Making MTSS Work: Real Talk with Stephanie Stollar and Sarah Brown

Episode Notes

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Narrator 0:03
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let’s talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst 0:46
Hello and welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst, and I am joined by my co host, Donell Pons. We are excusing our co host Lindsay today. She is doing the thing actually, it’s, we’re recording this in the summer, so she’s probably presenting to teachers right now. Sometimes she’s teaching when we record. So we’ll she wanted to be here. We’ll let her engage as a listener after this episode. But we are very excited today. In fact, we have one of our guests. We’re excited for both of them, one of our guests, we have been wanting to have on since this podcast began, and so years into it, here we are. So we get to have today as guests, Stephanie Stollar and Sarah Brown, and we are focusing on their new book, MTSS for reading improvement, and it was published. I know I got it in May. I want to say is that when it came out, so great. I’m so excited to take, yeah, I pre ordered it. I was waiting for it. I’m so excited. It’s a great book. So welcome Stephanie, welcome Sarah. Thank you for being here and just I guess to get started, if you want to do a quick introduction, tell our listeners about your background and what brought you to this book to create it

Unknown Speaker 2:08
so I’m Stephanie Stollar. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am supporting teachers and teacher educators to improve outcomes through the science of reading. My background is in School Psychology. Originally, I have worked as a consultant in a variety of different ways, and I spent 12 years working for the authors of Acadians reading so MTSS is in my DNA. I guess it’s the way that I’ve learned about how to make change in schools, system wide since I was in graduate school, I’m still using what I learned in grad school many, many years ago in my work today, which is really fun to be able to say because so many people are Having to make so many gigantic shifts in their professional orientation and practices, and I’m just really lucky that I had such excellent training. So I’m I’m happy to continue to talk about those things

Stacy Hurst 3:13
even today. Great. We benefit from that too. Sarah, do you want to tell us about your background? Sure.

Speaker 2 3:21
Thank you. Stacy, um, I am also a school psychologist by training, similar to similar to Stephanie. I I’ve worked in education for over two decades now, and similarly to Stephanie, in graduate school was taught, it was in a program that really taught evidence based instructional practice. And I’ve always worked in systems implementing what we now call MTSS and so and since then, since being in districts, I’ve had the privilege of leading teams at the district level, the state level in Iowa, before I transitioned into the private sector, where I led professional learning and supported MTSS in in schools with tools like fast Bridge, which is a screening and progress monitoring tool. And then today, I consult also where and I work with schools and districts to help make MTSS and reading improvement practical, actionable, really impactful, and to help schools make system level improvements in in a quick amount of time, right? Because we don’t. Students are only in first grade, only in fifth grade once, and so we really need to to maximize the use of of each of those years. And so yeah, that’s a little bit on

Stacy Hurst 4:33
me. Yeah, thank you. What a powerful duo. No wonder the book is so good. You guys have had years of learning and applying this. So the definition of an expert, right? And I know Donnell and I have all we’ve talked about this multiple times. Donnell works mostly in the intervention space, but we’ve talked about that how Donnell, I’ve let use you talk about your son and how he was. Went through grades, the grades, but not really in a systemic way, like every year you’ve said it was starting over, right?

Donell Pons 5:07
Yeah. So this, this will be such a great conversation, and how marvelous that we have both of you here to have this conversation, because this really is where we can make a difference in school settings, right? If we’re able to figure this out and follow the guidance and direction of some really great experience and put to practice what you talk about, then we can do the things that we all wish we could do in a school, and that is meet the needs of students who come in with maybe some different challenges, right, diverse learners and my son, because a lot of this wasn’t in play at all. There was no chance. And so I see bright lights, schools that are implementing, some schools that have an interest. But it will be so great to have this conversation to lay out exactly because it can be done, and we can do tremendous work. And there are resources. It’s just knowing about them and then putting them in place. I’m so excited for this conversation. Let’s get

Stacy Hurst 6:03
into it. Okay to start out with. And Sarah, you mentioned this. You said it like this, what we now call MTSS, right? And I think my first segue into this space, we were calling it RTI at the time, so maybe or something like that, at least in my district. That’s how it was proposed to us. Could you start out by talking about the difference? Just for those people who may have initially become familiar with RTI, still use it today. What is the difference between the two? Yeah.

Speaker 2 6:35
So Stephanie, I’m really interested in your thoughts about about this too. So I would say primary. It depends on the question. If you’re asking the question as an academic or as a practitioner in a school, I would say if you’re asking as a practitioner in a school, the TLDR is there’s not really a difference the idea behind you, but the idea behind both is that we’re using data to identify what we need to do within our school right now in order to support educators and learners. That’s the same kind of foundational piece. And with both of those, we use what we call like a collaborative improvement process where we’re, what I call it like fifth grade science, where we’re identifying the need, we’re analyzing that need, right? We’re making a hypothesis about what the need is, and then we’re putting something in place. The big differences lie. So if you might be in a school that’s that’s calling something RTI, but as you read a book about MTSS, or you have conversations about MTSS, you’re like, oh, that’s what we’re doing. And so many practical cases, they’re the same thing academically, where they differ is, is that RTI has really kind of started with and is around an individual student, and many times, schools are looking specifically for individual student needs and and addressing those needs, whereas with MTSS, we really are looking more at kind of the whole child, thinking about both academic and and behavioral needs, or socio social, emotional needs and and thinking about also systems level improvement and in addition to what individual students might need. And there are lots of nuances within that. And I’ll be like, Stephanie, what would you like to add?

Speaker 1 8:24
Yeah, I think you got it right. I always conceptualized RTI in the same way I think about MTSS, but that’s not the way it was put into practice. It was very much what Sarah said about a focus on individual students, and and that persists today. People say, you know, I’m the MTSS teacher. This is our MTSS room. Here’s our MTSS forms, right? And what they’re talking about, usually, is just moving kids through tears. So I had a little bit of a an AHA this morning, so I’m going to try it out on you and see if, see how this works. So instead of educators asking, Why isn’t this student learning to read in MTSS, we ask, why haven’t we taught this student to read? Or, even better, how can we teach this student to read? That’s the difference to me, it’s it’s sort of zooming out from that individual student, put the blame on the student. See it as something wrong with the student, versus in MTSS, we are taking the ownership as adults to get the conditions right for every student to become a skilled reader. So that’s how I would summarize the difference.

Stacy Hurst 9:44
I love that, and you heard that insight here first. Let’s just record that That’s brilliant. That will help me explain it to my pre service teachers too. Because I think there, as teachers, their default is, how come this? Student isn’t learning right, but helping them understand there is a system in place. You can be the best teacher in the world, but that’s not going to serve that student going into the next grade, or the students who might need extra support or structure to what their school experience is, and how are we going to provide that for them.

Speaker 2 10:20
I do want to point out that schools, states, this, one of the states I live in, calls, calls, an MTSS, an MLS, a multi level system of support, right? And so in your like, wherever you are, an educator or an educational leader, like, it might be called something else, and that’s okay. I don’t want people to get too hung up on like, we need to change everything. And all of our manuals to say MTSS instead of RTI. Or we need to change right? Like, that’s not like, like, Let’s do good things for teachers and kids and and and not get too, too weighed down, bogged down by the semantics when they’re not when they’re not helpful.

Stacy Hurst 10:58
Yeah, that’s a great point. And keep the thing, the thing right, focusing on what needs to be focused on. I just a little bit about my background with MTSS. I do feel lucky. I was in a district that really embraced it early on. And I started teaching in 2001 and I would say my district really started focusing on it, probably about 2005 or six. The model was pretty solid in application. As you know, it varied from school to school. I was lucky to work with a team who really we worked hard to understand it. We use DIBELS at the time. One of the things that I remember this, I was telling you, too, before we started, I actually called a co worker that I used to work with all those years ago and said, Oh, you know this, you need to read this book. We wish we would have had it then so many things, the forms would have been helpful to just have out of the gate. We were creating those, the meeting structure, like you’ve done so much of this work for us, but I think, and you chose in this book to focus on reading as part of that. MTSS, as you mentioned already, Sarah, it could be all kinds of things that were we’re focusing on math and helping the whole student, but I think where we were with the science of reading, and the knowledge that we had at the time was not very helpful, not as helpful as it could have been with our MTSS model. I feel like we’ve made a lot of gains, but we were also limited. Well, as you guys know, there are barriers to implementing this kind of model, and I think we experienced some of those too. But what are some of the most common ones that you see?

Speaker 1 12:47
Well, we’ve already sort of touched on one. And you know, you mentioned the science of reading. One of the reasons we wrote this book now is because of all of the conversation around implementing the reading research in schools for the benefit of students, but I’m hoping we don’t make a misstep in focusing on student by student, because a lot of reading improvement laws in various states, dyslexia laws in various states are written to focus on individual Students, and in my experience, most schools have too many students who need support, maybe not with dyslexia, but too many struggling readers or at risk readers, to respond to that situation one student at a time, and when our systems are bogged down with Too many students who need intervention, we can’t provide the student who does have dyslexia with the intensive support that they are entitled to and deserve. So I think you know, that’s what we want to try to elevate and bring together and help people see MTSS as the framework for delivering the science of reading, and that these are not two different efforts in your school. They are not different initiatives. They’re not competing. They should be integrated and brought together. That’s my hope.

Speaker 2 14:15
Anyway, I agree completely another barrier that I see frequently in schools right now is that they’ve invested a lot of time into and money, in many cases, into into learning about the science of reading, which is absolutely necessary we need to understand how students learn to read and how to teach it. And they’ve invested in new programs and curricular materials to help do that, and then they kind of expect that, you know, they sit back around like, Okay, this is gonna move the needle dramatically. And I work with a lot of schools across the country through my MTSS data Academy, and leaders come leaders and interventionists and reading coaches come to my program every year really frustrated and disappointed. Because they’ve learned about the science of reading, they’ve taught everyone else about the science of reading, and their data aren’t aren’t improving, and they’re not seeing that impact system wide, and a lot of it is because, as Stephanie said, Right, we’re still kind of attacking things student by student. Another barrier, though, that I that I often see, is that we’re not making the explicit connections between here’s what we learned as part of like from science of reading, and here’s what that looks like in a day to day, in day to day practice using our materials and making those explicit connections between those and really supporting, that’s part of the system wide support of an MTSS is that proactive support of identifying, how do we help teachers be able to do this thing like we’re asking for a lot of new practices, and so to many teachers, this is all brand new and um, and so it’s hard, and it’s hard to know then what to try next, when the first thing that you, that you read about, or that you that you’re trying is it isn’t effective. And so you don’t mean you might not have a second idea and and so I see that as one of the things right now that also, that also comes into play in many schools who are, who are making changes.

Donell Pons 16:16
So you both, you’ve both kind of hit on something, but I kind of want to pinpoint this, because I think it’s definitely a topic. And Stephanie, you brought it out, but we’ve talked around it. I think a lot of times schools feel overwhelmed, as you’re saying, because the numbers seem so big. And speak to that a little bit here, because we do have and as you’re saying, Sarah, you brought in a piece too. So we’ve got a lot of knowledge now, and so we think that we just apply this and we’re going to have great results. And then when that doesn’t happen, we’re surprised oftentimes, and then we feel overwhelmed, because there’s so many students kind of help, help us get an idea of Okay, so if that’s your situation, then what do I do next? Because I think this speaks to a lot of places that I’ve I’ve been to and seen, and a lot of what teachers talk about. What do you do?

Speaker 2 17:02
So I so the first thing to think about is the pyramid, the MTSS pyramid that you think of with those three tiers. Those tiers are not intended to be about students. So when we hear schools that say, I have an upside down pyramid, right, we can all picture what that means. It means, yeah, well, I think that’s what you were speaking to, right? Yeah, so we have an upside down pyramid with all these students who are tier two and tier three students. In reality, that’s not what the pyramid represents. The pyramid represents the resources in your school. And so when we have large numbers of students who have needs, there are, I have, I’m not in districts where magic intervention resources are falling from the sky, like extra resources, right? They just don’t exist. And so we have to look where we have the most resources, and that’s tier one. And what we see, what I tend to see in schools, over and over again, that end up seeing a lot of growth, right? So one, it’s about asking the right questions. So instead of asking which students need intervention, right we’re going to ask like, like, where are our needs? And so then, what are the resources that that need to support those needs? So part of it is honing in on the right question and then taking the right action next. And so we have large numbers of students, and we’re going to look toward a tier one intervention first as something that we need to put in place in order to meet the needs of all and then we’ll absolutely provide tier two interventions and tier three interventions to our most for most at risk students that

Donell Pons 18:30
right there. Okay, just want to, folks, if you didn’t hear it, please rewind, because that was insightful. And then what are you going to add? Stephanie, I thought you’ve got stuff to add to this.

Speaker 1 18:39
Well, I just think we set teachers up from their initial training program to think that they don’t have the secret sauce that that the special ed teacher is the the one who has the magic dust, like we literally tell gen ed teachers that, yeah, when you have a concern, refer to the expert. So then we’re surprised somehow when that’s what they do. So people are responding to exactly what we have told them, what we’ve set them up for. But it’s to me that’s at the heart of the overwhelm, and it relates to what Sarah said about fixing the gen ed instruction, but that’s not what people think MTSS is. People think MTSS is making a referral. People in these early literacy laws think the way to improve reading is to is to find the individual student and give the individual intervention. And when there are too many individuals that approach just doesn’t it doesn’t work. And yet people say, Well, we’ve done MTSS, and so this MTSS stuff doesn’t work. When I think the fundamental change that people well, okay, two fundamental changes that people have to have in their thinking is it is all. Of our responsibility for every student to become a reader, and that means gen ed teachers have to be equipped. I’m not pointing fingers at them, I’m saying everybody else around them in the system has to equip them with the knowledge, the materials, the time, the coaching, right? Like all of those, that’s what we call systems have to be in place. And then the second fundamental shift, I would say, is that people think they can get a different result by behaving in the same way. And this is way beyond reading like, you know, I’ve been trying to get some muscle tone, but I have yet to go to the gym. Like, right? Like, it’s hard to change behavior, especially your own, but that’s what I see teachers right now, or not so much, teachers, quite honestly, school administrators, thinking that they can just keep the same old practices and get a different result if they even want a different result, sometimes I wonder if they’re willing to make the investment in getting the different result. I also experience that people somehow think MTSS is this unattainable ideal. It’s it’s this idealized state that maybe it’s okay in some other district, but we can never do that, because fill in the blank when, the way I see it is whatever you would fill in the blank with, that’s exactly what you should be surfacing and talking about like everybody has a reality, Right? So what are the reasons why your first reading instruction is not lined up with what you have obviously seen in your universal screening data? Why are you not doing it? Is it something about educator knowledge? Is it something about collaboration? Is it something about time to plan? Is it something about instructional materials like that’s just a short list of considerations. There could be others, but that’s the work of MTSS, it’s that team based problem solving sitting down together to collaboratively surface those barriers and write action plans to eliminate them. And we depict that improvement cycle as a circle with no end point, because we know this is a continuous improvement process. Like you’re you’re constantly circling back to okay, we’ve got that up and running. What’s the next thing we’re going to do? And at some point you get into the conversations of, okay, our systems are all firing on all cylinders. How do we sustain this? How do we make this persist and last past the principal leaving or the charismatic lead, you know, visionary coach, leaving that school? How do we sustain this long term? Is like the last stage of implementation of that change process. And I think people just either they don’t, we have not been good about communicating that that’s what this framework is, or that’s too much for people to like wrap their head around. And so Sarah and I are attempting in this book to be clear about that, that that’s what we’re talking about here, and give them tools to sit down and do it. So that’s been our approach.

Speaker 2 23:27
Implicit in what you just said, Stephanie, when you named your two things that schools need to do, I want to add a third, a friendly amendment of a third, but I think was implicit in there. I also think that schools, our leaders and our educators need to believe that all students can learn to read and and well, and I, here’s, here’s what I think, though, like, again, I don’t blame teachers or leaders. Frankly, like pi, I think most of them that I that I get the opportunity, have never worked in systems where it’s been true, right? So they’ve always had overwhelmed intervention systems where they’ve been trying to serve too many students. So they’ve never seen success from intervention systems. And so they don’t really expect success from that. They’ve never seen student gaps between student groups decrease and so and so. They’re not really there. They’re not real. The sense of urgency to respond and proactively address those things isn’t there because they haven’t experienced it. I this is a bit of a bird walk story, but when I was in my internship year as a school psychologist, I was trained in a pretty non traditional program, but I went into my internship year and my so I already wanted to be working in MTSS again. It wasn’t, it wasn’t even called RTI again back then and and my internship supervisor had me, I taught a group of first grade boys. A group of five first grade boys for the entire year who had reading disabilities. They had IEPs with reading goals, and I taught them using an evidence based program. I had coaching on that program, and as I started, I was like, why am I doing this as a school psychologist? I’m never going to do this. I’m going to spend an hour every single day this year doing that right? Like, like, this is like, I’m not going to be a classroom teacher, like, our special ed teacher. Like, why am I doing this? By the end of the year, all of them were back into the general education setting for reading. Most of them no longer had like, were being dismissed, or at least on, like, just kind of consultative services for their for their IEPs. And I understood, and I now I value it as the most successful thing I, you know, like the best thing that is brought to my to my career and but I got my very first year in schools full time, the opportunity to learn that it’s possible, and most teachers haven’t had that. And so I think that’s something else that we really have to build, and we can build that strategically. There are ways to do it. And so we just build it. We don’t just tell people, right, hey, like it’s possible, right? But we build that through our systems and through our conversations and teaming, yeah. So I think that’s also super important for teams to attack.

Narrator 26:23
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Stacy Hurst 27:17
and I think you have answered this, but I’m going to ask it to be, to put a fine point on it, right, what is in a successfully implemented MTSS model? What are the benefits for the tier one teacher, the general ed classroom teacher, a successful implementation? What will they see for them?

Speaker 1 27:40
I think they will see payoff in student learning in exchange for their hard work. And they will feel supported. They will be supported. They will be supported. Their Students will be supported. Teachers are always working hard. I mean, I’ve never met one who just phones it in like they’re knocking themselves out every day. And I know many leave because they don’t see the payoff for that hard work, and they think they’ve told me, I’m doing everything my university professor told me to do. I’m doing everything that my mentor teacher, you know, I observed, and they taught me to do, doing everything I learned in my district’s PD, I’m doing this program. My district bought me to a T and yet I have half, 25% however, many kids in my class who I know I’m not teaching effectively, they are not reading. So what’s wrong here? And natural, human, you know, response to that, it’s them or it’s me, right? I know people have both responses, but many teachers take responsibility for that. They feel very ineffective. They’re very discouraged, and frankly, many of them leave the profession because they are working hard, doing what they think they’re supposed to do, and it’s not working. So with the science of reading, we have the opportunity now, with all of this movement and effort, people are excited to see that their hard work is paying off. So that’s what we want in an effective MTSS. That’s all there is to it. For me, it’s about the outcome. It’s not a rigid set of procedures. In fact, you’ll see some commonalities across MTSS models. People might use slightly different terminology, but the core components are always the same, assessment systems, tiered, evidence based, intervention, collaboration and teaming. Those are the bedrock foundation. But the flavor of that that plays out in your specific school is very context specific, but it’s all about all of. That is like window dressing around that interaction between the teacher and his or her students. That’s the meat of it, and and the result of your MTSS, whatever it is, should be that teacher knowing and seeing and experiencing success for their students, and

Speaker 2 30:20
yes, and I think feeling like you’re part of a real teams, and I don’t mean the grade level team where you meet, you know, every once in a while, and kind of you, you know, you were pretty we’re pretty play like we’re planning things, right, we’re talking about things, but a team where you really feel like you have the level of support, where you can be really vulnerable. And you can say this, I just knocked this out of the park today. Like, like, I write like these, this group of students who I haven’t seen may growth. Like, look at these data, right? Or look at this, look at this example of their writing, or whatever that is right? Be able to brag and you you don’t have to think you would never even pop into your head that. Like, should I say this? Like, what if somebody else isn’t seeing this? And I don’t want to seem like I’m bragging right, or on the converse side, you could come and say, Listen, I just tried that no new vocabulary routine that we talked about, and it bombed so badly. And like, and, you know, and then, and then come back and again. And you don’t think twice about that. And so I want, like, teams, our teachers should feel like in a successful system, like it is a real team, and they and that they Yeah, that they’re empowered to succeed together, to, you know, to learn together and and to really problem solve and Figure Figure out tough situations together too.

Speaker 1 31:41
I want to extend that teaming idea to include family members, parents, community members, because in a successful MTSS teachers wouldn’t feel threatened or afraid or confronted when a parent comes and says, I think my child is a struggling reader. Something’s not right here. They wouldn’t parents wouldn’t have to go out and seek the instruction or the assessment outside of the district. So that’s an area of partnership and teaming that’s inherent in MTSS that we are not implementing. I think that’s maybe a component of the science of reading. It’s certainly been the instigator of the national attention. Parents have certainly led the advocacy around the change that we’re seeing now, but that has to be part of the conversation. So it has to go beyond just the school educators, the professionals, so to speak, collaborating and teaming to get it right for kids. We have to extend that to to parents and community members.

Stacy Hurst 32:58
Yeah, those answers are so poignant, because everything you just said is a benefit. And I was focusing my question on that general educator, but in an MTSS model, there are many roles that benefit, obviously, like you mentioned, too Stephanie, parents are part of that, but those are the reasons people are leaving the profession. This is more powerful than then. I think people understand that if we get this right, we it. We are changing the the profession. We’re changing the climate. We’re we’re changing so much for students, which is why those teachers are there. Nobody signs up for teaching who doesn’t care about their students, right? So thank you for answering that. And I think as you’re talking and as I reading the book, I really have had so many thoughts, but one of them was this, we talked about assessment, and I want to talk more about that too. I love that that’s the golden thread throughout the whole thing, in a sense, because it helps guide us and keep us true, and helps us to know when things are working well. But I remember in in our school, and we did use the DIBELS assessment I was highly trained in that loved it. It’s one of my favorites. And now Acadians version is great too. And Stephanie, I think you and I have talked about this before, but there used to be a report, and it was hidden amongst all the many other reports, but it was specifically about how effective is your tier one instruction in each class and grade level. And we have those conversations now, but back then, it wasn’t something we that I saw surfaced a lot. So as a literacy coach, I did that, right? We would, I’d have those conversations with the teachers, according to this report. And there’s a whole lot of other like emotions involved in a conversation like that too, right? If you don’t have that system in place to feel like you’re supported, and you can be vulnerable. In many cases, 80% of our students. Not in reaching what they should be in that tier one situation. And of course, we tried to support as well as we could, lacking all that we know about the science of reading now, we kind of fell short in some of those ways, in spite of our best efforts. So I guess I’m saying that in effort to say for those of us who’ve been in the profession for a long time, this book is timely, just for what you guys have said too. We now the science is front and center. Here’s the system we apply it in to get the outcomes that you guys have so beautifully described for teachers and, most importantly, for students. So that assessment piece. Can we talk a little bit more about that too? What do you see as schools start implementing MTSS and really focusing on assessment and how that looks?

Speaker 1 35:52
Well, I think you have to make good choices, you know, to be able to build the kind of framework and and interconnected systems that we’re describing in MTSS, you have to answer certain questions. You have to know which students and systems are not performing optimally. You have to know exactly what to teach tomorrow, and you have to know in real time, is your teaching working for the students, small groups of students who are being taught together, individual students, so those assessment questions and purposes drive the choices of tools that you use, and you really can’t implement this framework without direct what are called curriculum based measures. You mentioned Acadians reading Sarah, mentioned fast bridge earlier. Those are both examples because they are specifically designed to be used in a database decision making process by teams to answer those questions, specifically the screening and the progress monitoring question, we have to have different tools to answer that exactly what to teach next diagnostic question. But so if you are going to do a school wide improvement model, if you’re going to implement MTSS, you have to have the right tools for the job. You’re not going to be able to answer the questions that you’re required to answer if you have other types of assessments. So I think school leaders really need to be informed about that, especially the district leaders who are making those decisions. Again, not to be too harsh on teacher prep, but we don’t prepare educators, typically, very well with knowledge of assessment. And so those teachers become principals, and then they become district administrators. They are the ones choosing the assessments, and they don’t always make the most useful choices. I agree

Speaker 2 38:02
with everything that Stephanie just said, and once you then have those assessment tools, having plans for how you’re going to use the data and how you will support teams to use the data, as Stephanie said, because we don’t. We’re not born knowing how to and so, and we’re not coming out of out of prep, knowing how to and so, and we don’t have time, and we, yeah, we’re already trying our best ideas. And so we really,

Unknown Speaker 38:27
Stacy was your professor? Stacy’s your professor.

Speaker 2 38:36
Yeah, we regularly say, right, don’t collect data that you’re not going to use. But there are so many schools that I work with so the state of in Iowa, they’ve been using the same screening and progress monitoring tool for over 10 years, over 10 years now, and I started working with a school district two years ago, and as we start at the end of the first year, they said, we are just, we are just so, like, our teachers are so empowered by these data, like they’re using the data all the time. And I said, Oh. And I said, Well, you’ve been using this tool for like, 10 years, right? And she’s like, Huh? I guess it has been 10 years, never like we are now and so, and I see that more often than I don’t, that teams have some data, and in many cases, now, more than ever, more than ever in the past, they have, they have some some good, some good data to some high quality data that are intended for the purposes, for the questions they have. But they they’ve never empowered teachers and and leaders and teams to be able to use it fully.

Donell Pons 39:39
So I’m curious, because you’ve taken us around some really good topics, and with this book that you’ve put together, which can be so helpful and powerful, how do you recommend or envision schools using the book? Do you have some ideas? Because typically we have ideas about when we’re putting something together that is this important, ways in which it might be most useful. Helpful. What are some ideas that you have for schools?

Speaker 1 40:05
Well, I think Sarah and I, as we were designing and writing the book, thought about a variety of entry points. So we want people to be able to start where they are like because it is a cyclical, you know, improvement process. So we want them to be able to start with some some tools, some some forms, some guidance about those meetings Sarah was referring to, so they can reflect on their current data. They can start with whatever data they have about student outcomes, and they can dig into, what are the reasons why we’re getting these outcomes, and what can we do to improve? And so I think there’s multiple entry points. If they don’t have assessments, if they don’t have the data to be the jumping off point, then that’s where they should start, I guess, is, is selecting a good universal screening tool, training everybody how to use it, training everybody how to interpret the scores in those team meetings. So, Sarah, do you have other ideas about starting place?

Speaker 2 41:14
I you described it perfectly well. We tried to provide, you know, we’ve provided team agendas, Team data protocols, as well as like, both grade level team and building staff meeting activities that can help in those specific areas, that that locally in your school you might, you might have the biggest needs according to your data.

Speaker 1 41:36
Yeah. I think the other thing we attempted to do is the first part of the book, the first three chapters, is kind of a crash course in the science of reading and MTSS for school leaders, again, because we have not done a great job preparing folks on those topics. Not everybody’s getting professional development if they’re a building principal or a district administrator. So it’s like, that’s meant to be a starting place, right? Like, if you just need some background knowledge about what this stuff is, then the first section of the book would be a good place to start.

Stacy Hurst 42:13
Yeah, and you both mentioned teacher prep, and that is the space I’m in, as Stephanie knows. And Stephanie, you’ve already helped inform what I do. There so much I am wondering, because I am teaching my students about the MTSS model, teaching them how, what the types of assessment assessments are, how to administer, how to look at the data this, and I’m not quite to the point yet, how do I teach them to collaborate in that area like they’re not working in the system yet. So what are some recommendations? Maybe a better way to ask it is, what ideally would a pre service teacher leave the university setting ready to apply or know that first year of teaching? What else do I need to teach them there.

Speaker 2 43:03
There is the Joyce and Showers. The original instructional coaching researchers have an article from 1982 where they interviewed a coach, a college football coach. I believe. Don’t hold me to that, though, but I’m pretty sure and they have, they speak to comparisons of athletes and teachers, and if you think about it, right, athletes take their jobs really personally, so do teachers, I think in many cases and their success really personally. And they said the difference between athletes and coaches and teachers is that athletes never expect that the first time they do something, it will go well. And that the difference is that in education, we’ve acted like teaching skills were as so simple that through a workshop or or a videotaped lesson, or, you know, like, like, one single kind of hearing about something that that will, that will be able to do it well. And then the last sentence, I use this quote in professional learning regularly, and have people reflect on it. To the extent that we have conveyed that message to teachers, we have probably misled them, and that is so powerful, and I think that that’s something that teachers need to leave believing right, that it’s okay if you now, two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, don’t know everything. Like knowing everything isn’t the goal ever like the goal is to to and so in order to continue to grow and support the learners that are in your classroom, whatever year you’re in, we have to work together to do that. And I think, and then I think I would like to somehow empower them, and I don’t know how you do this Stacy, right, but somehow empower them also to advocate for that from their leaders. Because teachers can’t be expected to create the collaborative teaming. And create the system on their own right. We need to empower them, but they need to be empowered.

Speaker 1 45:06
No surprise, Sarah and I are lined up on this, because what I was going to say is, I think the best that we can do in the limited time we have in teacher prep is teach them how to ask questions and teach them what kinds of questions to ask, like shape the questions that they ask and empower them to not be afraid, to question what they see, and coach them. Have them practice, give them feedback on, respectfully, kindly, professionally asking questions, you know, the right time for asking the questions and so on. So give them the frameworks like MTSS, like the collaborative improvement cycle, like the simple view of reading, like you can generate question the right kinds of questions from those frameworks. And you know, in two literacy courses in undergraduate teacher training, that’s probably about the best we can do is it’s very related to what Sarah said. You do not need to be the expert when you enter your first year. You should understand that you’re a beginner and you will always be a learner. That’s part of being a professional, and you should not be afraid to ask questions. I know. When I started in school or in my first job, I was extremely reluctant to admit what I didn’t know. I thought everybody would dismiss me if I wasn’t the expert with all the answers, and I learned quickly that it was much more effective to come into every experience with questions. So hopefully that puts some pressure off of you.

Speaker 2 46:48
You know, a lot of a lot of educators, not all educators, but a lot of educators, um, were good at school, so they’re used to having the right answers and and so not always knowing the right answer, you know, like which none of us always know the right answer we I mean educating, you know, teaching and learning is, is about doing our very best with what we know, the the evidence base tells us, and then looking at what happens, and then trying, you know, and then, and then keeping, keeping going moving forward.

Stacy Hurst 47:20
Yeah, I think it helped me having the background of a literacy coach working within I’ll call it now an attempted MTSS system, because I it’s the who are the people in your neighborhood, kind of thing I do. Tell my teachers, you know, this is how find your literacy coach, find the reading specialist, your speech and language pathologist. This is how they can help you get unstuck, or help you when you have a student who’s presenting in a way that you don’t know what to do. And I feel like that may be a good start too, but I know that as I read this book, I was already thinking about so many things I want to share with my pre service teacher, we could teach a whole course on MTSS. We just don’t have time. We have talked about a lot of amazing stuff today. I have 1,000,010 thoughts swimming in my head, ways that I’m going to continue the conversation in my own mind when we’re done recording. Donnell, can you sum up some of the things that we’ve discussed today?

Donell Pons 48:22
Well, you know, Stacy, this has been a fantastic conversation and so many golden moments. So I’m hoping folks will feel free to go back and rewind and listen, because I had some ahas along the way, and just kind of recapping a little bit of that one Stephanie you started us out with. And it was that idea of with MTSS, it’s the taking ownership, which is very powerful in many ways. Sometimes when we hear that, we think, Oh, dear, but really, there’s a lot of power in taking ownership, taking ownership of this learning. And then it’s solutions based which I love reframing. Let’s think of it that way. That is such a great way to reframe it along the way, you guys have been so good at allowing us the space to say, I may not know much about this. I realize it’s missing. Maybe I’m overwhelmed. So there must be a better way that has been throughout a thread, throughout which I really appreciate, because we are at all different places. Wouldn’t it be great if everybody was experiencing a terrific MTSS system wherever they’re working, but we know that just isn’t the case. And so you’ve given us real Grace along the way with this conversation to say, well, this is where I’m at, and that’s okay. Loved that. And then I love that way reframing the pyramid, because of the way that we sometimes look at the pyramid. Well, I know a lot of times we look at the pyramid, but I just also wanted to know if there are any thoughts. And you also gave us great ideas about how to approach your book, which is so terrific. So here’s this tremendous resource. What are some ways that we can approach it, knowing those first three chapters are all about, if you didn’t know, get to the first three chapters and it’s good for administrators, for educators, which is so great, something we can all share. But what are some. Maybe a thought that maybe we haven’t covered yet, that you might find very important for folks to know, because you guys have been great. What do you think?

Speaker 2 50:08
No, thank you. Thank you so much. You know my biggest, my biggest recommendation to teachers and leaders now is to find your community. I mean part I mean having great podcasts like this is a great start, right? But I know lots of teachers and leaders who and interventionists and reading coaches who are an end of one, right? They’re the one person in their building and sometimes even their district who are doing this work and and I just think it’s so important, because we’re all learning and sort of find a community of people who are going to rally around you, who you feel safe around, and who you can tackle, and think about all of these concepts with I highly recommend,

Speaker 1 50:52
and maybe there’s a person in your system, right like, I love that Sarah’s suggesting, because we can all be so easily connected through the internet and social media and so forth. But within your system, there’s probably somebody else who also sees opportunity for better outcomes for students, and so find that buddy, that that friend within your system who you can have the safe, vulnerable conversations with and then you don’t have to be the only person wanting to move in this direction. You can have a partner in that conversation. So that would be my last tip.

Stacy Hurst 51:33
Yeah. And I think even as a community, you can reach out and gather other resources too. Stephanie, I am familiar with your reading Science Academy. I’m a member. That’s one option. Do you have any other recommendations or suggestions for where people can learn more about the science of reading, or MTSS, actually, your book is just, your book is pretty comprehensive, but anywhere else, what do you think? Well, Sarah

Speaker 1 52:01
and I are offering a facilitator collaborative around our book. So if folks would like to facilitate the use of our book, the application of our book in their school, we’re offering some guidance for that that will include monthly group calls with us for coaching and support and a little bit of that networking and community. And Sarah has another resource that I’m sure she would share.

Speaker 2 52:27
Thanks, Stephanie, I Yes, I’m really excited about about that you can find it now just by on, on, if you, if you Google, are the name of the book, you will, you will come to it. And then I have an MTSS data Academy where I work with school teams over the course of a year to provide ongoing support around improving reading outcomes using your data, using protocols just like these, including these, as well as kind of individual data coaching and MPs and resources that entire schools can have access to through that work. And it’s also a community similar to Stephanie’s reading science academy

Stacy Hurst 53:07
that is exciting. And we will be sure and leave links in the show notes to all of these things. So what a fantastic episode, not only a very scintillating conversation and inspiring, but also we’re leaving with a lot of resources and ways to improve where we’re at. So thank you so much for joining us today. We really are looking forward to maybe we’ll have you back in the future. We can talk about your next book. Hint, hint, there isn’t it’s just English, but yeah, let’s revisit this conversation, and I’m excited to hear about how people are going to apply what they learn through your book. So thank you.

Speaker 1 53:53
It was great to talk with both of you, likewise. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 53:56
Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Stacy Hurst 53:58
Thank you. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode, and we hope you join us for the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator 54:09
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading you.