Dr. Maria Murray of The Reading League: Supporting Reading Difficulties for All Students

Narrator:

Welcome to EDVIEW360.

Dr. Maria Murray:

This is reachable. This is a public health issue. Low literacy that actually has a solution. And how cool to be a teacher. I mean, what an opportunity for a career to be a teacher and get in there and solve this problem.

Narrator:

You just heard from Dr. Maria Murray, CEO and president of The Reading League. Dr Murray is our guest this month on the EDVIEW360 podcast.

Pam Austin:

Hello, this is Pam Austin. Welcome back to the EDVIEW360 podcast series. We are so excited to have you with us today for our June literacy conversation. I'm conducting today's podcast from my native New Orleans, LA. Today, we are excited to welcome founder and CEO of The Reading League, Dr. Maria Murray, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to advance the awareness, understanding and the use of evidence-aligned reading instruction. Let me tell you a little about Dr. Murray before we begin. Before founding The Reading League, Dr. Murray was an associate professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she taught courses related to literacy assessment and intervention for 10 years. As a nationally recognized expert in the science of reading, Dr. Murray serves on advisory boards and committees for numerous local, state, and national literacy organizations, such as The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities and The Evidence Advocacy Center. Dr. Murray is passionate about the prevention and remediation of reading difficulty and consistently strives to increase educator knowledge in the connections between research and practice. Welcome, Maria.

MM:

Thank you, Pam Austin. It's an honor to have been asked and an honor to be here with you today. From Syracuse to New Orleans.

PA:

Oh yes, what a joy. You know what? I think we're going to have a lovely conversation today and our listeners are going to enjoy hearing all that you have to share with us. What inspired you to dedicate your career to literacy education, and how did The Reading League come about?

MM:

I love the question and people tell me every time I answer that same question they learn something new. So, I must not stick to a very strict script. But let's see what comes out today. I landed in education wanting to be a social studies teacher and right after I finished my bachelor's I realized that some of my students that I was even tutoring that summer before anything happened, were not doing the reading that I assigned. So, being naive, I had no scope of what I didn’t understand. Now that is for sure. I blamed the child and the family and I'm starting this out pretty frank but I didn't know what I didn't know. Never did it dawn on me that reading ability or learning disabilities could be a thing. Never heard of it. So, it was the parents who said to me he or she has a learning disability. I'm like, what are those two words together? What does that even mean? So, here in New York state you have to get a master's degree. And I called Syracuse University and said, “Please, do you have any master's degree I can get that would help me learn about learning disabilities.” And they said, thankfully, yes, come meet Dr. Benita Blachman, and if you look her up, she was one of the foremost national researchers working on this thing called phonological awareness. She started that with Dr. [Donald] Shankweiler, and Jeanne Chall was her advisor, you know, at Haskins Laboratory and Harvard, and she was passionate. She has her own story about remediation of reading difficulty and or, if possible, prevention altogether, and her area was mostly related to word recognition. So, there, I landed on the shoulders, so to speak, of this woman who was trained on the shoulders of giants, and so you would think, “Oh, you're all set.” And I was. I got my master’s right. After that, I stayed on with her. She asked me to become the coordinator for several of her federally funded National Institute of Health Research Studies, randomized controlled trials happening here in Syracuse, New York, which I want to say right at the outset in a frank and serious way as well: Syracuse, New York, is a small city and for a city our size, however, in comparison to all cities of our size, we have the second lowest literacy rate in the country and no surprise we have the highest child poverty rate of a city our size in the country. So, this is not a proud thing for us, but I just want to say that. Keep that in mind as I go on to tell you that with these studies we did a lot of the work in many of the schools in the Syracuse city district and in many surrounding Central New York districts. You will, if you've read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz and you saw some of that cutting edge stuff that she shows about how the brain gets rewired, those students in that book were our study participants. So, here people across the nation are hearing about it. Scientists sure knew it.

I was presenting in Hong Kong for The Society of Scientific Studies of Reading. That conference that year was in Hong Kong and I shared a taxi ride with a woman who said: “Why are you here? What are you presenting on?” And I told her she goes: “Oh, the Blachman 2004 Journal of Ed Psych. So, I'm like: “Oh, how come?” I'm in Hong Kong and people know about the work we did and the amazing success we had, in which all those children who participated were successful. The teachers who delivered the instruction were successful. But no one in my local community is hearing about it and I would run to Benita Blachman and say what are we going to do about this? How come when our study is done, everybody, you know, just goes away. How does it stick? And she didn't say this in so many words. But basically that's not our job, right? We do the research and it's up to somebody else to make sure that. But I was so shocked that the schools would just go back to the basal program they were using. So, that's one piece.

Also, I spent 18 years at Syracuse University, in one capacity or the other. I continued on to get my doctorate, teach there a little bit. And again, Congress actually sent a videographer to our site and said we’ve had 20 years, thanks to Dr. Reid Lyon, 1985 to 2005, 20 years of millions of dollars of investment in researching institutions from coast to coast in the United States. This body of the science of reading, this vast body of research science was taking place and we learned so much. But who knew about it? So, they sent a videographer to get it on 10 minutes of tape of what we did and I think I'm going to save that, if the time is appropriate, for like how that really changed me.

But basically it boils down to wait a minute, a very long, drawn out realization that despite all this research nobody knows about it. I mean. And it was lacking in ed prep for sure. No one would deny that it's getting much better now. It was lacking in publishing. It was lacking in legislation, state ed departments, you name it. So, I was so disenchanted.

I had gone on to teach 10 more years in the SUNY system, SUNY Oswego, and I was a lone wolf there. People were not. I would teach my classes, but we were already filling our school districts, and this is the case across. I'm not blaming my state, my community, my university. It was just ubiquitous that schools were being filled up with people from admin programs, special educators, from programs, school counselors, school psychologists. All the people in a school were being trained without knowing about it, so they didn't even know what they were lacking.

So, whose job is it? If it's not the scientists, if it's not the higher ed programs, ed prep programs, if it's not the schools themselves. We can't keep passing the buck. So, I'm like you know what. We can't keep passing the buck. So, I'm like you know what. I realized I can't take another minute of children being harmed when it's needless. I cannot? 

I also know a lot of people. I know one little snippet of the science of reading. I'm pretty well versed in prevention, remediation, word recognition, phoneme awareness that was what I learned a lot about. But I don't know linguistics. I know someone who does. I don't know communication sciences like in that birth through 3 stuff but I know someone who does and I know someone and I know someone and I'm a good people gatherer. I'm an excellent people gatherer. I love to reach out and find people. It never was an issue the minute I thought of The Reading League. Within minutes and hours, I had 100 people and I wish I'd done it a lot sooner. But so there you go. That's how it came to life and I'm glad it did. So, that’s a unique version. I don’t think I’ve every told it that way before. 

PA: 

Oh, boy. What an amazing journey. Just listening to your story. A lot of our listeners could probably relate with the fact that: “I didn’t know.” Then, you recognized that you didn’t know, right? Going from there to responding to the various situations that you found yourself in. I'm just inspired by that. 

MM:

Thank you, Pam. 

PA: 

One word you said that really stuck with me: “To make it stick. I don't make it stick.” Because you knew that there was this information to share, but we're not using it. And I love the idea, Maria, that you went forward and did even more. You took that next step to respond even more. So, I'm listening to all of this and I know that you gave us that broad overview of your journey, but I know that was probably a pivotal moment that helped to shape this passion. You say you're a people collector. You pull them all together. Was there a particular experience that really resonated with you to really deepen your passion for what you do?

MM:

I think we're on a good track, friend, because this question is going to allow me to say the thing I said I would say if it came up. So, here we go, that videographer that I spoke of … I’m trying to stay on task with what you asked me but my brain is all over the place. So, he came to Syracuse. Had been scheduled to also go to the University of Houston, to Yale, to see where the millions of dollars had been spent. And so, to create a video for Congress. Well, he came here and he ended up canceling the visits to the other two sites and he spent all summer here. He spent the months here just being introduced to the families of those second- and third-graders who had previously been non-readers … second- and third-graders not any words. And then, during that year of intervention that we gave them, they became grade level, for the most part grade-level readers with 50 minutes a day of instruction, readers within 50 minutes a day of instruction. So, he decided he was so impressed he was going to tell the story from the children's points of view.

And this was the pivotal summer of my life because, gosh, it's so funny when you look back and when you were younger and realize something surprised you, and then you get older and you're like: “Why was this a surprise at all?” But this is where I saw that the pain, and I'm glad this is an audio only because I get very worked up. The pain of children not knowing how to read it doesn't end at the end of the day. It's school. It's bad enough. During that long day, children have to undergo self-blame, bullying, and shame.

During a time of hope, being fresh in school quickly turns very dark. I'm sorry, I just got so choked up.

PA:

Oh, no. I understand, because school is the first place for us to experience success, and when that doesn't happen, the impact is not just in school. You're so right. Continue, Maria. 

MM:

And this is when I get tired in this work. This is hard work. I always come back here and I get recharged. So, I realized and I learned that at the end of the day, they don't get to go home and have a break from it. They have homework to do. They have parents wondering why they're getting calls from the school about their behavior. They have siblings much younger than they are who are picking up reading as though it's natural and taunting them. They get bullied at home.

So, the stories our children told the videographer and acted out. It's still available on YouTube. It's called When Stars Read. Those children ran away from home, ran into the woods and just threw things. They got sick before getting on the bus to school. They would break out in hives. That was shocking to me. It isn't anymore, but it was shocking and that's why. How can I look around and say what?

And another time I was presenting a poster session at the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading and it had something to do with teacher beliefs changing. Once teachers learn the knowledge and implement it and change their practices and have great outcomes, their beliefs change from the knowledge. Well, this is a no-brainer as well, but I remember presenting this to fellow up-and-coming scientists or existing ones and them saying: “Well, wait a minute, what do you mean? Teachers don't know about this work that we're doing.” To which I responded: “What do you mean what do I mean? Where would they learn it? On a billboard? I don't even have an idea where they would learn it. They're not learning it in their schools. No, because the people in the schools didn't learn it. What do you mean? It's not being taught in the ed prep programs. What do you mean?” I don't know. So yeah, all of my life experiences led to this Reading League, and not just me. We all, the founding members, all came from similar, “Wow, I didn't know.”

PA:

So yes, it's such a huge impact. The impact on students' lives, the inability to learn how to read with ease, right? And the impact on the teachers who are wondering: “What am I doing? Am I doing all that I can?” And the assumptions that are being made from those who have uncovered what we all should know, right? 

MM:

Yeah, so no more. Let's all get out there and know it. Time to shine the light.

PA: 

Right? Because right now The Reading League you all are making waves in literacy education. So, tell us about those waves. How has this organization, The Reading League, ensured that these educators now have access to the research-based instruction?

MM:

Thank God. Yeah, what a difference a decade makes, because I think we'll be celebrating, I know, next year's our 10th anniversary of existence, which is incredible, and back then in day, one time nobody even heard of it. So, our mission is to advance the awareness, understanding and use of evidence-based instruction, that awareness piece. We're doing pretty good with that with the help of others, not just The Reading League. But wow, that's come far. And now how do we ensure that they have access to that instruction? Great question what we do here at The Reading League. And just so people are informed and this is thank you for allowing me to tell people we do professional development. That's our main goal and that's how we first started out.
My friends and colleagues, The Reading League started out as a very and I chose the word league very deliberately because to me it takes a league of people coming together with different backgrounds. Together, we make light work. I had parents of kids that I had a little tutoring side gig. Their parents became Reading Leaguers and everyone else that I could find that ever got a degree from Benita Blachman and you get it. But we all decided: “Hey, let's go give free professional development to schools this month. I will do one, we'll do three hours long. We'll have it in this cafeteria of this school this month and in a couple of months you can do one, Pam, based on your expertise in this district's auditorium, and vice versa.” So, we each got a chance to strut our stuff and provide it in a very, very, very in-depth, impressive PD session for them. By the end of two years, we had over 4,200 teachers from Central New York who had come to one or more of our events. I think this was ongoing for two years. We did that over two years, more than that, but COVID is when we stopped the live events.

But anyway, professional development is what I'm saying is at the heart of all we do. We have numerous partnerships with school districts in our country, and we work to transform practices instead of add on, because we had all done the thing of going in and providing that single session on a single topic. I had done plenty of those in my time going in and teaching kindergartners about phonemic awareness, this letter, that and it never stuck. Again, how do we make it stick? But this professional development model we have has been very successful for us because we work to build the knowledge first. That's one of our mantras is knowledge first and foremost. Provide teachers with the professional knowledge they had not been privy to before, and then take that and say: “So, what does this mean for what we're doing now? If we now understand, for example, that reading is not a visual memorization task, that's not how the brain does it. Does it make sense that we have this practice or that practice sending index card packs home for kindergartners to memorize high-frequency words. That doesn't make sense. Now, right, so just giving them the knowledge would burst open the dams of them saying: “Well, this makes no sense.” And then eventually enough knowledge is gained that they say: “Well, now we see our curriculum in a new light. Now we see our intervention programs in a new light.” They're either good aligned or really bad, or somewhere in between, and they use their knowledge to go select something that's right for them, for their students, and then all of the things we work with, transforming assessments and systems and so forth. So, that's really how our organization started out and continues to do the main work, but knowing we can't get into every classroom and there’s millions of teachers, we also do things like develop the free resources on our website.

Being a nonprofit it's really nice that we can be mission-driven instead of profit-driven. So, we have some free things that we have. Friends, go on to the Compass. We named it that because it points people in the right direction. So, what kind of students are you responsible for? English learners, Emergent Bilinguals? There's something for you. Are you an administrator? There's a page on the Compass just for you. Are you a curriculum decision-maker over the summer? Are you tasked with that? We have something for you. Do you teach adolescents? Are you a family member or caregiver, and so on and so forth. So, we provide free resources and free videos on our YouTube channel. Actually, most of those old live events are still on there. There might be something for people to enjoy and learn from. So, that's how we ensure we are … If I might add and this is kind of important, we function as a knowledge broker, and a knowledge broker is a person or an organization that takes the knowledge from the people who develop it in our case, the reading scientists and brings it and creates networks, connections and so forth, and alliances with others to share that knowledge and by providing resources. So, that's exactly what we are. We go and take that knowledge and we dispense it for various audiences.

PA:

A knowledge broker. I just absolutely love it. As I was listening to you, my mind began to come with all kinds of questions. I’m thinking about the PD. How that's a part of everything and I was asking what next? What next? How do we transition? And then you used that word transform. So, we're transforming that and that's poured through that help. And, oh, what do you have available? Oh, we've got lots of resources available online, so there's a wealth. There are many ways to help support teachers to actually implement the science of reading that we've heard about this huge body of knowledge that researchers could not believe that they didn't know about.

MM:

Can you believe it? There's a little irony there, Pam, because maybe there's a lot of irony there. In education, which is the field I'm trying to laden my voice with irony. In education, which is the professional field responsible for dispensing knowledge, honor knowledge and all ways of knowing, right? Yes, sit me down on the weekend with a little case study, I will gobble it up. Sit me down with a book on qualitative research. Yummy, hey, what about this kind of research? Quantitative experimental research? Why can't that have a place in teacher preparation too? All of them answer a certain kind of question. None of them is perfect in and of themselves. We need all of them to answer a certain kind of question. We need all of them, and I'm so proud to have played a big part in getting that to happen.

PA:

So, that was my next question. I wanted to ask about how The Reading League is involved with teacher training and schoolwide initiatives. So, you gave us a little step forward in that direction. You want to elaborate a little bit more on that, Maria?

MM:

Oh, on teacher preparation. This is … I'm really happy you asked this, because we are poised. We've already been doing this. We've had what we've called it like a syllable refinement service up until this point, but now it's become a little bit more intensive, so that name will change. But something I can tell you, Pam, is that The Reading League is really moving more deliberately and being invited into some Educator Preparation Program work. So, working with EPPs, for short, is something that we've been gearing up to do for a while. We've been working with some universities with great success. But now we’ll be doing more of them in different states, I hope. So, we work with each program individually. First, just like any school district we work in, they are not boilerplate, they're not cookie cutter. Each has its own unique set of goals, challenges, students, where their students end up, and so forth. But we establish relationships, identify teams that could be formed to do the work, and then we get to work again. Using that word transformation, right? And where are their gaps? Looking at the standards, looking at the accreditation, looking at course outlines, course descriptions, assignments, what happens in a practicum experience? If they even have those? What kinds of textbooks are they using? Where are their redundancies? Are three classes covering something at the expense of something else? And so on. You get the idea.

But key to all of it is really working with their teams to identify collaboratively, just in a very true league fashion, after all of that analysis, like: “OK, so where are there opportunities in building knowledge, both content, the things, the morphology maybe, or the English learner work, or the adolescent work who knows?” There's plenty to choose from. Where is their most need? And then, as we teach that, help them to learn how to teach it themselves. So, you don't just give the knowledge. Perhaps none of them have ever taught anyone to read, maybe they’ve never taught a child themselves, so it's best for them to know the best way to explicitly backwards map and deliver it. So, their pre-service teachers are really ready to go do it themselves. So, we align building their knowledge, how they deliver it, along with their objectives and their needs. And we are so lucky that so many people want to work with The Reading League.

When we put out a call for consultants, we need a team of consultants that can spend some time in these universities and we had over 600 people apply. And these people are just the best of the best. They know all of the, you know, tools to use to evaluate a program. They are in higher ed, they are in state ed departments. They have been in higher ed review before, and even the people that don't have time to help us said: “I'm here for you. I can't be in a school doing the work, but call on me whenever.” So, in true league fashion, it's fantastic, and I'm also proud that I come from almost three decades in higher ed and teacher prep, so I feel very comfortable in this role that we're taking on, and so being stronger and stronger in our change management abilities over the years means we're ready for this very important next step.

PA:

It is about change, isn't it, Maria? So, you're creating this framework for success, room for collaboration and growth. So, it becomes an internal force for change. I just love that.

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PA:

Now, because we are in education, we have acronyms out the wazoo. You mentioned one EPP. Can you tell us what that stands for?

MM:

Educator Preparation Program, and that could be a two-year program, a four-year program, a master's program, but anywhere that educators of all kinds are being prepared, this is the work.

PA:

Yeah, I'm loving how the work sets up the teacher training programs for success so that when teachers come out they have that knowledge and they can be so impactful for student growth.

MM:

Everything needs it. A challenge for us at The Reading League is we are making ourselves responsible. Like no one’s ever asked us to do these things. But when we first started out, as I just mentioned, we were a little band of volunteers that went around and did free PD, Two teachers but then it wasn't long before we said: “Well, that's all well and good, but once a teacher gets going in the work, there better be someone supporting that person. So, that's why we not only raised our work up to that Compass level.

Who's in charge of making decisions that could either beautifully support or completely derail what the teachers are working so hard to do in this and to maintain that delicious success they're finally having? So, we work with administrators and school boards and state departments of education. We have a community of practice monthly with members of all 50 state departments of education. We have a monthly community of practice for professors and schools of education across the country. Hundreds of professors. So, we have guest speakers. We share model syllabi. All of this is also on the Compass. We work with pediatricians. We're going to have a pediatrician’s page on the Compass soon. On the Compass too, is our curriculum evaluation guidelines, and we also made for this year, we uploaded I think it was last year, excuse me, this year is going by so fast adolescent literacy or, like older students, intervention guidelines, and those are on our Compass. Free for everybody. And then we actually use our own work, which are guidelines according to how well a program aligns or does not align in certain facets, according to the science and its findings, and we are evaluating the most popular Tier 1 classroom reading curricula. So, those reports are all available for free for people to download and we highlight, there will never be a perfect curriculum. I don't think it's possible. There are a lot of great ones, but even all of those have some little flags, red flags, where there is going to be a need for supplementing, backfilling in something it might be missing or being aware of it. That knowledge base comes in, right?

PA:

You start with the foundation of knowledge?

MM:

Yeah, first and foremost, for sure. So anyway, policymakers and parents, all of these people who know the importance of reading and the human right to literacy, have to swim in the same direction. We just have to. And so, that's why we do this. 

PA:

All of the stakeholders, right? Impact on literacy instruction making sure that we're doing the right thing. The science of reading … We've got that body of knowledge. Here's the application of reading. Now, we’ve been really heavily focusing on literacy overall. I want to tap into intervention. Take a look at where does intervention fit and why is it so important that we tap into intervene early? Why does that matter so much? 

MM:

Yeah, this is a question. Again, that may seem obvious now to many of us, but many of the listeners might not really grasp that yet. And I love anything having to do with intervention because that's where I grew up in the science of reading, mostly in that area. So, you've heard, probably, some of the sayings you can't intervene your way out of a Tier 1 problem, right? If Tier 1, main classroom instruction, is not delivered with a strong system and support and curriculum, all of the good things, we're going to get too many children needing intervention. So, intervention, supplemental instruction, absolutely has to happen in the early years. I'm sure we could come up with many metaphors of illnesses and issues where, if we don't start something and get a strong base and get any gaps closed, they're just going to widen, right?

So, supplemental instruction, though, has to be not only in the early years, but it has to be consistent and it has to be geared directly to the needs of each individual student, not one size fits all. I'm not saying 50 different programs, I'm saying the instruction better match what the need is or you're just wasting the time. We need strong systems in schools, reliable and valid assessments so that people can quickly, for lack of a better word diagnose what those students do need, review that assessment, knowing how to do that, proper amounts of practice, never mind the science of instruction and science of all of that. Oh, how to review, how to catch students up, how to monitor that. So K, one, two, three these early years. These teachers have to be so highly prepared that any student that is at risk for falling behind is immediately identified and attended to. Just can't take the eyes off that prize.

PA:

So, the idea of being in a primary grade is not just: “Oh, that's easy, you could teach the little kids.” You're saying that there's extensive knowledge, there's extensive skill that we want to make sure that our teachers and primary students are really tuned into and truly understand.

MM:

They have such an important and honorable job. I think every time someone says to me: “I teach first grade,” or “I teach second grade” and I'm not being biased, but maybe I am a little bit it's like: “Oh, you get such an important job.”

PA:

Yeah, and the importance for, maybe, students with dyslexia, those who are English language learners. We've been talking about the students in the early grades, but we need intervention for those students as well. So, talk a little bit about these unique challenges that these students have. What are some approaches that would be recommended? What do you do for, maybe, a student who is in middle school and high school and have struggled all their lives and we found out, oh my goodness, this student has dyslexia or characteristics of dyslexia.

MM:

Yeah, I'm feeling positively when I compare what we know now and what our teachers are learning now about dyslexia compared to a decade ago or more. So much improvement, but we've still got a long way to go and there's so many myths and misunderstandings surrounding dyslexia. There's so many misunderstandings and a misapplication of instruction for English learners and Emergent Bilinguals. But suffice it to say I can broadly claim that the science of reading, a lot of the findings, are universally applicable to all students, right from the science. So, it's pretty much universally known that in an alphabetic language like ours, English, children absolutely have to learn those connections between the sounds in our speech stream, in our language, and the corresponding letters that the squiggles represent. So, it's understood. They have to know the meanings of the words like. What good is it to lift that word off the page if you don't understand what it is? So, these widely understood things that have to happen to recognize words accurately and automatically and comprehend language are just to me those givens as though, like in a formula. 

PA:

Right. Would you say that those findings are essential for these students who may struggle more and they maybe need a little bit more?

MM:

Oh, maybe. Yes, for sure. And let's just take the ELEB, another acronym, English Learner/Emergent Bilingual. iIt's a mouthful, so ELEB is an easier way to say that. On our Compass, we have a page just for them. But we feature a joint statement that The Reading League created with experts in the ELEB sphere and there's a huge bulleted list of what is needed to support positive literacy outcomes for these students and just a sampling is like explicit instruction, but the instruction also has to very much emphasize oral language development at the same time as English language development, so the words are understood. We have to integrate that language and literacy writing content and do that using a wide variety of materials, books and materials that support those foundational skills, building the background, knowledge, comprehension work, and please let's make sure that they are culturally and linguistically responsive, informed by data and always maintaining the highest expectations, not going in with low expectations.

PA:

Oh, that makes a difference, right? I agree with you a hundred percent. Great.

MM:

So, those are some of the things that we feature for people to dig in. I propose that, with this summer coming up for teachers they spend like maybe two or three hours a week on each of our compass pages. For most of them they won't do all of them, but most of them that would be great time spent, I think.

PA:

Great way to build that background. Really, what you're sharing is going back to the idea of really focusing on refining the instruction based on the needs of the students. So, we have that basic universal understanding. And here's something more that's definitely essential for our English language learners. Something more for our students with dyslexia. 

MM:

We are against one size fits all. The science of reading is absolutely not about one size fits all. It's not just phonics and so forth.

PA:

I was going to ask you if there was a major action that you would suggest to prepare for building reading outcomes, and you mentioned spending two hours. Would you say two hours a day, two hours a week? What was that? 

MM:

That's the first time I've said that, too. Try two hours, maybe more. I'm a professor at heart, so I always have to give homework. 

PA:

So, that is one way that they can take action. Do you have any other suggestions for how educators can take action? Just to build up their skill set, just to practice those muscles for instruction, to get ready for the next school year? 

MM:

Oh gosh. Yeah. Well, one major action, another one I have so many probably. But try to help The Reading League get administrators on board because I think administrator knowledge is critical beyond belief. A strong leader is needed to ensure that those teachers, whether they are the lone wolves of the school that have been trying it on their own or teams just demanding it, it doesn’t matter. Ensure that they receive the knowledge and support they get, that they require, that they deserve. The training. The materials. Ongoing coaching. This is not a one and done. This is not a one or two years and done. This is forever. We're in education, folks. Just get used to it. They have to have systems of support, assessment, management, all that. So it’s, in my opinion, that's not happening fast enough. If you can get your administrators to The Reading League's Compass page, send them our way. We're doing a lot of administrator training now and I really think if we can get a critical mass of administrators changed and trained not changed, but to understand and how to support and observe and know what good literacy instruction that based in science looks like, wow, that will be the floodgate for all teachers.

PA:

That administrator impact, right? I love that you said giving teachers what they require and what they deserve. And it just lends itself to me, just transferring that down, giving students what they require and what they deserve. It has that impact, right? 

MM:

If I can keep going, like teachers should do, either as teams or a self, a complete and accurate assessment of their own understandings. What do I know well as a teacher and how well do I know it? Do I? Am I at an expert level? Am I about 60 percent of the way? What do I still need to learn more about? What do I know nothing about? And then try to prioritize that list.

You may be in a school that's not doing this work. So, you're on your own and The Reading League wants to help you seek training and information on these things in one superb way. First of all, I want to make sure the information you get is the highest quality, because no one has time to unlearn and relearn anything. It's got to be right and you want it to be firmly grounded in reading science. But The Reading League we're not alone. As a Reading League. We've built, guess what, a league of chapters. So, we have 40 state chapters in the country. We're bringing in six more this summer and these chapters are constantly pumping out information and free resources. So, in April alone, our chapters held free, virtual and, most frequently, recorded events delivered by expert experts and here's just a sampling of the free ones that came and went in April alone, titled the Science of Reading in Multilingual Learners Bringing the Science of Reading to Grades 6 through 12 Strategies for Success. Playing with Language Harnessing the Power of Text Structure To Improve Comprehension Through Writing. The First Intervention Improving Tier 1 Outcomes, using I think this might be in may, but Mastering the Art of Explicit Instruction From Principle to Practice Differentiated Instructional Strategies. I mean this, they just cover everything. So, at any given month, any given week, The Reading League probably has a chapter doing something and you can go on to, to thereadingleague.org, go to the backslash chapter, backslash events, and if The Reading League National's not doing something, then I guarantee you can be like: “Oh look, what's coming up. I made my inventory of what I need to learn more on and it's gonna happen. I can sign up now.” And then they're even doing a massive, upcoming, massive chapter network free virtual book study on the book that just came out by Steph Stollar and Sarah Brown, I believe. So, it's just a beautiful community, The Reading League. When I say league, I don't mean the people here in Syracuse. I mean, if you're listening, Pam, you're part of the league. You know we're all in this together.

PA:

League. A league that has grown. That's a certainty. Forty chapters, 40 state chapters. That is beautiful, and thank you so much for sharing that wealth of professional learning that's available. Just listening to the various titles there was so impressive and it makes me want to really dive in myself, so thank you so much for that. Looking ahead, what's your vision for the future of literacy education? How do you see The Reading League, in all of its many chapters, evolving to meet these needs? You gave us some little tidbits there, but I know you're extending even more. What are some other initiatives out there?

MM:

Yeah. Well, we do a vision. We have a mission statement but we also have a vision statement, and when I repeat it, I always make it a little longer, so forgive that, but our vision is that there will be a day that all educators will be equipped with guess what? Knowledge. And that they'll use that knowledge to teach all of their students to read as best as they can and, as a result, we get the outcomes that we deserve, that all but a small percentage of students still have reading difficulties. Like we can do that. This is reachable. This is a public health issue. Low literacy. That actually has a solution. And how cool to be a teacher. I mean, what an opportunity for a career to be a teacher and get in there and solve this problem. I don't think we get teachers jazzed up enough about what they are responsible for. It's so cool.

But The Reading League is always evolving. To have more experts at the table … Just like if you're home with your family and there's not enough chairs and someone stops by, put another leaf in the table, bring some more chairs, expand the league, expand the league. We look for intersections of literacy and equity and we don't know stuff. We don't know why some people think: “Oh, the science of reading isn't for our population of students.” But we will reach out to anyone that says that and say can we talk? We have roundtables. No one even knows this is going on, but we have roundtable discussions with communities of people in whatever city we're in, very often like for everything.

When we had our conference in Charlotte, we met with people from Charlotte. When we were in San Diego for our summit, we met people from San Diego and we found tables there and chairs there and said what's the future of literacy education? What's the future of the science of reading? To me, it's about protecting the science of reading and making sure that, as we go, that people become aware of it. Information. That their well-intentioned application of that science is supported so that they do get the outcomes and don't become disheartened and backtrack and backslide.

So, I think the future of literacy education is going to focus much more on the science of implementation and the science of teaching and how to actually learn about something and then break it down to teach it. I think it's going to focus a heck of a lot more on oral language development and language overall, as what reading really is? It’s language on paper, right? And so, I think we're seeing. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. So, The Reading League is kind of entering its next era of everything that I just said. So, getting more involved with all those stakeholder groups. Having, continuing our conversations. Meeting schools where they are now because there's schools that haven't even begun yet and there's schools that have come quite far and developing more partnerships with districts, etc.

PA:

So, it sounds like you're just building this avenue. You're building this league which we’re all part of, as you said, so that educators become that solution, because, as you said, there is a solution, Maria, thank you

MM:

Yeah. I agree with you 100 percent. There is absolutely a solution and we're fortunate to know that.

PA:

So, lastly, where can our listeners learn more about The Reading League and the important work that you all are doing?

MM:

I have a beautiful, quick, easy answer for that one. Simply subscribe to the newsletter. We do not charge people to be a member, so to be a part of The Reading League is free. Our newsletter comes to you once a month. It tells you when a new Compass page comes out, when a new free resource is available, how to download this. So, you can just scan it with your eyes quickly for something that is pertinent to you. And we really want … We say we call it let's Connect, so let's Connect. 

MM:

All right, thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Murray. We thank you for sharing your knowledge and your experience with our audience. Today made my day. That's it for another great EDVIEW360 podcast. Please join us again next month and visit www.voyagersopris.com/EDVIEW360 to learn about our webinars, blogs, and other podcasts. This has been Pam Austin and we hope to see you all again soon.

Narrator:

This has been an EDVIEW360 podcast. For additional thought-provoking discussions, sign up for our blog, webinar, and podcast series at voyagersopris.com/EDVIEW360. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts and to help other people like you find our show. Thank you.