Summer '24 Interlude E1: How effective coaching transformed Mississippi, with Margaret Goldberg and Kelly Butler

Previously, she served as CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute, which as you'll soon hear, contributed significantly to Mississippi's transformation. And I'm also joined again by Margaret Goldberg, literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary, a school in California's early literacy support block. Grant. Margaret is also co-founder of the Right to Read project, and she's someone filled with wisdom about effective coaching.

Please enjoy this conversation well today. I'm so excited to have both Kelly Butler with me today. Kelly, hello. Welcome to the show. Your first time. Here

And I think most folks are familiar with the story of Mississippi, but can you talk a little bit about how you're involved in that story of Mississippi?

My first task with the institute was a couple of years in when I was contracted to do a review of the teacher preparation programs in the state. And we've done two over time, but that was my introduction to the institute. The institute was founded in 2000 and its purpose, it was a singular purpose, was to significantly improve reading instruction in early grades in Mississippi.

And Jim Barksdale with his business acumen set fourth grade and a as the single metric to show success. And so even though a lot of people talk about the Mississippi Miracle, we really view it as a marathon because if you look at our NATE Trends over the 20 years, you will see a gradual increase with a slight plateau around common Core. But it's been a steady climb.

My role at the institute has changed a little bit over time. I was really brought in after I did the study to help hire and manage coaches that we put across the state to work in classrooms. And so I had a lot of involvement in developing the model that went to scale in 2013 when the state passed the Literacy Based Promotion Act.

So I had a front row seat and it's been a good ride and we've had a lot of success, but we've had a lot of help too. Barksdale certainly was seminal in getting this off the ground, but we've had a lot of good partners in the process.

Saying, what the heck are we doing with teacher prep? And it was one of the first things the institute did was to try to influence how we were preparing teachers in the first place. And so from that work, we have launched , uh, something called the Path Forward, which is a multi-state initiative that now lives at the Hunt Institute in North Carolina.

They were one of the first states to call us and they partnered with us early on so that when the institute sunset in June of 2023, it could live on at the Hunt Institute. We are now in our third cohort. We touched 18 states altogether, big states, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York is in the LA latest cohort.

And it's really exciting work to see these state teams come together and begin to focus on how we train teachers in the first place.

So what I've been working on is coaching the coaches at those schools, and then I've been working as a coach myself in one of those schools and seeing how we're able to try to get some better outcomes , um, by building really strong literacy action plans.

How do I find her? And so we met at a conference , um, a mutual friend introduced us and Kelly was like, so good to meet you. And then she started pulling all these sheets of data out of her bag so she could start showing me the data in Mississippi that she was really excited about. And I was like, this was a friendship meant to be.

We in central time, we met, we gathered from about 1145 to 1215. And we, the purpose of it was to look at the research and talk about it and determine what implications it had for teaching and the classroom. And when the institute closed, I called Margaret and I said, we are now 250 people strong on this , um, this lift serve , and would you be willing to step in and take over as facilitator? Which she did.

And she's done a terrific job and has added to it. And every week we have about 40 folks that show up and talk about research to practice. So Margaret and I are also part of something called the Big Dippers when , when the pandemic hit Teach for America National called Barksdale and said, would you help us develop a short course for the science of reading?

We're gonna do all of our onboarding of core members this summer virtually and do it nationally. And so in very short order, we put together a four week course on an introduction to the Science of Reading. And Margaret was one of those folks I reached out to, and she stepped up to the plate, as she always does.

And so I I, I would imagine that you have lots of things to talk about in terms of what happens in teacher education and then what actually happens on the ground. True.

How do you do all of those things that are part of teaching? It seems like we need to teach in schools because candidates are not coming in with those skills.

And I learned how to do really long case studies. Like I could bang out a 12 page paper on a single kid like Fast. 'cause we needed to do so many of them. Like there were, you know, just creating our philosophy of education and revising it over multiple trim , like all of this stuff.

And I was like, if we could have spent that time differently, it would've been much easier when it came to trying to figure out how to be successful in the actual job of teaching in a school, in a classroom.

But I think that we let too many folks off the hook thinking that there , it requires a whole lot more , uh, well done. I think you can prepare a teacher in about 12 to 15 hours on how to teach reading. Would you say ? So Mark ,

First of all, what do you think of what's happening with states trying to replicate that? And what do you think has really been the key to Mississippi's success outside of looking at this as the long term ? Right. So, you know, you can't change overnight. It takes time. What are your thoughts on states that are replicating what Mississippi did?

And so one of the advantages that Mississippi had is that they had Barksdale on the ground working already and talking a lot about this thing called the science reading . And so we, we didn't have to all get up to speed on that necessarily in terms of what teachers were saying and what school leaders were saying.

What the law did was kind of create a wake up call and because the legislature funded it and funded the coaching and funded the new materials, there was a , a good bit of compliance. Folks were not resistant. We recognized that we've been on the bottom for so long that maybe in fact, we didn't know how to teach reading. And so there was a climate for change.

And I think some of the things that we did that I've seen in a couple of other states, but not many, is we took a bit of a top-down approach. We know that local control is the American way, and yet we knew that if we took time for every district to figure out what they were going to use to train their teachers and do it in their own timeframe, we would never get traction.

And so we decided to use a single provider statewide, and we marched out a pretty tight schedule to train all K three teachers and their school leaders in a pretty short order. So in about about 15 months, we trained about 18,000 teachers. Wow. And we also provided them with a coach. So the coaches were funded and because they were learning how to do it, not just what to do, we began to see different practice.

And when you use those practices, kids start learning to read. Hmm . And so it kept going. And I think the coaches were a real important part and we spent a lot of time training the coaches. I think they are critical to success and , um, they need to be well-trained and they need to be supported so that they can stay long enough to make a difference.

We had 500 applicants. And from that we got 25 coaches. Wow . And those all had to be trained. And while they were good and they had some solid foundations, they also had to be trained and also trained in coaching. And so we dispatched them. Each coach had about two or three schools. They are all over the state. In the early years, they worked directly for the state. Later on they became part of districts.

And so that the local people, we were growing coaches from the ground up. So we weren't trying to rob Peter to pay Paul. But the , the coaches have been, and we have a good cadre of them now. Um , we lost a few during Covid, but we're back up to, I think they're where we were. And you know, we're not a highly populated state.

We're pretty rural, so we were able to do a lot with fewer coaches than a place like California. Mm-Hmm . , they're the backbone of what we did here. And they were going into classes.

The model that we, that, the Barksdale that we , what I call the Barksdale model included intensive professional development for teachers on the ground, provision of a coach in the school, high quality curriculum mastery-based curriculum, tier one core instruction, a good bit of training around interventions that are purposeful and not cookie cutter. We spent a lot of time training folks on interventions.

And , um, those were the key elements. A structured literacy block helps teachAnd , what do you teach in whole group? What do you teach in small group and what is small group? What does a good literacy center look like? And how is it more than just busy work? And, and then lots of reading practice.

And, and our governor, Phil Bryant at the time was taking cues from Jeb Bush in Florida. So, you know, Florida was , have this third grade law and we patterned a lot after Florida. What Florida didn't have was one fewer students. And so it was a much more manageable thing. Yeah .

And while they have the Florida Center and other really high quality institutions over there, we sort of served in that capacity for Mississippi.

And I think one of the centerpieces of coaching is, well, there are two things really. One is understanding how to deal with the volume of data and what data's useful and what's not. And also knowing how, and being willing to model instruction.

And it was, which teachers were interested in it kind of negotiating, kind of, you know, seeing whether or not it would be possible to get selected for this role where there was no professional development, no training, no real goal in mind. I think the idea was like, we're gonna help teachers transition to the common core. Mm-Hmm . . And thankfully I didn't get that job .

Uh , I did end up getting a job in a large urban school district where there was a plan that we were going to help teachers transition to the common core as a cadre of coaches. And there was going to be , uh, I think it was like a weekly meeting we were going to go to for like half a day to learn how to become coaches. And so I felt like that was a better recipe for success.

And what happened was that it turns out there's lots of different ideas of what , what coaching should look like. And the district that I was in subscribed to the idea of transformational coaching. So this is like teacher led self-exploration. The coach is a little bit like a therapist and is talking with the teacher about what they're interested in exploring in their own practice and in their own identity.

And , uh, the idea is that it's teacher led and the coach is the facilitator of whatever the teacher wants to have happened . And I was realizing like, this isn't working. Like people are doing the best they know how to do . So to ask them to then figure out how they're gonna do better, if they knew how to do better, they would already be doing it. And so I started thinking that coaching was kind of ridiculous.

I was like, this is nuts. What are we doing? And then it turned out there's actually other kinds of coaching that I had just not been exposed to. So I learned about implementation coaching, and learning how to support a school or a district implement a plan that they had in place. Mm-Hmm.

and I learned about data-driven coaching where you're like with the teacher in your shoulder to shoulder, you're looking at the data and you're trying to figure out how to improve the achievement of the students in the class.

And I just started to realize like if we're much clearer about what the coach's job is and what success looks like, if success isn't just a teacher's reflection on their relationship with the coach and how supported they feel and how well they're getting along, if instead the goal of coaching is to improve student outcomes, teachers actually get really motivated to do that. And you build a strong relationship.

And transformation does happen because when teachers see outcomes they had never seen before, when they realize that kids are capable of more than they had ever had in previous years, you end up having a transformation. I think it's just what comes first in the model that is , uh, it's a little wild out there.

We also have done an overlay between the coaching cycle and Maslow's hierarchy of need and thinking about the adult , the needs of the adult. In this situation, we've coached thousands of novice teachers, new teachers teach for America, first year teachers. And you know, you just hope they show up after lunch sometimes. And so you begin with a really vulnerable first time teacher and there's a lot to, to be built there.

And so it's a cycle of building trust. And I think a really skilled coach knows how to give good feedback. That's a really important, it's true for kids too, but it's important for, for coaching adults is know how to give feedback.

How do we go about doing that? How do we figure out what curriculum would actually get us the impact that we want? How do I learn how to teach that curriculum? Like there were all sorts of things that I needed to figure out on my way, on my own. And then I realized, , that it's much more effective if you do that learning together.

So I started coaching coaches in the district I was working in where we would come together, learn about best practices, connected to the curriculum that teachers had, figuring out what the data point was going to be. If we do this well, what will be different? Some of that is actually student data and some of it is observational data. Mm-Hmm. .

And then trying to figure out how to help coaches learn how to do all of the things that you have to do in the role that no one seems to like lay out. Like how do you do pd well, like how do you present to adults in a way that is actually going to get them to buy in ?

How, what do you have to do in order to make it so that it's not just a PowerPoint presentation where teachers are sort of groaning because we're , as teachers, we are set up to assume that professional learning and coaching is not going to be such a great use of our time. We actually need to convince teachers that this is going to be a good use of their time and going to benefit their students.

And then we also had to figure out how do we put in place accountability? So at the end of every one of the PDs, there was a, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to come back together, talking about whether or not we've done it.

And I think what I realized, and Kelly has realized this before me, I'm sure is the amount of support that teachers need, that's actually the amount of support that coaches need. Like the learning trajectory is not that different. It requires a lot of modeling, a lot of providing feedback, a lot of talking about what's coming up that's difficult.

So just like teachers have classroom management challenges, coaches have challenges with some of the teachers that they're supporting, and they need to figure out a way to reach that teacher. So you have to do some problem solving. And then once I kind of worked my way through sort of a , a mess, like how do we start to build this model, then it was much easier to be able to see, well, here are the requirements.

Like, first of all, you have to have, you have to start with good data. You can't make that up as you're going. You need to have the universal screening data. It needs to be collected three times a year. You need to have a plan for the data dives where you're going through it. You need to have a plan for the curriculum that you're rolling out.

There has to be ongoing coaching for like, I think it's one of those things where when you back up and you look at what's really necessary, you can make a very clear plan. And what happens unfortunately is so often people are making it up as they're going Mm-Hmm. . And it , it wastes a lot of time.

And you guys must have had something like that put in place to support your coaches.

One of our goals was to really be the engine for the science. And we brought in the best and the brightest in the field to come and train our people. So Marilyn Adams was one of the first people who came to Mississippi and , and met with us to, to look at what we were up against. And then we shared our training.

So we would train ourselves and then we would go out and try to work with others, and particularly the state department and working cooperatively with them. Hmm . But I do think coaches, coaches do need support. They also need, there's the finance dance that coaches do between the administrator who's the evaluator and the teacher who is being evaluated and trying to hone their professional skills.

And so it requires a, a good kind of training and personality to play that role. Hmm .

Yeah. So if the coach is doing PD and the principal doesn't show up, the chances of the teacher's feeling like they need to be checked into that PD and really paying attention and learning are much lower. And if the principal is not following through saying like, the data needs to get collected, it should be in by this date.

Like, we're gonna look at it together, then it's on the coach kind of begging for that to happen. If the principal's not really clear on what the expectations are in terms of the curriculum that's gonna be implemented, then it's on the coach trying to cajole the teacher to use those materials and convince them that this would be a good use of time.

And it wastes a lot of coach time and energy and it makes it so that change happens much more slowly, which then deteriorates teachers' belief in the coaching process and in the plan that was in place. Because if change takes a very long time, you're not seeing fast gains. The chances of you being really inspired by that are much, much less.

Versus if you're working in a school where you have somebody who is a hundred percent supporting you in the work that you're doing, the change happens much faster. The data starts picking up quicker. Teachers are excited about it, there becomes this enthusiasm for the work. And it makes it much easier to be able to provide feedback and get results from that feedback.

And we didn't wait for buy-in. We said, we've got a law sitting here and we've got coaches that know what to do and we've got a good curriculum and we've got, we're gonna train you and we're gonna show you how and then you're gonna do it. And we didn't give people a lot of choice. And once they tried to do it, it worked. And then there came buy-in. And so I don't think we need to wait for buy-in.

I think that's what the laws are telling us is that time's up, we need to get this job done. The good news is we know how to do it. We just need to get it done everywhere.

Did you feel that same experience with I know what a coach's role is supposed to be and I have support in doing this thing?

So making sure that there was a short menu of data to select for making sure that there was guidance on what curriculum would be likely to be effective, making sure that professional development was a part of the plan. With any change of curriculum, there were certain things that we tried to recommend for schools to put in place in their plans.

And what ended up happening is that schools that had a strong plan and had continuity and staffing actually were able to start getting some good gains. Mm-Hmm . . And so that was, there was recently a report that someone at Stanford had done that showed that schools that were part of the early literacy support block grant recuperated from pandemic loss really fast.

And it was great to be able to see that, you know, these schools were chosen 'cause we were the lowest 75 performing schools. Like these were schools that where students were most vulnerable to school closures and how it was gonna impact their , uh, ability to learn how to read. So what wasn't in place is any sort of control over staffing.

Like to make sure that you would have the same principal for all three years of the grant, or the same coach or even like a percentage of the teachers that would be the same. With so much turnover, it's really hard to make sure that a plan stays at the center of the school's focus. Hmm .

And so I was really proud of the work that we did because despite all of those difficulties, the school still ended up doing quite well. But in the most recent grant that is focused on , um, coaching and on intervention, there wasn't actually the requirement of schools to propose a plan before receiving the funds.

And when you think about what what needs to happen is there has to be a plan and then a budget, and then you figure out how you're gonna spend that budget in order to make your plan a reality. And then you're like working. But we kind of got it backwards. And so money was disseminated prior to schools even recognizing they were part of the grant and knowing that they needed to create a plan.

And so I think what happens sometimes is that we lack a plan at the school level, at the district level and at the state level. And people think the answer is going to be funding. And usually that money ends up not resulting in the kind of outcome that was intended. The answer is only money when there is a plan and you're using it to fund something that's going to be productive and coherent. Mm-Hmm.

And I just wonder with your firsthand experience and sort of what you've been through in the before, the science of reading was the cool thing and during the time that it was really the cool thing, I'm not exactly sure what it is right now, but doesn't matter, what do you see in terms of positive changes across the country?

I think both, maybe Kelly for you in your role at Barksdale and then Margaret maybe for you and your role in what, what you do.

But my greatest frustration with colleges of Ed is that we have for , for centuries been colleges of philosophy, not of science. And I think we are beginning to see a shift in the profession based on the science, not just on what we think or believe in. Mm-Hmm. . So I think that the emphasis on pedagogy is a , is an important shift. I also think that thanks to folks like Amplify, we are seeing better curriculum.

And while it's not the only thing, it certainly can make a difference when a teacher is still honing her skills around pedagogy. The third thing I would say is I'm hoping that we are becoming a more transparent profession.

I'd be interested in Margaret's take on what she's observed over time as coaching has taken hold that teachers, and I'm hoping that teacher faculty will do this as well, become more welcoming of feedback and observation that we really are becoming cultures of, of learning for everyone in a building, not just the students.

In our work with teacher prep here, we actually did the same coaching model with faculty and went into their classes, their courses and observed and gave feedback. And so I think wherever you are in the food chain of education, if we're gonna be a real profession, we need to be reflective and take feedback.

But what coaching does is bring the scientific lens to your practice to be able to really hone and study your practice yourself, because that has such a big impact on what students actually learn. Margaret, what's your thoughts about where we've come?

And the number of times I had to have conversations where I'm like the three queuing the MSV thing, like it's actually not the way reading works. Mm-Hmm . and the amount of pushback and the amount of like, well that's just your theory. Or like, you know, that's, I don't, I don't agree with that. That's not what I believe or whatever.

It was like, it just took so much time and energy to try to get to the point where it was like, oh, okay, so then if that's not the case, then what is the case and where do we go from here? And so you had asked a little bit about like how things have changed since there's been more reporting on the topic.

And when Emily first came to visit us in Oakland, which she came to as part of a week long , seeing all the things that were going on. Uh , visit was coming to one of our coaches meetings where we were looking at curriculum artifacts. So we were looking at things provided to us by the district and also things that teachers have been using from their own, you know Mm-Hmm.

filing cabinets, and looking to find out like where does this fall? Is it likely to be supportive of kids who need explicit systematic instruction and learning how to read? Or is it likely to only work for the kids who are going to learn how to do this reading thing relatively easily?

And we had a big spectrum up on the wall and we would look at the curriculum and then go ahead and post it on the spectrum to say which kids it was likely to serve and why. And I think when I look back on that, I realize that what was so great about it was that it created like conscientious consumers of curriculum.

Like I'm gonna look at it, I'm gonna see what are the fundamental beliefs that underlie this curriculum? What are the instructional routines that are in there? What's the kid likely to get out of this? So it wasn't so much about like, you're gonna do this curriculum because it was on an approved list or you're not gonna use this because it was not on an approved list. It was, is it likely to work? And why?

And when I look back now , I'm like, there's been so much progress that I don't even really need to start with the three queuing thing anymore. Mm-Hmm . , right ? Like I don't need to start all the way back there. Instead, what's happening to me as a site-based coach is some of the teachers are bringing me things, they're like, I was listening to this podcast and I'm wondering like, what about this?

Or I was reading this. I'm like, I, so I'm trying to get the understand what happens in the two routes to recognizing words and blah blah. Like just all sorts of things like that where I'm like, they're doing so much learning on their own because it's now accessible.

Those kinds of choices and that kind of thoughtful process that you bring is not something in the past that schools or teachers were organized to actually take the time to be able to do.

I mean, full transparency, I'm sitting in the publishing industry, we talk a lot about the flip test and in the past that's would be how curriculum adoptions or assessment adoptions or even professional development moments that you're going to invest in. Take a quick look. Does this look like it's gonna match? Yep . It looks like it's gonna match the process.

You were talking about Margaret looking at each individual, like how does this, who does this support and how does it support? That takes a thoughtful sort of interaction and a lot of background knowledge to be able to engage in that.

There was one principal who told me that she knew they needed to switch to the curriculum and so she told teachers they had to box up absolutely everything that was not part of that curriculum and they were not allowed to pull it out for a full year. And she's like, after we've implemented what we've chosen the a new adoption for a year, then we can talk about the weaknesses that might be there.

We can talk about what we're gonna do to supplement, but like for this year, it is all all off bounds . And I was like, I can probably count on my hands how many principals I know who would be willing to say that bold move and commit to be at the school site for the following year when they were going to have the discussion about what modifications might be necessary.

And I think state departments are becoming much better engines than they ever were and their organizations like C-C-S-S-O and others that are really helping knit that together. But I think that, I think we have not had an anchor for generating the kind of change that we need because we've been living under this philosophy of education.

And so I think to create a better, and, and I'm kind of a top down gal because of our experience in Mississippi, which does not rob a teacher over her autonomy or creativity, but there's some things like teaching reading where we don't need a lot of of different options. We just need to do what we know is right and we know what to do. So that's one thing. Mm-Hmm . .

The other thing I would do is, Jim Barksdale once said that one of the simplest change agents that occurred that was relatively cheap but totally effective were speed bumps.

And I think to , to use that analogy, the speed bump in in education, I think if we could teach every educator regardless of what grade they teach or what subject they teach, the simple view of reading, it would go a long way to creating kind of a fabric of understanding. Now it's not the only research they need to know. And as Mark Seidenberg often reminds me, there's so much more that's come since then. Mm .

I agree. But there are too many teachers who have no idea that basic concept that reading is comprised of two domains and you have to have both to read Mm-Hmm . to comprehend. And it's such a simple concept. It's backed by a lot of research, but it's such a simple concept.

And I think everywhere I go, whenever I a master make remarks, I teach, whether it's a rotary club or or whatever, I teach the simple view of reading and then I say, now go teach your spouse or your partner or your dog . I think it's a , I think it can do a lot to transform how we think about teaching reading. Margaret, I'd be interested in your reaction to that, but that's my magic wand.

And it's really big, important, lofty goals, but what we've strayed from, or what we're not spending very much time talking about is like, what are we obligated to do? Mm-Hmm . And I think one of the things that happens is that schools therefore don't have the support and the resources and even the focus on those obligations that have become kind of assumed, but they're not the priority .

So what I would want with my magic wand is to have the community around a school come together and to talk with the principal, the teachers, all staff members, maybe district leaders and be like, okay, we're gonna decide who is responsible for what. So who's teaching handwriting? Is this a thing that the parents doing at home with their kid?

Or is that actually something that is happening in kindergarten, first grade and second grade? Who's teaching kids how to sound out the words? Is that a thing that is contracted out to the parents?

Like it was in balanced literacy where the parents were focused on foundational skills and the school was focused on developing a love of literature and using the classroom like it was a library and creating all these cozy book nooks as if like it was a bedroom with a, with a little lamp next to a kid on a beanbag chair who's doing what.

And I think if we could actually listen to families and say like, oh no, we want you to cover the basics. Like it's actually really important for a lot of families to be able to trust that they're gonna send their kid to school and their kid is going to learn how to write, like physically write, holding a pencil, right .

Being able to express their ideas, to be able to read to the words on the page, read them fluently by the end of the primary grades. Mm-Hmm . Like I think we have strayed away from the idea of there being a social contract between the community and schools. Mm-Hmm . And if we could get back to the point where we had an agreement about what the obligations of schools actually are, then we do everything differently.

It would happen that we'd be able to say like, you know, we really want to be able to honor this promise to our community to teach whatever handwriting, but our district doesn't provide us curriculum for that. Like, what can we do to try to change that to make sure that we're actually following through?

I think it would even change the process of like report cards where right now the school is grading the child and whether the child has met the common core standards in a lot of instances. And instead we'd be able to say like, how well are we doing at serving your child and making sure that your child meets these benchmarks that we agreed were so important and do we need more help?

And being able to make sure your kid reaches those goals.

And so we have all different kinds of systems of schooling beyond public schooling that are challenging the resources that we have and the talent that we have. If I had a clear slate, I would, I would consider that the system that we have now based on an agrarian calendar with a very traditional way of training teachers all needs to be reexamined.

I think even coming to terms with what education is about, I think we probably, if you look at all the different systems, and when I say different systems, I'm saying public private in Mississippi, that means parochial schools, homeschooling faith-based schooling.

I mean it's, we've got a pan of play of ways of, we're educating children and I'm not sure we're doing any of them the best that we could except for some of those very elite schools that have lots of resources and no , no regulations. So I think we need to wrestle with the purpose of education and is it to create a literate society, self-reliant individuals.

I think we need to examine who can be a teacher and what it means to be a teacher. Where can schools be located? Are we using the facilities? I'm some of the of the worst places in America are in public school buildings. They're so downtrodden and mm-Hmm . They've not been maintained.

And there's, I mean I , I just think there's, everything about it has been a reaction to leaving a big public system that was initially designed to serve a public good and I'm not sure it's doing that anymore. So we need to examine how we fund schools, how we lead schools, how we govern schools.

And all of that rests within what Margaret was describing, which is there is a school and there's a community and yet for a whole lot of parents there's not a lot of choice about which school that is. And that school is being asked to do a whole lot of things besides teach reading. Mm-Hmm.

Because it is totally ridiculous to think that a single adult with 25 5 year olds in front of them is going to be successful . Like that's just not a model that is likely to lead to success for the teacher or for the kids.

So if we could instead think like, well, research shows us that kids need varying amounts of instruction, that means not all kids need the same number of minutes and same length of school day and same number of school days in a year. It means some kids need more. Mm-Hmm . . And if we look at what the research says, yes, some kids are going to be able to learn in a whole class lesson.

They're going to focus, they're gonna respond in the way the teacher wants them to. They're gonna get the amount of practice they're supposed to get with the parameters of normal, what we think of a whole class instruction. But there are a lot of kids that actually really need small group or one-on-one in order to be able to acquire this skill.

And we set teachers up in a system that doesn't allow them access to the number of adults necessary to help them be successful to the flexibility and monitoring the dosage of instruction to make sure that we have materials that are actually likely to be successful for the kids and their varying needs.

So I think what I would want to do is focus in on early literacy and focus in on kind of exploding this system where we think that 180 something days between eight 30 and two o'clock is going to work for all kids if they're left in a room with one adult and start actually thinking about what a system would look like that meets those needs.

'cause when Kelly was talking about there are very well resourced elite schools, we look at what those schools have and they have person power.

And so if we could instead be more willing to ask those big restructuring questions and think through how it would be possible to create a new system where teachers can be more successful, where retention is not such a challenge. Because if teachers experience success, they're more likely to continue on in the profession.

And I think part of what I've come to realize a lot in conversations with Kelly and others is the importance of making sure that the community is part of the planning process. Yeah. I think too often that gets left out. Mm-Hmm.

And so my colleagues at the institute often talked about progress is not to be confused with victory. So we are still, we still have our foot on the gas, we, the state of Mississippi, even though the institute is now closed and, and are trying to stay focused to make sure that we get this job done for every kid. Even though we've made a lot of progress.

And I'd just like to make one plug for one of the legacy projects of the Reading Institute, which Margaret has helped us with, is Reading Universe. It is a prototype now online for K through second grade teachers. It is free to teachers in classrooms all over the country. We are doing a lot of filming. It's a comprehensive website for teachers of reading and writing pre-K through sixth grade.

And if you go on to reading university.org and search for Margaret Goldberg No , no. Timely Talk . And she will give you a crash course on the science of reading.

We'll have links to learn more about Margaret and Kelly's work in our show notes. Join the conversation about this episode in our Facebook discussion Group's Science of Reading the Community. Next time Around, we're continuing our summer series with a fruitful conversation with Jamie Clark, author of the new book, teaching One Pagers , Evidence-Informed Summaries for Busy Educational Professionals.