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Dr. Maria Murray and Dr. Jorene Cook are founding members of The Reading League. In this episode, they offer insights into the journey many of us have taken in teaching and parenting, coming from a place of trying to solve a problem to gaining new knowledge and practice. We’ll talk about moving from frustration to advocacy, from curiosity to community, and ultimately to transforming reading instruction through the Science of Reading.
You’ll learn about how The Reading League was formed and some of the incredible events and people that have allowed it to grow from a grassroots group to a national movement.
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.
[00:00:00.370] - Speaker 1
This episode is brought to you by great publishers of Wit and Wisdom. Wit and Wisdom has transformed English Language Arts classrooms across the nation with knowledge rich lessons written by former teachers and relentlessly curated selections of of art and books that build knowledge. Wit and Wisdom cultivates connected knowledge of a subject from an integrated and layered approach. Along the way, students are empowered with original thought and a questioning spirit. To learn more about Wit and Wisdom, visit Greatminds.org English Hi, I'm Laura Stewart with 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, inform, and celebrate contributions to teaching and learning. And today you are in for a treat. I have with me the founding mothers, if you will, of the Reading League Doctors Maria Murray and Doreen Cook, and today you'll learn about their accidental origins into education and the founding of the Reading League, as well as future aspirations for the organization. So enjoy. I am delighted to welcome to the podcast my colleagues, Dr. Maria Murray and Dr. Jordan Cook, two of the founding members of the Reading League, and many people have asked to know more about both the origin and the future directions of the Reading League, and there are no better people to fill us in.
[00:01:54.850] - Speaker 1
However, before we get started with what I'm sure will be a lively conversation, I'd like to share a little bit more about Maria and Jeremy. So prior to founding the Reading League, Dr. Maria Murray was an associate professor at the State University of New York at Uswigo, where she taught courses related to literacy assessments and intervention. She received her PhD in reading education from Syracuse University, where she served as project coordinator for Dr. Bonita Blackman's numerous federally funded early reading intervention grants. Maria is passionate regarding the prevention and remediation of reading difficulties, I'll say, and consistently strive to increase educator knowledge and the connections between research and practice. On a personal note, Maria is happily married to Danny and has two children, Katie and Mark, and is also mom to her dogs, lady into Connie, both of whom I've met, and they're lovely dogs. Dr. Jeremy Cook is an early literacy coach in the Syracuse City School District and part time instructor at Utica College. She has worked in the public school system for 23 years, her earlier years working as an elementary school teacher. She is also a national letters trainer. Her doctoral research investigated how schools and school systems in central New York support students with Dyslexia and their families.
[00:03:13.450] - Speaker 1
Her interest in advocacy, systems, thinking, and policy work led to her to become a partner in policymaking in 2015. Doreen is President of the Board of the Reading League. On a personal note, Dr. Cook is happily married to, as she refers to him, her best friend, Brian, and they have two teens, Evan, who is 16, and Brody, who is 14. So welcome, ladies, to the podcast.
[00:03:38.540] - Speaker 2
Thank you. So excited.
[00:03:40.640] - Speaker 1
It's great to see you. So I thought we would start with some origins, and I'd like to just have each you of talk about your own personal origins. What made you decide to get into education? Maybe some early influences around that decision or some early influences around your work. And I know these are personal stories for you that people really would love for you to share. So either one of you go ahead and get started.
[00:04:04.250] - Speaker 2
Go for it, Maria.
[00:04:07.910] - Speaker 1
Okay, I'll pick Maria. Go ahead.
[00:04:10.360] - Speaker 3
Oh, shoot. Thanks, Laura. And thanks, Jeremy. My story and education was an accidental entry. I wanted to be an attorney at first, and I think my freshman year, I made the decision making all that history and political science to want to teach others the same thing. That's the abbreviated version. And so I ended up becoming a secondary social studies graduate and started to tutor before I taught. And I could not understand why the students that I taught social studies to could not read and answer the questions I had assigned. So this was my first experience hearing from parents that their children had a reading difficulty or reading disability and the word dyslexia. They had never entered my realm before, and I was not taught anything about those. So I needed to get my master's, and I called Syracuse University. I was already married to Danny. I called, and literally, I'll play active for you. Hi. Do you have anything learning disabilities for a master's degree? I didn't even know what I was requesting. So this is the innocence of my beginning. But I landed in a really great spot with Dr. Blackman, who I just got off the phone with.
[00:05:49.810] - Speaker 3
We had a nice afternoon. She centers me still. So she was my advisor, my mentor, my teacher. For 18 years. I stayed at Su. Some of those years were fulltime work, organizing and coordinating huge studies. So it ended up that I had lots of teachers there, just the best teachers I might have had. There were the teachers I worked with. Because a lot of those studies, we scaled up the research to say what's it look in a real classroom? Is it doable in real life in real classrooms? And it was, I think a lot of that prepared me for my current role because I got to learn how to work with the politics of school systems and learn how powerful and brilliant teachers are, and they can make the research their own all sounds happy, doesn't it? All sounds wonderful. And I tell the story. A lot of people have heard it before, but when you end up leaving those schools after the studies are done and you pack your bags and you're done after one or two or three years, guess what happens after a couple that research doesn't stay. So I think Jordan could speak a lot to these systems.
[00:07:18.070] - Speaker 3
We worked just with individual teachers and individual schools but are part of a huge system and the research never addresses the system. So I would say to Bonita pulling my hair out, like, what do we do to get this to stay? Why don't they get all their kids were reading on grade level. So that's the beginning of my frustration. Follow that. With ten years as a professor at Sunnius, we go a school I'm proud of. I'm glad I interacted with, and I still have a lot of friend colleagues there. But you teach your students the great stuff, but it's a little 15 week window that you have to fill their brains that aren't probably really ready for that information. And then they carry that brain, their new teaching brain, into a school that's another system that is not ripe for what I taught them. So there was a mismatch between my science of reading teaching and the literacy environment that hired them more frustration. So that's kind of my quick.
[00:08:27.770] - Speaker 1
It's interesting, Maria, how many people I've talked to so far that so many other guests that didn't start out in education but followed a thread.
[00:08:38.230] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:08:38.980] - Speaker 1
Something was there that just kind of was a curiosity. And they followed that thread and it led them into the profession. How about you?
[00:08:51.600] - Speaker 2
Well, like Maria, I wasn't so sure I wanted to become a teacher. I remembered not really knowing what I wanted to do when I was younger and having to choose a career. So I thought banking must be the category for me. I like money.
[00:09:07.220] - Speaker 3
I didn't know that.
[00:09:08.400] - Speaker 2
Yeah. But I stayed for maybe a semester. And then I thought, this is just not for me. And what had happened was there were two professors that I had in my first year. I had a sociology professor and anthropology professor. And they just came to life when they talked about their content. And this is really the first time in my young adulthood childhood that I ever had an educator that was just so into what they were talking about. And I wanted to become a sociologist. Sociology was one of my majors as a result of this person just being on fire and excited about people and making connections and all of that. So that really kind of turned a corner for me because I thought, well, obviously I don't like sitting in my accounting classes and my micro and macroeconomic classes. I don't feel the same and I don't come to life. So I did start exploring early childhood and education, and then it just sort of took off. But like Maria said, I remembered being that student that you don't know what's in front of you. And it's hard to hold on to making this information stick.
[00:10:25.590] - Speaker 2
And now as an adjunct professor with undergraduate students, I think about that all the time. And, you know, how do I make them at least feel something when they leave me and that it would stick with them. So that when they're faced with students that they don't know or feel comfortable with helping, but there are some ways to get around it and that they have some knowledge. But I didn't learn that for a while. So I got an education degree, and then boyfriend, no husband, also had an education degree. And we thought, well, we don't know what we want to do. And that wasn't too exciting for our parents to realize. They just spent how much money on an education. And anyway, we went back into education and we both became teachers. And actually, I started in the south, and where I was in the south, balance literacy was huge. And we had these coaches that helped us learn these strategies and these techniques. And I was surrounded by I would get books on more and more of this information. And it reminds me of a study like, of networking and connecting, where it's not just who you know, it's who you know and what they know that defines what you know.
[00:11:46.190] - Speaker 2
Right. So if you're constantly reading about these authors, this other world that Maria was a part of at the same time couldn't be light years away for me. And yet, as a teacher, I still have those students. I didn't have children of my own, and I worked all of the artistic magic that I thought I had. And Lo and behold, I just couldn't figure out why I'm finding something they love. Why isn't it so it didn't connect and it didn't fit right. So much so that even though I became an instructional coach and it's kind of embarrassing, I'm an instructional coach. Flash forward years later, and I'm helping teachers, and my knowledge is this. And I'm kind of saying we'll try and even know that something is just not working and connected. Right. So then once I had children, my eldest, Evan, and then I poured everything I thought I knew into Evan. We read together. We did all these activities. I tried to find every topic that he was interested in and get a book on it, anything to flavor the water so that hopefully he would drink them. Well, he wasn't interested, and the signs were there, but I didn't really know what I was looking for.
[00:13:08.660] - Speaker 2
But you have that gut feeling that something was off. And so when he was in kindergarten, I mean, in hindsight is 2020, right. So in kindergarten, I remembered there was a time when Evan couldn't get his morning work done. Right now, I know this teacher, and I'm thinking, well, she attends anything than I do, so must be great. And again, this is my knowledge that I've got. So that's awesome. And he couldn't get his work done. Why? Because he had to sort sounds and letters, and it all encompassed something he really struggled to do. So instead of interjecting and addressing and differentiating and pinpointing the problem. It was presented to me as having an effort issue and attention issue. And so the resolution was to sit and make him work on it until he got it done. So that work would be over an hour every morning. And it hurts my heart to know. Fast forward. He's dyslexic. Right. So there are some signs along the way. And it wasn't until I really started doing my own investigating. By the time Evans in first grade, I've been teaching for however many years, still realizing, I don't know what I don't know.
[00:14:27.840] - Speaker 2
I see the same problems in my own district. I'm now at a working at a district level. So I was able to start pouring myself into research because I was in a doctoral program. So there was this huge pathway to knowledge that was just sitting there that I've never heard of. And so now you're wrestling with this guilt of. All right, awesome. Not only are you this instructional coach that should know better, and you didn't really know what you didn't know. All right. I'm also a parent that feels she should know everything because that's how we feel as parents. And I've failed that, too. So it was a big upheaval. But what a godsend it was that I finally kind of broke through and had access to this knowledge because that's really shifted everything I do today. It's all a result of work. When Evan was just five, he's now 16, has completely turned me into a completely different direction.
[00:15:32.390] - Speaker 1
First of all, thank you for sharing that story. It's really interesting how many of us we kind of have a moment. Right? We have a moment. And then from that, we set up to solve a problem, and it feels like that's what both of you were trying to do. You have this realization, you come up short, and then you set out to solve a problem, and it sounds like.
[00:15:55.170] - Speaker 2
Maria, it was isolating. Right. It's sort of like you have your own journey. And I felt the same. And I think that that's something. I don't think it is something that people will tell us is that they felt that they were on their own island as they're trying to solve this problem.
[00:16:11.920] - Speaker 1
Right. So that just kind of leads me into the next part of our time together, which is talking about the origins of reading read, because when I think about trying to solve a problem, building community so that you're not an island on your own singular journey. So if one of you could just share the story of how the readingly came to be and don't forget the.
[00:16:37.380] - Speaker 2
Llama, can I just share how I met Maria to kind of give context to that? Whoever wants to share, I'll start it out, and then I'll pass.
[00:16:48.830] - Speaker 3
Great.
[00:16:49.710] - Speaker 2
So now flash forward back to my story. Flash forward to Evan being a fourth Grooter, and I had him evaluated out of my district because having them evaluated in district was a challenge, and that's a similar struggle that I think a lot of our colleagues have gone through, our parent colleagues especially. So I was actually at training for a curriculum called Super Kids. And I finally felt connected because the research that the folks from Super Kids were pulling from was the research that I had been building my own background knowledge on my own and making sense of all of this and wrapping my head around, like, how the science of reading really informs how the brain works and how the brain processes language and all of these things and where the breakdown can occur, all of this. So finally I'm sitting around people that are presenting this information, and I had the courage to go up to Alicia Sparks, who was the presenter, and I said, My son is Dyslexic, and this is the first time I've really talked to somebody that might know something all this time. And so she quickly rattled off everything like, take notes, like, ID all these organizations that I've never even heard of, right?
[00:18:07.870] - Speaker 2
So I'm capturing all of this now in Super Kids. Part of the whole process with that was to have this coaching component to build teacher knowledge. So the local coach in the area, her name was Bonnie. And Bonnie is like, you need to get in touch with Maria Marie because she's going to be able to help you. I'm like, well, I know I know this name. How do I know this name? And she's like, well, Yale Bonita Blackman said, yeah. So I had all of these connections were coming together. So she gave me Maria's cell phone number. And I went home that day, and I called Maria and she answered. And I think we talked for maybe 2 hours now. I'm blown away that she's a professor and she's cited in research, and she's spending the time to just talk to me as if I'm not a moron, that I have a brain and that my problems are real. And she's seen these things before. And then I'm not crazy for thinking about all this. So Maria actually became Evans tutor. Now, the really cool thing about this was we literally live maybe 7 miles down one road apart, that's it literally like, what a small world?
[00:19:19.180] - Speaker 2
And if you don't speak up sometimes or take those risks, you just never know. Where would I be today? Where would Evan be today? How do we not run into Maria? I think about that often, and I'm sure a lot of the folks that Maria has really worked with think the same because in my transition to frustration, to advocacy, and it's that whole journey of mourning and all these process, like a grief process when you go through these emotions, she was there to bear witness to it all and help me just be another person that I can kind of bounce ideas from. And it helps kind of cultivate my doctoral study and change the life course of everything that I do. So thank you. I love it.
[00:20:06.490] - Speaker 1
I love it.
[00:20:07.020] - Speaker 3
This is such a great story.
[00:20:08.840] - Speaker 1
It is such a great story. So Maria takes us from there. I know, right? So Maria take us from there. And got to go back to your frustration. And then how that kind of led you into the formation of Reading Week?
[00:20:23.220] - Speaker 3
Well, I didn't even mention things like tutoring kids. And I'm a little emotional right now.
[00:20:32.310] - Speaker 2
It's game changing.
[00:20:33.930] - Speaker 1
It is very emotional because we're dealing with children's lives and epic journeys.
[00:20:46.210] - Speaker 3
Parents always cried, and I knew there's a little counter I worked at, and they would come through this door. It's giving a glare on this. It's just hard to know that it was almost unnecessary.
[00:21:09.410] - Speaker 2
Absolutely.
[00:21:10.200] - Speaker 3
I knew that they didn't need me. They needed someone before.
[00:21:14.660] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's right. But thank God they had you.
[00:21:18.220] - Speaker 2
Thank God. Oh, my gosh. I would just go and I would just sit in the back and I would just be in awe of the fact that here's my son who struggles to do this work. He would give me I mean, I'm mom. So it's hard, too. It's hard. He likes to talk like his mom. So he would sort of go off on a tangent and talk about something, and Maria would give him the space and then bring him back into it. And I remembered seeing him and I say this to teachers often because often these are kids that will do anything to avoid something that's this hard and insulting to their ego. Right. So I remember I would see Evan would be this little person, and he would Crouch in Maria's chair and hold his head. He's like, it just helps me focus on this work and blah, blah, blah. He would say nothing as to what he needed to do to contort his.
[00:22:11.480] - Speaker 3
Body so that he could focus.
[00:22:13.550] - Speaker 2
That's so powerful. Because when I see colleagues, that will be like, sit up straight. I'm like, these kids are doing everything they can. So if they need to do something like this, let them do it, because that's just like Evan would literally hold his head so that he could attend to what he's doing, the difficult work. So I appreciate and like Maria, not only did you bring the knowledge base that's important, but the human aspect and the building of cells and repairing of these kids that really were broken, that's a huge gift that you have. And it's natural. I don't know if you see that. Yeah.
[00:22:56.040] - Speaker 1
And don't you think that story is just so heart wrenching and it's so much of what drives our work.
[00:23:03.740] - Speaker 2
Right. It is. Right.
[00:23:07.470] - Speaker 3
I'm going to go back a little further, because as much as I'd love to talk about Evan, he's like, my boy. One of the things I did was after that Bonita Blackman intervention that was in collaboration with what she did with brain research, all this cutting edge, 90 stuff. Congress wrote a big check for that stuff, lots of zeros on it. And they don't actually ever read the resulting research. The congressional people, but they do want to see where it goes. So we get a call that the government is sending a producer to Syracuse, to the families of the children that we tutored. I still know those families and some of them. So I got a summer job as a production assistant one year, and he came to Syracuse, and he was supposed to go to Houston, I believe, and also to Connecticut, to Yale, because they were also doing research. But he decided he was so impressed with the outcomes and the change in these second and third graders that had never been able to read a word, and now they were reading on grade level. But it was more than their reading, which that's all enough as it is.
[00:24:32.430] - Speaker 3
These kids changed as human beings, too. They came out of their shelves, shelves. And so I didn't really appreciate that aspect of them at all until I worked with the producer. And that, I think, was that because.
[00:24:52.000] - Speaker 1
You captured that story, right? I mean, it wasn't just a score that went up. You captured the story of the actual human being.
[00:25:01.390] - Speaker 3
I saw them in the work just as students. I didn't see them as kids went home and no one could find them because they were hiding in the back of a closet. They didn't want to do their homework. They didn't want the tussle and convincing and upheaval that every family has to handle at night. You get out that bus, you're not safe at home. You have to get the stuff out of the backpack and keep going. And there's no one that can make it easy for you. And you don't get to go outside and play like your brother does.
[00:25:35.880] - Speaker 2
You got any more work, right, or kindergarten brother.
[00:25:39.230] - Speaker 3
That's reading as good as you are and talk to with it. And then you run away from home.
[00:25:47.650] - Speaker 2
Never again.
[00:25:48.390] - Speaker 3
Never again. Or you can't go to school because your body is completely covered with hives and you're growing up and you're bullied because you're vulnerable children and your playmates make fun of you when you can't read. I mean, it's just wouldn't. So I know that learning to read is not just an academic difficulty. It's a psychological abuse.
[00:26:17.090] - Speaker 1
It pervades every aspect of your life.
[00:26:19.050] - Speaker 3
Everything that might be out of time. We'll get to where we started the reading link, but in what we have going on right now with a pandemic and social inequities rising to the fore again and rightfully so in our world, we have so many injustices, poverty, addiction, name them all disease. Right. And we have a literacy, but we can change that one.
[00:26:50.950] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:26:52.370] - Speaker 3
That one doesn't need to exist. We can't cure all the diseases. We can't cure poverty like we want to, we can't eradicate. But illiteracy doesn't even need to exist, right?
[00:27:08.970] - Speaker 1
Yeah. We have control over this.
[00:27:18.310] - Speaker 3
It's correlated with all these others, too. So by getting it together and doing something about it, maybe help the other thing.
[00:27:27.830] - Speaker 2
Right.
[00:27:30.610] - Speaker 1
So out of that passion and out of that frustration comes the Reading League.
[00:27:36.310] - Speaker 3
Yeah. Tell us the origin tell us the.
[00:27:39.620] - Speaker 1
Origin story of that, and then we'll move on to kind of, you know, why readingly has struck a deep chord.
[00:27:45.520] - Speaker 3
Which is kind of give us a.
[00:27:47.040] - Speaker 1
Quick history of how you've gone from your beginnings to the Reading League.
[00:27:56.210] - Speaker 3
I think the quickest way to bring everyone up to speed on this is to say that I was sitting at this table at that end and my husband at the other end, and we both were very frustrated in our careers. People's careers don't always go so smoothly. It was really hard to check all the boxes. A professor you have to go present at a conference. Well, the people sitting in the room are usually the people in the choir. I'm presenting to people who get it.
[00:28:29.280] - Speaker 1
Yeah, right.
[00:28:31.190] - Speaker 3
How's that? Hour and a half talking to you folks gonna change the system out there doing research, writing papers, publishing stuff that takes years and years to get into print. I'm just going to read it. Not going to help a teacher, help a child. Never. So all of it felt for now. And it's really hard to work hard and not have impact when you know how important it is. It really kills me. So I was done. I was done. And my husband said, sitting at that table, I wish he was here. He'd hop in and vouch and say, it's true. They said, Why don't we go start an alpaca farm, right?
[00:29:12.920] - Speaker 1
I said llama. I meant El Paco. I got.
[00:29:19.650] - Speaker 3
The essential difference between those. They're both camelids. But Annie and I, we do not live a life of farming. So I should have called him insane or called an ambulance because what are you thinking? Instead? I said, Fine, sounds good. Let's just go. Let's get out of here. And so we met a realtor in Louisville, Kentucky, and we spent a few days touring farms, and they just did not match. Thankfully, that Joanna Gaines kind of home and garden TV farm picture I might.
[00:29:57.760] - Speaker 1
Have built into the homesteading idea just didn't live up to its promise.
[00:30:02.630] - Speaker 3
It's like a lot of work.
[00:30:04.040] - Speaker 2
Good thing.
[00:30:05.390] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I did interview at a University. There good people there. But because I know I still have to make something for money. We flew back after that, and you get your pile of bills in the mail or junk mail envelopes going through what we missed while we were gone. And in there was a cardboard package with a cardboard envelope. And I opened it and kind of rolled my eyes because as a professor, you always get free desktop copies of new textbooks. And I'm not a textbook fan because they tend to have a lot of, erroneous garbage in them. And why you have a student buy a lot expensive book if it's not going to have good stuff. Well, the book was written by David Kilpatrick, who I know he lived like Jordan lives down that road away, and David lives up there about the same distance away. And David, I'm like, how the heck scratching my head. I'm like, he's a school psychologist. What's he know about reading, right. Since that's a silo. School psychologists don't use all the information part. They can't read, but they can't tell us what to do about it. I've met David at international conferences.
[00:31:29.250] - Speaker 3
I know he's all about research and knows it like scripture and verse that he knows all of it.
[00:31:35.830] - Speaker 1
He is amazing.
[00:31:37.350] - Speaker 3
Yeah. He's a gift, truly. So David wrote this book, and I said, well, out of honor to a guy I know. I'll read the first chapter. Chapter one was the beginning of the reading League in my mind, like, this was my real APACA moment. Not. And he laid out in a number of really clearly why the research has never made its way into teachers. It wasn't enough to do research with them. There's a system out there. And what are the researchers doing to get their research into teachers? Practitioners? Do we know any other profession where practitioners don't wait for what the new findings are is an exception. And you think it's anyhow, I called David up to congratulate and left him a message. He called me back and we chatted for a long time, four and a half hours. I know that number on that couch over there. So I was very excited because misery loves company. And I'm like, yes, I know. It's so frustrating. I feel alone finally talking to him. So we hang up. He probably had to go teach class. I probably had to go do something else. And I said, please, let's do this some more.
[00:33:05.470] - Speaker 3
Let's have a dinner because you want to keep going. I walked to about Yay this far. And as excited as I had felt five steps across the room prior, I felt as low. Right away. I'm like, well, what would be the point of getting together? I'm still in that kind of what the heck. Anything for us to talk about it. Who really needs to come to this talk? This part two conversation is the parents of the kids. Itutor they have a piece to say about this. And is Heidi and Stephanie Finn like, they're doing gangbuster stuff they're giving to their teachers in this district that I live in. Their teachers are doing amazing stuff. They need to be here doing it. And she looked clone and she left academia and started her own private practice. She was so frustrated. And then the and I'm like, because, hey, one thing I got out of almost three decades of doing this work is knowing people and who got it. So I'm like, wait, we're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. It was like a whole new moment, and I still didn't have any expectations.
[00:34:26.490] - Speaker 3
But I ran to Facebook and it was October 13, 2015. I still have a screenshot of that post I put up, and I said, hey, people, why don't we start a central New York reading professional development club? They had some ugly acronym. It was bulky. And please say yes, because even if you say no, I'm going to come find you and make you do it anyway. It was like a threat. And the next morning, by midnight, we have 100 people saying, I'm in, I'm in. So these are people that were reading specialists in schools that were sick of fighting the flight and not being heard. If we get this megaphone thing going, we might drown out some dominant voices that need to go to and Doreen walked in the next day with Evan, I think. And I'm like, yeah, starting a reading League.
[00:35:27.570] - Speaker 2
Yes. And I remember I sat down, I started reading David's book, and I ordered it that night on Amazon. And here's the thing with Silos, though, that it's hard to disrupt because I was so charged by that book. And then it was written by a school psychologist. Right. And that was like making visually what's going on clear. So I then took it to one of my schools, and I offended the school psychologist not meaning to. I was like, could we do a book club together? And she was not excited about the fact that me, the instructional coach, wanted, was like, hey, I think this would be great because she was insulted, thinking that wasn't the point. The point is that this is written by somebody from your field. Wouldn't this be a good story? Because she was one who didn't believe Dyslexia existed. And that gives me memorized. And so I thought, well, all right, that was a door closed. But it was a game changing moment. With that book, though, I think everything he had such a way of putting anything that was in everyone's heads at different disciplines and putting it all out and saying, here, it's not an easy read for folks that don't typically read that kind of text, but it is like dog eared and tabbed.
[00:36:44.570] - Speaker 2
I mean, I carried the same book in a bag that bag for three years until I got a different one. But yeah, I do remember Maria saying, you would rather you felt more successful rearranging fruit, like at Wagman's. If you went to Wagman's, you felt like you were at a point where you felt like you could be more successful doing that just because of the troubles that we see in Silos. Like, you get your education in this Silo but then I leave and go to this system that might not respond to how I was educated over here, and then that breaks down.
[00:37:18.210] - Speaker 1
Yeah. Let me capitalize on something you just said, Maria, about. Well, I'm thinking about when you got.
[00:37:24.140] - Speaker 3
Into Facebook and you kind of said.
[00:37:27.140] - Speaker 1
To people, hey, why don't we do this? And you instantly got 100 people. So obviously, just that initial inquiry struck a chord with people. Why do you think the Reading League has struck such a deep chord with people?
[00:37:41.970] - Speaker 3
I've been asked questions about the start of the Reading League many times, and that's the first time that one has come up. It's great question. I read a book. I don't know the title of it. I don't have a handy to run and get. You know, I always have to run and get something during. I'll try not to today, but it was about why some social movements are successful and whereas others fall apart. Black Lives Matter is a social movement that's really successful. There's been others, I can't think of any that have kind of flopped, but definitely it's got to resonate with a lot of people. I think most educators feel that they were thrust into their positions, having to stumble, fall, and fear that they weren't hitting the Mark all the time. It should be that way. But I think most of.
[00:38:45.690] - Speaker 1
Some of.
[00:38:46.070] - Speaker 3
The members were family members who there's a little bit of knowing, sorry, there's a ton of knowing that this is unnecessary and the frustration of aloneness, but finally finding others, that it was like a magnetic we've had more people sit at our original live events, so that's what we started doing was all we intended to do, I swear, was have a live event every two months. We were going to do them every month, which we realized was crazy. We were going to rent a bingo hall or go around to a school system. Right. And just give it out for free. And Doreen you'll do one on Dyslexia? I'll do one on syllable types. David will do one on this. Heidi will do one on that. And between the 15 of us that met at a Panera or however many of us met, or we all have something that we're really good at that we know really deeply we can build a beautiful, free PD. And then we asked all the teachers that came, what do you want to know about? And we started searching, what do you need to learn about? And it was like they filled every box in with that.
[00:40:08.670] - Speaker 3
But I think that as soon as people realize that we were not, hey, you're doing something wrong. Never.
[00:40:20.490] - Speaker 1
I agree.
[00:40:21.310] - Speaker 3
Yeah, it's still a misconception by some districts. I think the Reading wants to point out what people are doing wrong. But we're mostly teachers. We're teachers are still our teachers, and we're not professors or researchers or experts saying this is what you don't know. We don't anyone feel inept or insulted.
[00:40:47.130] - Speaker 1
I totally agree with you, Maria. I think one word I would use is authenticity. There's an authenticity to the people that have formed the Reading League, and that's not just the leadership, but also the community of people in the League. And I always like to share with people what you shared with me about how the word League was deliberately chosen. I also wanted to mention something you said that I think is really important. You talked about a social movement, and I'm sure that was a very deliberate choice as opposed to an education movement. It's really a social movement.
[00:41:23.820] - Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so delighted that you were into sociology. That's so fun. You can learn about people. You know, there's a cool YouTube video that Jordan featured, the Dyslexia Live event you did back in 20 whatever. And it's called Something about a Nut.
[00:41:50.690] - Speaker 2
Yeah, the loan nut, maybe loan nut.
[00:41:53.410] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:41:54.170] - Speaker 2
Did you see that, Laura? It's a good.
[00:42:00.350] - Speaker 3
YouTube search for alone nut. I think it's a sociologist. Am I saying that right? And he has a video of some kids on a summer concert day on a hillside with grass, and they're wearing semi clothes, maybe shorts, no top or whatever, and the music is playing and one kid gets up and just starts doing this ridiculous drunk looking dance, and nobody's really he's probably being judged. So that's what I was. I was the lone dancing idiot that put out this Facebook post. But what made the movement was the people who said, I want to dance, too.
[00:42:47.490] - Speaker 1
I want to dance, too.
[00:42:48.540] - Speaker 3
Yeah, I'll dance with you. Right, Laura? You'll dance. And now that's kind of what we mean by.
[00:43:05.570] - Speaker 1
I want to ask you this because you're there in a district. How far do you think we've come as an educational community, specifically in schools, since starting the Reading League? And what is getting in our way?
[00:43:22.310] - Speaker 2
Awesome question. I think we've come an incredibly long way in such a short time. To think of that. We were just a grassroots, a few people gathering at Panera in 2016 to now sitting in on conferences to being a national trainer of a literacy organization for letters, referencing the Reading League throughout, which was fascinating and advocating for how much of a group, how people should really subscribe to us. I'd say we've made some really big dents really fast. I also think that teachers feel safer now and more comfortable to say, you know what? I really don't know this stuff. And I kind of want to know more. And once we give them a taste of like, hey, did you know this is what the brain does or any of those things? They're hooked. And once you know something, you can't unknow it, right? How can I go about my day the same way that I've always done it? Now that I have this new information and I think that really feeds all of us because we're like, this is where I felt like I felt I needed this information. And it's not a mystery. It's kind of clear.
[00:44:36.820] - Speaker 2
And I can do these things, and my kids are responding and I'm having fun. Yeah.
[00:44:41.560] - Speaker 1
I think the curtain has parted.
[00:44:43.740] - Speaker 2
Right, right, exactly. And it's not some big magical thing, really. And it's not a natural thing either. And, you know, all of these misunderstandings due to what we had at the time in terms of knowledge, and that's just a contagious piece. Right. And I think our enthusiasm, it's contagious anyway. And like you had said, one of the things that I most respect about our group is the fact that we're incredibly authentic. And I find that I think back to when I first met Maria.
[00:45:18.950] - Speaker 3
She.
[00:45:19.300] - Speaker 2
Has all these accolades or whatever, but it's like she's down there. Like, it just was my first brush with somebody who has all of this access to knowledge and didn't put me in my place or didn't feel like she had to be like, oh, this girl. I think a lot of folks feel intimidated with knowledge. It's a power, and knowledge is powerful. And once I have more knowledge, I'm feeling a little more confident and powerful and that there is no shame in not knowing. The shame is not doing something as a result of knowing kind of thing. So as we continue to grow, I think that's just going to happen over time. The problem is that a lot of this work has really been to strengthen the core of the teacher, which is incredibly I mean, that is the most precious part with our children in the organizational system. But from education, there are all of these other folks, right. We have policy, we have the schools of education, we have psychology, we have leadership, we have parents, we have all of these other things. It's kind of overwhelming to think that we've got to tap into all of that, too, I think, to really infiltrate, don't you think?
[00:46:36.800] - Speaker 2
I think that to me, that's the most challenging thing. I think for teachers, we're supporting them as best we can. But if I'm a teacher who's getting the support and I'm in a system that wants me to drive a car on water when we know that that's not working, we've got to kind of support that as well. And not shame. We've got to bring this knowledge. But just going back to that example that I gave a while ago as to me in my silo, saying to somebody in another silo, hey, we should cross paths and do these things, and then they're offended. We've got to continue to disrupt that and break that because we're all here for kids and we're all educators at the end of the day. Right. So that, to me, is the driver. But it's also in our way as well.
[00:47:24.160] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think you brought up a really important point that we're all stakeholders.
[00:47:29.930] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:47:30.840] - Speaker 1
But you could take that child in the center and you can draw this wheel.
[00:47:34.340] - Speaker 3
It's all of us.
[00:47:35.940] - Speaker 1
I mean, everyone in society has a stake in that child being a literate citizen, that child leading a literate life. We all have a stake in that. And I think that's, again, why I go back to what you said, Maria, about this is social movement.
[00:47:51.350] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:47:51.680] - Speaker 1
It's not just in the educational community. This is really about all of us because we're all stakeholders in that child's success.
[00:48:00.180] - Speaker 3
Right. And I think, Laura, that the people who were magnet drawn to this are those that had some experiences in realizing, knowing that it works, that the science is like dream, not a clause or phrase for another thing that won't do anything. I was thinking as you guys were talking about each person who joined, and I'm like, yes, she cranked out reading. So they were all doing the science of reading. A lot of stuff, feeding brain what it means to succeed.
[00:48:50.150] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I do.
[00:48:50.970] - Speaker 1
So, Maria, let me ask you this. When we think about the science of reading, what do you think people get wrong about that or what are some perceptions that get in the way?
[00:49:03.630] - Speaker 3
Like the science of reading was a phrase we could not say ten years ago. I don't know about you, maybe, but I know it was something you had to kind of squelch and not say because it seemed offensive. Well, we've come a long way, baby. Now the science of reading is out on the center stage. But now the burden we thought the burden was getting people to know that it existed. The burden now is heavier. The burden now is to protect it and make sure that everybody in the world that produces something or invented something or publishes rather a program or a strategy or whatever doesn't slap a sticker on it and call it the science of reading.
[00:49:45.840] - Speaker 1
Yeah. Let me pause there. I want to reiterate that. Yeah. Our first challenge was to understand it. Now our challenge is to protect it.
[00:49:55.620] - Speaker 3
To understand that it exists.
[00:49:57.150] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:49:57.480] - Speaker 1
I love that now. I love that.
[00:50:00.120] - Speaker 3
That's awesome.
[00:50:00.910] - Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:50:01.210] - Speaker 3
Keep going. Yeah. Props to Emily Hanford because actually hidden one little hard work for her, I'm sure, a long time. But what she did was really propel that work for us. And so that's checked. We have now got the signs of reading and a place where people at least are hearing about it, realizing it ain't going to go away, realizing I should learn. Right. But now we're in a whole new situation. People are picking a little bit of this, putting it on there and saying, look, I'm doing it. Well, you're not awesome.
[00:50:46.990] - Speaker 1
That's really important because I do think and correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think a lot of people, for example, think about the science of reading as well. That's phonics while I'm doing phonics, therefore I am doing the science of reading. Yeah.
[00:51:02.570] - Speaker 3
I can understand why people think that because phonics is an integral part of.
[00:51:07.530] - Speaker 1
The science of reading, but it's not the whole thing.
[00:51:11.150] - Speaker 3
And that's what a lot of people weren't doing very much very well. The science of reading is about every aspect of reading, for sure.
[00:51:25.430] - Speaker 1
I like it because the science of reading is about every aspect of reading. And I also like the science of reading is for everybody. Yeah.
[00:51:33.210] - Speaker 3
Okay.
[00:51:34.490] - Speaker 1
I want to make sure we have time to talk about the future plans and aspirations that you both have for the Reading League in terms of the future. So as leaders of this organization, what are your thoughts? Jerry, let's start with you.
[00:51:47.340] - Speaker 2
Well, one of the things I like to think about our organization that helps us stand apart as opposed to something else, is that we're trying to bridge through all of those silos within education and society as a whole.
[00:51:59.650] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:52:00.320] - Speaker 2
So how do we do that and how do we sustain and grow as an organization to give credence to different disciplines and kind of shining that light that we're all contributing to helping kids become literate, period. And so how do we do that? To me, I like to disrupt different silos. And being a parent that wasn't educator, I was an insider outsider in my own district as I tried to advocate, which was forcing something on. And it wasn't forcing, but it felt like probably for them, something that they didn't have the knowledge to hold on to with this information with Dyslexia. So how do we dispel this? Because it's not a mystery. I mean, this information is clear, and it will help so many children. And what we know about how the brain learns to read and what the brain needs in order to be a proficient reader can be done as a preventative measure. Right. If we know these things, if we go bigger, then I'd like to see policy change to support that on the grand scale. Because if we can catch the Evans of the world right on the onset and just prevent some of these things that have been life altering as a result of this difficulty with reading, might we then be better off as a society?
[00:53:23.520] - Speaker 2
Right. So I feel like how can I infiltrate different pockets across the whole educational system? And I like to be I think the Reading League is certainly primed, and we have the folks together already. We already come from different disciplines. How do we continue to grow this so that everybody knows about us, not just our schools and school systems?
[00:53:46.340] - Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:53:46.930] - Speaker 3
Great.
[00:53:47.350] - Speaker 1
So, Maria, I know this has been your dream. So what's the next chapter of your dream in terms of the future?
[00:53:55.910] - Speaker 3
Well, I think we could frame the future of the Reading League with that wheel that Jordan alluded to the Reading League has those calls to action on its website where we call on policy makers frame policy around the science of reading. We call on publishers to discontinue publishing stuff that's not that we call on and to lean on science of reading knowledgeable experts when they revise their material. We call on schools of education, and a lot of those are coming along and coming on board, which is encouraging. So we as a reading League, have members and supporters like the reading League is in central New York. We're in Syracuse. But that doesn't mean that we are just reading leagues across the world now. It's anybody. That's what the word lead means. So there are all these wheelhouses and folks rather that need strengthening attention and support. That's our work. We have a lot of work to do still.
[00:55:20.490] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I know sometimes you and I have said that to each other, Maria's, like there's work to be done. I do want to point out to anybody who's listening that you're speaking about our Science of Reading campaign and those calls to action for different stakeholders. So what I've heard you say in.
[00:55:38.260] - Speaker 3
Terms of future, I've heard you say.
[00:55:40.180] - Speaker 1
Try to kind of bridge through those silos. And I like the way you phrase that journey and not break through the.
[00:55:46.180] - Speaker 3
Silos, but bridge through the silos.
[00:55:49.050] - Speaker 1
I've heard you say, Maria, in reaching everyone briefly, the silos to reach everyone, I heard you say, really support that message of prevention versus intervention and to think about how do we move that to policy change?
[00:56:03.770] - Speaker 3
Right.
[00:56:04.090] - Speaker 1
How do we actually change policy?
[00:56:06.400] - Speaker 3
And I would add to that, just.
[00:56:07.690] - Speaker 1
As someone as part of this organization, I hope that we always continue to grow and learn and use that to lead.
[00:56:16.280] - Speaker 2
Right.
[00:56:17.370] - Speaker 1
Growing and learning. It's exciting.
[00:56:20.800] - Speaker 3
There's work to be done, but it's really exciting work. And it's such important work.
[00:56:25.130] - Speaker 1
And I just think about this every day. Aren't we all fortunate to be part of this? Aren't we fortunate we get to jump out of bed in the morning and.
[00:56:32.330] - Speaker 3
Be part of this? We are.
[00:56:34.600] - Speaker 1
Yeah.
[00:56:35.460] - Speaker 3
Okay.
[00:56:35.880] - Speaker 1
So I want to end with our little kind of quick fire questions, and I'll ask you. I'll alternate. So we'll start with you. Jerring, who was your favorite teacher growing up in Y?
[00:56:47.910] - Speaker 2
Oh, golly, I don't remember the name, but it was my sociology professor.
[00:56:53.510] - Speaker 3
Okay.
[00:56:57.010] - Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just thinking about it, and I have a mental block, but it was my sociology professor.
[00:57:03.170] - Speaker 1
Well, once it comes next, you have to write him a note or give her a note.
[00:57:07.240] - Speaker 2
Yes.
[00:57:08.830] - Speaker 1
Maria, who's your favorite teacher growing up?
[00:57:10.940] - Speaker 3
In one too many to mention, but I'm going to just draw ball. Fourth grade. I think she did read aloud. That blew me away.
[00:57:21.190] - Speaker 1
See, look at how much we're always impacted by teachers. Teachers can change, in your case, during change the trajectory of your life.
[00:57:28.110] - Speaker 3
Really?
[00:57:28.470] - Speaker 2
Yeah.
[00:57:32.090] - Speaker 1
Okay, next question. What was your favorite book, either as a child or as an adult dream.
[00:57:37.910] - Speaker 2
Too many to choose from. I go back to Kill a Mockingbird. I just think at that time in my life, when I was younger and I read the book, that it just affected me so much, and I had read about somebody else's perspective, that experiences that were unlike my own, that kind of resonated that there's a lot more out there in this world.
[00:58:00.700] - Speaker 1
And isn't that the beauty of illiterate life?
[00:58:04.010] - Speaker 2
Exactly right.
[00:58:05.460] - Speaker 1
Maria, how about you? How about just name one?
[00:58:14.970] - Speaker 3
Oh, goodness. I love my sister was much older than me, 15 years older than me, and she would always gift me with a real book, like with a gold leaf little Women. I didn't have a lot of things or a lot of books, but my favorite children books, everyone knows I did it as a read aloud.
[00:58:42.710] - Speaker 1
Oh, I love that.
[00:58:44.690] - Speaker 3
Oh, my gosh. That is one of my favorite books of all time.
[00:58:49.250] - Speaker 1
I know. What are you reading right now, terrif?
[00:58:53.210] - Speaker 2
Oh, my liver. You had to ask me that. Well, I read a variety of things. I'm reading a book by Anahati Coats. I don't know if I said his name correctly.
[00:59:02.820] - Speaker 1
No, that's it.
[00:59:03.580] - Speaker 2
Yeah, the letter to his son. I can't think of the name of the title. I'm reading making it stick.
[00:59:11.590] - Speaker 1
Oh, isn't that good?
[00:59:12.960] - Speaker 2
Yes, that's so good. I'm reading the second book by. Oh, now I'm nervous. Maybe I'm the one who has word receivable issues, but I have, like, four or five different books going at this time, and so those are the two that are.
[00:59:29.580] - Speaker 1
That's cool. Yes, I'm the same way. I have a stack of books, and.
[00:59:32.050] - Speaker 2
If you ask, they're all over the place. The plant based Paradox or something like that. The acid watchers diet. I mean, I have a variety of.
[00:59:40.940] - Speaker 1
Yeah, cool. How about you, Maria?
[00:59:46.350] - Speaker 2
Oh, yes. There you go.
[00:59:48.520] - Speaker 3
Okay, good.
[00:59:49.560] - Speaker 2
Very good.
[00:59:50.510] - Speaker 3
Yeah, good. Okay.
[00:59:52.860] - Speaker 1
Doreen what do you have on your desk that symbolizes you or is dear.
[00:59:56.410] - Speaker 2
To you on my desk? Pictures of my children. Actually, I have one here.
[01:00:03.930] - Speaker 3
This is the boys in my room.
[01:00:06.330] - Speaker 2
That's one of my favorites because they look like they really appreciate each other. So I like to charge cherish those, because in real life, that's not always the case. So I'd say family. And the desk that I have upstairs is my downstairs area. I guess it's an heirloom desk. It was my husband's great grandmother's desk, so I think that's pretty cool.
[01:00:27.430] - Speaker 1
That's cool.
[01:00:28.510] - Speaker 3
Yeah.
[01:00:28.970] - Speaker 1
How about you, Maria?
[01:00:31.110] - Speaker 3
Well, this is my home desk table, and one of the people I recognize, these things behind me. These are historical documents that are housed in, I believe, the Vatican library. So they're Napoleon's letter to the Pope saying I take over. This is King Henry VIII request for divorce with all the seals from Parliament. And this is a Chinese Empress begging for. So I told you, I started out as a history teacher with writing and literacy.
[01:01:08.300] - Speaker 1
That's so neat. That's really cool. Very cool. And last question for both of you, what are your greatest hopes for today's children?
[01:01:16.180] - Speaker 2
Doreen well, given our current situation is that they have developed some sort of resiliency and ability to reconnect. I worry about connections and just literacy rates in general, but I hope that this will send out our kids will be somehow more creative due to having to not have access to things that are typically able to when you're left with just your mind, sometimes in an isolation, as maddening as that can be, maybe for some, this might ignite a spark just to hold on to connections, I really hope that we can support and sustain.
[01:02:06.750] - Speaker 3
Nice.
[01:02:08.410] - Speaker 1
Maria, what are your greatest hopes for today's children?
[01:02:11.890] - Speaker 3
Well, I'm going to answer based on a conference I was at right before COVID hit where it was in San Diego. It was Excel in the Ed keynote speaker and he was speaking about technology's impact and creating anxiety and disconnection. I very much hope that our work in helping kids learn to read can provide that connection to humanity, empathy and whatnot because we know that being able to read is a protective factor experience adverse life effects and loneliness and trauma and all that. So I hope connection and humanness and empathy through literacy.
[01:03:08.550] - Speaker 1
Well, I'm going to leave it at that. And thank you both so much. And I know that as people are listening to this, they'll understand why. I feel fortunate every day that I get to work with the both of you. It's just my privilege and I know that all of us who are connected to the Reading League and community just so appreciate what both of you do as leaders in this organization.
[01:03:33.150] - Speaker 3
Thank you for being Laura. Laura. Absolutely.
[01:03:36.650] - Speaker 2
I second that you're here. Thanks. Bye bye, guys.
[01:03:43.570] - Speaker 1
Thank you for listening today for that heartfelt and somewhat emotional exploration with Jeremy and Maria. The Reading League is committed to bringing you important conversations like this as well as bringing you resources that can help you on your journey and in your practice. So if you haven't had a chance to check us out, please do please join our Facebook community where you'll share your journey and learn from other colleagues. Please check us out at www. The readinglead.org and join us. Become a member. Thanks for tuning in and we hope to see you next time.