The Teacher Burnout Podcast

An Overview of the Science of Reading
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Teacher Burnout Podcast, where we explore the challenges of burnout for teachers and share practical strategies to support teacher well being. I'm your host, Barb Flowers. If you're a teacher looking for ways to prevent burnout or an educational leader searching for strategies to support your team, this podcast is for you.
Let's dive in.
This episode is part of the National Literacy Month with RAF campaign, a partnership with the B podcast network and reading is fundamental to host numerous productive conversations across our network of podcasts about developing kids reading and literacy skills for life.
Well, welcome everyone to the podcast today. Our guest is Carrie Walchuk, who was actually a teacher when I was a principal. So I'm so excited to have her on the podcast. She was a title one teacher in my time as a principal and then became a literacy coach for the district, which was really exciting because that was a new role for us.
[00:01:00] And in my time that I got to work with Carrie, , Carrie, she brought to me what the science of reading was and we got to roll that out into the building together. So a lot of great times and a lot of literacy learning together. So I'm very excited to have her on the podcast. She's done a lot of professional development and growth in this area and is very knowledgeable.
So , we're going to ask her a lot of questions, and then I'm also going to give her information at the end if you want to reach out to her. I know she loves talking science of reading, but we are going to just start, Carrie, if you want to talk about yourself and give people a little bit of background of how you became someone who was interested in the science of reading.
All right. , thank you for that wonderful introduction. Yeah. , my interest and growth in the science of reading came through, , when I was in title one . And of course, we're working with small groups, we're trying, all different types of strategies and interventions. And then, , I got the opportunity [00:02:00] to attend an International Dyslexia Association, Northern Ohio branch, , workshop for an entire day.
And the speaker at the time, , had published, , a book called, On the functional MRIs and how they were able to see inside the human brain during a task, , like reading. And then she showed these, , MRIs. Where a child had received, a certain type of intervention and it literally changed the brain, the parts of the brain that were lighting up, , changed and matched more of.
a typical reader compared to a dyslexic reader. So they started out with dyslexic, , brain scans, and then got this intervention, and then the brain changed. And that just blew my mind. And I was like, , what do we got to do? What do we got to do to change brains, because I didn't even know that [00:03:00] was possible.
So through the use of the International Dyslexia Association's resources, And, , website and things like that, , we started diving into it. I also went to see, , down in Columbus, another international dyslexia association, central Ohio, , workshop where David Kilpatrick, , was speaking. And again, he's sharing, What the brain is actually doing when it's processing and reading and then here are the things that you can do.
And one of those missing pieces was this phonemic awareness and we were like, Oh, my gosh, this is crazy. How come I don't know this? How come I didn't come out of college knowing this? And so that started just, , A deep dive for myself and a couple other colleagues, and we just were like, okay, this makes total sense.
So we have got to get educated and start the move. And for [00:04:00] me as a leader, what really struck me when they brought this and knowing that it's not a fad, because the research was from the 80s, I'm like, what the heck? How did, like you said, how did we not know this? I taught kids how to read. I knew phonemic awareness was part of that, but it was such a different Teeny part of what I was teaching, even when I taught first grade.
, so yeah, like you said, it kind of blew all of our minds that, and we knew we had a problem, right? 80 percent of our kids weren't reading on grade level. Right. We had already in the past had done, , what now it's called dibbles, it's an oral reading fluency test and so on. It was, The original dibbles way back and, we did it for 2 or 3 years and we were analyzing the data and we still were not getting that 80 to 85 percent with our tier 1 instruction.
Yeah, it was. Like we got to do something. Yeah. And I know talking with teachers just all over the country, every state is kind of in a different position with the science of reading. I [00:05:00] know there are states who are like the science of reading. We've been doing that for years. And there are states in Ohio where we've really, we have started looking at this stuff a few years ago, but really the legislation has just come up in the last, like two years where teachers have gotten a lot of training this year.
Schools had to adopt a new curriculum. And then I know states that really aren't pushing the science of reading, so everybody listening, you're all in a different place. And so I thought that this is such an important topic that Carrie could come on and, you know,, you listen to this based on where you are and you're learning of the science of reading, but.
, I just wanted to give an overview so that you could go look into it more if you haven't done anything with it or just some tips if you are already implementing it because the biggest thing and the hardest shift I would say that we saw with the science of reading is there were so many things our teachers were doing and that I did as a teacher that we take teaching so personally.
And so when you hear no, [00:06:00] you've been doing that wrong or you shouldn't have been doing that, you take that to heart and people got very defensive. And I think Something important as we talk about this topic. It's not to be defensive. I love one of our teachers has the quote on her door like when you know better, you do better.
And that's so important because we didn't know, right? We can't beat ourselves up with things we didn't know, right? Better. So now we're trying to implement better. I could share to , , the Emily Hanford documentary. Was really a game changer, too, and figuring out that. Why don't we know why were we not taught this and so on and so forth? There's, there's some controversy maybe about , how she was influenced to create all those articles or whatnot. But if nobody has listened to that, , podcast sold a story kind of gives you a background of why we may be where we are.
In lack of knowledge, and I have to say, I was just at a podcasting conference and I met, , the company [00:07:00] that produce that and they were saying that podcast . Changed legislature in 40 some states, which is pretty crazy. And it shows how powerful, that really was. So I do think it's worth the listen if you haven't listened to, , that podcast.
I know there's a lot to it, Carrie, but what are the key principles of the science of reading that every teacher should understand on a basic level?,, I think probably the one, the couple that I feel are the biggest keys is understanding that you're not born with the brain network that you need to be able to read.
So the brain actually through instruction repurposes different parts of the phonological processor and the visual and the meaning making parts of the brain to create a new network. To turn, , print into speech and that there's a huge link between speech and [00:08:00] print for a long time. We thought it was visual.
If we just saw the words, but now we know that network is made up of multiple parts of the brain that definitely include the speech center pronunciation. , and that creates a whole , new neural network. So when we're looking at instructional practices from a teacher's point of view, you've got, that's one thing you can ask yourself, is what I'm doing reinforcing this idea of print to speech and speech to print?
Or is it, using another, way of getting the brain to learn to read that doesn't support that because we know that if that network isn't created and doesn't become efficient, then the child is going to struggle down the road with fluency. And then that's going to, mess up their comprehension.
So that would be 1 thing. Understanding how the brain. What all those processes are and then the other 1 is something you've probably [00:09:00] talked about before, which is the simple view or Scarborough's rope that reading is made up of all these different complex things that again, weave together over time and understanding what each of those components are and, , Looking at your instructional practices and which ones are supporting each parts of those simple view or the rope, , if you have that kind of basic knowledge, then you can reflect as a press practitioner and see what it is that you need to, , educate yourself on or, try different practices to improve those components.
And I will put a link to that picture in the, , show notes, but I want to say, I think one of the biggest misconceptions I had when I was teaching first grade was that idea of speech to text, right? Of like them having to have solid speaking skills and the phonemic awareness, because I remember one year I had 24 kids and 14 were on IEPs, [00:10:00] but the thinking was, okay, well, 10 of them are just speech IEPs.
And I remember , , why am I struggling so much getting my kids on track? And it's like, well, of course they are on speech IEPs, right? They are really struggling with that speech component. So learning to read. Is going to be harder and I didn't know that connection as a new teacher, I don't remember talking about that in college.
And we've I feel like collaborated more with the speech pathologist now more than ever that I never knew to before. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. So how can teachers incorporate evidence based reading instruction into their daily classroom practice? One of the things we want to start shifting away from is this idea of teaching kids to guess.
At words. So anytime that, , you have the opportunity for a child, then where a child makes an error and you're listening to them read out loud, you want to [00:11:00] discourage guessing in favor of the decoding based on phonics. There's so much research that supports, , systematic, explicit phonics, , and not, The guessing or what maybe people might have heard of as the 3 queuing system.
If you're going to start somewhere, that would be a good starting spot is to whenever you have the opportunity to scourge guessing and let's look at the words look at the words. Let's match the print to the speech and. Move forward that way. And I will say if you're listening to this and you teach a higher grade level, this is very hard because we've progressed over the years of breaking kids with this.
And, I know they did a lot of this in title and it, I just want to say, it's not easy. If you teach upper elementary or if you're already in, middle or high school and they've have this coping strategy, It's a hard thing to teach. So just know you're going to be frustrated along the way.
And it's a [00:12:00] lot of repetition of remember to look at the sounds, remember to sound the word out and not just guess. , I don't want you to think, Oh, I'm just going to remind them a few times and they're going to be able to do it. You think if that's how you were taught, like it is a really hard thing to change for kids.
Yeah, it's basically , just a bad habit that you have to break them of because they inevitably, and we all use context when we read, even as adults, we use context, but that's more for meaning. You know what I mean? What I need is the pronunciation of the word correctly, because then that will, Oh, I've heard that word before.
And so. It's definitely a bad habit that they get into and you're actually using a different part of the brain when you are encouraging that. And so you're weakening that neural network. I was talking about, what common misconceptions about teaching reading do you often encounter, and how does the science of reading address them?
, one of [00:13:00] them is this, , visual memorizing. Okay, so people are still stuck in that, that it's all visual and we just, need to memorize words and so on and so forth. And the other one is that English is so irregular that you can't, oh, there's too many exceptions to the rules that's just too cumbersome for young Children to learn.
And turns out that about 85 percent of our language is actually decodable. If you know the history behind the words. So that's, the etymology that, where did the word come from as a leak, , Latin or Greek or Anglo Saxon, all of those things play into why the words are spelled the way they're spelled, why they're sat, why they sound the way they sound when they're pronounced.
And, a lot of times that would be a misconception is that, oh, , it's too irregular. So. It doesn't make any sense to try and teach any rules because there's too many exceptions. Actually, , there's [00:14:00] not, if you have the background knowledge of how English is formed. I remember one being V, like in the word give, you have your short I, and we would always say we don't know why it's like that. It's just an exception. And then I learned that any word that has a V ends in an E.
Right. Because English has that rule, right? Yeah, that no J or V. J or V. Yeah, so then it was like that made perfect sense and you could explain that to kids versus saying , it doesn't make any sense. , yeah, I think that's a great example and what I know we've talked a lot about this. What improvements have you seen in student reading outcomes when teachers implement the science of reading?
Well, I'll tell you, the confidence level of the kids definitely improves and , they establish themselves more as a competent reader. I think, , their fluency improves and their, , then their [00:15:00] comprehension improves because a lot of times it's hard to measure their. comprehension if you don't have a high enough degree of word accuracy.
So the research says basically you need about 95 percent accuracy on word reading in order to have a shot at fully comprehending what you're reading. So if you're improving accuracy and then the fluency comes where you're reading like you're talking, that Is going to increase your ability to comprehend so the data of accuracy becomes actually, the most important thing that you're looking at.
So, if , you're measuring improvements and you're not seeing accuracy go up, you're seeing maybe speed because they're trying to speed read you want to discourage that and increase the accuracy and get it to as close to 95 percent as you can and then work on, reading a little bit faster.
Okay. [00:16:00] Yeah, and we would use the cadence for that. And one thing I do want to caution you on to and we had conversations around this, like we would do item analysis for our state test in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. And I do think it's important to look at that data and really dive into that data.
But. You have to look at if you see a kid who can't even read that passage, they're not reading on a third grade level. It's really not helpful to look and be like, okay, so they missed the main idea questions because they're not even comprehending the text. So they could be guessing to get their answer.
We don't know what is accurate there. Until they're a fluent reader, you really want to focus on measuring, like Carrie said, that accuracy to see that improvement, right? , and, you know, like you said, you, you can't get inside their head when they're silent reading. So really, the measure that becomes the most important is that oral reading where you're listening.
And can diagnose, those errors and what [00:17:00] it is that they're doing and what, , strategies they, they are using, , because without you listening, , you really can't. Identify what it is that's going on and why it is they're failing in those comprehension questions. It could be a whole vocabulary thing.
They could be reading completely accurate, but they're not understanding the meanings of the words. , that's a whole different issue then. , yeah, and I think that's 1 thing too that I've learned over time is just having them read out loud versus silent reading. , what are your thoughts? And what have you learned about?
Okay, we have 20 minutes to read. Go ahead and read like what do you think about that? Oh, yeah, there's definitely techniques out there. Echo reading. So the teacher reads, then the whole class reads, , coral reading. We're all reading together. Tim Rosinski has a lot of great resources, , on readers, theaters and poetry, all of those types of things where you're rereading [00:18:00] something with support, but out loud.
, for, and for a purpose, a lot of times, just asking a child to reread and reread and reread. They're looking at you like, why am I reread this? This is boring or whatever. So you've got to set a purpose, whether the purpose is, okay, we're going to read it again this time to look for, , the main characters or what's the theme of the piece, or we're going to read it again because we're going to perform it.
in front of an audience. , that, that's what Rosensky's stuff is great at is, , choral reads that actually turn out as performances. So kids are motivated to reread and reread. Yeah. Yeah. And I think more and more. We see with kids, , they want a purpose. They want to know why it's no longer because it's like, well, I'm the teacher and I told you I do it.
Oh, no, they've got the, yeah, by doing this. Right, right. So giving them that purpose will help you a lot. What is one thing a teacher can do now if [00:19:00] they are listening to this and maybe they're in a district who hasn't made any strides towards, implementing things from the science of reading?
, how would you recommend they get started now? Go to reliable sources and begin educating yourself. So I am a big fan of the Reading League because they're a non profit. They're not affiliated with a publisher. They're a group of educators, , actually from New York who got together and just said, this research is out there and we have got to start, , shifting people towards understanding how the brain learns to read and what instructional strategies will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
And they, have a wonderful website that has lots of resources on there. book recommendations, what, where to start reading. If you're gonna, start educating yourself, you want to choose. A book that's been chosen by, a resource like this to make [00:20:00] sure you're getting reliable information because there is, obviously money to be made from publishers by putting a stamp.
Oh, , we align with the science of reading. So there's going to be a sticker on the front of the book. And then once you actually dive down into it. There could be some questionable practices, so you want to make sure wherever you're getting your resources that it's, really aligned and doesn't have a backdoor motive for putting a stamp of the science of reading on it.
And we just experienced that as, , we went through a curriculum adoption for this school year and we looked at curriculums and I'm like, nothing is different. This is the same exact curriculum we had from 15 years ago or 10 years ago. , and it did, it said science of reading aligned, and it's , like you said, it's ulterior motives and how that gets, that stamp of approval.
I don't know, but you got to be really careful and do your research. The International Dyslexia Association is also another great [00:21:00] resource because even , for students who aren't dyslexic, the process is the same. So we know that there's no difference in the instructional strategies that have the biggest impact.
We do know that about, , probably , I think it's upwards of, 40 to 60 percent of the students, however you teach them, they're going to learn to read, right? Know that there's , that chunk that needs a specific way. , it turns out that specific way it can be used across everyone.
Yeah. It's a way. And if it's going to hit your most. At risk students and not, damage or, harm the other people who are going to learn to read no matter what. Why not just make it a blanket instructional practice that works really for all. So right. International Association's resources.
Understand that, yes, these are the deeper things you need to do for a student who's elected. They're going to need more time. They're going to need a smaller [00:22:00] group, but these same practices work for everyone. , when you're looking at your tier 1 core instruction, do you have those practices in place?
And before we leave, I just want to end talking about, , one thing that I've seen as a huge shift as we've gone through the science of reading. There have been classrooms with, I think there were about 25, even maybe 27 struggling readers in fourth grade, , that we put together. And they did explicit instruction in one classroom.
I think there's this misconception, and I definitely had it from a balanced literacy approach that I needed to have all small group to engage kids. And I needed to constantly be rotating in the problem that I've seen with that over time is you have kids in small group that aren't necessarily engaged.
And what we found with this, , it was a pretty big group of kids. And there were multiple teachers. I will say there was, a classroom teacher. , there was the intervention specialist and a title teacher came in [00:23:00] there, but that title teacher pretty much had all 27 kids engaged.
Focusing on the lesson and really progressing in their reading in that one whole group situation, so I also want to address and carry if you want to speak on that misconception that to help kids in reading, we have to be pulling in small group all the time, right? You're absolutely right. It's about time management, right?
So if you're. Reading in small groups a lot. Okay. The way we were all trained with balanced literacy, , the reading love. What are the other kids doing? And the idea that you can really give the other kids something to do that's going to be as meaningful as having them engaged in that whole group lesson , is hard to justify.
It really is. , yes, we can, say, Oh, we're going to have them read this book and they're going to do this and the other. But I think realistically, we've all been in those [00:24:00] classrooms and there's someone over there who's playing with their pencil, like they're doing it. So it's impossible to have everybody engaged when you're not there, especially when it's one teacher by themselves.
Right. So your biggest bang for your buck is to get as much engagement, whole group as you can. , with these instructional strategies. So, , again, needs to have that perky pace. Anita Archer is big about that. Like when you are moving through the lessons, even with comprehension, even with vocabulary, it's got to be quick and you need them to be giving you a response or they need to be responding to their neighbor.
So that turn and talk, reconnect. What did we just learn? Let's give it back to me, , but constantly keeping them involved is going to get you a bigger bang for your buck than sending them off by themselves to hopefully do what you've asked them to do while you're working with this small group over here.
Do you need, [00:25:00] opportunities to reinforce something with a small group? Absolutely. But you don't want to make that the majority of your schedule. You want to make most of it an engaging whole group lesson that's, giving you that where they're, , on the edge of their seats, then with some little bit of time work with that small group.
If you have attention issues or need, repeated. And if you would have told me this as a teacher, I would have been like, that can't be done. They can't be engaged in a whole group. They don't have the attention, but I'm telling you, I have seen it done in fourth grade with . A lot of kids that have ADHD and it was those engagement strategies.
It's not lecture. It's not 40 minutes of, , the teacher talking at them. It's this constant, , stand up, sit down, , , talk to your partner, repeat back to me, , and it is going at this perky pace, , but it is amazing to watch, and it does have a huge bang for your buck and better time management.
So [00:26:00] I just wanted to address that because that has been a huge shift for me. Right, and that's going to be a huge shift for our teachers as well. , with the adoption of our new curriculum, , we are going to be using more whole group instruction. And I think it's going to be challenging at first, because, in order to do the procedures.
You have to have the manual there and that is hard for teachers to , actually hold a manual where the words and the instructions are all there and looking down, looking up, they feel like that shows like that they're incompetent. But they're not. You need that. You need that guide. You're never going to be able to memorize, all of , the procedures for everything.
You just can't wrap your head around that. You know what I mean? So you've got to be willing to let that be your guide. And then again, that exchange, student, teachers, student, teachers, back and forth, back and forth. And as you're transitioning to this, I just I always want to stress to teachers.
It's not [00:27:00] about perfection. We're not going to be perfect in this. And you just have to try it. And that's what I've always loved about teaching little kids is like you just say, Hey, I'm trying this. And they're like, Whatever you go, kids are so resilient and so understanding. And so if you mess up, it's fine.
You always have a chance to reteach and do something again. I really recommend if you haven't, and Carrie shared some great resources, Anita Archer, , Kilpatrick, What else, Carrie, to recap? The Reading League, the International Dyslexia Association's websites, lots of resources. And I will link all of those in the show notes, but I really recommend you go back if your district hasn't been providing PD and doing this, go find this information on your own.
And I encourage you. To go talk to your principal about it. This is how I learned, right? They came to me and showed me and said, here, look at this. , and so if you research, go talk to, leaders in your district , and see what you can get going in this area. But it is important stuff.
And we have seen [00:28:00] a huge difference in kids from using, methods from the science of reading. It's very exciting. I've been in education over 30 years and , I'm, could be on my way out here soon, but, but it's just, it provides so much hope for the future, I think, because we've been struggling for so long and not sure what to do and letting so many kids, , down, with the NAEP scores remaining flat.
Over these years, it's very exciting to me that as the country, Ohio and everybody starts shifting in that direction, what we're hoping to see happen, , with those scores because , it's a life skill and in today's , technologically advanced, , stuff you really, reading is critical to your life success.
Yeah, definitely. Well, thanks Carrie for being on the podcast today. Thank you for having me.
[00:29:00] Outro Music