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Over the past few years, APM Reports correspondent Emily Hanford has been researching, writing and broadcasting about reading instruction in the United States, and has elevated the conversation to the national sphere. In this episode, Emily talks about how her educational reporting led her to discover how the system is failing so many children, why her work is striking such a deep chord, and why this is an urgent social justice issue.
Teaching, Reading & Learning: The Podcast elevates important contributions to the educational community, with the goal of inspiring teachers, informing practice, and celebrating people in the community who have influenced teaching and literacy to the betterment of children. The podcast features guests whose life stories are compelling and rich in ways that are instructive to us all. The podcast focuses on literacy as we know it (reading and writing) but will also connect to other “literacies” that impact children’s learning; for example, emotional, physical, and social literacies as they apply to teachers and children.
[00:00:10.630] - Speaker 1
Hi, I'm Laura Stewart from The Reading League. Welcome to Teaching, Reading and Learning, the TRL Podcast. The focus of this podcast is to elevate important conversations in the educational community in order to inspire, influence, form, and celebrate contributions to teaching and learning. On today's podcast, you will love hearing from APM reporter Emily Hanford. I really wish this session could have gone on and on. She has so many terrific insights, and I know many of you probably follow Emily's work. However, in today's podcast, you're going to learn a little bit more about Emily and how where she started out isn't necessarily where she ended up. So I know you will really appreciate this episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy. Our guest today is Emily Hanford. To give you a little background from Emily, Emily is a senior education correspondent at APM Reports, the documentary and investigative reporting team at American Public Media. She has been working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director, and program host. She has written and produced content for many news outlets, including NPR, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, and PBS NewsHour.
[00:01:27.830] - Speaker 1
Her work has won numerous awards, including a DuPont Columbia Award, a Casey Medal, and awards from American Education Writers Association, and The Associated Press. In 2017, Emily won the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. She is a frequent speaker and moderator. Emily has been at American Public Media since 2008, where she produces education documentaries that air on public radio stations nationwide. It can also be heard on the Educate podcast she produced Hard Words why aren't kids being taught to read in 2018 at a loss for words? How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in 2019. And her latest report, what the Words Say in August of this year. And I think I speak for many of us in the science of reading community when I say that. I am deeply grateful to Emily for really elevating the conversations around reading, education, and educational equity in this country. So welcome, Emily.
[00:02:32.070] - Speaker 2
Hi. Thanks for having me, Laura.
[00:02:34.090] - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's great to have you here. So one of the things I thought we would do is just really kind of dig into your origins and the impact of your work. So let's kind of start there. Just tell us about yourself as a reader. How did you learn to read? And has reading always been important in your life?
[00:02:54.270] - Speaker 2
So how did I learn to read? I kind of distrust when people tell me with certainty how they learn to read, because I'm not sure anyone really knows. So I don't really know how I learned to read. I think that I am one of those people that reading came pretty easily for. We know that there's a chunk of us, maybe half of us, maybe not quite that many where we're going to learn to read pretty much no matter what, as long as we are read to and we get a little bit of instruction and we have a lot of opportunity and we do a lot of figuring it out on our own. And we do know that once kids get started, a lot of what we learn about language and reading is through reading. It's just this question of how do you start? I have memories of reading in school, actually. I haven't been able to identify what system it was. I remember really wanting to get to the purple. They were by colors. Purple was my favorite color. I was a good reader in school. I was one of those kids that was like on one of the high levels, and I was very proud of that.
[00:04:07.500] - Speaker 2
And reading was really important to me. I read a lot when I was a little kid and I had a wonderful first and second grade teacher. It was the 1970s. It was definitely an era where a lot of progressive kinds of ideas were coming into education. It was very like play based. I have wonderful memories of play in kindergarten in first and second grade, and not a lot of memories of explicit instruction.
[00:04:32.080] - Speaker 1
Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned that system with the colors, because I remember that, too, and I always was in a hurry to kind of get to the highest level. And when you mention some of us don't necessarily remember how we learned to read, I think a lot of teachers have that going on. And so for them, they think, well, reading came easily for me. I think a lot of teachers, they want to become a teacher because they were good at school and they were good at school because they love to read. So many times we don't necessarily remember receiving explicit instructions. So sometimes we don't think, well, that's actually necessary. Have you found that when you're speaking.
[00:05:15.110] - Speaker 2
With other oh, and the thing that I want to say is I think I may have gotten explicit instruction. I don't remember it. I definitely remember decodable readers. I don't remember if I got those in school or if I had them at home. I think I did. You know, I definitely remember, like the cat sat on the mat and the tin pan. I mean, I remember those books, and I remember I do have memories of how exciting it was to be able to read those words. My experience in my years as a reporter, this is a broad generalization, but I think a lot of people go into teaching because they have a strong feeling about their own school experience, sometimes one way or the other. So for some people, it's because school really was a great experience for them. And for some people, it's because it wasn't. And they go to school, they become a teacher very much for that reason. But I always very much liked school. And I think I grew up in a fairly affluent community, but I grew up on sort of like the working class side of town. And I was very aware of class differences and race differences early on.
[00:06:34.150] - Speaker 2
I grew up in the Boston area, and there's a very famous integration program that's still going on called the Mecca program. And I remember very much we were a fairly white town, and that was how integration was achieved in our town. And I remember having an awareness early on that I had a lot of privilege and advantages and that I was seen as a smart kid. But I had an awareness that that might not really be true, that I was a kid who just had a lot of ways to be the smart kid.
[00:07:12.610] - Speaker 1
Interesting. Did that color your decision to go into reporting and journalism and especially education? Tell us a little bit about how.
[00:07:29.270] - Speaker 2
That ended up where I am? Yeah, it wasn't a plan. In fact, what happened actually, is I went to College and I just getting a bachelor's degree. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It really didn't. And I actually left College for that reason. I had always been kind of a good student. And as graduating from College grew closer, I sort of had a reckoning with, like, I don't know what else to do or be Besides be a good student. I've been a good student for so long. So I left College with one semester left. I was in the end of my first semester of my senior year, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I wish I had done it a little bit earlier. I just went home. I lived with my mom. I worked at a bookstore. I did a ton of reading. I just sort of read about so many different things. I was able to borrow books from the bookstore, novels and bestsellers and nonfiction and research and all kinds of stuff. And then I went back to College still without really knowing what I wanted to do.
[00:08:33.360] - Speaker 2
And I took a writing class, a nonfiction narrative writing class, and I ended up getting connected with the local public radio station in the College town where I went to school. And I started working there as an intern. And I have just been in public radio ever since. So I came to this journalism thing just through becoming a public radio reporter and have covered lots of different topics. Very first story I did was about, like, flooding in Western Massachusetts back in just have lived in different places for various personal reasons and always got jobs in public radio and ended up in education reporting sort of by accident back in 2007, 2008, and have realized that I landed in and that this is something that I care passionately about, and that all the different things that sort of drew me to journalism without really knowing it and kept me in journalism are things that you can explore really deeply and really well in education. And there are things about equity and opportunity and questions about sort of research and how research affects policy or not. That's always been really interesting to me. I've also been really interested in how people learn, too.
[00:09:55.460] - Speaker 2
That's just been something that I've been even before I became an education reporter. I think I was thinking about a lot.
[00:10:00.550] - Speaker 1
Wow, that's so interesting. So kind of connect some dots for me. I just recently relistened to your latest piece, what the Word Say? And you do such a wonderful job of really connecting the issues of equity and literacy instruction and education in general. So kind of go back to what you said about yourself and that perception of yourself as having some privilege and then how you ended up in education reporting and how you blend those ideas together for us, because I think that's really you do such a wonderful job of that.
[00:10:42.830] - Speaker 2
Thank you. Let's see. What's the answer to that question? I mean, when I was hired to cover education back in 2008 at American Public Media, the very first project I did actually was about early education. It was about preschool. But then after that, almost all of the stuff I did was really about more at the post secondary level in preparation for post secondary because I was really interested in these questions of what education can do for people and how it can be a force for equity and why it's not more of one potentially. And the question of whether people are prepared for education after College and what happened is that several years ago, I was doing a piece that was about precisely that. It was about the very large number of students who end up in these remedial or developmental education classes when they go to College. And I met a whole lot of people who told me about their struggles with reading, and in particular, one woman who told me she had Dyslexia, and I didn't know anything about Dyslexia. And this woman had never been evaluated in any kind of formal way that she knew of.
[00:11:57.010] - Speaker 2
She had sort of self identified as someone with Dyslexia. And she just told me this extraordinary story of just how difficult reading was for her, how no one really ever taught her how to do it, how she figured out ways to get through school and do okay and graduate from College. And she really wanted to be a nurse, and she was super persistent about it. And she was from a family background that was kind of troubled, and they didn't have a lot of money, and there was no one there to sort of really notice or help her with the problems that she was having. She had an older sister who really kind of did a lot of the reading for her and had she memorized a whole lot of stuff, like the amount of stuff that she was able to just memorize. And she just told me this extraordinary story and I didn't know anything about Dyslexia. And I got really interested in the question of just learning disabilities writ large, whether or not the part of our problem with all these people going into remedial education in College was under identified, unidentified learning disabilities that hadn't been dealt with well.
[00:12:59.550] - Speaker 2
And then I quickly learned, of course, the absolutely most common learning disability is reading, and quickly got very interested in Dyslexia and understanding what that is. But very quickly, really through Dyslexia advocates was really introduced to this gigantic body of research on reading, which I really didn't know. I mean, I get to know a little bit about it, but I've never really dug into it. I didn't really know much about it. And it became very clear in that reporting on Dyslexia that people who have Dyslexia, which is a question obviously, we know that reading abilities on this continuum and that the kids who are really struggling with reading in school are like sort of Canaries in the coal mine that we have this larger problem where all kids are not sort of being consistently taught in a way that's going to add up to them becoming good readers. We just leave too much chance because the instruction is not grounded. What we know about what skilled reading is, just what it is, how it develops, and then what's wrong when people struggle? And so when kids are struggling with reading in school, I think a lot of the problem is that the teachers themselves and this is not their fault, haven't been taught what they really should know about reading and how it works.
[00:14:17.820] - Speaker 2
They don't really understand what's up when kids are struggling, and so they don't really know what to do about it. And this cycle where they're sort of like waiting for it all to come together like magic. And for some kids, it does. And for a lot of kids, it doesn't.
[00:14:32.570] - Speaker 1
You bring up an interesting when you talk about the woman who wanted to be the nurse and how she had kind of compensated throughout her schooling, her sister read to her. She kind of made her way through. I think that happens a lot more than we know. Students who look like readers sound like readers, act like readers are really compensating for not really having that deep neural system that allows them to really get that text off the page.
[00:15:02.430] - Speaker 2
Yes, quickly, efficiently, deeply. That is one of the things that's been very moving to me in response to the reporting that I've done is I hear from struggling readers all the time, and they tell me about how they've kept it secret, all the ways that they hide it, the shame that they have, but also the extraordinary ways that they can be very successful anyway. They memorize the words they need to know, and you can be sort of in a set very intelligent, very people who've been very successful can really learn what they need to know. I mean, scientists in certain fields learn the words they need to know for their field. This woman, Sarah, learned all the phrases and things she needed to know about nursing. She eventually got out of that remedial class. She almost didn't. I mean, that was almost the end of College for her. A professor saw that she was really bright and really motivated, but she just couldn't read very well and she really couldn't spell at all and figured out a way to get her through. And she got her nursing degree without really cracking a book. She just like she can memorize a lot of stuff, and she did what she needed to know, but it's taxing and tiring and she feels ashamed about it.
[00:16:22.930] - Speaker 2
And she's limited in some of the things that she can do in her life. And so she's in this incredible success story. And yet if someone had taught her some basic things about written language, she'd be in a better spot today. It doesn't necessarily mean she'd be like a great reader. Right. But she could know so much more. She could understand so much more about the English selling system, for example, which is just a complete mystery to her. It's a complete mystery to a lot of people because we don't teach it to them when they're five and six.
[00:16:53.220] - Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because I think about that's a heartbreaking story. I mean, it's a success story, but it's also a heartbreaking story. I know your work has really struck a chord with people like her, people who struggle to read. Who else do you think has really been deeply moved by the work that you've put out there?
[00:17:21.510] - Speaker 2
I think that this work has gotten a lot of response because this is really like a problem hiding in plain sight. So I have heard from a lot of parents. Like I said, they were really the ones who showed me the story initially. But I think the other group of people that are very moving for me to hear from and I hear from all the time are teachers, because I think that all the debates and disagreements about reading have really teachers have sort of been sometimes cast as they're sort of like collateral damage in it all somehow, and they get blamed or they feel blamed. And I think what happens is that when so many teachers in this country are either not really taught much at all about reading, when they're in their teacher preparation programs or they're taught or sort of pick up a kind of collection of ideas that turn out not to be quite right and that sort of leave them astray and so many people, as, you know, kind of go into teacher prep and they're taught a bunch of different theories and different things about reading. And they sort of choose their own approach, their own philosophy, what works best for them, what works best for their kids, teachers, some of them really see it right away.
[00:18:46.080] - Speaker 2
They come out of teacher preparation and they're assigned to teach first grade, and they realize, oh, my God, I don't know anything about how to teach reading. Other teachers think, well, I'm going to take all the stuff I did learn and I'm going to apply it and do as well as I can. But most teachers, I think in this country who have not been introduced to the scientific research on reading and how to apply that translating into practice is much harder than just learning it when they start to learn about it, it's just these huge AHA moments for them, like, oh, right. And they see their own students from the past. They see the kids who struggle. They're like, if I had only done that or that, I think that's what was going on with that kid, and they feel guilt, which is awful. This is not the teacher's fault. Teachers aren't being taught this stuff and they're being taught stuff is incorrect. Teachers who learn this stuff are really, really grateful. But it's a problem because when teachers do learn it, when they really dig in and learn the stuff, they realize how much there is to learn.
[00:19:55.700] - Speaker 2
There's so much to learn, which I think is the biggest challenge we face, is that really teaching teachers what they need to know about this stuff, to teach little kids how to read? Well, there's a lot for teachers to know, and our whole teacher preparation system isn't really set up to train teachers very well or very long for much of anything. So there's a long way to go.
[00:20:18.250] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And I feel that way. I reflect on my own coming up as a teacher. And when I came up as a teacher, we were taught a lot of different activities to do with kids and multiple kind of ideas around reading. And I always think about this ideas around reading, but not how do children acquire the ability to read and how does instruction match that? That's the part that I think is really missing. And I really appreciate that you're bold in your reporting. When you say many teachers were taught something that is incorrect. And your second reporting, the flawed idea, teaching millions of kids to be poor readers, that really was, again, bold, I think. And I'm guessing that you probably had so much response to that one in particular because the flawed idea that you called out is one that is pervasive in both teacher preparation and practice.
[00:21:25.850] - Speaker 2
Yeah. It's sort of like this elephant in the room kind of I guess that's what that piece did. It's like no one really wants to name names or say the thing. I think these debates about reading have gotten kind of stuck in this fight about phonics, honestly. Right. And phonics is sort of one piece of it. And there's plenty to talk about in terms of phonics, like how to teach it and all the other things that kids really need to know to understand the written language, which is really the message that I'm trying to deliver. This is not about phonics instruction. It's about the fact that when a little kid comes to school, they know how to say a lot of words and they don't know how to read and write them yet. And they need to learn, they need to figure out how their written language works to access that it's something different. And as we know, it's a different process, and a lot of kids need explicit teaching. So, yeah, I think the arguments about phonics has distracted us because now it enables people to say, yes, I'm for phonics. And here's some phonics.
[00:22:39.470] - Speaker 2
And number one, we need to have more, better conversations about phonics instruction itself. And number two, it allows everything else to stay in place. And it's almost like what really needs to happen, I think in schools is almost like a time use audit, like go in to elementary classrooms and in your literacy block, which in a lot of schools is an hour or 90 minutes or 2 hours or there's two blocks a day, we spend a lot of time teaching kids how to read. But like you said, what we really do, if there's a bunch of activities and processes and systems to move kids around and you give them a little bit of independent reading, a little bit of guided reading, a little bit of phonics instruction, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it adds up to readers. And that does add up to reading for some kids.
[00:23:31.750] - Speaker 1
For some kids. Right? Yeah.
[00:23:34.200] - Speaker 2
The problem is that I tried to point out in this most recent piece, when you're sort of like you give them a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and when it doesn't equal reading, two things happen. You either say, well, that kid must have some kind of disability, right. Okay, maybe kids need special Ed or that kid is from some sort of impoverished environment. They weren't read to enough. The parents aren't paying attention, and parents are told all the time, just read more to your kids. Reading kids is absolutely great and really important and build a foundation for good reading. But a kid who's struggling to learn how to read in first grade, you could read to that kid till the cows come home.
[00:24:15.770] - Speaker 1
It's not going to matter. Yeah. I mean, I was again reflecting back on my own experience, which I went to College a long time ago, but I still hear from even very young teachers that this is what they're taught as well, that there's a parallel between learning to read and learning to speak, and that if we model and immerse kids in print and let them explore print, that somehow all of this is going to come together. And again, if we learn to read maybe that way or we don't remember explicit instruction, we think that that is real for most kids, if not all kids. So kind of breaking through that. And I think that's what's really important. But you bring up something else that I think is really critical. When you said that teachers, when they're available to this information, which they don't necessarily get in their teacher preparation, there's this sense of why didn't I learn this? And they reflect on all these students and there is a sense of guilt and there is a sense of how do I make up for that? And I'm sure you see that in your work.
[00:25:21.800] - Speaker 2
I do. And I hear from teachers at all grade levels, too. So I hear from those kindergarten and first 2nd grade teachers, but I hear from middle school teachers and high school teachers a lot who two things. Either they've kind of always known they had these kids who weren't reading and what's going on in the early grades or they're sort of getting introduced to this whole science of reading thing and having different AHA's about what's really going on with their kids, like finally realizing they have these kids who really don't read. They read, but it's sort of halting and flow and not very fluent. And what we know from the reading research is those kids have not orthographically mapped all those words to their mind. There's there's something that's really missing in terms of understanding of the structure of language. And as we know, as I really tried to point out in this most recent piece, this stuff just like accumulates so quickly. So this is why it's so incredibly important to get this right in kindergarten, first grade, because we've got the kids who get good instruction and or basically get it. There's one group of kids who get it and they're just like off and running.
[00:26:26.710] - Speaker 2
And then there's this other not small group of kids who are not. And what happens is that the primary task of your first task in school when you're a little kid is learning how to read. And if that is confusing to you, if that is not coming together, it gets in the way of so many other things, it starts to impede your ability to keep up in other classes. It starts to affect your feelings about school in general school. You don't like school. I mean, the number of parents that I've talked to who talk about how they have first graders and second graders who throw fits and they won't get on the school bus and they want to come home sick and they talk about wanting to die when they're eight years old because they can't reap. And I've heard that from so many.
[00:27:10.260] - Speaker 1
Kids that is just unfathomable. It's heartbreaking. Yes. And I think about a five year old start school eager to learn to read and eager to learn to write. And one thing you said, I think is really important because teachers want to deliver on that promise. Right. They want that for their students. When you say that this is not the teacher's fault, this is just not something that they were prepared to do, I think that's a really important point that you make. Another point that I really love that you make is this isn't about phonics. And sometimes people add phonics to their existing program, and it isn't about adding phonics, it's about what are we doing in the whole. Right. How are those pieces being integrated and how are we doing that for students so that they see how unlocking the alphabetic code leads them into print and then how phonic decoding leads them into orthographic mapping and how that automaticity leads them into fluency. Right. It kind of comes back to how do we help teachers understand that process that readers go through so they can make those instructional decisions every day?
[00:28:29.330] - Speaker 2
I think one of the larger tensions here that needs more attention is that the bare argument in reading instruction is not really as much anymore about phonics versus no phonics. It is really about direct teaching versus a more constructivist approach. Right. So what we know from a lot of the scientific research on reading is that the unifying thing that it calls for is effective, is direct and explicit teaching. And we are a nation that is really very fond of something else, not direct, explicit teaching. And in fact, I think a lot of teachers are really taught to believe that that's not good for kids, that it's much better to put them in an environment where they discover things lover and explore and discovery and exploration is great. But I think one of the things that sort of misunderstood in education is that the difference between being a novice and being an expert. What does someone who is a novice at something need to know to become an expert? What we know is a lot of the stuff that's so popular in schools about discovery learning and hands on learning. It's not like we should take all of it's, not like we don't let kids do that.
[00:29:47.680] - Speaker 2
But the point is that when you don't know about anything, you need a grounding in the thing before you're really going to get a lot out of the discovery and discover things for yourself. So if you become a really good reader at a young age, a lot of the routines that are in place in reading instruction would work much better once kids are sort of expert in the basics of this can apply to science education, too. There's a lot of stuff that happens in science education in the name of letting kids explore things for themselves. And what we know from the research is that kids need to learn some basic things so that they have those AHA moments in their explorations rather than confusion. And I think that's what's happening. It's just like a lot of kids are coming to school and the way that they're taught to read is confusing. They just don't know what to make of it, and they can't add it all up and they don't have the extra support at home to make it all add up. We know that some kids really do kind of get taught by their parents, or if there's really a struggle going on, those parents pay for tutoring or they figure out a way to make it work.
[00:30:52.590] - Speaker 2
And this is why this is really an equity issue, because if we don't teach kids how to read, it's the kids who don't have an option outside of school who suffer the most. We should be teaching all kids to read in school rich, poor, white, black, whatever. But some kids are okay in the end, no matter what their schools do. And some kids are really dependent on what their school does for them.
[00:31:18.620] - Speaker 1
Well, and I'm glad you brought that up, because I see such a clear connection between reading instruction, reading achievement, and equitable access to high quality education. And this makes this such a compelling social justice issue. And that really comes through in your work. And I think that's a really important thing for us to really reckon with.
[00:31:42.170] - Speaker 2
I agree. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that and to really see I think that one of the problems written large is that we have to sort of like flip the script. The assumption about reading instruction is that most kids will be okay and some kids will need a lot of direct teaching, and it's the opposite. Some kids do not need much direct teaching, but a whole lot of kids do. And the other thing, of course, is the good direct teaching by a teacher who really understands the English language. It's going to help kids be better spellers. I can't tell you how many people tell me that they're good readers, but they can't really spell. And you realize what you're missing out a lot on how English works. You really are nice. Yeah.
[00:32:32.540] - Speaker 1
And I think that spelling, to me, is one of the windows into if a child is struggling.
[00:32:38.480] - Speaker 2
Right.
[00:32:38.730] - Speaker 1
Because we talked about kids who can compensate as readers, but a lot of times then we look at their spelling and is their spelling can measure it with that reading. And sometimes that's a window to understanding that there is a struggle there. So I think that is worthy of attention as well. When I think about, you know, you mentioned that struggling readers, that you really strike a chord. And with teachers, what kind of pushback do you get from your reporting?
[00:33:10.550] - Speaker 2
Well, certainly some teachers feel blamed. I think I've been very careful in my reporting, not to do that. And I've heard from many teachers who recognize that and appreciate it, but it's inevitable that this is going to feel like they're being blamed. I think that's one of the ways that just human beings also deal with things that are hard or those initial feelings of guilt. I think the pushback comes from people who are invested in the status quo for some reason. And I'm not saying that in some sort of evil intent, but there are some people who have found success with the way or they think they have with the way that they're reading. It may be that they have it may be that they're in a school that is tilted towards a lot of kids who are going to do okay no matter what. Like some people are in schools like that. Some teachers don't realize how much help some of their kids are getting outside of school. Some people have made their careers on writing papers and producing curriculum and doing things that don't align very well with the scientific research. There's a big industry in the United States around professional development and curriculum materials, materials.
[00:34:31.780] - Speaker 1
No question.
[00:34:32.420] - Speaker 2
It's a big old ocean of stuff that is not particularly well aligned with the science of reading and is not aligned with the idea of direct and explicit teaching.
[00:34:40.860] - Speaker 1
Exactly. And there are a lot of curriculum resources out there that are predominant in the marketplace. Right. That do not align to any of this. And that's something that I think really needs, again, to be reckoned with in this discussion. I want to go back to what you were mentioning about the constructivism and this idea. The kids learn best through exploration and discovery versus explicit instruction. Do you also think that there's kind of a social political aspect to that?
[00:35:13.650] - Speaker 2
Yes, absolutely. But I think that the social political aspect is very complicated. So the very simple version is sort of like a conservative versus Liberal or progressive. That's a very simple thing. And certainly that's a charge that's been put at people who've come out for the science of reading or explicit instruction in particular. They're traditionalists.
[00:35:34.530] - Speaker 1
They're Conservatives.
[00:35:37.130] - Speaker 2
Yeah, but that turns out not to be true. Certainly there are some sort of Conservatives who are, but there are plenty of people in the reading research world who I think are very Liberal on many things, politically speaking. And what they've done is looked at the body of evidence on educational approaches, which really shows a lot of evidence for direct instruction. We have this huge meta analysis of direct instruction a couple of years ago. There's really nothing else in education that's so well proven, but only of like a very small percentage of schools teach that way. People who looked at the body of evidence come out for a certain way of doing things, and it goes so against the ocean of what is sort of accepted in education. No one think it's telling teachers what to do. Teachers are taught, too, in their teacher preparation, that they're supposed to design their own curriculum and make up their own lessons. And we know that a lot of schools, what's really happening is a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and the teacher really planning her mostly own lessons and going to Google and teachers pay teachers and think about it with the extraordinary amount of work that is what teachers have come to accept somehow.
[00:36:53.100] - Speaker 2
I actually remember when I was sort of trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I had a lot of friends who went into Teach for America in the very early days of America, and I remember sort of observing their experience, and they were put in some very challenging situations with very little training. And I don't know that I would have known how to say it then. But I think the thing that I really realized is they weren't really given anything to teach, like what to teach. And in this country, we're really agnostic on the what. And we know from the science of reading, this gets us into political conversations because these are political choices when it comes down to what content you're going to teach kids. And there's so much evidence on the side of certain things. But at the end of the day, there's no way to do education without making choices that are sort of political in nature, moral and nature. If you want a school that sort of designed in a constructivist approach, what we know is that there's a lot of evidence to do it in a different way.
[00:38:04.510] - Speaker 2
But that could be a choice that people make. People pay a lot of money for private schools that are set up that way. People live in Washington, DC, and they pay many, many thousands of dollars a year because that's what they want their kids in. But when we're talking about public education and public dollars, we need to be looking at what we know works. That gets us to the one of the hardest parts of this whole science of reading thing, which is like really identifying places that have made it work. There are so many pieces, but it's not like you go in, you do the science of reading for two years, and suddenly all the kids read really well. I mean, first of all, our date scores aren't aligned to any particular curriculum or context. That's part of our problem is we're sort of chasing this weird end where we are not willing to make a decision. And I'm not saying we should. This is a political choice, but we haven't been willing in this country to make a decision that there's certain stuff we want all kids to know. We're going to teach them that stuff and test them on that stuff.
[00:39:11.170] - Speaker 2
But it's really led us astray yeah, it's interesting.
[00:39:16.640] - Speaker 1
I was speaking to a younger teacher recently and she said, I came out of teacher prep thinking that I was supposed to know all this when I went into the classroom, that I was given choice in autonomy and that that was a good thing and that I wasn't supposed to. This is how she felt, her perception. I was supposed to know, and I was supposed to be able to make all these choices as an autonomous educator in a classroom. And I said, yeah, I think that's really pervasive this idea that teacher autonomy is really important. But I think that puts an unfair burden on teachers a lot of times. Right. Somehow I'm supposed to figure this all out.
[00:40:00.400] - Speaker 2
Exactly. And the way we do teacher prep in this country, maybe you've had your last two years of College, or maybe you went to a one year preparation program. Right. And then you're in a classroom. It's an impossible thing that we're asking teachers to do. And we don't pay teachers enough, we don't respect them enough. And yet this idea that they have to plan all their lessons and be autonomous means they spend all their weekends lesson planning. They spend their nights lesson planning. And some of the people that point out the curriculum is the teachers learn the curriculum and they deliver those lessons, and it takes a lot of the burden. They are not curriculum designers. Instructional design is not their thing. But it's difficult because any one curriculum includes all kinds of different choices. Right. About what to teach them. Exactly.
[00:40:48.920] - Speaker 1
And I think that I kind of felt this way as a beginning teacher that there was some publisher out there that had all good intentions, and they had this team of experts that were putting together a program that was based on the evidence and that was solid instruction for kids. And so again, reckoning with that these instruction materials aren't necessarily coming from a place that really draws on the evidence base.
[00:41:18.650] - Speaker 2
There's probably never going to be a perfect curriculum, right? No, I think the sort of twist in this whole conversation is that I do think at the end of the day, it does come down to teacher knowledge and some kind of autonomy. Like at the end of the day, it's really about what the teachers know about reading and the English language and what's going on when kids struggle. And I think that's one of the problems, even of trying to chase some perfect curriculum, because any curriculum is as good as how well it's implemented, how well the teachers understand. And I think what a lot of people like you have learned is there's a lot of different curriculum that can work in the hands of a knowledgeable teacher, skilled teacher, and a skilled teacher can know what things in a curriculum not to use. There are some curriculum that some people will say to me that curriculum is terrible. And other people will say, I think it's great. And I think it's all about how it gets used, which is why it becomes very hard to measure this stuff. Right. Like school A implements this curriculum and school B implements this.
[00:42:22.500] - Speaker 2
And can you connect that to reading outcomes? There's so much that happens in the middle. Plus we know that around half of the kids, it doesn't really matter how.
[00:42:29.160] - Speaker 1
You teach them anyway. Right? I know. Yeah.
[00:42:33.260] - Speaker 2
So difficult to kind of prove this stuff and to show it, and yet it's very convincing. The thing that I think is very compelling to me about this topic is the basic scientific research itself is very compelling to many teachers when they learn it because it is so different from what they've learned. And it does provoke a lot of thought. It does resonate when they hear about the basic science of reading. They see that, they see that is what is going on in my kids minds, and it's really empowering and they want more.
[00:43:10.610] - Speaker 1
I agree with you. I know that when I speak to groups of teachers and I talk about this robust body of evidence over 40 years, and when I mentioned it's the most studied aspect of human learning, these are big AHAs for teachers. So it does kind of go back to how are we preparing teachers and the myriad decisions that teachers make every day. Yes, she's got these resources, curriculum resources, but she has to make decisions every day on how to use that. And so if the throughline or the underpinning of her teacher preparation is understanding how children learn to read, she can make those decisions based on that knowledge. Right.
[00:43:56.750] - Speaker 2
And it is so ironic when you say the teachers that it's the most studied aspect of human learning because there's this weird situation, I think, within schools. Like parents definitely go through this when their kid is struggling or whatever, where there's almost this, like, we don't really know. It's sort of a mystery. How do kids really learn how to read? I think that ends up being sort of like the message in schools or teachers are like, I'm doing everything I was told and it's not adding up for some kids. So it's just a mystery. And then when they realize this is so studied and we know so much and so much of this stuff has settled in the scientific community, that's a big haul for them. But I know, as you know, in the reading League, the question of translating it into practice is a whole other thing, and that's not necessarily, like, proven or figured out.
[00:44:43.700] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And that's the gap.
[00:44:45.370] - Speaker 2
Right.
[00:44:45.920] - Speaker 1
How do we bridge that knowledge into practice? That's really the gap. Yeah. As I mentioned in the opening, as I mentioned, I'm just deeply grateful because I feel like you really elevated the conversation around reading instruction, around teacher preparation. Do you think we're making any progress since your first report? When you look back over this last.
[00:45:11.410] - Speaker 2
Few years, it's really hard for me to know. Obviously. I think there's a lot of conversation going I mean, I think there's a national conversation going on. I don't think that's just because of my reporting. I think I came along and did the reporting because, like I said earlier, the problem hiding in plain sight. It's already because a whole lot of people parents, researchers, teachers who've learned the science. Right. There's been a whole bunch of people for quite a long time. We know that people have been fighting for this for a very trying to bring it to schools for a long time. But I think maybe it's like having I think maybe like enough forces are coming together. I think the big tipping point at all really is the parents. I think the parents and then also the teachers, because a lot of teachers are parents, too. And as you know, a lot of teachers come to their big AHA moments when they've been teaching first grade for five years, and then they have a kid who can't read and they realize, I don't know how to teach her how to read. And they think, what kind of a first grade?
[00:46:09.920] - Speaker 2
I mean, I have so many teachers have broken down.
[00:46:13.130] - Speaker 1
I totally agreed. Yeah.
[00:46:15.890] - Speaker 2
I think the most powerful actors in all of this who potentially have the power to really tip the scales against a kind of research community and a publishing community and sort of a public policy community that sometimes tilted a different way. Right. There's like a big Titanic of all that stuff. And then there's parents and teachers who are a powerful force saying, like, my kid can't read, can't read, my kids can't read. So I think there's a lot of conversation going on, and I think that's great. And I think my reporting has helped distill some of this stuff for people. But, you know, it's always a delicate moment when conversation like this is going on. Right. Because conversation has gone on about this at a sort of a national level many times before. And I think in some ways, we're in the position we're in because there's sort of been like an action reaction to things that have happened, different kinds of federal and state efforts to codify this stuff and impose it. And then there's a big reaction against it. A lot of what we see out there that's sort of popular in the world of reading materials or companies and people who come along to sort of say, like, we're not big, bad publishers, we're on your side.
[00:47:31.170] - Speaker 2
They speak the language of teachers. They know what they want, but they're selling some ideas about reading that really aren't adding up for a lot of kids.
[00:47:42.140] - Speaker 1
Right. Exactly. Yeah. So what are your hopes for the work that you've done so far? What do you really hope will happen next? What's kind of the next step?
[00:47:54.770] - Speaker 2
Well, in my work in particular? Well, I mean, I'm hoping to stay on this topic for a long time. I feel like there are years of reporting left to do to really just actually document what's happening. I feel like what I've been able to do as a reporter is sort of some basic sort of explanatory journalism, kind of explaining the science to people and sort of show what's wrong. I would really love to be able to document more of what's happening over time. And I also really would like to sort of better understand how this happened. How did we end up here? How did it happen that there's 40, 50 years of scientific research on something and so many teachers don't know about it? And part of the answer to that is that findings from scientific research don't make their way into the real world that easily all over the place. We know that this is difficult. There's resistance. But I guess I would like to better understand that as a journalist that happened because I think that's an important part of understanding how it maybe cannot happen again. Right.
[00:49:09.670] - Speaker 1
Yeah. I was talking to Tim Shanahan about this, and he was saying that of the professions that you see out there, teaching is a unique profession in that we don't necessarily bring our teachers up to understand research and to understand effect size and quantitative versus qualitative. And so really helping teachers understand and discern what is evidence, because I'm sure you heard this in your reporting, and I hear this a lot when I speak to groups of teachers. Well, Laura, you can make research, say whatever you want. And so I think that's part of the piece, when you mentioned science that is sometimes intimidating to people, when that should be part of a professional preparation in a profession in which there is a body of evidence.
[00:50:05.850] - Speaker 2
That'S our larger world, too. We live in a time as human beings where we actually know a lot about a lot of things. And yet we live in a world where people can have their own opinions about stuff and kind of go find the evidence that they want for their opinions about things. And it's sort of scary the world that we live in in terms of holding on to what's actually known and knowledge is a contested thing always. And obviously, that's one of the biggest you asked earlier about pushback to the work. And I think this general question of sort of like my science, your science kind of thing, it's true. I think what's happened is that there's been a huge amount of research on reading that has largely not been done in schools of education. It's been done by cognitive scientists, psychology. Right. Exactly. For people in schools of education, that feels like a little bit of an incursion, an invasion, like we've been doing this other it's not like a lot of the stuff that's been going on in schools of education has been valuable for other reasons. It's just that a lot of the stuff that's been done around reading and early reading instruction turns out to be at odds with some of the stuff in cognitive science.
[00:51:18.910] - Speaker 2
And you do have to kind of weigh the evidence and think like, okay, there's a really big weight of evidence over here on the stuff that these cognitive scientists figured out. It's time for the School of Education research to be affected by that.
[00:51:34.060] - Speaker 1
Right. You even see evidence of how those two departments don't even speak to one another, don't even come together to merge their understandings. So, Emily, what are you working on now?
[00:51:47.730] - Speaker 2
Well, I am hoping to do more of this reporting, trying to get to answer some questions about sort of why and how. I'm not quite sure how I'm doing that yet. And I really would like to continue this work for many years to come. So I'm working on trying to sort of establish tell APM how much there is to do here, how much more work can be done. So, yeah, I'm hoping that be there. Will more projects to come. These things take a long time. I've got a couple of other people working with me now. I was doing a lot of this as a reporter. I was really solo. We've actually hired a couple of more reporters who are working with me now. And so we've got some ideas for a big project that we're working on. In a year or so, people will hear about.
[00:52:32.780] - Speaker 1
Okay. Well, we can't wait to hear about that because like I said, we're just so appreciative of the work you've done so far. So there's one niggling question that's just been kind of rolling around in my head. When you talked about how you left College with one semester to go and you just did a lot of reading, was there anything in particular that you read that was really impactful that you can name? Oh, wow. Or just do a lot of different reading.
[00:52:59.910] - Speaker 2
I'm struggling to come up with a title of a book. I don't know. I don't know from that period of my life, a lot was going on with me emotionally. So, like, I don't even know if I have very good memories of that period of my life.
[00:53:14.590] - Speaker 1
Yeah. But nonetheless, you said it was the best decision you made, right?
[00:53:19.970] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Because when I went back to College, I really got so much out of it. I ended up actually paying off for a year and a half, and then I just had one semester left, and I just knew what I wanted out of my education at that point. And that's a long time to finally be like, I know what I want out of my education now. I feel like College is often wasted on the young.
[00:53:42.830] - Speaker 1
Right.
[00:53:43.710] - Speaker 2
A lot of money to send 18 year olds to College. And I think some 18 year olds really know how to get a lot out of it, but I didn't. So I appreciated the sort of intellectual endeavor and just got so much more out of it when I went back.
[00:53:57.730] - Speaker 1
That's great.
[00:53:58.300] - Speaker 2
And then I never even went to graduate school.
[00:54:00.340] - Speaker 1
Yes. Well, I'm really grateful you took that time because it led you to where you are now. And that's kind of how I always kind of frame decisions like that around. If you hadn't made that decision, you wouldn't be where you are now. Right. In those big life decisions. Well, thank you for this. This has just been a great conversation. I wish we could go on and on because there's so much more to say. But I really appreciate your reporting. I appreciate what you bring out there to the world for those of us in education. And I appreciate the articulate way in which you're able to express these ideas, these big ideas around reading instructions. So thank you for that. But I do want to end with some rapid fire questions here. So here we go. Who was your favorite teacher growing up and why?
[00:54:55.710] - Speaker 2
I had several, probably Mrs. Stanley. She was my 7th and 8th grade English teacher. And what I remember about her, she was one of the first people who really introduced me to content. We read Shakespeare Folkner, Carson McCullough's. Like, I remember really reading, and I was an English major in College, and I feel like I think I read more sort of good classic books than Mrs. Stanley. We read a lot, and then we wrote a ton. Obviously, we had these journals, and every night we just had to write. And I would write and write and write in response to what we were reading. She would give us prompts. We would just write personal things. She would go through there. So it was like and then, you know, she taught us how to diagram sentences. And I loved it. I know so much.
[00:55:49.610] - Speaker 1
I know.
[00:55:50.850] - Speaker 2
So it's like Mrs. Stanley kind of gave me, when I think about it now, like sort of all the things you need. Like, I got this rich content she has. Right and right and right and right and right. And I got this structured instruction. I learned how to I really learned a lot about English grammar. And I know a lot of people say there's no evidence behind diagramming sentences, but it was good for me.
[00:56:12.360] - Speaker 1
That's so funny because I love that, too. And a good middle school teacher is like the best.
[00:56:18.340] - Speaker 2
Right.
[00:56:18.950] - Speaker 1
And I had the same experience. I had a middle school teacher, and she read aloud Greek mythology, and it was amazing. And then we also did a lot of sentence diagramming, which I love, too, so I totally can relate to that. Okay. Name a favorite book either as a child or as an adult.
[00:56:38.890] - Speaker 2
A favor.
[00:56:39.470] - Speaker 1
Notice I say a favorite not your favorite because you probably have a lot.
[00:56:45.250] - Speaker 2
One of the things I realize in life now. So really in my life, I've loved fiction so much, and I almost don't have the head space for fiction anymore. I can read it when I'm on vacation. I just was on vacation and I read a few novels, but I read a few novels every year, and it's when I'm on vacation. But what I do remember when I was a kid, I'm old enough that I was pre Internet, pre computers, all that just how much I would just get sucked into books. And I really didn't read a ton as a kid. But the books that I remember the most, I really wanted those, like Page Turners. I was the kind of kid who was walking down the street with like a book. And I remember. Do you remember the flowers in the attic? Do you remember?
[00:57:27.400] - Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh, yes.
[00:57:30.010] - Speaker 2
Horrible books. Those are the books I remember because there were like a whole bunch of them and they were horrible. It's like these four kids were locked up in an attic of their wealthy grandparents and there was like incest and abuse. And it was.
[00:57:42.050] - Speaker 1
Yeah, but they were really popular, right?
[00:57:44.550] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:57:46.870] - Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. Yeah. The Pace Turner. I was that kid, too.
[00:57:50.460] - Speaker 2
I was the kid who walked down.
[00:57:51.500] - Speaker 1
The hall stumbling because I had the.
[00:57:53.900] - Speaker 2
Book in front of me.
[00:57:54.750] - Speaker 1
I totally get that. What are you reading right now? You mentioned going on vacation, reading some fiction. What are you reading right now?
[00:58:01.890] - Speaker 2
Well, I just read a nice novel. I have it here. Fever by Mary Beth Kane. It's a novel about Typhoid Mary. So I thought that was kind of interesting given.
[00:58:09.750] - Speaker 1
Oh, interesting. Okay.
[00:58:12.070] - Speaker 2
I've been reading this book, Robert Carroll, who wrote this huge he's written this epic thing about Lyndon B. Johnson, and he's just written a short memoir, which is about researching, interviewing, and writing. And it's just reflective for my life. And then I mentioned before that there was that big meta analysis about direct instruction a few years ago, people who did that just wrote this book called All Students Can Succeed. It's about 50 years of research on direct instruction, and it's really good. I just read that whole book this weekend.
[00:58:47.210] - Speaker 1
Awesome.
[00:58:47.840] - Speaker 2
Great.
[00:58:48.300] - Speaker 1
Okay, so three recommendations from Emily Hanford. What do you have on your desk that symbolizes you or that is dear to you?
[00:58:59.870] - Speaker 2
Well, I have these things taped up on the bookshelf next to me, and I just realized I have a whole bunch of things. There's like a watercolor that my mom made and quotes and stuff. But I have two things from my kids. I have this little poem that my youngest son made for me. He's probably in like second grade or something. There's a little picture of me and he says it's a poem that starts for mom, cute and mindful, funny and nice. I wish I could take you out to dinner. And it keeps going. So I don't know. This is my cute little fun.
[00:59:30.630] - Speaker 1
That is adorable. Oh, my gosh.
[00:59:33.000] - Speaker 2
And then the other one. That's been funny. I haven't read this in a while, but when my older son went to College, he's a junior in College. Now. Someone gave me this New Yorker cartoon, and it says, I've been a mess since Jake left for College. So now we have a boy who comes in a couple of times a week to leave wet towels all over and challenge everything I say. And the funny thing about that is that my older son, he leaves wet towels everywhere, and he went away to College, but now he's back 20 years old, and he's actually like, he's working a job and he's very mature in so many ways. But. Oh, my God, are there what tells them?
[01:00:09.180] - Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh. Spoken like a true mother of boys. Yeah, I know. When my son left home, the one thing that was missing was the smell of socks.
[01:00:21.590] - Speaker 2
Right. Okay.
[01:00:23.650] - Speaker 1
And last question, what are your greatest hopes for today's children?
[01:00:30.410] - Speaker 2
I really do hope that this conversation happening around reading leads to some real change really sticks, really. We've had these conversations before, but I hope something is different this time. And I'm really worried about what's like, I'm worried about the world right now, this year of instruction in Kobe and kids who are going to lose out and the long term effects on those on so many kids for so many reasons. But the little kids who are kindergarteners, first and second graders right now, what are we going to do as schools in a society to make up for that lost instruction? Because we know so many of those kids weren't getting that instruction anyway, and now they're losing, even though many teachers are doing their darndest. But it's not easy.
[01:01:21.870] - Speaker 1
You're exactly right. I totally share that as well. Well, thank you, Emily, for this wide ranging conversation. And I hope we have another opportunity to speak maybe when all of this is over and we're all traveling again and we can be in person. That's a hope that I have. But in the meantime, again, thank you so much, and we really appreciate the work you're putting out there and look forward to your next piece.
[01:01:51.210] - Speaker 2
Thanks for sharing the work.
[01:01:52.920] - Speaker 1
All right. Thanks, Emily.
[01:01:54.530] - Speaker 2
Okay, bye.
[01:01:55.310] - Speaker 1
Take care. Bye bye. So thank you so much for listening today. Quite sure that you, like me, really enjoyed Emily's insights and her passion. We here at the Reading League are committed to bringing you these important conversations and also to providing you with some valuable resources. So if you haven't already checked us out, please do so www.thereadingleg.org and you'll learn about our mission. You'll learn about our knowledge base and the resources that we offer. And we really encourage you to become a member. Also, check out our Facebook group because we have a robust community of educators. You that want to be involved in sharing insights and learning from one another. So please join us. Thank you for tuning in and we hope to see you next time.