The Storyshares Approach to Diverse and Accessible Libraries with Louise Baigelman

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show. Louise Baigelman is the founder and CEO of Storyshares a mission driven literacy organization focused on engaging and empowering readers and writers of all levels. Before

starting Storyshares. Louise was a reading and writing teacher a middle school ELL coordinator and a literacy specialist working with students from preschool through high school, Louise was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list the International Literacy Association's 30 under 30 list, and she has received awards from the Library of Congress Teach For America Milken Penn GSE and reimagine education for her work

with story shares. Louise holds a BA in English and psychology from Cornell University and an MA in education from Boston University. Louise Baigelman Welcome to Edtech Insiders.

third grade level. And so for me, one of the huge problems was just being able to find good books for them that they could read and wanted to read that weren't embarrassing that were representative. And so you know, noticing that gap that need for a new kind of content for these students is where it initially came from.

have readers. And so that was the first piece was kind of the proof point that if we ask for these stories, and we give some guidance, we can get really amazing content. And then on the other side, well, once we have these books, what does that mean for readers? How do we know that they're making a difference? And, you know, for me, the reading to writing full cycle piece of it is really powerful.

So if you're a middle school or high school, or who's struggling with reading, who's behind, you probably have negative associations with reading, because you know, you've been struggling with it. And so it's boring, it's demotivating. So the real transformation is when you have a student like that, and we hear from teachers about this that wouldn't read wouldn't pick up a book during independent reading time, because they didn't have

anything they could read. And that when they have choices for our stories that are relevant to them, the characters look like them. And they're dealing with problems that they're dealing with those students now actually, not only are they sitting down and reading that book, but they're asking their teacher for another one. They're telling their friend, Hey, you gotta read this. In some cases, they're actually writing their

own stories afterwards. So really bringing it all the way home in that sense.

itself is a thing. And then if you're someone who struggles with reading, and you feel behind that, that has a thing, right? It's stigma. And if you give that student let's say, it's a ninth grader, Hop on Pop, or, you know, Junie B. Jones on the stupid, smelly bus, they would be embarrassed, they don't want to be seen reading books like that in front of their peers, and not let alone find it, you know, interesting content for what they care

about. So yeah, I think that embarrassment and just the kind of awareness of what is the book look like? What does it feel like, you know, does it feel like the book my neighbor to the left and to the right in the classroom is reading that matters so much, hugely.

spice, and everything nice. And the cover is a young looks like probably African American teen sort of looking up, it looks like a book you'd buy in a bookstore, it looks like a young adult book, a little bit of maybe like almost like a romancey kind of feel is nothing embarrassing about it at all, adults would read a book like this on the you know, on the train and not feel anything. Tell us a little bit about what

the stories are. And we will dig into this whole global writer community as well, because I think that you have an incredible use of tech there. But first off, let's just make sure our listeners understand what these books really are. Yeah, so

in some cases, as well. And the way that we structure our library is to make sure that their choices that are engaging and compelling and accessible for students at any intersection of age, you know, an interest and then reading level and your skill level so that you can go in and say, I'm in middle school, but reading closer to a first grade level and say, you know, search and find all the books that that are for middle schoolers at a first grade

level. So that gives students not only great choices, really where they are, but also give them the next choices so they can scaffold up as they're working to improve their skills. So the first sort of phase of our library creation was focused on what's referred to as high low content, they're high interest, lower literacy level, they're kind of shorter chapter books with easier language, vocabulary, shorter sentences,

or shorter overall content. And that's one piece and those have, you know, been received really well. The other piece, like the seashells book you mentioned, is new, and those are called decodable. As we're calling them, decodable, chapter books, those are really structured literacy titles that follow a scope and sequence to teach students those really foundational sounds in a more

controlled way. We just launched them in October, and we are, they're flying off the shelves, we've had an amazing response to those books. Yeah, and you know, as far as embarrassment, and that kind of thing, the books that are currently written that are decodable are intended for preschool, kindergarten, first grade. And so those books, you know, there's the Bob books, for example, their line drawings, there's a few words on the page.

And so these accomplish the same thing, but in a dramatically different way, as far as how they feel and how a student would feel reading them hugely

I mean, I'm looking at this incredible topic, Library of things that people I mean, we'll get into that soon. But at the same time, I consider you very much of an edtech company in a few different ways. One is the delivery of content, do you have it in print, but also in tech delivery. And I'd love to hear

more about that. But the other is in the sort of really clever way that you have basically built a tech enabled platform to bring authors into this ecosystem so that you can actually create this huge library of high quality content. Can you talk us through the tech components, but first off the tech delivery, and then this sort of platform piece?

tech enabled. And I say, you know, technology is a big piece of what we do to enable this you know, content creation and this new model, which we kind of uncovered through the first writing contest we did we started with just one writing contest and then realize that we could really expand upon and so From a tech perspective, when we do writing contests, or even in general, when authors come to the platform to create a story, you know, they can submit a manuscript in a traditional way.

But what we guide them towards and love to see is them to use our ebook publishing platform where they not only have the guidelines on here's how to make a book engaging for a teenager, but a little bit easier to read. But also, while they're writing, the platform itself has some feedback built in so that it can show them you know, here's around the reading level of your text, and it will spike if they use a really tricky word or a

really long sentence. And so it's not only for this book, okay, I'll revise that word to make it a lower level. It's also we're sort of training, you know, a community of writers, you want readers, here's a huge population desperate need of new content. Yeah, here's a way to make books for them. And yeah, that's been really successful.

other. I'd love to hear some stories of some of these writers who come to your story share site through the writing portal. And I'm sure it's changed their life as a writer, because they're getting things from out of their laptops and into the hands of kids all over the world. Tell us about what that looks like.

career. So there's so many writers out there. And yeah, we found that we started with these writing contests. And we started getting stories, but also along the way, we identify different writers who were really excited about this, who really understood these guidelines. And so we sort of bring them into this community where we can then continue to, you know, go to certain writers for certain things. We have some who used to write, you know, nonfiction, you

have news articles. And so they are great for that kind of content. We have some who are actually a literacy specialist and a writer. So they're great for, you know, to quotables, because they understand that so so we can sort of tap into this community in an ongoing way. It's like, yeah, to your point. It's like a crowdsourcing event, author aggregator, in a way,

idea. That's good, rightfully so you've gotten awards from the Library of Congress that you as a Forbes 30, under 30 award, and others have highlighted the sort of impact of this really brilliant insight and company that you're doing with story shares. Tell us about you know, how you've evolved it. You mentioned in passing that you started with writing contests or that was your first approach, how have you evolved the sort of content creation side? And how

have you evolved? You also mentioned this decodable is obviously a huge evolution, but you tell us about how things have sort of continued to change as you've gotten recognition, but also gotten more and more people sort of inside your ecosystem? Yeah.

ebooks and paperback. So you know, next thing, you know, here, we are kind of publishing. And I think that the difference besides this author, community model, and the tech enabled publishing from more typical publishing is we're also trying to be really nimble about everything, and so really responsive to the market needs. And that's where we are right now with this decodable

collection. It's brand new, and it's because, you know, there's this huge push right now on structured literacy with the science of reading, you know, it's been de emphasized teaching your phonics skills for several

decades. And so there's a really big focus on that now, and we just heard in every single conversation we had with teachers and librarians that they needed these decodable texts for older students, too, because, you know, 68% of fourth graders are not reading proficiently, and every year beyond that the gap just grows between them. You know, the content you can read and the

content you want to read. And so, so we we thought, okay, and someone said to me, no, it was it would be impossible to make a decodable engaging for a teenager. And so that was really what kicked this part off. I said, it's impossible. So yeah, just trying to you know that this phase right now is really informed by those conversations we were having around this other content gap

literacy. And now that we have, there's a whole slew of struggling readers at all ages that have never been taught in the way that works or have never, for variety of reasons are far behind many grade levels behind as you say. So I want to list a couple of these topics, just because it's so inspiring reading the topics. And then let's talk about seashells and spice and everything nice just because it's at a 1.2 reading

level, right. So it's designed to be read by people as young as I believe that that's first

grade, right? But you mentioned how do you write things that are decodable level but have where the topics are relevant to teenagers, so I'm just going to just cherry pick, you have like probably 200 at least different topics in your library, but things like YA dystopian first kiss fighting divorce, depression, you know, ghosts and paranormal grief and loss, homelessness, graphic novels and comics, horses, horses, to kids of many different ages, you know, lies, magic, mentoring,

military mysteries, small town, I mean, it's so exciting subways, you know, space, this idea of like, yes, we've been in a world where the topic of the reading and the level of the reading, people tend to sort of put together they say, okay, Hunger Games is for this audience. And it's going to be a dystopian novel. And you've completely detach these in a fascinating way. So let's use you know, seashells, spice, or you could pick any other books, you know, your library better

than I do. Tell us about how you're doing this. How are you making, you know, things that can be read at a first grade reading level, but for a, you know, 1314 year old?

those things. My husband, he reads about really different things he's interested in, you know, how to create things out of wood, and how to write there's totally, but he would read avidly about that topic. And I would not, and vice versa. And so the same concept applies is, what's that entry point of relevance for any reader and having as many choices as possible? Because you never know if it's one book one talk, right, that actually speaks to

you. So there's that piece and then the as far as the actual, how do you get so low on reading level, but still keep it engaging? I think we really looked at a few core pieces, right? When someone says it's impossible to do that. We said, why is that impossible? And we came up with, like, what, and my son actually is in first grade.

So it's really interesting to see it from that perspective, you know, what is it that makes it so that he'd pick up this book written for first graders, but that a teenager wouldn't and are those things we can change.

And so we boiled it down to what I think are like, relatively simple concepts around it has to, the characters have to be around the same age as the reader, and they have to look like the reader, right, and ninth grader doesn't really want to read about a first grader, the graphics matter a lot, you need to have covers that look cool. Like, you know, don't judge a book by a cover, but we

do and students certainly do. So just having engaged in covers and graphics, visuals are really big, the shape and feel of the book. So in our case, the Decodable texts typically are really short, right? They're these like short texts for for younger students. And so for that one, we thought for a while and we came up with this chapter

book concept. So see sales face and everything nice is actually a chapter book where each of the five chapters in that book are a decodable text that says on a specific focus sound that fit into a scope and sequence for literacy learning. And so just that alone means you know, that comes back to the backpack test. A student would be fine picking that up, because it's all combined. Whereas if it were just that little thin text, it

would feel really different. And then yeah, topics and themes So how do you use fewer words, but still hit on those key topics and themes. So the one that comes before seashells, spice and everything nice, which is the first in our decodable series, I'm holding it in my hand right now, which is why I'm talking about it. But it starts with Max wanting to yell because his parents said, No basketball until your grades get better.

And with with a little bit of graphics, but also just with fewer words, you can still get at all those concepts. So that's what we're doing.

various ways. So there's a sort of representation piece. And then there's this interest piece, you know, mysteries versus reading about woodworking versus reading about magic, or science fiction, or myths, you know, or all sorts of different

genres. And I'm curious how you see those playing together, because it's very easy to see looking at your catalogue, how they do play together, but I'd love to hear you talk about it, you know, there's those are two different types of what we sometimes call, you know, personalization, right, that you can personalize on a cultural level and have culturally representative or age representative or gender representative characters. And then you can personalize on a topic level and have books about

things that kids care about. And kids can choose topics they care about. How do you see those playing together?

middle school. So or maybe, you know, more science fiction for girls, whatever it is, and so we can craft our contest categories, based on those topics, so that we get a lot of stories in these gaps that we identify each year, and then bringing that piece together

with who are our authors? And how do we make sure that there's really authentic representation, because a lot of, you know, there's definitely a lot of talk about diversity in literature and in content and cultural relevance, but often, it's still written by, you know, like a white person. And it's written about a country that they've read about maybe, but actually haven't experienced firsthand.

And so for us, this cultural authenticity of voices by giving these guidelines and then getting them out there to as many different authors as possible so that we can really bring it together that way. Tell

of organic reach? We're not exactly sure how this you know, how authors in Senegal are finding us. But I think it comes back to that kind of the hunger from the writer side, right? There are so many writers out there who are sitting down each day, looking for opportunities to get rich. And so just connecting those two pieces, you know, using the technology in between and this kind of awareness campaign that comes with the contests and offer

submissions. A lot of the rest is it's exceeded, you know, any of the expectations we had as far as the interest and diversity of our Raider group, I think we have 180 countries.

or design all these things. And then you get it out back into schools and you're obviously responsive to schools and teachers and continuing to evolve to what they need. Those are all hugely impactful and amazing things. But I think one of the things that It seems like it's almost like underlies this whole story is that we are in a world as of 2021, more than half of the school age students in the US are non white, right?

Where percent are Hispanic, almost 14% are black, almost 8% are Asian, you have a diversity of languages spoken. And then we know that we're in this midst of science of reading change where the underserved populations and minority populations are reading behind grade level, it's

reported on all the time. So if you have more than half of the students, entry being non white, and non white readers being more likely to be reading behind grade level, and everybody's moving to science of reading for all the right reasons, you have your finger right on the pulse of where the entire literacy world is going. And, you know, you mentioned serialization, you know, we just saw the 18th Diary

of Wimpy Kid. It's like, that is also something that commercial publishers have realized for a long time, that it's all about cereals, and chapter books and continuing stories. And you're taking all of these trends that are sociological, and, you know, economic and putting them all together, it just feels so

exciting. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that sort of change that we're seeing in the country, where we have a school aged kid right now is might feel very different than people who grew up 3040 years ago might be picturing, tell us about what you're seeing in the schools and how people are reacting to this library? Yeah,

reading differently. And we've determined that we have so many students who've already gotten past the point where they were, we're teaching them to read without knowing how to read yet. And as a result, and it makes sense, we're all really, really focused, and you know, the space is really focused on, we have to make sure they can read on grade level by third grade. So we need to revamp, you know, K through

three literacy. And we need to make sure that they can read on level by third grade, I just read an article yesterday that said, you know, that one of the solutions is like, well, we have to start retaining kids at third grade if they can't read. And I thought, it's so interesting to me that we're not talking about the fact that decades of students have already gotten past third grade, not being able

to read. And so I think as far as like the positioning in this space, it's pretty soon once we kind of nail down this early literacy structured, you know, science of reading piece, it's, how do we now take that but also look at it differently for those students beyond the third grade, who do need the same foundational skills, but cannot be handed the content or the strategies that we invented for a kindergartener. And

have just completely missed. The fact that, you know, the demographics are changing so much that the science of reading is changing so much, and a library, I mean, you know, just as we talk, I'm scrolling, scrolling through this endless library, and hundreds of titles of these incredible books that all have. I mean, this is a library you really want to dive into. I don't know how you feel it. I mean, read one more thing,

just right can't stop. The brave inside 18 year old Kenny tries to ignore the bullies at school. But when they become involved in robberies around town and take something precious from his good friend, he knows it's time to act, interest level high school, this is an 18 year old reading level 2.3. Like, that's the

future. I mean, we need this for all the reasons you're saying you can't keep kids back, you know, you have 18 year olds right now who need to read this, and you will have 18 year olds in three and five and seven years who need to read this because the answer is not just trying to do a bubble and keep people in phonics land forever. You have to I mean, they have to keep doing phonics, but they have to do it in strategic ways,

a key part. But there's all these other strands of literacy that also have to be thought about and especially for older students, when they're learning to read, they actually have to kind of happen in parallel, like they have to be learning their phonics skills, and they also have, there's the fluency and background knowledge and so, you know, thinking about how that all comes together for older students, and there's the effective piece Right, like they're emotionally checked out

from reading. So I have addressed all of those at once. And I think it is tricky. And so that's part one of my hypotheses as far as why aren't more people looking at this part of it, but also, it has changed dramatically, you know, COVID had a huge impact on it, because anyone who was underserved and sort of had less access to quality education before COVID, like they were home in a place where that just totally was

exacerbated. And then again, like this with the science of reading, as we're looking at all these scores, so it's grown, but it's been there as well. It's just a little bit of a different way of looking at it. Yes, yeah.

so much sense. But until you hear it, it doesn't seem obvious, it doesn't seem like as you said, it doesn't necessarily even seem possible to write stories with 18 year old protagonists of cultural representative, all sorts of different worlds in a way that can be read and understood by at a second grade reading level.

But with the background knowledge, to your point, the background knowledge and lived experience of an 18 year old, who knows exactly what this is, like, second grader would not be able to understand that story. But an 18 year old would it's really, really, really, really interesting combination, just I mean, you can hear my enthusiasm, but I'm really excited about it. So I want to ask one, kind of slightly

controversial question. And you could tell me if this is something you're comfortable talking about, but you know, I do notice in your list of topics, you're pretty comfortable getting into some really serious topics that teenagers really wrestle with, and there's bullying, but there's also suicide in here, right? There's sexual assault and rape, pregnancy, there's some you know, you're really addressing some very serious

things. And of course, built into your model is the idea of culturally representative learning and or cultural representative authorship and

characters. I'm curious if you have felt caught up in some of the political wars over the last few years, have you gotten feedback from any of your districts, or schools or educators that say, you know, the idea of putting books about, you know, that includes suicide in front of kids, or grief, you know, freaks me out, or I'm nervous that if I were to put books that have characters of color as the protagonists, that my parents might harass my

school board? Like, is this a world that you have had to touch? I'd love to hear your experience.

connects with them. And we have a lot of conversations internally about it as far as where those lines are, right. And it's always a moving target. But our core philosophy is we want to keep it appropriate and reasonable, but also really show reality. And so one of the ways we can do that is we do a lot of bundling. So like the library matrix, that you see it, you can

filter by interest level. So you know, if you're an hour late elementary school teacher, like, please don't have your students selecting from the high school collection, just like you wouldn't take them to that section at the library or the bookstore. for high school students. Like if you think that by banning books, you're keeping them from these topics, you know, you have some other soul searching to do. So. That that's one way sort of these curated bundles, and we will work with

schools. And actually, we're working with prisons, as well. And they have all sorts of criteria that are sort of strict on certain, you know, there's certain topics or even cover images that can't be on those books for incarcerated individuals. And so we'll do custom bundles, right? We can go through you give us those parameters. And we'll go through and make sure that all the titles that we're providing for these people will meet those parameters. makes

And it's one of these things where I can imagine depending on who you're talking to, this might be exactly what they're looking for and you know, their ability to read a title about, you know, called different at a second grade reading level, but for people who are older and struggling or want to know more about this is could save lives. On the other hand, there are some school districts and people who would say, oh my gosh, the last thing I would ever want in the kids school is a book like

this. So you probably have to navigate those waters really carefully. Totally.

makes sense. So there is another topic we have to talk about, because it's yet another, as you say, another layer on top of this, this melange of different complicated and really interesting things happening and literacy right now, which is AI. You know, we talked about this in virtually every episode, but there's a few different ways I can imagine AI being relevant to the story shares world, but before I even ask about them, I'd love to just open it up.

What does aI mean to you? How have you been thinking about it?

there. So yeah, I mean, it's exciting what you can do now with regards to level of text, even through chat duties. So you can go in and say, here's the story, can you make this a level higher and a level lower, or, you know, three different levels. And so, there's a lot that we can do with playing with that. But what we have discovered is that it works better for nonfiction content.

And if you try to use it for fiction, it has to still have a real human layer, not only in the authentic voice piece, right? If robots are writing the stories, you definitely don't have relatable authors. But all in just the nuance of a story. You know, a lot of the chat TVC stories, no matter how specifically with our prompts, they ended, you know, and everyone was happy. So and voice that you use voice, you know, some of the we love about great books, those powerful sentences,

all that stuff. So we can use it as a component. But it requires us on either side of it as well, that

Just because you're so deep in the writing world. It feels like this technology could sort of nip around the edges of almost anything. I'm curious how you think of it. Yeah.

been obviously more organic. And we've ended up sort of amassing this is a toolkit right of content, and different ways to explain and sort of train authors on how to create the content. But for the next contest, which will be our first one, since the AI really kind of exploded onto the scene, playing with how we can, yeah, streamline a lot of that through with the technology is a great idea. What

And in the year since Cecchetti has come out, we've seen multiple text leveling, companies come out and people incorporating them as features into things. So it's interesting to hear Yeah,

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of opinions on audiobooks and things like graphic novels, but my philosophy is like all reading is good reading, and really can be the bridge to more reading. So yeah,

What is your relationship to them? You know, I'm curious. Yeah.

right now. Because I think what's happening is, as they've all gotten up there, you know, K, three new literacy solutions in response to science of reading shift, they're starting to realize, ooh, but what about those fourth graders, fifth graders and the sixth graders, and they don't want to like, you know, it's pretty, it was so niche, this content, it's not anymore, but it is a different lens. And in a lot of cases, they don't actually want to create a new body of content

themselves. And there's a real opportunity to partner to licensed content or, you know, custom create content for all sorts of different publishers and platforms. Yeah, so we're kind of partnership minded in that sense. We're very small and so thinking about what the real way to to scale from there. Yeah, great.

and it is not anymore. We have the majority of students are reading off of level, they are culturally diverse, like they have interests that are totally separated from their reading level. I think that is such a brilliant and such an exciting insight, that it's really, I think, something that we're going to look back and say, how did we not think of this earlier? As it sort of becomes baked into how reading happens? Thank you. Yeah, we always end the podcast with two questions.

I know we're coming on the end of our time. The first one is about trends in the EdTech landscape. You know, you've been doing this in sort of the combination of publishing and ad tech for a while now, what is the most exciting trend that you're seeing in the EdTech? Landscape right now that you think our audience should keep an eye on? Yeah.

adaptive technology. So I think that that's really exciting and has really interesting applications to what we're doing once that can kind of be brought together, right with that older audience and thinking about that literacy beyond that third grade, along with this kind of personalized, adaptive learning power we now have through technology. Yeah, I

early side. So it's the beginning of the story, but it's a really powerful way to learn about what's happening right now with with reading and literacy and why is it so important? So that's one and then just add tech more broadly? Michael horns podcast, the future of education, I think, is a really great way to sort of stay up with all sorts of different movement in this space.

for a while. Fantastic. We will put links to both of those the soul the story podcast, and Michael Hon's future education podcast in the show notes for this episode, Louise Baigelman, CEO of Storyshares doing really incredible work for literacy, personalization, and edtech. Publishing sort of the new style of publishing. So I'm so glad to be able to speak to you. Thanks for being with us here today on ad tech insiders.