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Interviews & Perspectives

image of readwood trees

The Overstory of Literacy

The Overstory is a best-selling novel by Richard Powers. It tells the stories of a few enormous formidable trees and how their existence affects the trees’ people. I never heard of an overstory before reading the novel, and I have since learned that they are giant trees that live above the other trees in their own climate—they even breathe their own air. If nature is a metaphor for life, then we are the understory. We are connected to the overstory by our circumstances or knowledge. We advocate for science, data, and the logic that has alluded widespread adoption of evidence-based literacy instruction and interventions. We progress in some states, districts, and sectors, and it’s never fast enough or equitable enough. How can we rest with small victories when we’re looking up at redwood trees, and we have only glimpses of the sky. How we write our overstory is when we grow as strong and formidable as those unmovable redwoods. Nobody can do it alone. At Teach My Kid to Read, we believe in reaching parents and caregivers as quickly as possible and educating them about all the skills parents like me wish they had known about when our children were young. Faith Borkowsky even created a book series called “If only I would have known…” Knowledge is power, and we… | Read More »The Overstory of Literacy

Literacy For All!

Literacy is not political or partisan. The right to literacy is as fundamental as the right to a free and appropriate public education, and both are deeply intertwined. Lately, it seems, everything is political, and now there’s a movement to suggest that those parents, teachers, literacy specialists, and advocates spouting about the science of reading are part of the far-right movement. If we weren’t living through a pandemic and one of the most challenging times of our lives, it could almost be funny. It’s not the first time I have personally experienced this attempt to pigeon hole literacy advocacy with politics. When I was brand new to the literacy space, I spun off about schools not embracing the approach to literacy proven to help all kids, especially children with dyslexia, learn to read. I was accused of representing a conservative think tank funded by the far right. Years later, during an advocacy meeting, I was charged with representing a well-oiled and well-funded machine. I wish the latter, at least about the funding, was correct. With all the uncertainty and divisiveness in the world, the last thing we need is to use our children as pawns to maintain the status quo in reading instruction that doesn’t work for all. I have witnessed higher education faculty cut down parents, tutors, and anyone… | Read More »Literacy For All!

Children's librarian, Faye Lieberman and one of the boys who frequents her library

Ask the Librarian: I Miss the Kids!

We started working with public libraries in 2019 to raise awareness of reading issues like dyslexia and educate librarians about resources that help all children learn to read. Who would’ve envisioned that within a year a pandemic would hit, and public libraries would close. Franklin Square Children’s Librarian, Faye Lieberman, tells us what it’s like to be a librarian working remotely through COVID-19 and what she will be doing when the library reopens. Lockdown I miss the kids! My library closed March 17, 2020, and we are on lockdown until at least May 15, 2020. Libraries are doing online programming, but I’m not good at it, so I keep in contact with our kids through lots of phone calls. Some kids are too shy to talk to me, so I talk to their parents instead. Other kids can’t wait to talk to me and tell me their latest news. What I Miss the Most When the library is open. the best part of my day is from 3:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon. I often have a roomful of kids then and I love it! Some come in to play with toys, puzzles, LEGOs, or the computers. Others are doing homework or working with tutors. Some children are looking for books. I try to greet everyone with a smile and… | Read More »Ask the Librarian: I Miss the Kids!

Teach My Kid to Read members and librarian Faye Lieberman, holding a stuffed bear

Hey Teacher! Let the Kids Read What They Want

What does a librarian say when parents of struggling readers say their children won’t read anything? What’s it like to hear parents tell their children they can only read books at certain levels? Why do all the young adult books seem to include themes that are so difficult for our tweens and teens to grapple with? Struggling readers in this age range are often facing enough challenges, so why are so many of the books written for them so brutal? Recently, a few Teach My Kid to Read volunteers and I sat down with Faye Lieberman, Children’s Librarian at Franklin Square Public Library in Franklin Square, New York, for a discussion about children’s books and the questions librarians hear the most. Following are excerpts from a transcript of the discussion: Ask the Librarian! My name is Faye Lieberman. I’ve been a children’s librarian for nearly forty years. In my experience, things have gotten much worse for children with and without dyslexia. Most schools teach reading using sight words, leveled readers, and standardized tests. There is minimal attempt to adjust to the needs of individual children. I’m finding fewer children who want to read for pleasure. It’s not always the teacher’s fault. Sometimes it’s the parent’s fault, too. Every day I hear, “You can’t read that, it’s not on your level.”… | Read More »Hey Teacher! Let the Kids Read What They Want

Save a Life: Teach a Kid to Read

Have you ever watched young children in a library or bookstore? They run around in excitement and pull dozens of books off the shelves. I’ve seen it many times and I’ve pulled a few books off shelves myself. Children are born with an innate capacity for joy, a natural curiosity, and a desire to learn. Young children love Story Time or having a parent or caregiver reading aloud to them. Is there is a defining moment or a collection of experiences that leads to diminished joy and eventually to a downright hatred of libraries and books for some children? Maybe it’s when a child first heads off to school, or when the other children progress to chapter books, that those once-exciting books become painful to try to read. I’ve thought about the loss of joy a lot lately. Through our new library program, The Road to Decode, I have spent a lot of time in the children’s sections of libraries. Teach My Kid to Read worked hard on The Road to Decode, creating awareness and helping librarians understand what resources help children learn to read. But are we doing enough? We’ve cited statistics before. Reading issues are common, and nobody is spared. Sixty-four percent of fourth graders are not reading proficiently. According to The International Dyslexia Association, reading issues like… | Read More »Save a Life: Teach a Kid to Read

Connecting the Dots: Who Can Help Our Kids Learn to Read? Parents!

As a parent of a child with a reading issue like dyslexia, I came to this world of reading wars, phonics, balanced literacy, leveled readers, and other instructional methods that we argue about, as an innocent. I merely wanted to know why our daughter was struggling so much, and why nobody could help her learn to read. When she didn’t progress at school, I thought that I could teach her to read. As an English major, a publishing professional, and a past writing tutor, I was a natural candidate, but my methods and attempts didn’t work. I couldn’t teach her, and the school couldn’t seem to teach her, so then I thought that there must be a print-based or computerized program that could teach her to read. If there wasn’t, I was sure that my colleagues and I in educational publishing and technology could invent a program that would magically work. We had solved educational challenges before; surely we could figure this out. (Perhaps now we could create something, but we didn’t have the background back then.) As I slowly entered the world of the science of reading; direct, explicit instruction; multisensory instruction; and eventually Orton-Gillingham, I still couldn’t help our daughter learn to read. I couldn’t hear the sounds myself! While I could probably teach a course on the… | Read More »Connecting the Dots: Who Can Help Our Kids Learn to Read? Parents!

Why Educational Publishers are Part of the Solution to the Reading Challenge

“The greatest enemy of progress is the illusion of knowledge.” John Young, Astronaut Several years ago, I was working as a contractor in the educational publishing industry. The scope of one of our contracts was to build curricula for a few disciplines so the publisher could assess whether to pursue publishing in those particular academic areas and, if so, determine their strategy. We listed the required and elective courses for the discipline, specific areas of study, course objectives, and major textbooks and course materials used for each class. We commented accordingly on enrollments, trends, and areas for improvement. One of the disciplines we worked on was education. While we were putting together courses and books for the certification and degree programs in special education, reading, and literacy, it never occurred to me to hunt for the few textbooks that include a science-based approach to reading, or to recommend that graduates need at least a basic understanding of the foundations of reading. I didn’t know then about the five pillars of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. How would I have known? We Can’t Change What We Don’t Know Is Broken That phrase is repeated regularly in connection with teacher training in the science of reading, and it applies to publishers as well. Publishers can’t change what they don’t… | Read More »Why Educational Publishers are Part of the Solution to the Reading Challenge

Why Learning About “Why” Helps Us All to Read

I can’t tell you why a “c” sounds like an “s” in the word certain. Without Googling, I can’t tell you why certain patterns of letters make a specific sound. Ask our daughter. She has an understanding of alphabetics, phonemic awareness and she understands the particular rules that make letters and letter combinations make certain sounds. She can tell you why. The Phoenicians Can Tell You Why & I Can Tell You a Little The alphabet and connecting sounds to letters have been around a long, long time. The Phoenicians were the first to start breaking down sound into letters. The earliest evidence of their work dates back to 1000 B.C.! The Phoenicians may not have written a structured literacy approach to reading, but it seems like they were moving in that direction. The Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and they can tell you why. I learned to read easily and naturally. Over the years, as I’ve discovered more and more about how all of us should learn to read, I’ve rediscovered the joy of the English language. I’ve learned to tackle long, confusing words that I would generally skip or try to figure out in context. I break the words apart or look for the meaning in the parts. I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you a… | Read More »Why Learning About “Why” Helps Us All to Read

Why the Alphabet Is So Much More Than A, B, C

It’s Dyslexia Awareness Month and the perfect time to consider why the alphabet is so much more than A, B, C. Each October, Dyslexia Awareness Month generates awareness about the 1 in 5 people who have difficulty decoding words because of a challenge at the most basic level in connecting sounds to letters and then mapping those words to print. Learning to read is a complicated process, and the first step toward understanding where we’ve taken a wrong turn is to look at the alphabet. Here’s why it’s worth a second look. The alphabet is a series of symbols or letters that work together to create words. The words work together to form sentences. That’s how most of us learn to read—me included. Why this process sets us down a squirrely path is because we take the alphabet at face value with minimal thought to the many sounds and patterns that work together to form words. The alphabet becomes nothing more than the alphabet song that we all learned when we were starting to read. We’re Reading and Guessing! Once we get the letters down and have some basic sense of how they dance around and create words we’re off and running. If we’re not sure of a word, we guess. In theory, we’re reading! It’s like jumping out of… | Read More »Why the Alphabet Is So Much More Than A, B, C

Will New York’s Guidance Memo on Students with Disabilities Resulting from Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia Change Anything?

New York is making progress towards better dyslexia awareness, and the acknowledgment of science-based approaches to reading. That’s the good news! As a parent, though, what I want to know is will the guidance memo change anything. Will more teachers get trained? Will we get more effective services? In August 2018, the Deputy Commissioner of The State Education Department sent out a guidance memo on Chapter 216 of the Laws of 2017: Students with Disabilities Resulting from Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia. The memo went out to the following stakeholders: District Superintendents Superintendents of Public Schools Public School Administrators Charter School Administrators Superintendents of State-Operated and State-Supported Schools Executive Directors of Approved Private Schools Nonpublic School Administrators Directors of Special Education Directors of Pupil Personnel Services Chairpersons of Committees on Special Education Organizations, Parents, and Individuals Concerned with Special Education In plain English, the purpose of the guidance memo is to inform school districts about the specific educational needs of students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. Furthermore, the memo confirms that these very explicit terms can be used for evaluations, eligibility determinations and drafting IEPs (Individualized Education Program). #SayDyslexiaNY Just look at the stakeholders. The memo is out!  Now that the good word is out when we start complaining that our kids aren’t learning to read, the services aren’t working, and… | Read More »Will New York’s Guidance Memo on Students with Disabilities Resulting from Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia Change Anything?