Science of Reading talk and materials and webinars and all of these other pieces, it's hitting schools as a very specific, particular mandate.

Patty McGee:

Yes, and with that particular mandate, and that legislation comes PD that's focused on that and funding, that's specifically for that. So it's not just... it's like waves of impact. At the same time and as you said, there are places that will benefit from that and then there's places that will not. And that's the equity conversation.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Yeah, I think it's sort of one of the macro level equity conversations. I think about this particularly for teachers in terms of professional development, because professional development time and resources is a zero-sum game. So if you choose to spend it on reading or you have to because it's a new set of curriculum materials, you cannot spend it on anything else. And so there's only training on new materials, which is a really simple basic surface level training, not development, not expertise elaboration, not collaboration, really, just like getting trained to do this new thing, which is a really simple, basic, not super life-giving way to spend the precious time that set aside for educators to learn together and educators who learn together teach better. And if we spend it on training on a new a new set of materials again and again in some places, this is the first time they've gotten any word about what they should do with reading. But in others, they had a new program 5 minutes ago, or they had a program that worked well that they were breathing into and developing and making it responsive to the kids in front of them. I worry about how little time there is for professional development during the week and in a school calendar and how much of it has to be taken up by sort of instrumental things.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

The new fire drill pattern, the new protocol for concussions. I had one year that every PD that I was scheduled to do was interrupted by the Ice Bucket Challenge. And like Ice Bucket Challenge is awesome. It's a community builder. It has for a good cause. It's like helps schools be part of the larger conversation, the larger world. I am not against an ice bucket challenge, but when we think about how there's a certain set number of hours for teachers to be engaging in their own development, which directly impacts what they can do with their children, and we lose minutes and hours and up to all of these things that are not actually developing pedagogical capacity. This is just one more thing that is taking up time where we could be developing pedagogical capacity and coaching has to focus on are you using the new program well? And PLCs have to focus on unpacking the new program. It's all necessary, but not every school district and state needs it at the same time or needs it focused on the same thing all the time.

Kevin Carlson:

After the break, what can you actually do in your classroom to address issues of equity? Stay with us.

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Patty McGee:

Let's just maybe like start to go down a road of in response to this in response to what you're saying. What can we do about this? Like the teacher in the classroom with their students knowing that that this is the reality, perhaps in many, many places. Some teachers have a little more flexibility. What can we offer to teachers, educators who are listening some things they can do in this?

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

I think there's maybe sort of three places that you might want to lean into, depending on your context and where this, where these new policies and where the new curricular materials, or old curricular materials, for that matter, find you in your own community and in your own practice and growth as an educator. So if this is new, if the ideas within Science of Reading are new to you, the idea that it matters that you teach phonemic awareness and sight words and use some decodable text sometimes, if that's a new idea and you want to learn more about it, then like, this is your time and that's great. And what I would want, what I would hope is that you understand these as foundational in the truest sense of the word, that this is the beginning, not the end of what has to happen with reading instruction. And so once you've got it, the next thing to look out for, and this is sort of a preview of teachers who may be on the next part of the of the spectrum in terms of how this hits them. The next thing to look out for is how do we integrate? Once I understand sort of the most basic idea that this has to be taught in a certain way, in a certain sequence, and it has to be taught, not assumed. That's, those are basically the two messages of science and reading right there.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

Once those two things are are fully integrated into your knowledge base. The next question is how do I integrate them into literacy, not recognizing individuals letters or recognizing individual patterns or words. How do I integrate them into the work of being literate? And that means we have to think about writing, and that means we have to think about how the isolated skills and the individual items that we're developing in children by helping them remember them and apply them, are actually used to do something that matters and used to do something that matters means writing something that they actually want to say. So not copying, not dictating, but actually composing, even if that's the first sound of every word, even if that's just labeling their drawing, or if that might be phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and all stanzas, all the things, they have to be able to use that as soon as possible. Yesterday, if possible, but as soon as possible, they've got to be able to use that knowledge to write something that matters to them. And they have to be able to use that knowledge to read something that matters to them. And the challenge with decodable texts, historically, is that they often are too weird to matter.

Patty McGee:

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

I know there's lots of people working on decodable texts that are interesting, but the the truth of the matter is, there are lots of texts around the world, around the classroom, around the school, outside in the park, all of these texts around kids that they want to be able to read and to whatever extent the text that they are asked to read in school are like from another planet in comparison, it's going to feel like there's not a real point to this except pleasing my teacher.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

But to whatever extent they're invited to, yes, read decodable texts and see some of those words and letter patterns in other texts too, that are read to them that they're allowed to browse through, that they are allowed to read at different times during the day. No one's arguing for one or the other. The question is when and how much? And what I'm saying is if kids don't have exposure to texts that they want to read, they will not want to read. And so there's no like that's not that's also science and reading like a huge science of motivation and engagement, huge science around assent to learning in general. And if there isn't a real reason for it, there just won't be people who choose to use time that could be allocated in lots of different ways to read. Like I always tell my students about looking around when they're at the grocery store, where they're at Target or something like that, and noticing that kids that are the age that they're still sitting in, in the shopping cart, whether they're looking at all of the words and pointing and trying and saying or whether they're somewhere else in their minds, whether they're spaced out or looking down at one thing, but like thinking about all of the text exposure that you have, just being out in the world, if you're in tuned to text versus the the sort of opportunities lost, if you aren't, If you go to a restaurant and you try it out looking at the menu and you match some things and figure it out, like that's incredible practice that matters to you because you want to know what's there and you don't know what the options are.

Dr. Rachael Gabriel:

If not, then that was just one lost incidental opportunity. And so when we bring in texts that kids care about into our classroom, we're setting them up to have many more incidental learning opportunities. And literacy, when it builds, our language is built in a way that, like their literacy, will self-extend, they will recognize words, they'll piece things together. If they are taught in an explicit and systematic way, they will be able to extend that, but not if we don't show them where the extension is going to happen. So the middle folks who are like, Yeah, I knew about phonemic awareness. I knew I had to teach that where I even knew I had to do them in a in a set sequence. You may be excited to get a new set of materials. Maybe you're using the materials you always had. And what you really need to be thinking about is where is my integration work? Because integration is the actual entire name of the game. When we're thinking about developing print-based literacies. It's the integration of all the knowledge that you can bring to the words so that you can make them make sense. And folks that had a really well developed practice that are saying this is actually stripping me of opportunities to do the kind of innovative, creative, engaged, responsive, community-based, project-related work that I have been developing over years with my colleagues, folks that have been in an environment where they are trusted and respected as educators, and it feels like they're getting some of that trust and respect taken away because their options are being limited; I think the message to them is to be here now. So thinking about the focus right now is on the foundation and you know that there's a reason for it. That there is always going to be this sort of anxiety around literacy, literacy rates, literacy development, because it matters so much that children have powerful literacy when they finish school. And honestly, by the time actually not when they finish, but like for school purposes. And so there's always going to be this this movement in one direction or another to make sure we're getting this right. So at the moment, we're focusing in on this area of literacy instruction, which is not the whole story. I don't know anybody serious who's arguing that it is, but the way the laws are written makes it seem like reading instruction is good if, and only if, it attends to the five pillars so of so. It almost doesn't matter what people are saying about it. The way the policies are written makes it seem like there's only a few things that matter at this moment. You know what matters beyond it. And so you can be modeling and talking about that integration. You can be naming and framing the work that you do that you have developed over a long period of time in the terms of the Science of Reading movement, so that people understand what looks like, what and how these different things can be. Because we really need people to help develop our collective imagination about what really good reading instruction can look like. And so take on the vocabulary, engage with the advocates and the parents and the other leaders and educators that are really into this and focusing on it like it's really, really exciting and new. Don't dismiss that excitement. Use it and use it in a way that expands it and elaborates it so that there's room for more kids in it. Because just like teachers are going to be hit with this and depending on sort of where they are in their spectrum of development, kids are hit with this in different ways too. Some of them don't need that level of explicitness.

Some of them need that and then some. This was always true. Like, just like kids are not the same height, their literacy development pathways are different. So we have to make room for all different kinds of learners within a Science of Reading framework. And again, the science here has room for people, but the way it's being enacted is often so narrow that certain kids will always look like they need help and certain kids will always look like they don't. And certain kids will always look like the help they need is actually tantamount to a Disability label and other kids won't. And there are inequities set up by this sort of narrow, limited approach to implementation that are just going to exacerbate every line of difference we already have. So if you've got a lot of English language learners model and show us and use the language to stretch our understanding of what this can and should look like with them. If you have kids that are neurodiverse, model and show us and stretch our understandings about what this can look like for them, because at the moment it's like shot through the middle kind of thing. And that's not going to be good for us as a community, as a collective.

Kevin Carlson:

Thank you, Dr. Racheal Gabriel. Thank you, Patty McGee. And thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop. If you want to learn more about the Science of Reading, go to TeachersTalkShop.com and visit our archive. Episode 27 is “The Sciences of Reading and Small-Group Instruction” with Dr. Adria Klein. Episode 26 is “A Practical Approach to the Sciences of Reading,” with Dr. C.C. Bates. Episode 25 is called The Sciences of Reading and the Whole Child,” featuring Peter Afflerbach and Rachael Gabriel. Episode 20, "Expanding the Science of Reading," features Peter Afflerbach. And Episode 4 features Wiley Blevins and is called “The Science of Reading: What Brain Research Says About How We Learn to Read.” While you're on the site, please register to receive updates about the show. For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.