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As a student growing up with a learning difference, Rupen Fofaria brings a particular empathy and vulnerability to his writing. He offers a storyteller’s sensibility in his reporting, and his work truly embodies the Gandhi quote he lives by: “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” In this podcast episode we’ll dig into the power of story, Rupen’s background and influences (including his life-changing moment with Mr. Boggs), and the journey that has brought him to focus his reporting on the intersection of literacy and equity.
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.
[00:00:00.730] - Speaker 1
Today's episode is sponsored by Hagerty. The Hagerty Curricula has 35 weeks of phonological and phonemic awareness lesson plans aligned to the science of reading. Systematic daily lessons require minimal teacher prep time and take just ten to twelve minutes to complete. The Hagerty Curricula is available in both English and Spanish and is being used by thousands of school districts across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Learn more about the curricula, their intervention books, and decodable readers@hegerty.org that's hegerty.org.
[00:00:51.750] - Speaker 2
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Teaching, Reading, and Learning the TRL Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Stewart, and I am delighted to welcome Rupin Fafario to our podcast today. I met Rupin when I was in North Carolina for an educational event, and I have been following his work ever since. It is a true joy to welcome him so you can learn about his background, his passions, and his work on behalf of teachers, students, and families. So I'll read his biography to you as a way of introduction. Ruben Fafario is a storyteller@ednc.org where he examines how education policy shows up in classrooms and impacts teachers, students, and families. Rubin has invested much of his time since 2019 reporting stories about literacy instruction in North Carolina. His stories about the body of research on how kids learn to read, take readers inside classrooms, advance student and family narratives, explore challenges for early reading teachers, and study best practices in colleges of education. Prior to joining EdNC, Ruben was an attorney in Raleigh and Chicago, practicing startup and intellectual property law, and in his younger days he was a sports writer for ESPN.com, The Rally News and observer, and the Orlando Sentinel.
[00:02:15.450] - Speaker 2
Rupin's passion is shining light on untold and underreported issues. Today we'll explore some of those untold and underreported issues, and we'll focus in on Rupin's wonderful storytelling. You're in for a treat. Thanks for joining us and welcome to the podcast, Rupin Fafario. Well, Rupin, I'm delighted to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:02:52.450] - Speaker 3
Thank you for having me.
[00:02:53.620] - Speaker 2
You bet. So, Ruben, we're going to start with the question I asked. I've been asking all the guests recently, which is what is the quote you live by and return to?
[00:03:05.390] - Speaker 3
I guess throughout the years, probably the quote I most come back to is a Mahatma Gandhi quote, and it goes in a gentle way. You can shake up the world, or I think it's actually in a gentle way, you can shake the world. And I like that. I like the gentle approach. I prefer to lead with love, but I do have just a slight mischievous streak. And so I like the idea of shaking things up, too. I don't really subscribe to a lot of black and white or right and wrong, and so it's not necessarily shaking up things that I don't agree with. It's more shaking up conversation to make sure that we're exploring the whole picture that we're considerate of different lived experiences. To me, that's really the rattle that I like to give to the collective discourse.
[00:04:12.530] - Speaker 2
I love that. And just knowing your work as I do, I see that gentle hand in there, and I greatly appreciate that. I really do.
[00:04:23.070] - Speaker 3
There's a second quote, actually, that I come back to a lot, and it's a Tupac quote. It's from Tupac Shakur. And it goes something like, out of anger comes controversy, out of controversy comes conversation, and out of conversation comes action. And I love that one, too, because it really does guide a lot of the service approach in my writing, where I like to try to process things before anger swells. But fear and anger are natural parts of life, and I think inevitable. But what I love about the quote is the progression, the productive progression to conversation and then to action, because I think you need both.
[00:05:17.070] - Speaker 2
Yes. I love that. Out of anger comes controversy, out of controversy comes conversation, out of conversation comes action. That's really nice.
[00:05:25.820] - Speaker 3
Doesn't it feel like that science of reading alone there felt like there was a time and still sometimes now, but certainly a lot more. A few years ago, I felt a lot more anger in the discourse and really controversy. But in North Carolina, it did feel like it just continued to progress and it did ignite conversation. And from conversation, we did get to action and still lots of action ahead.
[00:05:57.490] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I see that, too. I actually do what I hope is a lessening of kind of this sort of dichotomous thinking and more of a relaxation into the okay, this is what we know we can do. How do we take steps to do it?
[00:06:22.230] - Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:23.340] - Speaker 2
That's nice.
[00:06:23.830] - Speaker 3
Absolutely.
[00:06:25.650] - Speaker 2
I want to get into that even more in terms of what's going on in North Carolina. But how did you get into journalism? Because your background is very interesting. You were an attorney, you were a sports writer, but you've really gotten into journalism, specifically into this arena.
[00:06:48.270] - Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, journalism, I love to tell that story because it is thanks to a teacher. It is thanks to a teacher. I wasn't the best student, academically speaking, when I was a kid. I have a learning difference and was a kid with learning differences. But even though I'd been diagnosed, I don't know if the word is diagnosed, but the school had evaluated me and had made the determination. But my parents who moved here from India, they didn't really understand the education the US education system, learning disabilities carry a lot of stigma culturally. And so they really didn't take any action on that. And so I was a student with the learning difference who wasn't receiving any supports for it. And I remember just being confused about why my friends were able to perform in certain ways that I just couldn't. And I remember teachers telling me a lot, you need to work harder, you need to start trying and I was too embarrassed to say that I was working really hard. I was trying really hard. And so I just sort of suffered in silence until I decided that I wasn't that smart. I probably was just not that smart.
[00:08:16.970] - Speaker 3
And I started to check out a little bit at school and became more interested in making people laugh and looking for other ways to get attention. But when I was in high school, toward the end of my freshman year, I had a teacher, Mr. Boggs, and Mr. Boggs saw through my phony front, and he asked to speak with me after class. And instead of telling me that I needed to work harder, I needed to try more. He told me that I showed promise as a writer and that he was an adviser for the high school newspaper. And so he asked me to join. And it's incredible to think about now that might have been a small moment in his life. Like how many students must he have touched by naming their talent for them? It's probably too high a number to count, but for me, that one moment was life altering because I joined the paper and I enjoyed it so much. I went to College to pursue a degree in journalism, and I was writing from that moment on.
[00:09:21.130] - Speaker 2
That is a wonderful story for a couple of reasons. I mean, number one, the fact that you had a learning difference, and at some point it progressed to the point where you thought to yourself, well, I'm just not smart. And you checked out and haven't you heard that story again and again and again, and we lose so many of our kids this way. Right. But then you were touched by Mr. Boggs, who helped kind of change the trajectory of your life and helped you make a different choice.
[00:09:53.470] - Speaker 3
Yeah. It's really incredible the power of a teacher as a kid. I just assumed that the way that the other kids were doing it was correct. I assumed that the way that the teachers were teaching was correct. And so if I can't do it, then there's something wrong with me. I'm incorrect. There's a problem with me, and that's hard. It's just really hard to process that and to respond in a mature manner. I think that I was afraid of being stupid, and so it just made the most sense not to say anything.
[00:10:33.710] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, thank you, Mr. Boggs. Right.
[00:10:37.960] - Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Boggs. I got to tell you, Mr. Boggs was a huge sports fan, and so he had me start out writing sports, and I loved sports, and so it made a lot of sense. And I was convinced from the moment I went to College, I went to the University of Maryland, and I knew that I was going to be a sports writer for the rest of my life. That's my calling. And I had a lot of wonderful opportunities. I worked part time at the Washington Post in the Baltimore Sun. And I truly, truly enjoyed my time, my season as a sports writer. But there was just something inside that it really wasn't filling me all the way up. It didn't feel as purposeful for me. And I think that's why I decided to take a temporary detour and pursue the law. And I hung in there as long as I could as a lawyer. But I met a lot of wonderful attorneys. I think that there is there can be nobility in the profession, like any profession. It's got some drawbacks, but it just was not a good fit for me at all.
[00:11:52.040] - Speaker 3
It felt soul sucking at times. And so when I decided that I needed to get back to writing, that writing is really what brings me alive. And not just writing, but writing stories. Storytelling is really what brings me to life. And when I made that decision, my kids were ten and seven, and I just remember looking at their education and interacting with their teachers and reflecting on my own education experiences. And I just felt like maybe this is a space where I can be of service, the students who are like me to our state, to our future, for EDMC, this is our students, our state, our future. That's our students.
[00:12:39.130] - Speaker 2
Our state, our future. Excellent. Yeah. Well, I think that you listened to that and you listened to that gentle voice to help shape your life and bring you into writing and especially into educational writing. And that seems to be your passion, right?
[00:12:59.090] - Speaker 3
Absolutely. I believe in it.
[00:13:03.190] - Speaker 2
And you've talked about the power of storytelling. Tell us a little bit more about that.
[00:13:08.930] - Speaker 3
Yeah. I just think that we experience life through story, and we're hardwired to do that. I like to say this. We may not be hardwired to learn how to read, but we are hardwired for story. Our survival and prosperity as a species has depended upon it. And so when I approach storytelling, it is through that lens. It is with the idea that when I experience an event, when something happens, particularly when it is emotional, and so let's say it's a painful event. I almost always learn from that. I mean, there is something that happens up here. What I love about storytelling and telling others stories and even sharing my story with others is that it allows us the opportunity without experiencing that pain or that sadness or whatever the emotion is, it allows us the opportunity to learn. I experience it neurologically, almost as if it was happening to me. And so mentally and physically, I can learn from that story through the experience of story. And so I believe that storytelling is really, if done responsibly, it has the capacity to be one of our greatest acts of service, and that's what draws me to it.
[00:14:43.660] - Speaker 2
Oh, that's wonderful. Through storytelling, we can develop, would you say, empathy with the other is that part of it. Yeah.
[00:15:02.510] - Speaker 3
That can be the hard part. When I started at EdNC, my very first assignment. So before they even hired me full time, first assignment was to it was a freelance gig for two or three months, and they sent me out east. I think it was Hurricane Florence that had just come through, and there was a lot of flooding along the coast, and schools were shut down and schools ended up closing in various districts for between 25 and 40 days. This was a significant event. And I remember driving in and going through the main streets and the highways that were leading into these communities. And you would just look on both sides of you, just the destruction. Houses were gutted, people's possessions, all of their possessions just sitting on the curb side. And photos, how treasured those photos must have been. Just everything they owned just on the side of the street. And this was my reintroduction to storytelling. And this was the story that I was going to try to tell. And when I talk about responsible storytelling, I think it means a lot of things, but one of them is to convey the responsibility to convey the emotion that the protagonist, the subjects of the story are feeling.
[00:16:33.780] - Speaker 3
And I think to do that, you have to feel that emotion. You have to lead with empathy and vulnerability. And I think that I'm an empathetic person by nature. But there was a lot of tears. It was definitely a struggle.
[00:16:52.670] - Speaker 2
I know there's a little bit of a side question here, but is this a different way of looking at journalism, as opposed to the, quote, unquote, objective journalist? Is storytelling a different way to look at journalism?
[00:17:06.770] - Speaker 3
I don't know. I don't consider myself an academic on the subject. I will say that personally, I look at it as a form of journalism. And so I don't look at what I do so much as news reporting, which is where we start to think of a lot of these rules and rigid adherence to objectivity. I think those are under question anyway, and for good reason, because I think that objectivity has been used. I think they've been used in ways that have disadvantaged communities and particularly historically minority communities, whether that be racial minorities or gender minorities. So I've always had a struggle with this idea of objectivity, even dating back to when I was a sports writer. They would say that you can't show any attachment to teams. And I was a College reporter attending College at the University of Maryland. And this is when we had Steve Francis and Juan Dixon and this wonderful team. And it's ludicrous to think that I have no attachment to what's happening. And so I always had a problem with objectivity. I think that people want a sense of fairness. They want honesty and truth. And I think that those things are absolutely important.
[00:18:45.070] - Speaker 3
But objectivity for the sake of objectivity and objectivity depending on how it is executed. I don't know how it doesn't always serve the reader with storytelling. I am much more grounded in searching for truth and experience and really just relaying experience. I'm trying not so much to show two sides of an issue or every side of an issue. It's really like this is the person and this is the story that I'm telling, and I'm going to do it as forthrightly and honestly as I can.
[00:19:24.420] - Speaker 2
And you know, Ruben, I love that because I think at the end of the day, that is what touches people's hearts. I oftentimes think about in the literacy world and trying to enact change for the betterment of teachers and children. And it's not beating people about the head with facts. It's not about more research. It's about the stories. The stories are what is going to win the day here?
[00:19:53.590] - Speaker 3
Yes, I think so. When I think about Tupac and I think about going from conversation to action, there's something that happens. I think that we get invested in each other and we get invested in people that we choose to help and choose to support. Or maybe we get invested in the conversation and the people we're in conversation with. But there needs to be something, at least in my experience in my life, I find that I'm moved to change for just a small number of reasons, and probably most frequently it's out of pain. I'm doing something that isn't quite right. It's not serving me well. And after enough pain, I will change. But oftentimes it is because it's out of love, right? It's out of love. And I think that that's what story can do is when you get to know someone through story, you can open up to loving people.
[00:21:01.130] - Speaker 2
I know you have told many compelling stories. Can you pinpoint a particularly compelling story that you think has really touched both yourself as the writer and those who read your writing? It might be a whole compilation of stories as well.
[00:21:27.090] - Speaker 3
Yeah. I think in what I've done as far as education reporting, it is the compilation of stories around literacy. I mean, there's no question to me about that. I care deeply about covering learning differences and telling those stories. I care deeply about not just that neurodiversity but also racial diversity and racial equity. I care deeply about those things. And by the way, literacy touches on all of those things. But I think that covering literacy has been an incredible experience. Just learning it was an emotional experience for me because it's been personal to me from the beginning. And so I think if I chose one, it would be the very first one that I wrote, and it would be that one because I almost didn't write it. I almost never went down this path. And so I can tell you that story if you're interested.
[00:22:35.260] - Speaker 2
Yes.
[00:22:39.590] - Speaker 3
Literacy got on my radar. I was hired to cover learning differences. And of course, as a person with learning differences, highly invested in that and remains so today. And as I was going out and doing interviews with families, I was also watching state board meetings and paying attention to the education news of the day. And I remember looking at literacy at reading scores in North Carolina. This wasn't Nape, this was state scores. And I was just astounded at the low proficiency rates. And I was disgusted, really, when I looked at nobody across any demographic, nobody like there wasn't great success in teaching any demographic of children how to read skillfully. But then when you look at students of color, there was still this wide gap, and I felt some kind of way about that. And as I was going out and doing interviews with the families of students with learning differences, I was also hearing about literacy issues. The parents were telling me the same story over and over again and with equal parts fear and exasperation that their children were not learning how to read. And it touched me because reading I like to tell people, and it's true.
[00:24:13.930] - Speaker 3
Reading, I believe, saved my life. It changed my life. I grew up in a home in an unsafe home, and laying in bed in my room reading books really liberated me from whatever else was happening in that home. It offered me an escape, a sense of safety. And it wasn't just at home, but in school. Reading was a safety valve because as I was suffering in silence with my learning disability, cracking jokes and acting out, I often found myself at the trouble table and the trouble table. And this was third grade. And the trouble table in that classroom was where you had to go and sit and read quietly while the teacher taught the rest of the class. And sitting there, losing myself in those books, I think, really saved my self esteem and just my sense of self. I found friends in those books, and I found acceptance, and I found adventure and all the wonderful things. But it was sitting at that table that also didn't meet. But I would sit with my friend George, who was the other kid that was always in trouble. And George didn't know how to read. And so he would sit for a bit, and then he'd get up and he'd disrupt the class again.
[00:25:33.690] - Speaker 3
And of course, he would get into more trouble. George was the first kid that I met who told me he couldn't read. It was the first experience that I had with this thing that I just do, and he can't. And it wasn't lost on me. Our different outcomes, because even though I struggled through high school, I did go off to College, and I started to get help from my learning difference there went on to graduate law school with honors. And Meanwhile, George dropped out in the 9th grade. And so when literacy bubbled up, on my radar again. Now as an education reporter, it was already near and dear to my heart. And I really just wanted to throw myself into that. And what that meant was at that time, one of the greatest joys of my job is that I get to go into schools and I get to sit in classrooms and I get to watch the magic between teacher and student. And so that's what I was doing. And I had this pivotal experience where I visited one school, and it was a wonderful school with the principal. I'm very careful to say this because these were wonderful and just really highly qualified people that I was visiting with.
[00:26:50.820] - Speaker 3
And this was a principal who was deservedly named a finalist for state principal of the year. And she was so excited to tell me about this new literacy curriculum that they had purchased. And she wanted me to sit in a classroom and watch teacher use this curriculum. And this teacher, by the way, was also a finalist for state teacher of Year deservedly. But they had just adopted a new curriculum by Lucy Cawkins. And that name didn't mean anything to me at that time. This is early in 2019, but they insisted that I watched one of the teachers conduct a lesson. And so I did. And it was honestly captivating. She projected a book onto the screen in the classroom, and I watched them walk the book, and they would hypothesize what was happening based on the pictures. And then they went back and they started reading, and she started to queue them. And I'm telling you, Laura, the teacher was so engaged and so just looked in her joy. And the kids were so engaged. Their eyes were all up front, their hands are up in the air and their shouting responses. And afterwards they would talk to me about, I guess I'm trying to remember there was three or four teachers, and they were between kindergarten and second grade.
[00:28:18.580] - Speaker 3
And they were telling me more about this curriculum unit of study. And I walked away feeling hopeful for all of the parents that I was talking to who were worried about their kids. I thought, maybe this is a solution. And I even underlined units of study three times in my notebook. And a few days later, I was meeting with another parent, and I told her what I'd seen and how exciting it was. And she just looked at me and she says, have you heard of the science of reading? And I have not. And so she sent me a link to Emily Hanford's work. And this was about six months after hard words came out. And I listened, and it was crushing because I was so inspired by the lesson I had just seen. And then now I'm hearing everything that Emily laid bare in her audio documentary. That's what sent me initially on the journey with the research, with the Castle Wrestle Nation and Mark Seidenberg's book. And honestly, if you look at the guest list of everyone who's been on your show, that's who I was reading. But I was just so shocked. I remember being shocked, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, but just surprised at how much research was out there.
[00:29:39.410] - Speaker 3
But a lot of people didn't know about it. And I was struck that it was particularly relevant to the LD moms, the moms of students with learning disabilities, but it was also applicable to every parent because the research was applicable to every kid. And so just going through the research, I learned that teaching reading and compatibility with the way the brain learns is possible and that it can transform lives. At that point, the story for me became a question. And that question was, is North Carolina teaching reading effectively? And as I started to investigate that question, most of the classrooms that I visited were using queuing techniques, and they were using curricula that marketed itself as balanced literacy. But I would also run into teachers who would talk to me about the science of reading and who were on the journey with the research and practice. Already, as I met with legislators, I've met some who were working towards grounding instruction in the science of reading. Right? Some, but not all. And that was the same story at the State Board of Education. Some, but not all. And it was the story among leadership at our Department of Public Instruction.
[00:31:07.770] - Speaker 3
It was under a previous administration, and at that time, there were actually six different plans for reading instruction that were floating around that building. Just incredible. And so the story just felt very complicated and very difficult for me. Not only is it difficult to explain the research, I'm a neophyte. I'm not an academic, and this is not my field. Explaining the research felt complicated, but also explaining the political landscape felt very complicated. And so I stayed stuck for weeks and really was leaning towards maybe just not doing this story. I just thought maybe I'm not qualified. Maybe this is not the right time. In the meantime, I was chosen as a fellow for a program with the Education Writers Association. And I ended up in a hotel ballroom with the other fellows. And we were waiting for a group of mentors to walk in. And Lo and behold, as they do in walks Emily Hanford. And I must have scared her. I must have scared Emily because I just read up to her and I just verbally vomited all of these things that I was seeing in North Carolina and all of these thoughts that I'm having, and I'm struggling with.
[00:32:32.120] - Speaker 3
And it was incredible. She talked me through it, and she gave me a lot of advice, and she remained a mentor and has become a friend. But she helped me to understand that this issue was just too big to handle in one story. Right my first story, the one that I would say is maybe the most compelling, was called The Wall of Sound, and it was a treatise. It was more words than my editor told me to cut it to 30 words. Okay, your story should not be at 3000, but he asked me to cut it to 3000, and I think I turned it in at 5000. It was far too long. But as Emily prophesied, even that was not long enough to tell the full story. And so there were dozens of follow ups that published before I started seeing broad distribution and interest. And I'm still on the story because there's more to report.
[00:33:31.050] - Speaker 2
Well, I think what you're sharing, too, is that you're untangling that very tangled rope that makes up reading, makes up instruction. Like, there's so many factors. Should you come at it from the parents point of view, from the children, from the teachers, from legislation, from dyslexia, from policymakers, from politicians? I mean, there's all these different strands that make it a pretty tangled rope. And what you're doing is you're unwrapping those strands. For us in the show notes, I will connect people to your work so they can see the many different facets you've taken in your storytelling to help really make sense of all of this. And I go back to something you said when we first started talking about this. You said I almost didn't go down this path, but Rupin, you were led to it. Do you see that? Yeah, you were led to it.
[00:34:32.510] - Speaker 3
I believe that. I mean, I believe that I look at my background and there are things that stick with you, and there's a reason that those experiences with reading and experiences with George is the reason that they never left me. I agree wholeheartedly. I do believe I was led there.
[00:34:51.470] - Speaker 2
Emily has taken a very national point of view on this, and you're working really focused in North Carolina. So I'm going to ask you the same question I asked her. But I want you to think about this in terms of North Carolina. How far has North Carolina come in terms of dealing with literacy and equity issues in education and what is left to do?
[00:35:15.570] - Speaker 3
That's a big question. I'll say at the outset that I believe literacy is an equity issue. Right. They're one and the same. I do believe that. Nevertheless, as I'm answering from the North Carolina point of view, I kind of want to touch on them separately for a reason. So on the literacy front, I think that we're headed in a good direction. But really, we haven't done anything yet. If you're involved in education and the measure of your success has to correlate with student success. Right. And at this point, we've only just passed a law. Right. And we're in the midst of implementation of the law. But how we implement it matters a great deal. Right. How we implement it is going to determine student outcomes. And so are we going to implement it with Fidelity to the science, to the research, or will it become about programs that market themselves as science of reading and whatever that might mean? So far in my interviews and observations from classroom level to leadership at the Department of Public Construction, which is driving implementation, I feel really good about the direction North Carolina is headed down, and I have high hopes, but it is going to take time.
[00:36:42.590] - Speaker 3
There's a lot left to do, and there's a lot of reasons that it takes time for my reporting. Most of the teachers that I visited with in classrooms tell me that they weren't taught any particular way of teaching reading when they were in a prep, let alone being taught how the brain learns to read. What it means is that they're building the plane while they're flying it, right? They weren't taught anyway. And now they're trying to gain that knowledge while they're already in classrooms teaching kids. And so as part of the law that the state passed, every elementary teacher in traditional public schools is going to do letters training. And that has started. The first of three cohorts has begun, but it's just begun. So they're somewhere in the first couple of units of the eight unit program. It's the two year professional development. And then you have a majority of districts which have not started yet. And so when I visit classrooms now, I'm still seeing whole language practices in classrooms. But what do we expect, right? I mean, I think we're retraining teachers now, and it just takes time. And I think that we have to give a little bit of Grace to teachers who didn't know better.
[00:38:11.060] - Speaker 3
And I say that knowing full well how high the stakes are for kids who are not getting their best shot at learning to read. But it's just a reality, and it's a frustrating reality.
[00:38:21.210] - Speaker 2
It is frustrating, and it's a hard situation because teachers say over and over and many times in tears, I didn't know this. Why didn't I learn this in my teacher prep program? So like you said, they're trying to build the plane while they're flying it. In the meantime, we're trying to provide this intensive in service professional development that is very deep and dense knowledge and asking them to translate that into classroom practices, sometimes in places where they're not given materials which allow them to enact what they've learned. And then we're also trying to say, okay, well, then how do we prevent this? By improving teacher prep so more teachers come out of teacher prep saying, I understand what is necessary to build those neural connections, and all of this requires a reckoning, like you said, that we have to understand that we're judged by student success. I go back to what Anita Archer said when she said so many wise things. But one of the things she says, if they haven't learned it. You haven't taught it.
[00:39:34.510] - Speaker 3
Yes. Right.
[00:39:38.050] - Speaker 2
So that kind of reckoning. Right. And then the. Okay, what do I do next? And then how do we, from a systems level, prevent teachers from saying, I didn't know this? This is information I needed to know.
[00:39:52.270] - Speaker 3
I will tell you that that's one of the reasons that I'm feeling hopeful in North Carolina is we are taking a system approach to this. I think that the most difficult thing right now is having teachers going through letters while they're in classroom teaching a current set of students. But while that's happening, we do have movement at the Ed prep level as well. And so the UNC system has done a lot of work to create a literacy framework that is going to guide all of the UNC system at prep programs on how they teach future teachers, on how to instruct and reading. And it's not just the UNC system. The independent and private colleges and universities, they have a similar task force and putting together a similar effort. One of our private institutions, Lenora Rhine University, has an incredible program that dates back three or four years. Monica Campbell is the Dean over there. Well, she's not the Dean. She's a Dean. I don't know, but she's in charge of their literacy program, and she's just done an incredible job putting together a licensure program for those students. And so the hardest part is retraining teachers that are already in the room.
[00:41:29.070] - Speaker 3
Right. In the classrooms. But we do have something happening that's going to help teachers that are coming out of bed. Prep.
[00:41:36.200] - Speaker 2
Yeah. It's both end. It's not either or. It's both.
[00:41:41.120] - Speaker 3
And it has to be Laura, I would say it's both. And because in addition to retraining the in service teachers, we have to support them just going off of something you were just saying a moment ago, we've got to give them real time, face to face coaching. We need coaches in the school buildings who are observing as teachers are trying to put this into practice and then sitting productively with teachers and say or even modeling at times. But at this point, I don't know what North Carolina's plan is around school based coaching. And to be completely honest with you, that's concerning for me because I don't know how successful we'll be without that. And so a lot of my reporting right now is around that. I think that is we're asking a lot of teachers, and if we're going to ask this much with stakes this high, then we had better support them.
[00:42:39.850] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I agree with you. So that's what you're working on right now is that kind of Bridgettopractice is, you know, here our teachers are learning this, but then how are we bridging that to practice?
[00:42:49.490] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:42:50.040] - Speaker 2
Okay. So let me ask you a couple of other things. Number one, how important is legislation in your reporting? How important is legislation as a lever of change? And what is happening in North Carolina for the leaders, for principals and administrators and superintendents.
[00:43:08.750] - Speaker 3
Yeah. So I think that from what I've seen, legislation, it's a double edged sword because it can get everybody on the same page through mandate. But then it is also a mandate. And so it can feel restricting. And so when I look at North Carolina, we mandate letters training for all teachers, for all elementary teachers. But there are some districts that have already been through letters. Right. I hear some tell me we wish there was a little bit more flexibility in that. And the other thing is that when legislation passes, there's almost this anxiety and this fear of compliance, and that can become a superior concern to the actual work of, like, what's happening between the teacher and the student. So all of that to say I recognize drawbacks. However, in North Carolina, we have 116 school districts and we have 200 plus charter schools, and we've got seven lab schools. And without statewide legislation, I don't know how we would have gotten everybody close to the same page. When I tell you that I visit classrooms and I'm still seeing ineffective reading instruction practices happening without legislation, I don't know how you equitably remedy that because you'll have districts where students can afford to get outside help.
[00:45:01.320] - Speaker 3
You have districts where they have leadership capacity and they can look into getting training for themselves and they can look into what their teachers need, giving teacher knowledge to improve instruction. But then you have districts that don't have those resources. And so legislation, I feel like, gives me hope for equitable implementation, like you.
[00:45:26.020] - Speaker 2
Said, trying to get us all on the same page. And do you think a lever like teacher licensure is a lever for change for teacher prep? If teachers have to pass a particular licensing exam, for example, do you think that is a motivator for teacher prep to change?
[00:45:48.150] - Speaker 3
So I may be getting a little out of my depth here, but I hesitate to say, yes, I'm doing a lot of reporting right now around high stakes testing and particularly in the K twelve space and especially in the early reading or the early grades where we're doing a lot of assessment around reading. And I'm seeing studies that show that you can give the same child different assessments and one will say proficient, one will say not proficient. And it's like, how reliable are these? I also have concerns around we're working very hard. Well, there are groups in North Carolina that are working very hard to diversify the teacher workforce. 80% of our teacher workforce is white, 20% are educators of color. Right. In students, it's closer to 50 50. Right. So there's a disparity, and we're trying very hard to diversify this workforce. But when you look at some of the testing results and articles and research that I've read, there's questions about how equitable licensure exams are for candidates of color and so I really hesitate to say yes. But I also have to say that I really am out of my depth. I mean, a lot of this is reporting that I'm doing now and learning now.
[00:47:35.450] - Speaker 3
I know that we need some way to tell whether prep is effective, whether K three T instruction is effective. We need some levers to be able to measure that. I just wonder if they're like, can we find better measurements?
[00:47:52.550] - Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, I think that's part of this unfolding, right. There are more stories to tell. There's more to unfold. There's more strength to unravel in all of this. And I just have to say, first of all, I can talk to you forever about this, and I just appreciate your time, but I just so look forward to your continued storytelling around this Rupan. I think you do a masterful job in the way that you tell these stories in a way that's very accessible to not only us in the educational community, but to parents and to other stakeholders. And we're all stakeholders in this. Right.
[00:48:34.450] - Speaker 3
We really are. I mean, it's our students and our state, and it's our future. Right. This is our future. We're all stakeholders. And I tried it really is coming from a duty of service. Right. And really joy in service. And I appreciate your kind words. I think that I'm getting better, and I think I need to get better because there's a lot of different stories and there's different audiences for different stories. And I want to tell as many of them as possible because some need to be accessible by the families, by the parents and the grandparents, and others need to be accessible by policy makers and others from educators. And all of those stories are important, and they're really all coming back to the same thing, which is just how important it is that kids learn to read and how it's incumbent upon us to remedy really what amounts to a wrong in the past by not teaching them in ways that we know are effective.
[00:49:44.250] - Speaker 2
Right. Well, thank you so much. I look forward to your storytelling around what you've identified as some things you're working on, that bridging research to practice for teachers and the high stakes testing issue. I really look forward to that. Yeah. So I can't let you go, though, without asking you a couple of our final questions that I ask all of our guests.
[00:50:07.720] - Speaker 3
Okay, let's go. I watched the podcast on YouTube. I'm ready.
[00:50:15.660] - Speaker 2
Well, the first question was about your favorite teacher, but I think that's Mr. Boggs.
[00:50:19.500] - Speaker 3
It's Mr. Boggs. I got to give a shout out to Ms. Willard, also, who taught me physics my senior year. I was not a great math or science student, and so we're dispelling stereotypes here. My family is from India, but I'm not great at math or science. But Ms. Willard was incredible. She just had a great way of connecting with students and not just me. A lot of us felt that way.
[00:50:44.270] - Speaker 2
So, Mr. Boggs, Mrs. Willard, thank you. Okay. What is a favorite book, either as a child or as an adult?
[00:50:53.070] - Speaker 3
My favorite when I was younger was the greats of Rat. And I still love that book and love the way that Steinbeck writes wrote. Right now, I'm really getting into the Tristan Strong series with my ten year old, who just loves it. And so we're enjoying that right now. And enjoy Kwame and Baliya, the author, who's local in North Carolina, lives in Durham.
[00:51:20.460] - Speaker 2
Oh, fantastic. Well, I'll put that in the show notes, too. And then you're reading that with your ten year old. How fun. So that's what you're reading right now. Is there anything else you're reading right now that you want to give a shout out for?
[00:51:35.410] - Speaker 3
So I brought down what I'm reading right now and I'll show it to you. It's a page Turner. It's called Theories of Adolescent Development, but it is incredibly informative. And one of the things that I'm hoping to do with my work is just study the role of schools in adolescent development and all of these noncademic supports that we can provide kids that will open up, unlock the doors to academic achievement.
[00:52:11.340] - Speaker 2
And that also might come in handy with your emerging adolescent at home.
[00:52:15.790] - Speaker 3
That's right.
[00:52:18.470] - Speaker 2
Okay. What do you have on your desk that symbolizes you or is dear to you?
[00:52:25.050] - Speaker 3
I have these three claws. So these are claws that I received. I participate in something called Yguide, and this is a program through the YMCA. It's a father son program. And so I started doing it with my oldest when he was six years old, and he's 13 now and started doing it with my youngest when he turned six, and he's ten now. And these claws are from a weekend outing, a camping event that we did together. And it's the first time that all three of us could go together and do that. I'm so grateful to the YMCA and to that program because I don't know, it's just incredible bonding with my kids in that time.
[00:53:10.100] - Speaker 2
Yeah. I want to put that in the show notes.
[00:53:11.710] - Speaker 3
Is it wide eyes, it's wide letter Y guides?
[00:53:17.550] - Speaker 2
Y guys. Got it. Okay. I'm going to put that in the show notes. I don't know anything about that. So I'll have to figure out to put some more work into that. Okay. And what are your greatest hopes for today's children? And I think you've expressed that many times throughout the podcast, but if you could just summarize it for us.
[00:53:39.030] - Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, it's all of what we talked about, but really, more than anything, it's that we do no harm. I hope every child feels a sense of belonging and love. Right. Of course. I want them to master, competencies and learn to read and have bright careers in whatever they choose to do. But so much more than that I just want them to attend school in places that love on them constantly and do no harm.
[00:54:06.570] - Speaker 2
I love that very much and I think that's a wonderful way for us to wrap up our conversation today. I've been quite moved by this conversation. Ruben, thank you. And thank you for the gentle way that you are shaping the world.
[00:54:22.290] - Speaker 3
Oh, thank you. Thank you to the reading League and thank you to you, Laura. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed meeting you when you came down to North Carolina but I've also just really enjoyed this podcast and just all of the resources because it helps me to understand a lot of what I'm reading because it is way over my head, but I need to understand it so I can tell it better. A lot of that is thanks to you.
[00:54:50.410] - Speaker 2
We're all on that journey, aren't we? Well, thank you again. I'm so appreciative so grateful. Thank you.
[00:54:59.670] - Speaker 3
Thank you.
[00:55:03.850] - Speaker 2
I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I loved hearing about Rupert's background and what has started him on this road to journalism and specifically to writing about literacy and education. And I think it's wonderful just to kind of see the throughline of how he began and where he is now and I just so look forward to what he has in store next for us. If you enjoyed the podcast, please let us know, please rate us and also please provide us with feedback. We want to make sure that we're offering great stories like this to you and wonderful guests like Rupin. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being part of our community and we'll see you next time.