20. "The Right to Read"--a Reaction Episode with Amanda, Janet, Jess, and Trina

In this episode, we are joined once again by Janet Nasir, who shares her insightful experiences and reactions to Kareem Weaver's impactful film, "The Right to Read." The discussion opens with a heartfelt acknowledgment of Janet’s admirable work and dedication to the field of education.

The conversation dives into the critical themes of the documentary, exploring the longstanding issue of literacy in America. Janet and the hosts discuss the inadequate preparation provided to teachers, the flaws in current curriculums, and the significant shifts occurring, particularly with the Science of Reading movement. Janet shares her district's efforts involving science of reading training and its impacts.

Particularly poignant moments from the film are analyzed, such as the transformation of students under effective literacy instruction and the challenges faced by families moving between states with varying educational standards. The inefficacy of curriculums and the evolving steps taken by districts to align with scientifically based reading instruction are discussed in depth.

The hosts and guests highlight the role of social justice in literacy, touching on the historical context and systemic issues that continue to affect educational equity. They critically analyze the influence of commercial interests in educational materials, including the controversial stance of figures like Lucy Calkins.

Finally, the episode concludes with reflections on the broader implications for the education system and the crucial need for comprehensive teacher-led reforms. The necessity of quality early reading education, the misuse of technology in reading instruction, and the pursuit of genuine educational equity through informed and courageous action are reiterated as key takeaways.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
03:14 Initial Reactions to 'The Right to Read'
04:57 Personal Reflections and Experiences
08:34 Challenges in Literacy Education
13:46 Parental Involvement and Early Literacy
23:19 Systemic Issues in Education
39:36 Reflecting on the Documentary's Relevance Today
40:20 Curriculum and Phonics Instruction'
42:28 Challenges in Implementing New Programs
44:23 The Importance of Foundational Skills
48:12 Assessment Data and Its Reliability
58:44 The Role of Teachers and Structural Issues
01:03:00 Social Justice and Literacy
01:07:10 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Topics/Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
The Right to Read Documentary (free to watch with ads)

Scarborough's Rope

Interview with Janet Nasir

www.teachershortagecrisis.com
Petition to Save K-12 Schooling and our Precious Democracy!

Transcript

We are joined today by Again, by our fantastic rebel, Janet Nassar, who spoke in a previous episode, and we're all going to react to Kareem Weaver's film, The Right to Read. We mentioned this at the end of the episode we, um, brought Janet on. To discuss and we're really excited.

We've all just watched it. We want to share out a reaction, but I first want to say something to Janet.  I have kind of been obsessed with you since we recorded Janet. I am so, I am so enamored with you. I am so amazed by you. I am so proud of you. You are like exactly the person I was trying to find to speak about this.

And, um, We are so lucky to have you in our profession. So I just love you. Thank you so much. That's such a, like, huge honor. Thank you. I love it. I, like, my district, I think I mentioned this before, is doing science of reading training. And so I was at one of the trainings this week, and I gave, I sent the link to the trainer.

She's a, she works at University of Laverne, and they are doing science of reading training. Are for their teacher candidates. So I was like, Oh, have them listen to this episode. So I'm trying to like, get it out there more because a lot of her candidates are saying things like, well, I'm just going to teach fourth grade.

And she's like, you got to be prepared to teach anything.  And then one of my TOA  friends that works  on the board at Cal Poly Pomona, who I named and shamed last time, I made him listen to it as well. And I was like, listen, I'm going to like, Talk about the university. We both went to in a negative way.

Don't get mad at me. But he gave really good feedback about the episode as well. He thought the things that we brought up were very poignant.  Wonderful. And I love that word. There's also other episodes in that theme on our website and in our, in our podcast. I think this is like what the fifth episode on the theme of the reading mess.

And so there's a lot of good stuff in there. Um, Amanda's sister shares her story. Um, Jess and I talk about the problem with reading instruction, um, it for the English language in particular, um, and then we look at international, um, data, but let me let you react first to the right to read. So what is your like gut reaction after having just watched it? 

I wasn't surprised. Um,  I wasn't surprised because I see it, you know, like I talked about in the episode I was on before.  We don't get good preparation in our teacher prep programs. We don't get good PD once we're hired in school districts. We're given these curriculums that are like . It's not great when it comes to foundational skills.

I would even argue it's not great when it comes to comprehension, because they try to put too many. Standards in one story. Um, so I wasn't surprised, but I was excited at the end when they talked about the NAACP and their initiatives that they gave to Oakland that some of those initiatives had been met by the end.

Like, they were no longer using, um, units of study and they were using more scientifically based curriculum.  A lot of it was really sad too.  You know that one family that they, they moved from Mississippi and Mississippi has been making great gains in the area of literacy, and then they had to move for jobs.

And it was kind of like, are we going to be in a place where our kids are going to learn what they need to learn  while we work and, you know, parents had those, those shifts the mom was working 11pm to 4am, they were living on the couch of grandma's house. But then when it showed that they got their own apartment, and by the end of the documentary, the little boy was reading above grade level, the little girl was in kindergarten, and she was doing well, like, that was very heartening to hear, because as I've said, my district is now doing the work to become a science of reading school.

based teaching and seeing kids like excelling in that. That makes me excited for the students in my district.  Well, and you saw very similar changes like almost instantly the second you started using the science of reading in your classroom. So I felt like I was seeing your story play out in the young teacher that they featured in the film.

Yeah, that teacher in Oakland teaches first grade. I wrote it down somewhere where she said like in a matter of weeks while she was teaching on zoom during the pandemic. Her kids were making huge growth and they were they were becoming readers and she had the highest growth in the district. I think she said, um,  and not only in the district for that year, but in the district for like previous years, and she was a third year teacher and to see that growth happened so fast.

Like, that's exciting to me, you know, and it makes me want to go out there and like, force everybody to do this.  And she though was guided towards this because Kareem Weaver leaned in very heavily into supporting teachers knowledge and building that practice and gave her an opportunity to try something else out.

But like when you're, he even said like, they're having to do this. As rebels under the radar, I really identified with that. But you, Janet, you went out and bought it. You paid money for the curriculum.  So how did how did how did it feel to see a teacher be given a curriculum?  Whereas you had to buy your own. 

Really have like it wasn't like, oh, that wasn't very anything. I was just excited for her that she was getting support. That's the type of support that I wish I had had early in my career. Even though I was teaching middle school, the first part of my career, if somebody had come and said, Hey, your kids can't read and here's something you can do versus the story I told you guys last time where my students were reading a novel that was third grade level and they were eighth graders and my principal was annoyed about that, you know, like you're reading something that's so far below their grade level, but yet it was still so high above their, their reading level.

So for this teacher in Oakland to have somebody supporting her. Not just Kareem, but the other lady that pushed in to help. I can't remember her name. Um, but she was in there like helping her prep stuff, helping her teach the groups, like how amazing would that be if we could do that every single school across the country. 

You know, right. Currency rates would explode. Especially to support new teachers. Yes. Yeah. Because it starts with having the good curriculum and then providing the PD for the teachers, but then having a mitigation plan for what are we going to do with a brand new teacher who hasn't proven that they know what they're doing yet.

It's those three things, right? It's kind of like the idea you brought up last time of like a first three year teacher Um, they're not teaching literacy like a mentor is coming in and showing them how to do it. This teacher was still teaching the literacy, but she was having a lot of support on the side.

And also it looked like some kind of a co teaching model with that literacy.  Um, and we saw the results, right? And I don't think they were a flash in the pan. It seemed like as the documentary went on, she continued having that growth with her students and then exploding in their literacy skills.  I should say their phonics and phonemic awareness skills because that's what that focus was.

It wasn't on all strands of Scarborough's rope. We really focused on phonemic awareness and phonics,  which is the first and second grade emphasis, right? And you can't, I mean, how can kids comprehend what they're reading if they can't read it? You know, obviously they can comprehend if it's read to them.

And that was mentioned a few times, like having retreat alouds, having great discussions where kids can get excited and get engaged. But then if we just put a text in front of them and we've never taught them the code, they can't comprehend that.  Agreed. Well, we're going to get the reactions from Amanda and Jess.

And then afterwards, we're going to share out our glows and grows, what we loved, and maybe some critical feedback, um, which I think I don't know. I, I've told you guys I want to see if Kareem Weaver will come on  and push back against our pushback. We'll see. I, he was very open to chatting with just a lowly teacher once upon a time years ago. 

All right, let's go to Amanda. Amanda, you have taught  So many different grade levels. So, what is your reaction to the right to read?  Uh, well you, when you asked us this before we hit record, the first, uh, word that came to mind was emotional. Mm hmm. Um, I think that those scenes with Kareem's family, Um, like his home movies that are scattered throughout and just,  I'm even getting goosebumps thinking about it, just  the huge, massive efforts he and all the families in the documentary to ensure their, their kids were able to read, um, and were in, you know, environments that were safe and secure.

rich, you know, with, with books and things like that. And it just was really, really, uh, inspiring and just showed me how much he cares about kids. you know, not just his own kids, but all, all kids. And I loved that he talked about how, um, you know, a lot of the kids  that are doing well and getting what they need, like, there's a lot of them, right, that are doing well and getting what they need.

And so it, it allows us to ignore.  But yet there are a lot of, you know, kids that aren't getting what they need and are slipping, you know, through the cracks, not just, you know, at the elementary level. And that's one thing that I keep thinking about because I teach high school now, ELD, and, um, that the letters training and all of the explicit phonics, I feel like that is, you know, useful at all levels because of all the kids that have kind of slipped through the cracks and not learned these basic skills.

So, uh, yeah, just, just emotional. I really liked the stories of real, um, parents and the teacher in the documentary. I could really relate with her, um, just being burned out and, and her talking about her first year of teaching and, Um, using the units of study, uh, and the, the, you know, guessing strategy, the queuing strategy and just  feeling like it was very strange way of teaching, uh, reading.

And yeah, I mean, I remember teaching third grade and all grade levels and feeling at a loss as to how to help the kids that were just a year after, or, you know, quarter after quarter getting  Fs, Ds and Fs and just low grades and feeling inadequate. 

Yeah, I mean, it helps to know how widespread the problem is because I just felt so much guilt and shame about not being able to move reading levels in the sixth grade setting and just feeling like I don't understand anything that's going on here and going on a crazy making journey of discovery, teaching myself everything that I had to learn on all by myself.

And then Two, when, when they were showing us the data in Oakland, like I taught in Oakland schools, I stood up. In staff meetings when they were trying to push out a PBIS matrix for disciplinary behavioral expectations because a huge chunk of our population was really acting out in our school become extremely chaotic. 

And I stood up and said, the kids who you are trying to affect here with this PBIS matrix can't read the matrix. They can't read it.  They can't read it and people will just look at me like deadpan. I went to our union leadership. I went to my site leadership. I went to the PBIS people about it. I went to district leadership and sat down hour after hour talking to the reading gurus for primary and secondary and nobody gave a damn. 

Nobody cared that this problem had manifested and nobody understood it. Some people tried to whitewash it. And get me to change my language and stop calling kids illiterate like that was somehow cruel of me, you know, so I felt validated. I felt very validated because Kareem was not just speaking about the nation, he was speaking about the district that I was having such horrible trouble.

backlash in for trying to speak about this in 2015, 2016, 2017.  So that was my reaction. So now I'm going to go on to Jess. Jess, what is your reaction?  I think along the lines of the Amanda is I felt emotional for the, the parents that were trying so hard. Like they seem to be aware of the facts and they're pushing so hard to try to get their kids to learn how to read.

And I was thinking about like, I heard once that when it was like Finland or Sweden, you know, one of the happy countries,  one of the countries that are. Way better off and happier than the United States. Like when you have a kid, I mean, not only do they have like amazing maternity leave, but when you have a kid, they give you this like box, uh, for the kid.

And it like, you can make the box into like a cradle. And then there's all these learning tools in the box, all these things you would need. And I was thinking about these parents and I, I was looking at the kids rooms and they had like maps in their rooms and  alphabets and these letter, like the letter puzzle.

And like, they had like a toddler, like tracing her hands through the letter puzzle. I'm like, Oh my gosh, it would be so cool. If we had something like that to get kids, like. Early childhood on the right track, right? Like parents should have access to these letter games and these puzzles and these, you know, maps and these things that would increase literacy so much.

And I kept thinking like, that would be so cool if I could bundle up these parents ideas and put them in a box that like everybody gets automatically. When they have a kid in the United States, right. Just to get them like excited. It was, I just, I feel like there's so much misinformation and disinformation about not only the public school system, but reading as a whole, like a lot of kids and I don't really think they understand what it takes, what it takes to get their kid on the right track from day one with reading, they don't understand what a literacy rich environment looks like they don't put their value into literacy.

And it would just be so cool if on day one, they could have the perspective of like these parents in the film that they were just so like crazy for reading, right? I was like, Oh man, if I could just bundle them up, like that sort of passion and energy and, and everything that they wanted for their son.

Son, I think his name was Frederick. I was a big fan. I had, I was wondering what's he named after Frederick Douglas. Is there something going on here? But anyway, Frederick in the film, like his parents are phenomenal and they're working like several part time jobs and they're, they're getting like all of these literacy rich activities for them.

And like every day is about learning how to read. I was like, Oh my gosh, like how do we clone these people? It makes me angry, though, that they have to do all of that. Like, what is the kid what are the kids doing in school? You know what I mean? That's the kind of thing that should be happening in all schools.

Like, parents shouldn't parents who are working, like, multiple part time jobs shouldn't have to take on that. All of that responsibility, but Amanda, don't Amanda, don't you think? I disagree. Don't you think that parents should be aware of like the importance of literacy from day one? Like you're having a baby.

That's super cute. Cool. Change its diapers, but how are you going to help? And it's learning how to read someday. I mean, the parents have to get with it a little bit that it's not reading. It doesn't begin when you drop your kid off to kindergarten, the first day of school, and that's the problem. They've done so many studies about early childhood literacy coming from a literate, it is so important.

I just. feel like parents, they don't, they miss the memo because you're right. They're busy. They're exhausted. But like, how do you, how do you get to a society where, and a lot of people have asked me this about different countries I've been to that have like 98 percent literacy grades. And what I see is that literacy is celebrated as a daily activity  in the home.

From the moment the child is born, like it's not just this random obscure thing that I'm going to drop my kid off to kindergarten and those darn teachers are going to teach you how to read. Here we go. I mean, that's kind of how a lot of people act nowadays, right? They're just like, Hey, hi, have a good time at kindergarten.

Hope you learn everything you need to know about the world. I got to go back to work now. Right. I mean, like, that's how I feel as a teacher anyway. And I know that's really biased. Yeah, I want to say, and I think Janet would agree with this. And then I think Janet should react to what I'm about to say. Um, is I think you're both right in the sense that the concepts of print. 

Where children learn the directionality of the text, they learn word to, they learn to see what words are and that they have a sound and, you know, phonemic awareness, hearing sounds, having a vocabulary, rich text, rich environment, the actual hardcore instruction of phonics doesn't really need to have to be your parent. 

I don't think it, I think that if you set your kid up in the right way, and then you have super awesome pedagogy and curriculum for phonics instruction in K and first and second grade really. I don't, I mean, Amanda, I think you're right. Like you shouldn't have to teach your kids phonics. Like that's something we should be able to do well.

So I'm going to let Janet react to that.  I feel like I'm Switzerland. I agree with all of you in different ways. But  like I think about because I have two kids, they're nine and 11. Right. My oldest, when I was pregnant with him, my baby shower was a book themed baby shower. Because I love reading, I love books, and I wanted him to love reading and love books, and from the moment, I mean, even before we brought him home, I was pregnant, reading to my belly, you know, and obviously he heard me all day long when I was teaching, reading to my 7th graders, but from the moment we brought him home, he was in my lap, reading, I have a video of him at 8, 9 months old, sitting in my lap, and he's turning the pages while I read to him, You know, I think that that part is super important for parents.

Like you have to read to your kids and you have to talk to your kids. When my kids like very little and their talk was gibberish and I had no idea what they were saying. I was still talking to them and trying to make it a conversation being like, Oh, okay. Like, what about this? You know, because, but I knew the importance of that.

And I tried to interject earlier, like the birth to five, I think in California, and I don't know nationwide, but that's. Always the push is like birth to five, their brains are little sponges and they learn so much. And we know that kids that enter preschool TK and kinder from homes that are not print rich, that are not literacy,  devoted, for lack of a better word, there's already a huge gap.

And so like Amanda said, and like Trina said, like, no, we don't need to teach symphonics at home. You know, like, you're not going to sit your two year old on the couch and say, you know, PHS,  but exposing them to lots of different versions of literacy. So vocabulary, they're talking to them, reading to them, asking them questions.

Not just about what you're reading, but just about life in general, like talking to your kids. That is so important because then they come in with a vocab.  I just, as an ELD teacher with parents who don't speak English, what about them? You know, like, I just, I'm always the devil's advocate, you know, like, The person on the devil doesn't need an advocate.

But I understand what you're saying. I mean, I even wrote that down because in the doc, Kareem Weaver's brother is like, well, just to play devil's advocate. And I was like, the devil doesn't need an advocate. He does good enough on his own. But I understand what you're saying, because where I work, it's also a very high EL population.

Um, I've always told parents, literacy is literacy. So if you are reading at home with your kid, Books in Spanish. I 100 percent support that or whatever language, you know, it's not just Spanish. Um,  being literate in your native tongue is just as important as being literate in English, and a lot of the skills will transfer.

But if you are illiterate in your native language, and you're illiterate in English, That's a problem, right? And so I've always told my parents like  talk to your kid in Spanish. I wish I was truly bilingual because I feel like that's a bigger advantage than being monolingual. So parents can converse with their kids in whatever their native language is and read to them and have  those literacy, like early literacy concepts building.

In whatever their native language is, I 100 percent support that because the skills will transfer. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, of course, you're welcome. And then for the phonics and phonemic awareness part, like, yes, teachers have to know how to do it. They have to know how to do it accurately and appropriately.

And then they need to do it systematically and explicitly. You know, so it's, it's really, we got to have more of a partnership. And Jess, you were talking about in Finland, like the box of books that they get when they're born. I know that Dolly Parton does that. I think it's like zero to five, like every month the kids will get books.

Unfortunately, I learned about it when my kids were too old, otherwise I would have totally signed up for it. There is that, but it's not like a nationwide push like it is in other countries. And I wish that it was, but you know, we're such a huge country in the United States  and we can't even agree on like the most basic of things. 

politically. So I don't know that we could, how we could get that going here.  And that actually dovetails nicely into a big point that he didn't cream didn't make in the film, but he provided a ton of evidence for, and it's my big takeaway is after talking with Dr. Paul Bruno. I don't know if you heard those episodes, Janet, but it's where I was trying to quantify the actual amount of teacher shortage we have in the country.

And I found the only scholarly article that often gets. Misquoted by other people in the press and I was so impressed with it that I invited him to come on and we've had a few conversations really the big takeaway isn't how bad the shortage is, it's that we can't quantify it because every single state is measuring it very differently and it's really being measured and discussed at a micro local level and so the biggest problem here and this comes up in the film all the time is the lack of equity and access to good reading and Education.

You really have to kind of hit the lottery and just get lucky. Like that one family that had to move from Mississippi, which had, you know, which had really dedicated resources and time to the science of reading. They'd invest in that. And then they had moved to Tennessee, which has some of the lowest literacy rates in the nation.

It was really like sad and unfortunate. And those are two red states. So it's really not a political issue. It's just a matter of knowledge and will. And to me, the big underlying problem here, which is how could we have gotten so bad and so off course was something so fundamental is that the people who Have the knowledge are not allowed to lead our profession and that we're going to continue to make these mistakes.

Big foundational mistakes like this until teachers are leading our own profession and the extent to which we're not and the extent to which there is no K 12 governance system. It's just all kind of a crapshoot. It's something that we really need to educate the community, educate our population on. What do you guys think? 

Well, this morning I was on threads and, um, I don't know if you follow here, we read, but she posted the updated literacy statistics from the national literacy Institute, California, we're solidly blue state, and we have the lowest adult literacy rate in the country,  you know, and  we're so progressive in California in so many ways, but then when it comes to education,  our government is like. 

Do what you want. You know, like they have some mandates in place, but it's like, oh, you want to do science reading? Cool. Oh, you want to do balance literacy? Cool. Like, we can't get it together as a state, um, here. And I felt, I thought that was crazy. Like, I had no idea that California had the lowest adult literacy.

And then New Ham, not in Hampshire, New Mexico has the lowest child literacy rate in the nation.  And it's just, I don't know, it's a mess, you know, but what you said about until we get to leave, until the teachers get to lead, and it's scary with the incoming administration wanting to dismantle the Department of Education.

I know.  How are we ever going to have some kind of K 12 initiative nationwide if we're dismantling this component of the federal government? I don't understand.  So, okay, so getting to your comment, Janet. One of Paul's critiques of me being so critical of K 12 governance is that people will use this argument to dismantle all of public schooling in the United States in general.

I,  I understand, I'm not, I'm, I definitely want to defend and uphold the U. S. Department of Education, But I wanted to be completely reimagined. I wanted to actually be strengthened in some ways, but I also want to keep micro local control for teacher choice around pedagogical decisions and curriculum choices, especially with content of what books were using.

We need them to represent our kids. Um, but we need to be the ones to make those decisions like we need to sit down as a political group of teachers.  In an agency where we are given a lot of full voice and make these decisions ourselves like we're just human beings, we will make mistakes, but for the love of God, we're your best shot America, we are all you've got.

And how do we get to a place where teachers are not expected as a matter of course of their daily work to critique things that are not working. That is one of the hardest things that I'm still dealing with in my current situation, is we are using some very bad curriculum for 6th grade ELA that does not allow us to do steps 3 through 5, which is build vocabulary, develop  accuracy with good prosody and fluency, and comprehension.

Like, it's not a good curriculum for that, and I am having to be a rebel and try to subvert it. Thank you very much.  District using  I'm should I say you guys on the air? 

I'd love it. I'm going to say it and I may delete it later so that you just know what it is. Okay,  it's  okay. I think  this under the  as well.  90 percent of schools in the country use some form of  90 percent and nobody can read. Hello. Yeah. Well, you need to delete me. That's fine, Trina. No, no, that's why I love Kareem pointed that out.

How many millions of dollars that these companies are making off of our taxpayer dollars that are not serving our kids. And do you remember and Amanda, this, I was thinking of you, do you remember when he was pulling up the data and saying, this is all baloney, this is all baloney, but the district office people look at it and they don't think twice about it.

We have data. We're good. And we're moving on. And it's just all crap.  When he started digging into the Lucy Calkins units of study data, when he was like on her website and like, look, this looks really nice. And then he dug into it and it's like, the data actually shows it's not working.  You know, that was,  I don't even know how to respond to that.

It was, it was disheartening, you know? And as you said, he said, like publishing companies are making millions of millions of dollars every year and kids can't read,  you know, it's just, there's a huge component of greed there. And I don't know if you guys want to talk about Calkins that much, but  I find her to be very greedy, because she got all this backlash, rightfully so in my opinion, and then she said, and it was in the documentary, like she has nothing to apologize for, but she did go back and rewrite her curriculum to put in new elements of phonics and phonemic awareness, but teach, or no, teachers, districts are having to rebuy it, so she's now making even more money. 

Oh, God, I was saying I did nothing wrong, but I'm also going to edit my old curriculum, you know, like to me, that is like the epitome of greed,  agreed. And before we started recording, though, Amanda was saying that, um,  she has a strong narrative that is pro units of study. And so what I want to, what I want to say here is that Without teachers at every level deciding how we're going to do this, we're going to make mistakes because it's not all things.

It's just it's not one thing or the other. I should say. And so the workshop approach. There's a lot of good stuff in there for the older grades. And so getting away from novel units of study. That's the problem I'm having is that I have to turn the page, teach a lesson. There isn't time to actually teach a whole book in there.

Right. And so you're having to subvert the system to just to teach a whole book. So the lack of nuance about first and second grade is this third and fourth, fifth grade is this like six through eight. I mean, there's a lot of nuance there. And we are just seen as one teaching pool. That's something Paul Bruno said too.

It's just lack of nuance about what teaching actually is and their lack of specificity around what you're actually qualified to teach. You know,  Amanda, why don't you talk about what your experience has been with. Lucy Calkins. Well, yeah, I met her in person. I have a picture with her because I went to the teacher's college and I was like a super fan and I was like shaking because I got to meet Lucy Calkins and the picture of us, I look like her daughter. 

Like people actually were like, wow, you guys look related. Um, yeah, she was like a rock star superstar. Everyone was like getting her autograph and yeah, I, I, it. I, okay, so I discovered her, I don't know, my fifth year of teaching, fifth or sixth year of teaching. And the reason that I fell in love with her approach, and it wasn't just her, uh, was because I was struggling so hard with teaching writing. 

And so that was, um, when, You know, I felt like I found, you know, the answer, but I didn't, I didn't find the answer because in one classroom, like I'm just, let's just talk about one classroom of 39th graders.  There's Probably, and maybe you have some ELD students in there and you have a student with a learning disability and a dyslexia, and you have students who are gifted and you know what I mean?

There's such a wide range of kids in a classroom. And so how does one teacher provide all that is needed in that classroom? It's, it's, it's, It's a little bit like I want to go see what they're doing in Switzerland, I guess, because, you know, I feel like there's certain kids in my class that could use explicit phonics instruction and Shrina and I have talked about that, like, how do you do that without embarrassing these kids, you know, and  their self esteem is important.

And like my sister in her episode, um, She was so embarrassed by Hooked on Phonics, uh, the program my parents bought for her. And she was a third grader. She was embarrassed by that program as a third grader. And she always saw the commercials, Hooked on Phonics worked for me. And she always in her head was like, Hooked on Phonics didn't work for me.

And like,  You know, she now knows she has dyslexia, but like hooked on phonics, I think is pretty explicit direct instruction and she hated it, you know, it was boring and dry and like, I just, I'm scared that we're going to go too far to the dry side of, Teaching reading, even in kindergarten, first and second grade.

And I just, like, I loved what Jess said in your episode, Janet, about we need both because we have both kids who need both in our classrooms. You know what I mean? Like my daughter, we talked about, she learned to read. I don't even know how the heck she learned. She taught herself when she was like four.

And I'm just like, okay, cool. Like, I don't have to worry about that anymore. Um, but yeah, And so, but that's just one kid. Other kids might really struggle, you know, and need the explicit direct instruction. So,  I want to, I don't know if pushback is the right word, but, like, I hear this frequently, like, phonics instruction is dry and it's boring.

And I don't think it has to be. Um, we talked in my episode before about, like, scripted curriculum, right? And,  Trina was booing me saying that we're using scripted curriculum, but then when we talked about it more, and I said, I only really value it in this one arena, you know, phonics and phonemic awareness.

I don't think that the rest of it should be scripted.  And we're seeing right now,  I don't know, millions of kids, thousands, hundreds of thousands of kids. can't read. So what we're doing right now isn't working, obviously, right? And there are definitely those outliers, because my own children, they didn't get good phonics based instruction either, and they're both voracious readers, reading many grade levels above their actual grade level.

But  those kids, I think they would have learned to read no matter what. You know, and we have so many who can't read and Karim says, this is not a question of can we do this is a question of will and if you are not making the choice to do it, you're violating kids civil rights. That, uh, I had to pause the video and make sure I wrote that down.

Exactly, because there are people, like in these teacher groups on Facebook, Instagram, whatever that are saying with their whole chest, like, I'm not gonna teach pH phonemic awareness. I'm not gonna teach phonics because that kills the kids love of reading. But how can they learn to love reading if they can't freaking read?

Like, I don't get it. I, can I respond just real quick? I totally agree with you because in the kid in the documentary, there, there's some home movies of a kid that he was tutoring one on one. Larry. I love Larry.  And he was just so happy.  Empowered. And I read Knowledge Gap by, um, Natalie Wexler, and she talks about kids getting so excited to teach about, you know, ancient, like, civilizations or something in third grade.

Like, they go home and teach their things that you would think were dry and boring. Kids feel empowered and, like, they're experts. And I don't know. So I agree with you on that. Like, you're right. And I love Larry too. Larry was amazing. And the fact that he was what, fifth grade and had never read a sentence before broke my heart.

Yeah.  I felt so sad, but I also felt so excited for him when he did it.  Yeah. Okay. So Larry falls into my wheelhouse, right? Because I had, I had students that age that could not read and that those were the kids I was leaning in heavily trying to figure out how to best meet their needs. And so here's. What I learned.

Okay. So  phonics instruction is happening in first and second grade. It's not embarrassing to receive the instruction in first and second grade. So if you're getting it in first and second grade properly, following as scripted a curriculum as you, as you need, as, as, cause I'm not the one who's teaching. I don't, Janet says we need it.

We need it. I'm not the one teaching it. I believe her, you know, so if you get those opportunities, then you don't have to be taught explicit instruction and phonics later when it is embarrassing, when it is drier, when your brain wants more, right? Um, and so that's, that really just comes back to the point of like, Kids are embarrassed to get remediation of skills, period.

And there's so much shame associated with not being able to read. And we made that mess. We, the educators, we made that mess. We created that situation. The reason why Larry was able to do it, because it's so humiliating, embarrassing, was because he loved Kareem and Kareem loved him. The relationship.

Protected his dignity.  And that is what I'm going to cry because it was so clear to me how much he loved that boy and how much the boy trusted him and felt safe doing something which is embarrassing and hard and  cream leaned in very heavily with his heart. That's cream. The end. This is my grow. Okay.

And I think this movie was made before and during the initial stages of the pandemic. We have so much more knowledge now about the harms of putting kids on tech too much. My pushback is, and I, I get why Kareem wanted it. He was like a immediate, like, I can't trust the teachers are going to do this. I can't trust that the districts are going to support it.

Here's some tech and I get it. I understand why, but That tech cannot provide that relationship that creates a safe space to be brave and do really hard things. So that I'm going to let you guys, and I'm going to let Jess go, because we haven't heard from her in a minute.  Uh, yeah, I, I agree with everything you guys are saying.

Um, uh, and the technology, I didn't, I didn't know if he was really pushing it that much. I mean, I thought he was kind of pushing it a little bit because it was filmed during the pandemic and we all were leaning heavily on it. So that was one of my questions. Like, I didn't think that, like, if he were to do the same documentary today, I don't know if it would have as much of a tech lead.

That's what I was thinking anyway. I don't know. Maybe I'm totally wrong. I have no idea.  But yeah, I just figured like, Oh, this is, we're kind of seeing a glimpse into what was going on for this really bizarro two year period of time. Right. Because you notice they were wearing masks in the documentary and they acknowledge the teacher was taught, was teaching online.

And I mean, and they were all playing with iPads and stuff like that. But I mean, I think it would be, I think the overall message wasn't so much on the tack. It was more on. You know, why can't we find a curriculum that is going to teach people how to read? And that was a lot of my questions during it.

They had mentioned a one that I had never heard of before in the documentary. My school district uses a 95 phonics now. And it's interesting because the kids have phonics instruction, but then they have reading instruction through.  And I wonder like how, like if we're, you know, I do see the shift. I see the shift.

Like we're all doing letters training. We're all learning about phonics now. And I'm just wondering like when are these because I don't know if the  is really incorporating Any of, like, those reinforcements, um, that you need with the phonics? Like, I don't know, they seem, it still seems kind of separated and obscure.

Maybe Janet can, like, fill in a little bit more of that. But, I mean, it was, uh, because, I mean, I don't know, as a librarian, I'm not seeing the curriculum every day. I'm just seeing the skills come in. And I'm noticing that kids are sounding out words, right? But there seems to be a disconnect after that.

Then they don't know what they just sounded out. Like they're sounding them out and they're like, uh, I know. I think Janet can talk about  maybe or other can curriculums, um,  their efficacy in the first and second grade world. I can tell you very specifically what's wrong in the sixth grade curriculum.

Yeah. And I also think too, the reason why, and he didn't talk about this in the film, but we mentioned it in the podcast, the reason why workshop whole language queuing method, the reason why it was so lauded, the reason why it was so bought into because it really gets away from that veteran teacher having extremely esoteric veteran knowledge.

And so if you can buy into an idea that says, Oh, you don't really need a veteran teacher in that space and you have data to prove it. Everybody's going to march in line right over a cliff for that. baloney, right? But so go ahead, Janet.  Well, you know, I said my district is where  has been our ELA curriculum, but now we are supplementing in K 2 for the foundational strands with magnetic reading, which is an I Ready program.

And then starting in January, our 3 through 12th grade teachers are going to get phonics for reading, which is a foundational skills program for older kids who didn't master it. Um, again, through iReady.  So  it's a lot. And I know since I'm a coach, teachers are struggling to mesh the two,  um, because they are kind of just thrown into it.

You know, I don't know how well thought out the rollout was of this. We all kind of got like a crash course drive by PD on magnetic reading. Um, I think I shared with you guys last time, like I've gone in and I've taught a couple lessons just so I can learn the program. And I'll do the same once we get phonics for reading in place with our older grades. 

And our instructional coaches just met via Zoom last week with another district nearby that's doing the same thing. They're in their magnetic reading and they are maybe a year or two ahead of us. And just learning how to kind of mesh the two.  And it's hard, it's really hard. But when we talk about the older grades, and like being embarrassed that you can't read, or how do we meet the needs of all of our kids in a third through high school classroom, that when we have non readers,  I feel like if we can shore that up in primary, Then we're not going to have that problem as extensively.

There will always be some kids, right? We know that like the dyslexia rates are, I think like 10 15 percent of kids have dyslexia. Our people have dyslexia. Um, and there's always going to be people with, with learning disabilities that will struggle. But 95 ish percent of our kids can learn to read by the end of second grade.

So I feel like if we really focus in hard K2 on those foundational skills and do that systematic explicit teaching, then third through 12th through third through 12th grade teachers. are not going to have to differentiate the level they have to right now.  But you also have to get those third through 12th grade teachers on board right now with shoring up the problem of the kids that they currently have.

And it's scary and it's hard. And there's teachers that I work with that, you know, they've been told this is coming. You're going to get phonics for reading. We're going to train you in it. And they're like, Oh, it's one more thing that I have to do. And I just kind of get a little frustrated because I feel like it's talking on both sides of your mouth to say these kids can't read and then we're providing training and writing another program and saying, well, I can't do that's one more thing to do.

You know, I don't really have a good answer for that. It's just one of my current frustrations as a coach.  But yeah, I think we know that scars Scarborough's rope is interwoven right. In these conversations, we're really focusing on that one in that word recognition in because without that.  Kids can't really get to the other parts of the rope, but they need the skills to all be interwoven.

So we can't just say we're teaching phonics and phonemic awareness, K2, but we're ignoring comprehension and vocab and writing because those pieces are also very, very important. We can't wait till kids get to third grade to start talking about vocabulary and comprehension. We just need to do it in a different way, K2, while they're getting those skills in place. 

And, and we have to make sure those three things are, are, are in place, right, Janet? Like we have to make sure we have good curriculum, that the teachers are trained, and that we have a mitigation plan in place to protect students from brand new teachers who haven't learned this stuff yet. Cause it isn't just the curriculum and the pedagogy.

You also have to have good classroom management and you have to have relationship building skills. If any of those things are not working well. You're going to lose kids and they're, they're, they will not recover from a whole lost year in first or second grade. Like I say, that's an insult to their reading education that they cannot really recover from.

And so those three things need to be in place. And so in order to mitigate brand new teachers, we need to have, like we were talking about before, like a literacy coach or a tier one reading teacher, who's going in highly paid. And in so doing, not only ensuring that everybody's getting a quality reading instruction, but it's also mentoring and teaching a new teacher how to teach reading.

And what I loved, did you guys catch on the OUSD school board member conversation with he and Kareem?  When they were acknowledging reading is more important than math. I am so tired of having this argument with math teachers.  I'm a math person. Actually, okay, I should back up. I don't self identify as a math person.

I don't love math, but I kind of carved that niche out for myself in this. world, but math is truly important, right? But you can do math without being able to read.  I  was like, you're right. We've so long said that math is the gatekeeper, but it's not.  It's the gatekeeper that's going to open up everything else.

Amen. And in the district Amanda and I work in right now, math is so blown out of proportion to basic literacy skills. And that gets to where I see  just failing. This middle school years because the high school level there, they haven't bought a scripted can curriculum. They don't have a can curriculum, but they did get it for six through eight and they're So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's deeply, it's deeply problematic.

So, I mean, I don't know how far into the weeds you guys want me to get into a discussion. It might be too long, but what I'll just say is that one of the data points that comes up on our star reading data, and I have a problem with the star test, especially at the secondary level, it's just super unreliable.

And I, I kind of hate this test. I don't like any of these tests, but, um, I like the Scholastic Reading Inventory better than the STAR. Do you know these two tests, Janet? I do, yeah. Do you have a preference for which one you think works best?  No, I don't really have a preference. My kids district, they do the STAR reading test.

I'm always looking to see, you know, have you grown my district doesn't really have one  reading assessment that we use some places, Renaissance learning with the star reading test. Some places it's the core phonics screeners. Some places it's wonders like we don't have. And that's something that I think is problematic in my district is that.

We don't have one assessment that we're all using, and we are a very big district. Um, top 20 in California for science. They mentioned, they mentioned the NAEP test at the beginning of . Oh my goodness. Can I just tell you, I'm so embarrassed. A few years ago, my fourth grade class was chosen as one of the classes whose data or who would take the A-N-A-E-P and that their data would be harder than national data.

And I was like, oh, well we're gonna make the scores worse.  I did this test. What is that? It's another freaking standardized assessment that they have to take. So it's not cast. It's not. A district benchmark, it's this the  own tests, they pick random schools  throughout the country. So my school was chosen and it's all 4th grade and the kids take this reading test so that they can say, well, here's how poorly.

Or how well we're doing as a nation and reading and it was a whole other test, which I think is really unfair. First of all, because 4th grade is already taking cast or whatever. It's called in other states. Plus, you know, all the teacher assessments and district assessments and then to throw another assessment on these kids.

I just think is so unfair, but it's just another reading comprehension.  But is it like, okay, so the star is a glorified vocab cast. I don't know that it's really, I feel like everything is a glorified vocab because if you don't have the vocab or if you don't have the background knowledge on a topic, they're not going to do well.

Like we already know that schema is super important. I know you can. Yeah, you can be the best reader in the world. But if you pick up a textbook on what astrophysics It doesn't mean you're going to understand it, you know, that's, that's part of the process. This assess these assessments suck. A lot of them are tied to the can curriculum.

So their doctor to give data to make them look better than they are. This N A E P. Is that tied to a curriculum? A B. Is it qualitatively different than these other tests? Like what is the testing time on that test?  God, I think we had maybe three or four days, maybe a week.  Um, and I tested for 45 ish minutes.

It was kind of until they were done, right? But I would just cut it off at a certain point each day. Um, if I remember correctly, it was on the computer because it was my class.  after COVID. So it wasn't the class I had online. It was the next school year. Um, they had spent third grade online. So they were in person fourth grade.

And I remember that they were the ones that had been assigned to take this test. And that was the year that I really started implementing a lot of phonics based instruction with fourth graders.  But I was like, this sucks because these kids did not get good instruction. They would just online for a year.

And now we're going to give them this The SNAPE test,  and it was, I was embarrassed. I was honestly embarrassed, um, because I knew that we were going to contribute to the illiteracy rate of the country  and just, like, continue to add to the data that, like, we suck, like, we don't know how to read, you know, and it wasn't like I wasn't trying and my kids weren't trying.

I was pulling small groups every day and working with those kids who were still mastering letter sounds.  But to give them another standardized test  just to prove that, like, we can't teach reading. I don't know. I don't know how helpful that would be or how helpful that was,  but so the name, if that's  okay.

So the other test, in case you're unfamiliar, you're listening to this, the star and the S. R. I. At least in the middle school years, they take kids anywhere from like 15 minutes to maybe 45 minutes. And then it spits out a score. And what I have noticed is the SRI, at least in the secondary level, the scholastic reading inventory was a little more reliable, a little more reliable, and it didn't have those wild swinging scores that the stars, the star has wildly swinging scores.

Of course, both of those. Tests are, um, they miss, they give erroneous low data on students with learning disabilities. And I think honestly, sometimes erroneously high data too, as well, because it's not really giving you a reading comprehension level. And it's certainly not able to get at the prosody and the fluency and the accuracy.

It's just, it's just vocab recognition really. Yeah. So that name sounds more reliable. Did you get a chance to cross check? Different data sources to see how reliable the scores of our kids did. Oh my God. No, we just had to give them the test so that Nate could have the data. We didn't get the data. I mean, maybe my admin did and chose not to share it with us, but I doubt it. 

Okay. So I don't want to talk too much about assessment data because this is, we have a whole, we have a whole episode coming up on bogus assessment, but  My problem with the star is that it, it does give unreliable scores, but the reason why when I asked my district, why are we using this instead of the SRI now because they switched,  they said it because it gives us a lot more data, and it does, it gives us, it gives you a ton of data, I don't know how it's  able to say that it's able to collect this much information on the kids, but there is one data point that I keep seeing, okay, in all of my students,  every year.

And it's their, their reading low when compared to all the other indicators on the ability to make meaning of complex text  over and over again. I don't know if you've seen it in the star data that you've seen in the high school level, Amanda, but if you open up your star data, I guarantee you, you're going to notice that one indicator is way over here where all the others are here.

And I know that that is because of  because at least it has some aspect of close reading instructions. I was. I developed my own pedagogy, my own curriculum for teaching close reading, because I had to get a hook or crook. And when I got to my district, reading wasn't even really being taught, to be perfectly honest.

It just wasn't. And so now there is an attempt at teaching the basics of close reading strategies, which is really like  focusing on steps three through five, right? You know, which includes your accuracy rates, making comprehension and words, developing your vocabulary. So, um, at least that's doing it, but it trademarks it all and makes it super like trademark y.

And then it makes the kids extremely dependent on text features that are built into the  curriculum. So, for example, The every single complex word in all of the excerpts they have all the story excerpts is defined in the footnotes.  So the kids don't have to use any of their strategies. They don't have to develop prefix, suffix, Greek or Latin root knowledge.

They're not using context clues, which I know is a cueing method of sorts, but it's I still think it's good strategy for third through 12th grade students.  And so they're not able to do any of that. And there's tons of pictures included and graphs. and scaffolds to take these story excerpts and help the kids make big comprehension takeaways.

Without any with all of this assistance, so they're not so they're not doing it on their own. And then they'll say, Oh, but we've recommended all these novels. The novels don't have our scaffolds. But if you teach every single lesson in there, you don't have time to teach a novel. You don't. And so, We're getting a de emphasis on novels and a stronger emphasis on just teaching these story excerpts in this anthology, which has all the lessons and activities built in there.

Um, but the scaffolding that they put in that text does not allow the kids to develop independent reading skills. I think that,  that part of the problem is that a lot of the novels we're teaching are like at the kids level or below the level and what we need is advanced text. If we're teaching a whole class novel, like even at the third grade level, it should be I appreciate it.

advanced, you know, it should be above their grade level because we're facilitating that instruction. And I kind of learned that from Doug Lamov's Reading Reconsidered  book. I really love that book. Uh, cause he, and he also talks about the stigma around teachers reading out loud. Um, and I felt that, you know, um, And, but it, but that the importance of doing that, like that, that it is very important for you to read out loud to your students, complex texts, not  texts that are too easy, which most of the books we're reading, especially the middle school level are too easy, uh, novels. 

So I think we've glowed a lot about this documentary. We highly recommend it. We'll put a link to the. to the, you can actually watch it. You didn't used to be able to watch it, but you can now on YouTube. I don't know how long that's going to last. So we'll put a link to it in, uh, the show notes and on our website.

But, um, what is, what are, what are some things that we think we're missing from the documentary or what are some things that we think, um, You know, that maybe like from a teacher's perspective that we wished was there or  like feedback critical feedback for  so my, my pushbacks are a couple of things one,  this documentary lacks the gestalt of where this problem is coming from. 

Which is that teachers are not allowed to lead our profession and that the way you prevent big problems like this from happening again is that you put teachers in charge of the leadership of their own profession and you standardize things at a national level. We all get very clear around what it is we're trying to do and how we're going to get it done and we ensure that every American child receives the In an equitable, high quality education. 

Particularly in first and second grade, but like again, the what we're what we're not acknowledging here is the structural sexism built into our profession from the very beginning. We built a profession in the 18 thirties specifically for women and never went back to try to understand the oppressive practices that were built into that based upon.

The erroneous assumptions and what women can even do back at that time. And so we have to be really brave because, and Janet mentioned that, and so did Kareem, that we have to reshape and demand better instruction at the collegiate level over teachers. Right. But when I went above to get my master's and my admin credential, there was zero space and it was a social justice program.

Okay. Zero space around looking at the structural sexism that was built into our profession from the beginning. An open hostility against me for trying to have those conversations. So  this teaching thing is coming from a thing that was built for women. So we have to be really brave and we have to understand that K 12 governance is a mess.

We have to empower teachers to lead this thing. We have to understand how we got here in the first place is because this thing was built for women and women was a paternalistic attitude that kept us out of leadership. So that's the first thing. But then the second thing I, my pushback is that. Because I already heard, um, an article on NPR the other day about AI being used to be a reading tutor, and I'm worried that it's going to become a tier one reading instructor.

And the reason why I don't think that's a good idea for the same reasons I mentioned before about needing to have a personal connection with someone who's able to form a relationship. So those are my pushbacks, but I love. This documentary. It made me weep. He gave us the data I've been asking for. I've been trying to find this data for years.

What are actual literacy rates were? And it was staggering to see how wildly they were swinging from place to place. Um, and it was, it was, it is essential. I think every single person in the United States needs to watch this movie.  Uh, Janet, what are your grows?  Well, I want to touch on what you just said about everybody needs to watch this documentary.

I think going back to earlier in our conversation talking about parents role, like maybe if more people watched it, more parents would understand how important the birth to five is and do more of the things to get their kids ready. But, um, one thing I wanted to point out was, at the very beginning, within the first five minutes,  they show a clip of various presidents, going back, it was before Reagan, so I think that's Carter, all the way through Biden,  but notably number 45 wasn't there, um, talking about how we need to teach kids to learn to read.

You know, that's where No Child Left Behind came from. But in this doc, they go, you know, before the 80s. And it's been said in almost every administration. Notably, one didn't, wasn't shown. So I don't know if he said it or not. Why is this still a problem? Carter is before I was even born. And we've had every single president say that. 

And  is it all lip service? You know, like, I wish they would have, I wish they would have addressed that more. Like, this president said this, this president said this, this president said this, and then here's what they did or didn't do. I would have loved to have them flesh that out a little bit more. Um, because,  Those clips of the president saying it, I think they made a good point that, like, this is not a new issue,  but it wasn't, they didn't go deep enough in that part, and I would have really liked them to go deeper into that,  um, and then Karim also said something, I wrote it down, about, um, the United States has always prioritized reading either to include or exclude certain people, and then that's when they kind of started showing this stuff about the Alabama slave code, and how free people who taught Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Black people to be literate would be fined, you know? And it goes, yeah, I'd never seen that, Janet. It was 200, between 250 to $500. Fine. I was gonna do the math to see ingested for inflation, how much that was. That was, so, yeah, because that was 1833, so that's probably like tens of thousands of dollars in today's money.

And that was just,  I don't wanna say outrageous because I'm not surprised, but at the same time, just seeing it in black and white. Like how much this country has fought to keep minorities and people of color uneducated.  Seeing it black and white on the screen, you know, it's, it's not new. I knew that, but  to see it written in the state's code, that was just,  Almost shocking in a way.

Um, and then Kareem said a little bit after that, do we have the political will and do we have the moral courage and fortitude to use literacy as a vehicle to include all  and I think all four of us identify as like social justice advocates.  And that piece of this documentary, that social justice piece, and it kept coming back to this is a civil right.

This is a social justice issue. You know, like,  I just, I don't know, it made me feel good in a way, because sometimes I'm like, am I doing enough for social justice issues?  Or am I being a slacktivist?  And sometimes I'm hard on myself about that, but knowing that I am pushing for and I am fighting for and I am supporting the right for kids to learn to read, all kids to learn to read, um,  I was glad to have that, that kind of support in a way from this documentary, like, oh, I am taking the right steps. 

That is so good. Like in a time like this, a lot of us are like, what can I do? How can I make things better? If you are a teacher, this is it.  This is it. You can ensure that everyone in your class is literate. And if they're not, you keep screaming from the rooftops, digging into the problem  until you understand it, until it is well understood in your district, like just never giving up.

Like, this is the thing we know how to do. We are teachers. This is it. This is the number one civil rights issue going on in our nation. They, everybody else fighting for different aspects of civil rights and social justice, they just need us to do this. They are counting on us to get this right.  Thank you, Janet.

That was, I want to add one more thing just to kind of piggyback on what you said and what I said at the very end. Um, I don't remember if it was Kareem or not, cause I didn't write down the person that said it, but it says it has been said that illiteracy is one of the most solvable issues of our time,  most solvable issues.

Every time, you know, as a country politically and not politically, I feel like we are always throwing up our hands and saying, we have all these issues, how do we solve them? You know, like how do we solve homelessness? How do we solve poverty? How do we solve, um, hunger? But illiteracy is something that we already know how to solve.

We have the brain research. We just need to follow it,  you know, and stop defending bad practice.  I mean, but this is, this is our legacy. Like we're dealing with deep roots of systemic racism and oppression, deep roots of a profession that was built for women during a time when women were not even considered to have the same mental capacities as men and couldn't even sign a contract or own their own property.

So we have to solve this oppression  in order to uplift everyone else. We have to empower ourselves. We have to demand a professional space to lead this profession. Like it's insane to me that we have to leave it to lead it. And once you leave it, you lose your tenure and you can't fight anymore. And so the system is just very broken until we fix this.

Big problems like this are going to keep coming up. Jess, what is your pushback about anything in the film?  Something I've been thinking about a lot, uh, especially after the most recent election, is this idea of misinformation and disinformation. And Kareem Weaver kept saying again and again in the documentary, kept saying, we are in the information age right now.

Like when, when they look back on us, like hundreds of years from now, they're going to say these people were living in the age of information. Yeah. And how do we make people literate in the age of information with these sorts of illiteracy rates? And I mean, it came up again and again. And so I thought that was, that was kind of like my final takeaway is just to remember for myself, um, Just like, I did write down what Janet had said, like, the illiteracy is one of the most solvable problems of our time, but then, like, we're not solving it, we keep, uh,  like, it's been 250 years almost as a, as a nation, and it's still a problem!

Like it's obviously not that solvable. That was my big pushback. It's it's I mean, yes, we have the science of reading Yes, we now have phonics. We're like amanda said the pendulum is swinging back the other way now and i'm sure in 20 years It's gonna swing back the other way when it doesn't work again. I mean like There's more going on.

It's not like if it was easily solvable, it would have been solved in 250 years of being a nation, but it has not been solved. That was my pushback. I was like, easy for someone to say, you know,  that knows how to read, right? But like a lot of us, we're not in that position. The people listening right now, I'm assuming, probably know how to read.

They're not in that position. And I just think there's, there's a lot more to the problem. And I think it kind of,  that's, that's my only pushback. It's a lot more complicated than maybe, I think a lot of people are seeing phonics and the science of reading as a Pill right now, and everyone's following the pill that it's going to solve everything.

But I feel like, you know, we've already had hooked on phonics, and there's still a generation of people from the hooked on phonics years who don't know how to read. So you know what I mean? Like, like Amanda was saying, the pendulum, I definitely believe in that as a teacher, like, we get too far one way, and then we have to swing back the other way.

And it's like, when are we just going to be a happy, Middle ground and figure and figure things out a little bit more. I don't know. Those are, those are some of my thoughts as a teacher. Anyway, those are my final thoughts. I'm just echoing everything Jenna just said.  Amanda, let's record your final thoughts.

I mean, I think that part, part of me was definitely thinking about the SPED kids, you know, they weren't really talked about. And I think that there are a lot of kids. you know, that,  that just struggled to read, like, no matter what. And so, like, what are we gonna, what, how are we helping them? How are we supporting them, um, to be successful in our society?

I think that's one, one thing. And I know there's intersectionality and there's many different, like, people can have multiple different identities and, and then also just not throw the baby out with the bath water, kind of like, Just,  I think that, yeah, Lucy Calkins has, you know, um, rightfully so been reprimanded, I don't know, outcasted,  because of the cueing method and her methods of teaching reading K through 2nd.

But I do believe in, um, the philosophies that she endorses, uh, um, especially when it comes to teaching writing. But I just really love that, that whole, like, philosophy, um, that she, that Lucy, Calkins, you know, promotes that, that we really want students to, to like be learning things in our classrooms that they're going to do outside of our classrooms, right?

Like we want to treat them. But also I think that she needs to get more explicit about teaching writing too. Right? Like, I think that's kind of missing in her curriculum. Um, but I like what you were saying about your, the things you liked about workshop, because I do think, I mean, I, I do writing writer's workshop.

Okay. Cause I do think that this lack of nuances over application of one giant statement is the problem here. Like,  Lucy Calkins and Fontyson Pinnell never should have gotten in their feelings and in their ego about what should be going on in a first and second grade classroom. Like, where did they ever think they had gained there?

That's the problem. They were, they were, they were treated as heroes and they're, they were no longer teaching. How, where do you get off not even being a teacher and saying what other teachers should be doing? The only people who get to say what we should be doing is us. And that's why when Janet says what should be happening in a second grade classroom as a sixth grade teacher, I shut up because I am not a second grade teacher.

The only people that have that argument are other second grade teachers. My other critique here is that. And I love what you said a minute ago, Amanda, about special education because and Janet mentioned it, um, is that dyslexia is a very reliable situation that we have in our population. I've even heard up to 25 percent of our population, but certainly at least 10%.

And because we have English. Which does not follow its own rules of phonics, and we are not capturing dyslexic kids like that is a big missing piece that we and also what I have noticed is kids who do have 504s or have that recognition of dyslexia are overwhelmingly kids of privilege. So kids who are disadvantaged don't get noticed for their dyslexia.

And that is a big  barrier to becoming a very fluent reader. But the other thing is, and this gets back to what Jess was talking about when we first started talking about reading instruction, is this documentary lacks a cross cultural comparison of reading pedagogy and curriculum. There are other English speaking nations that are killing us, that are slaughtering us with their reading levels.

What are they doing? Doing I needed this documentary to go to England. I needed this documentary to go to Canada, Australia. I needed this documentary to show us that this is already working in other places. And what exactly are they doing differently that I wanted? I really wanted that one. Jess, what do you think? 

Well, I kind of know what they're doing since I went there to go see, right? Like, they have national standards, and I'm fairly certain that they deal with teachers on a national level. Like, it's not local, districts, states. All making their own decisions, all fighting against each other, and I know that's what makes America a unique and interesting place, but if we're looking at really successful countries, and I would be very interested to look up if they have this idea of a uh, Uh, a national, like, teacher association, like, is there something that's, like, binding all the teachers together?

Because I do know that they definitely have national standards for reading, writing, math, that every single classroom follows the same standards, and it is kind of rigid. I will say there's not a lot of flexibility, but it seems to be working, but it's also that whole culture of Literacy is cool. And that's what I'm interested in.

How do we make it? How do we make that cool? Because I feel like in America, now, literacy is just kind of like, it's um, it's being weaponized a little bit with book banning, right? Like, oh, well. You know, you, you know, like libraries are bad and, and teachers are bad and these books are bad. I mean, there's this weird cultural thing going on right now against literacy.

So I think it's kind of twofold. One, you know, we don't really have a national level. Yeah. system.  And I hate saying that as I know so many people are against that, right?  But it is what I saw. What I saw in England, New Zealand,  Scotland. But if that's the difference, if that's the difference, if that's why we are not making this work here.

First of all, no one knows how bad our, our literacy problems here. And that I wanted the documentary to explain is the ignorance our population has about this. And I feel like it's intentional. I feel like they're deliberately kind of keeping us doped. And, and confused and misguided because they don't want us literate, right?

But if, if we could see this and experience the shame that we should be feeling and know that other nations are just slaughtering us with their literacy rates, we could get all mad about it together, get united about it. Like this documentary needed to go there. I feel.  Okay. I mean, this was a really great reaction.

Dr. Weaver. I'm going to email you, please come on, please  come on. We love you. Do you remember having that conversation with me back in 2018 or 2019?  Cause I remember you, you made me feel really good about what I was seeing and believing and noticing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.  All right. 

Bye. Bye.  But thank you for having me this time. I really appreciate it. for coming back on.  That's it for today. Thanks for listening, everyone. Please let us know if you want to join in this or any conversation on the podcast, because we have only begun to delve into each topic and we need your voice to do this justice.

Don't forget to go to teachershortagecrisis.  com to sign the petition and join the movement to save K 12 schooling and our democracy. And remember, We may just be teachers, but we're the only ones who can fix this mess.