Episode 114: Investing in People, Not Programs: A District’s Literacy Transformation

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

Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Donell Pons, one of my co hosts today, and I think Lindsay will be joining us shortly. She's on her way home from school, I imagine. So we'll we'll introduce her ahead of time, and we have a great guest today. As you know, if you've been listening, we are focusing on change makers in the literacy space. And I will just preface this by saying I first became introduced to who this guest was and the great things that are happening in his district at the IDA conference, he spoke to a group of higher ed people the day before, and I got to tell you, I was just wishing I could work for you. Dr Rivera, as I think everybody in that room thought the same thing. So we have grant Rivera. He is the superintendent of the Marietta School District. Welcome. Dr Rivera grant,

Unknown:
1:42

yeah, no, I'm honored to be with you. Listen. You can come and work in Marietta. You both can so and we, we can talk about that later.

Stacy Hurst:
1:49

Okay, awesome. We'll keep that as I'll keep that in mind for sure. I, as you know, I lived there before, and I do love that area. So if you like going home in many ways, before we get started with what you're doing all the great work that's happening in the Marietta School District, tell us a little bit about your own background, your leadership journey, as we say, what experience shaped the way you lead today. How did you get here? And are you from Marietta? How did you end up in Marietta?

Unknown:
2:16

No, so I'm not from Marietta. I'm actually from Central Illinois. And I grew up in a small town in central Illinois, went to college at Northwestern, had some experience. My dad's a college professor. I have an older brother who has special needs, and we were just immersed in education in so many different ways, not just as a student, but as a family. But it wasn't until really my senior year, spring semester at Northwestern, I had to do an internship somewhere, and as a someone who was in the counseling program, I picked a high school counselor. And I actually didn't necessarily love the high school counseling job. I love the high school principalship. So I would end up graduating from Northwestern with a degree. My mom says, still to this day, she's not sure if it did me any good, but, but I would, I would go on and get my special education degree at the University of Alabama and started as a special education teacher, and which is really ironic, because when I think back to the the what I learned on how to teach kids how to read so many years ago, it's really very different than the work that we're going to talk about today. But I would end up being a special education teacher, high school assistant principal. I was a high school principal for nine years, which was really one of my passions, and then I've been a high school super, excuse me, a superintendent for the last nine years, and, you know, just honored to be doing this work right alongside people like yourself. Wow.

Stacy Hurst:
3:34

So Donell, you and grant have something in common with the special ed background. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. What a great journey, though, because you've experienced so much in the world of education before you got here, I think you're prepared, uniquely for this. For listeners who may not be familiar with Marietta schools, as I learned to say, meretta, can you give us a quick picture of the district, the size the population, maybe a little bit about the community that you serve there?

Unknown:
4:05

Yeah, absolutely. So Mariana sits just about 30 minutes north of Atlanta. Our school district has just under 9000 kids across 12 campuses. We have an Early Learning Center, eight elementary schools, all the kids feed up to 1/6 grade academy, one middle school and then one high school. It's a beautifully diverse district. We sit again just outside of it, outside of Atlanta. Give you a sense of that, 64% of our kids are on free and reduced lunch. 39% of our students identify as Hispanic, 35% African American, 19% white. Again, some interesting context relative to all of Metro Atlanta. When you look at proportional to the size of other metro districts, we have the highest homeless population of any school district in metro Atlanta. So really, just a lot of dynamics. I think it's similar to a lot of communities around the country like we, you know, we serve the kids who show up at our at our at our school doors. So. For us, it is an incredibly supportive community. It's one of the dynamics that we may end up getting to shortly here. But when we set out to do this literacy work, the commitment from our city council, our mayor and community partners, was we weren't just doing pre K through elementary school. We were actually doing birth all the way through, in this case, now, high school. So really, it's a very supportive community that leans in hard. They love hard and lean in hard to education. It's also a community like many around the country, where there's significant challenges, whether it's transiency, whether it's student need, whether it's immigrant population, homeless population, at the end of the day, all of our kids need to learn, regardless of where they come from.

Stacy Hurst:
5:38

Great. And why did literacy rise to the top? I may be burying the lead here, but you mentioned in Atlanta that that is your priority. That is the number one priority in the district. Tell us about how that came to be. Yeah. What need preceded that?

Unknown:
5:57

Yeah. I mean, it really was a I mean, listen, if you had asked me as a superintendent, as a high school principal, I would have given you the I would have given you the correct answer, which was yes, every kid needs learn how to read. And even as a former special education teacher, I will say, still an educator today in many different ways. I understand the importance of literacy, but I didn't understand how kids learned how to read. I knew just enough to talk it, but I didn't know enough to lead it, and I certainly didn't know enough to navigate through all the dynamics that exist and and some of the reading wars. So for us, when I started as a superintendent, we had different schools doing different things. And as a leader, I wanted to empower. I wanted to honor what I appreciated as a as a principal, as a building principal, which was don't micromanage my building. So I allowed principals to do different things inside their building. And candidly, some were writing big checks and sending people to Columbia College and and we were kind of all over the place. They were buying their own resources. They were really adopting their own ideas. And I just sat back because I didn't know any better. And it really all changed with one phone call. I mean, it was like that simple and like that, that candidly, special for me. What happened was I was sitting on the front porch one day, late in the afternoon, after I'd gotten home, my two young daughters were playing in the front yard, and I get a phone call from a gentleman by the name of comer Yates. Comer Yates is the head of the Atlanta speech school. They are recognized as one of the most influential educational organizations and schools changing the landscape of education in the country. And he called me and he said, Listen, there's a lot of people saying they do literacy, but let's talk about the foundational elements of how kids learn how to read, and how do we help every kid reach their fullest reading and writing potential? He started asking me some of these questions, and he started asking me what we were doing as a district, and candidly, we were all over the place. And he really threw me an idea and threw us an idea. And he said, Listen, we want to create, if you will, a model that can be replicated around the country. And not only are we going to really focus on the pedagogy of how kids learn how to read and dive into Scarborough's rope, but we're also going to back this thing up and acknowledge that developing the reading brain starts with our birthing hospitals and prenatal care. So it was that one phone call I watched my little girls roll down the hill in the front of our yard that prompted me to acknowledge a couple things. One, we weren't doing anything on a birth to fifth grade continuum. We were starting everything in pre k2. It forced us to acknowledge that it was kind of the wild wild west. There wasn't a central philosophy guided by research and pedagogy. We were all over the place, and I needed to bring that in under one umbrella. So those were the two, if you will, catalysts. It was a phone call that led us to acknowledge we weren't starting early enough. Two, we weren't focused on the right research and pedagogy, and then three, really, we needed to involve our entire community in this work. So that's really where it started. And from there, five years ago, we would partner with the Atlanta speech school to just develop a model that for us was about Marietta and our kids, and yet, at the same exact time, became something that we could learn and grow in partnership with others around the country.

Donell Pons:
9:01

So grant, you said some really important things there, and I don't want us to pass over this, because I think it's critical you got that phone call. But you also were humble enough to say, tell me what you know, because maybe I'm missing something. You listened, in other words, and that's important?

Unknown:
9:22

Yeah, I think it was, I mean, it was humbling to acknowledge that I didn't, you know we're supposed to it stops the buck stops with us, right? But I actually didn't know what Buck was stopping or how to stop it candidly. And I think the acknowledgement was we all knew that literacy was important, we just weren't exactly sure how to get there. And I remember sitting at a desk, sitting at a table with a group of people around the table. We started talking about what this could be, and it was cohort, it was other partners. We were in a room together, and I remember saying, if this thing comes to fruition, it will be the most important work I do in my entire career. And I had no. Idea how transformative it would be, to your point, how humbling it would be, but how transformative it would be, the decisions and the conversations we were having in the superintendent in the central and superintendent's office and central office would would end up going to every corner of our community and every classroom in our schools. And I think that it became more transformative over the last five years than I could have ever imagined. Wow.

Stacy Hurst:
10:24

And what a great Inception like obviously, that got the the wheels rolling right. What? What are some of the things? What are some of the initiatives that you started with, or that you instituted early on? Where did you start? You had a great partner in the Atlanta speech school and a great community, and then what?

Unknown:
10:43

Yeah, it's interesting. And I think so often people are looking for a quick fix. They're looking to go buy something. And I think there were some guiding principles that we had. I think one was that we were going to invest in people over programs forever and ever. Amen, if you think about it, many of us have many years, decades of experience in education. We can look over our shoulder and it's like a and it's like a graveyard of reform. And I it's not that any one of those were bad ideas. It's just what happened was we implemented them with a quick fix and didn't create systemic like systemic change. So to that end, out of the gate, five years ago, we made a commitment that we were going to invest in people over programs. We weren't going out to buy anything. We were going to invest. We were going to understand, and we were going to invest in our people to say, what does the research say about how to develop the reading brain? And we looked very carefully at all the resource we part resources. We partnered with the Atlanta speech school, and we had to separate balanced literacy from structured literacy. And I remember so after we made a commitment to invest in people over programs, the second thing that we had to do was really for the leaders in the district central office, Superintendent CFO, head of HR, all of our principals, we all got in a room for two days. We said, We have to understand what structured literacy means, and we have to understand how every position of the district supports it. I mean, I will never forget sitting with Margie Gillis at a two day training, and our CFO was answering questions about word Rec and language comp, because she was gonna have to answer those questions if we were starting to make value decisions on a budget. So anyway, all that's to say Part one was investing in people over programs. Part two is acknowledging there's a North Star, and there's a way to get there. And all the leaders across the district had to understand the work well enough so we could start to lead it. And then we had a very strategic rollout across our district where every aspect of our district became aligned to structured literacy, every aspect how we spend principles, principles, meetings, how we do AP, meetings, resources, assessments, grading, everything.

Donell Pons:
12:48

Yeah, Kate, Stacy and Lindsay, I know your minds are just ticking away, like mine is too, just listening to this because you've said some really important things, Grant and at very various junctures. If we're not all on the same page, this can fall apart. And one important one you're mentioning is that second stage, when you're like, Okay, so we have to learn these things. We have to learn the basics. If you guys are arguing over that piece, you're done, right? I remember distinctly.

Unknown:
13:14

And there are some principles who have been in place for many years, who I respect people, who I respect my own child, right? As a superintendent who has kids in this district, exceptional leaders, doing exceptional work, but we were at this crossroads, and I'll just name it as it is. We've been doing balanced literacy, and we believe it works. You know, here we were talking about structural literacy and leaning into what the research and pedagogy says about that. And I at one point had to say to our group of principals, like, I love you. I'm here for you. I'll give you everything you need to be successful. But if you don't agree to this vision, then you shouldn't wear blue and be in Marietta. And there were some tough conversations. And I think now, as we look back five years later, people, I mean, that's the interesting thing, like, there were a lot of teachers and principals who felt like they were doing everything right for X number of years, yeah, and they had to really wrestle with themselves. So part of it was not only leading a vision as a district and really making sure that everything in our district was alive, but it was also helping people wrestle with maybe we hadn't been doing it right, and there's another way to do that. And the aha moments that were occurring for us were very transformative.

Stacy Hurst:
14:25

And how did you help facilitate that? It's one thing to say those things like, how did you develop that sense of it's a mind shift, and for some people, it's a big one, right? So how did you have those difficult conversations? What did that entail? I'm sure, difficult conversations. You just demonstrated some of them. But how did that go overall, and how did you lead to facilitate that?

Unknown:
14:52

So I think you know, there's a couple parts, right? So the first part was clarifying expectations and saying, This is who. We are. This is what we believe. And if you want to be a part of this, I'll hold your hand through it. We'll do it together, because I was still learning. But if you don't, then, like, Tell me now, because we can let, let's, let's part ways. So part of it was just agreeing that this is our North Star as a district. I think the second part, in terms of how we led through that, was setting people up for success. Listen, I believe that every educator does the very best they know how to do. And as we were setting people up, we had to give principals and APS and our instructional coaches, we had to give them the resources and the support and the safe space to wrangle with conversations that might have shifted how they approached literacy differently than they have for the last 20 years, like we had to give them space to wrangle, and we couldn't just throw them in front of the staff and expect them to be able to lead it. They needed to have time to process. So I think one part is being reflective on how we set our people up for success. A second part, as I mentioned earlier, is this idea of alignment. I mean, everything changed in our district. We used to have principal meetings where we would be getting a room for six or seven hours, and we'd have whole bunch of operational things and some instructional things. And no, no, no, our principal meetings now, when we come together, are 90% literacy. Wow, if our time is a reflection of what we value, and we have to align our time to literacy, our budgets. Marietta and I could talk to you a little bit more about the structure of how we did it, but Marietta invested in what we call science of reading facilitators. We call them soar facilitators, and we have one facilitator for every two schools. Their job is to have what we call source cycles, science of reading cycles, where they go into a building once a week out of the month. They're doing side by side, coaching, training, walkthroughs, feedback, and we're setting people up for success. Listen, that isn't cheap. The other thing that we did was, for any child reading below grade level in elementary school, we would we hired 37 additional reading specialists, people with expertise in reading who did it the way we believe it should be done, and the science says it should be done, and we will reduce class size for one to 10 or less. So that way kids get double reading block, five days a week. So the idea is, whether you are adjusting your time, where you say your time is a reflection of what you value, or you're reflecting adjusting your budget because your budget is a reflection of what you value. Everything in our district started to shift and align to literacy, and I think for us, it became, candidly, a tsunami that came across this district, in this community, where our priority was to set people up for success and really make sure they could execute the pedagogy and the practice that we have been working on together. Yeah.

Donell Pons:
17:48

Okay, that is so beyond lip service grant, yeah, that putting it right. That shift you you do the stuff that needs to be done in order to get the results. You keep saying you want, wow.

Stacy Hurst:
18:01

I mean, talk about aligning with true north, even as you were describing that, I was sensing that whole like massive alignment. And for our listeners, if you listen to our episode that aired last week, we interviewed one of those sore people Justin Browning, and he was talking about his experience in your district, and again, there was alignment there with what he said and what you're sharing, and that that does speak to a shared vision and a clearly communicated vision too.

Unknown:
18:36

Yeah, I know. I mean, I'll say because your listeners may be familiar with him. I mean, just Justin was an incredible resource when we initially launched this five years ago. And again, just think about someone as I'm sure your listeners were able to hear over a period of time, he was with you. You take someone with that degree of practical expertise, yeah, he's not a researcher, he's not strictly a practitioner. He's actually a merger the two, and we could put him in a room with teachers who were struggling, veteran teachers who wanted to do it right, but were struggling with the implementation of decoding, for example, and Justin could sit side by side and walk you through that, or struggling with principles on how to lead this. What do you do when you have 30 elementary staff, and they're all at different places along this continuum of implementation and success. And that's really where we lean on people like with expertise like Justin, who can help our people experience success. And we do it during the work day. We do it. We talk all the time in Marietta, company people on company time, solving company problems and and the idea is we're not having these meetings before school and after school. We're having these meetings when necessary. We provide subs so teachers can can lock down for half a day or a full day and just have confidence in what they're expected to do. Wow.

Stacy Hurst:
19:56

Lindsay, I'm curious as a classroom teacher, as you're here. During this, what are you thinking?

Lindsay Kemeny:
20:03

How incredible would it be just to have, I mean, just really the shared purpose with everyone, including the leaders, and how amazing to have such knowledgeable leaders helping guide this. And I love that you're putting, you know, your money where your mouth is and your time, it just sounds amazing. Have you already, because I was teaching, so I joined a little bit late. Have you already shared results, like your scores, before you started this initiative, and now you know five years later?

Unknown:
20:38

Yeah, no, Lindsay, you're working harder than any of us because you were just you were just finished up teaching. Finished up teaching a class. So anyway, we're glad you could join us, but so let me say this, and I'd be happy to share some quick numbers and anything further you want to put in the podcast notes. I could do that. But I think for us, this thing started as a birth through age eight, birth through third grade, and then we realized like, hey, especially with dynamics in our community, not every kid was reading by third grade. Some of them were just coming to us. So we expanded it to birth through grade five. And then we recognized in a district with high transiency and other dynamics, we still had 33% of our kids in middle grades not reading on grade level. So then we expanded it, birth through grade eight, and then we started acknowledging, hey, with a high immigrant population, we've got a lot of kids that that are struggling. So now we are birth through grade 12. So birth through grade 12, across 12 campuses. How do we help every kid reach their fullest reading and writing potential? So one of the things we look at is, what growth do we see over time? And we don't get super hung up on individual third grade cohorts, because we're trying to do this in middle school too. And we don't get hung up on third grade cohorts because I actually want to see how kids grow over time, as opposed to this group of third graders compared to last, last year's group of third graders. So I'll acknowledge one data point Lindsay that I think just, I hope, is validated for our educators. It's certainly something that is encouraging for us as leaders. But so the state of Georgia, if you look at our state standardized test at the end of the year, all kids in grades three through eight will take them. And when we look at our students reading performance, as we look at kids in grade from third grade all the way through eighth grade, and we say kids that are reading at or above grade level, when you look at the change in Marietta compared to the state of Georgia. So for the state of Georgia, there was an increase by 1% of third through eighth graders reading on grade level in Marietta, it was an increase over five years in 11% so for us, we are incredibly proud of that. When we start looking at skill scores, we've had gains in every single cohort, every single demographic. So for us, we're really proud of that work over time. It started five years ago. It has expanded in middle school, and we're seeing that success all the way through eighth grade now.

Stacy Hurst:
23:03

That's wonderful, yeah, and that is great amount of change in that amount of time. And I appreciate that the focus in all of your conversations, and when I heard you tell us, talk to us about your your implementation in Atlanta, you did not lead with the scores, right? You were focusing on the process and the people to your point. But that definitely is an outcome. I think sometimes we get too fixated on those scores as the end goal, but I do think I've, we've been hearing a lot of conversation lately in our state of third things like third grade retention laws. And I think we've all been saying the focus needs to start before that. It needs to be supported before that. And you're demonstrating that. And I love that the conversation is not just about kindergarten through whatever grade it's birth through high school and beyond. So I think that is great. And all that process was there anything that surprised you, that has surprised you, and putting all of this in motion and heading towards that North Star?

Unknown:
24:13

You know, I think as I look back, there are a couple things that I am reflective about. I don't know if I'd use the word surprise, but I'm like, reflect, reflective about. I think one is, I think people thrive on clarity and expectations. And there's a lot of times in a district, as leaders either or in a school. I mean, even as a classroom teacher, Lindsay, where there's all these things coming at us all the time, and in Marietta, what we're trying to say is, listen, we have two priorities. We hadn't talked about one of them yet, but one is safety of students and staff, and the second is literacy, and what that does. And I think as I look back five years later, where I'm reflective is that we've really eliminated a lot of the noise like and it's interesting. We say to our teachers, you do this right, everything else will fall in place. And I remember when people were yelling at me, like, literally going, like, what we got to do math and like, what about this behavior intervention? I'm like, hey. Like, the research says if we can develop the reading brain and give kids the school the skills to communicate, then we can change every other outcome that we may want to measure. So in Marietta, the focus was after safety, literacy and everything else will fall in place. So one of the things that I am reflective on is how we can eliminate all the other noise, all the other agendas, all the other priorities. And say, when we get together and we figure out our budget, our time and our money. This is where we focus. And I think it really took a lot of burden it took it took burdens off of building leaders. Took burdens off of other people in the district. Because if it's not, if it's not looked at those through one of those two lens, safety or literacy, then we don't, we don't necessarily focus on it. And I think that's something that as I think back, maybe I am surprised, like I am. I'm surprised. I'm a bit surprised at how we can eliminate all the other distractions to let people focus on what's important. I've heard someone say, one time, a football coach said, keep the main thing, the main thing. You know, when we can keep the main thing, the main thing, then we clarify expectations for our staff all the way down to the classroom teacher, and we set them up for success. I think that's important. I think the second dynamic, again, maybe not so much surprise, but reflective on is I've been really reflective on how we could get every single system in the district aligned to our literacy priorities, everything, everything. So board meetings. We will do a board retreat, and most of the time we're talking about literacy. And when we start talking about, as I mentioned earlier, principals meetings, AP meetings, coaches meetings, when, when I interact with staff, which I do throughout the year, literally, it's, you know, at the time that we're recording this. It's a February in the spring. I will go me with every single grade level team, and I'm going to ask them a real simple question, like, how can we better support you in the work that you're doing? So this idea of like, how we spend our time and how we interact with our people is critically important. I think that's a second dynamic, and how we make sure that everything is aligned so, assessments, resources, everything. The last thing I'll mention that I just that, I think oftentimes, is it's a, it was a, it was a, it was a, something we thought about on the front end. And I see a lot of other people kind of kind of make this mistake candidly, is we made a commitment in our district that we were not going to adopt any curricular resources, no core or supplemental reading program until we had three years of the research under our belt. Wow. So we said to our teachers, you can't be critical consumers until you understand the science and the pedagogy well enough to know what resources align to best practices. So that there are a lot of states and a lot of school boards I'll talk to where they're like, Oh, we got to adopt a core or supplemental program. Actually, no, you don't. And if you do that too quickly, your people are just lurching for resources, as opposed to investing in people over over teacher boxes, right? So I think that's kind of a third dynamic on how we string all that together to make sure that our people were critical consumers. We didn't. We actually ended up doing a supplemental core adoption, or supplemental reading adoption, three years after we had started this work, when we felt like our staff was finally able to lean into that space be critical consumers.

Narrator:
28:32

For over 40 years, Reading Horizons has helped educators build strong literacy foundations for students now with ascend, they're supporting every learner and every tier through one unified solution, ASCEND mastery, a comprehensive pre K through five core literacy program, and ascend focus, an adaptive K through 12 intervention. Learn more and explore how you can bring ascend to your schools at reading horizons.com/ascend, implementations begin in the 2026, school year grant. I've

Donell Pons:
29:12

got another question for you, because I know that our listeners are probably curious as well. When you mentioned birth to 12th grade, what does that mean, who are you working with in order to make literacy a priority in that birth to 12 grade space?

Unknown:
29:28

Yeah, so I'd love to kind of chunk it out, because it's been interesting for us and for some of this, there were resources waiting for us, and for others we had to make our own. But so going. So think about birthing hospitals. We partnered with area birthing hospitals. So in our case, in our community, WellStar, it's the largest hospital network in Georgia, and they've now established a team, which is, how do you support parents during prenatal care and after birth to help their child develop the reading brain and their resources are aligned to. We're doing in pre K. So there's this continuum, if you will, so that we partnered with any forward facing community organization, daycare providers. What have you the second piece when you start looking at two, three and four year olds. So we have one Early Learning Center, they really became the experts in how the science of reading gets translated into four year old dynamics instruction and and what does it look like to help them understand empathy and and compassion for others? And what are the things we want them doing around decoding, etc, right to develop a reading brain. And our early learning center now serves as a hub and a resource for other pre K programs throughout Marietta. So even though they're not affiliated with the school district, we still support their teachers and aides with understanding what best practices look like. So ours, our pre K center, actually becomes a Learning Hub. So you can see it's like birthing hospitals. How do we touch how do we get through to every health care provider and forward facing adult who's interfacing with parents during third trimester and after birth, then we begin interacting and engaging with pre K programs that are inside of our city limits to make sure that they're adopting best practice. Because, listen, that's the wild wild west. Like anybody who spent five minutes in a pre K daycare program understands there's a lot of turnover with staff. There's not a lot of opportunities for professional development, because if they're not, you if they're not in front of kids, the daycare center is not making money. So that's a fascinating dynamic. But the idea is, if we're going to welcome 600 kindergartners to Mariana city schools in kindergarten, but only 150 those are actually in our pre K program, what are we doing with the other 400 some kids and and so anyway, so that's that the k5 space was the easiest space, because those teachers want to be reading teachers. They want to do right by kids, and they think that reading is their responsibility. Jump to middle school because you asked the question. You know that that was interesting. So we partnered with the aim Institute out of Philadelphia, and Nancy. And Nancy, and she was fantastic. And Pat at the aim Institute. And what we did, basically in our middle school was, if you were a teacher who came in contact with kids who were likely to be struggling with reading, however, you wanted to find that below grade level students were English as a second language. Fill in the blank. Those teachers went through a two year program. It was a virtual resource, but it was done in person with our science and reading facilitator inside the building. So we really had three cohorts. Anybody who came in contact with had a high percentage of kids not reading on grade level two, all English teachers. And then three was every other teacher in the building. And so, for example, there's an expectation that the PE teacher use high leverage vocabulary strategies in PE in the same way we might expect that to happen in an English class. So that's where we are right now. We're on year two of that work that I'll tell you. This was hard, because until we on the aim Institute, we couldn't find anybody doing this work in middle grades in a public setting, it's very challenging now at the high school, just to round that out, so we're in our first year of that work. We are leveraging the aim resources at the high school. We're really focusing on ESOL Special Ed and our reading classes. We hope to expand this next year to every English teacher. So it's really just the opportunity for us to create this birth through high school, if you will, ecosystem where we say we're going to follow the science and we're going to help every kid reach their fullest reading and

Donell Pons:
33:28

writing potential. Yeah, Grant, I applaud you, because that's where I ran into the wall for myself as an educator, is sitting in a middle school classroom, the only seventh grade English teacher and I had a classroom, or my whole coat, coat load was about 300 students. I was their only teacher, and I had maybe two classrooms of 20 students that were actually reading at or above grade level, and the rest were struggling anywhere from two grade levels below to kiddos that were reading out of first grade second grade, barely putting word to word together. And I begged for resources. What have you got? What can you help me with? And there was nothing. And I took that first summer, rented a car, drove myself to Denver, and did my first training on my own. You should not have to do that. I applaud you in your efforts. It's fantastic.

Unknown:
34:14

Well, you know what's interesting, too. And as you were in elementary, as you're as you're in k5 space or pre k5 space, teachers are leaning into this literacy work, but as you start to get older into middle grades, they start to see themselves as content teachers. Yeah, and you know, I, I didn't reference this earlier, but I'll say it now, like when you can move the literacy needle, everything else moves in Marietta, when we look at our elementary discipline, we've had schools where discipline has dropped 300% as we see increase, we've seen math scores increase, we've seen all content areas go up, and that's really where we're leaning into our middle grades. Educators to say, Listen, I know you think you do social studies, but you do literacy, because when you do literacy, well, then we can kids can further engage in the content. You, you love, right? So it's just, I think it's interesting to be reflective on, how do we help educators, especially in middle and high school, make a transition that, just like the elementary teachers, they too, help kids learn how to read. And if we can start to get consistent strategies across, in our case, grades six, seven and eight, then kids start to see consistent, if you will, practice and instruction, and we can see those incremental gains. So it's really a fascinating I think there's a lot of people that say, Listen. The shingle outside my door doesn't say reading. It doesn't say English. So this isn't my problem, but actually it cuts across every domain and every interaction with a child,

Stacy Hurst:
35:38

and that is not to say anything of that child's mental health, social well, being, all of that is impacted by their ability to be able to read.

Unknown:
35:50

You know when my when my child? You know she's 10 now, but when she was 345, and she's misbehaving my own daughter, well, the behavior was because she didn't have the language to communicate what she needed. And as we can help kids understand. You know, it's why we talk so much about Conscious Discipline and pre K, like we're building empathy in relationships. We're not teaching kids to be compliant if you're going to walk from your classroom to the to the bathroom, we talk about why that walk down the hallway being quiet is not because you have to put a bubble in your mouth and, you know, have a tail and everything else. No, no, it's not being respectful of those around you. We don't want to interrupt our friends who are learning all those dynamics as we help kids develop a language and then they are able to communicate, and so many other things change. Everything changes

Stacy Hurst:
36:36

well, and that is evident too by your focus from birth, because language is it is literacy, right? And even starting there and focusing on things like talking to children and building that empathy and putting stories and interacting with them as you read, all of that helps prepare them for that. So great. I think you do have three new employees, Grant moving to Marietta soon. My current role, you've got a sense for Lindsay and Donell. I am a former first grade teacher and literacy coach, but I am currently preparing teachers. I'm teaching at the university level of pre service. So I always have to ask the selfish question. When you have brand new teachers coming to you, what do you look for in what they know? What do you wish they would know? And then how do you help them, if they if they are not, how do you identify what they know and what they don't? And I know they they're supported, but how do you do that?

Unknown:
37:42

Yeah, so I appreciate the post secondary question, and I think I might even back it up a little bit. So Marietta is fortunate to have a close working relationship with Kennesaw State University, and in addition to welcoming their students as student, teachers and those that are completing practice and observation hours, like we open our doors and say, Come, come, come. What's interesting is that, you know, I worry deeply, deeply about post secondary, because I worry not only are the programs sometimes not always aligned to the most recent research and science, but let's also be honest, in the same way we had to pull some of our veteran teachers who've been teaching balanced literacy for 25 years, college professors need to make sure that they understand the most recent research. It isn't a functional you've always taught, right? So there's this healthy discussion that has to occur. And how do researchers, practitioners, post, secondary, K, 12, all come together to really make sure that we're setting up current students for success. That's why the work that you're leading is so incredibly important. I will say we're really fortunate to partner with Kennesaw State. And one of the things that we do is we say to their professors, any professional learning activity that we have in Marietta around structured literacy, your students, your prospective teachers, can come and sit in we got plenty of seats. We'll pull up 10 more. Like if you want to learn how we do classroom, walkthroughs align to structured literacy. If you want to look at how we do assessments, whatever the case may be, we invite not only those who are student teachers, but also those who are in their classes to sit alongside of us anytime they want. That builds a very close relationship with Kennesaw State University. I think really going back to your question, though, I think one of the things we have to figure out is, how do we immerse not only our college professors, but our posts, but our College of Education candidates, our College of Ed students? How do we really immerse them in this work? It's not easy, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you think about some of the best teachers we have walk in the hallways in Marietta, and it took them a year or two with side by side coaching and one week out of the month and planning days. And then we're going to throw that at a 22 year old who's just trying to figure out, like lesson plans. So I think there's got to be some very systemic structures in place. Here's what I know. Marietta, we don't hire a lot of elementary teachers. We don't have a lot of turnover, but the ones that we do, we bring them in every summer, and they have additional days before they ever step foot in their classroom. We say, Listen, this is how we walk, talk, chew gum and teach literacy, teach kids how to read. And I think the question becomes, as you have all and I think this is the reflective question, k 12 to K 12 leaders, you're never going to have complete alignment from all the teachers that you hire from five, 610, 25, different universities. So when that's the case, how do you make sure that you get everybody on the same page before they hit the first day of school? This is not a six month rollout, because I can't afford for a teacher to loot, to be with kids for five months and not know what they're doing, right? So I think there's kind of two conversations. One is, what's what responsibility rests with the K 12 leaders who are welcoming teachers into their building brand new out of college, who don't know how to run yet they're just crawling. And the second becomes, how do, how does post secondary, College of Education Programs, what you're leading, immerse teacher candidates as much as possible. So therefore they have the greatest runway and the longest runway possible. I think those are reflective questions. We do it through a partnership with Kennesaw State. But let's be honest, that's not the only students we're going to hire this year. So you know, we got to get everybody, we got to, we got to get everybody to a level playing field before they step in

Donell Pons:
41:19

front of kids. Yeah, Grant, I'm really curious, because you've you've given us so many great aspects of this. You've done such a good job of walking us through it. There's a piece that I know some folks will be curious about, what role do you end up playing politically, as the superintendent who's running a big idea like this with literacy? How do you interface with, say, your state legislators, is there a relationship? Is there a piece there?

Unknown:
41:44

Yeah, so I say this very humbling. I think I'm going to lead into your question by acknowledging, like we're not perfect, and you know, we really believe strongly, we live this work, but we're making we're making tweaks every day to do it better, and we're looking at gaps and inconsistencies and where things are incoherent and not aligned. So with all that said, like acknowledging that we're not perfect, I also will say, like, I'm incredibly proud. So the success that Marietta has had over the last five years, our model was adopted by the state of Georgia, specifically around literacy coaches in schools and the type of work that they do. In fact, the person that was leading it for Marietta, ended up going to work for the state. They initially started with a cohort of schools around the state, and now there is current legislation in this current legislative session that looks at putting in essence reading coaches in every school, and that really models after the work that we've done. Listen, you can throw positions at schools and they can get lost in the sauce and have zero impact. What we have done in Marietta is we have identified that if we take what we call science of reading facilitators, some people call them reading coaches, whatever you want, and we allow them if we embed them inside schools for job embedded professional development, side by side, coaching, safe places, feedback loops, what have you that we can have incredible outcomes for kids. And I think going back to your question about like, politically, listen, this is a non partisan issue, right? We can argue about a lot of different things in schools, whether it's budgets or other types of things. What we can't argue about on both sides of the aisles. We want every kid to reach their fullest reading and writing potential, and Marietta has served as a model for the state of Georgia, and yet we're still trying to get better every single day.

Stacy Hurst:
43:30

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that too. Donell, it's legislative season, and I just wish every legislator could hear your story. Hopefully they will. We can send this recording to them, because that that overall alignment, like you're aligning the district as a system, but now you're you're impacting the state's alignment as well. And as somebody who is in higher ed, what that is so powerful? There's some of what we do with our pre service teachers that we have to teach them what we consider to be the ideal and then prepare them for what they might encounter, which will not be that, right. And so I think How amazing would it be to launch them into a system like yours, your district and state, hopefully, eventually to say, Hey, this is all copacetic, and not only for the teachers who are doing the hard work, but for them the lives they will impact, right, like the students, which is why we're all doing this work. So story, just to, like, kind of hit your point.

Unknown:
44:42

It's like we've talked a twinge abstract, but like, let me just say this way for post secondary, if every, if every college of education student understood scar, Rose rope, and knew how to translate that into a classroom, and there were leaders who. Said, we're going to align assessments and teacher planning periods and grading and all the things that we do on any given day all to what you know about Scarborough's road. Like, How simple is that? Yeah, it's not. We're not. Listen, I had a kid, my 10 year old, beat cancer when she was two years old. This is, this is not. We're not trying to find a cure for cancer. We're trying to make sure every kid can read, yeah. And at the end of the day, it's real simple. The science is simple. And I think about if every college professor like yourself said, You know what in the time that I have with my kids? One course, three courses, whatever the case may be, if every kid understood Scarborough's rope, can you imagine the difference we can make across the country? That's where we are. Like, we don't argue about pedagogy. It's Scarborough's rope. It's structured literacy and and then we make sure that everything else is aligned accordingly. And then, you know, allow teachers to do the art and science of teaching. That's, that's where the magic comes. But I think it's, it's just reflective for me on how can you get and think about the whole, the whole arc of our conversation, if you will, pre K birthing hospitals, prenatal care, pre K service, elementary, middle, high, post, secondary. If everybody was committed to following the principles of Scarborough's rope to develop the reading brain. We didn't argue about, you know what? The what is really simple, and then we aligned. There was incredible alignment on everything else that laid underneath that arc. I mean, the people talk about the Mississippi miracle, all they did was make sure there was coherence and alignment to that very basic principle. And I think that's that's very inspiring for us, and I can't wait to see the work happening in Utah.

Stacy Hurst:
46:48

Yeah, well, you know, thank you for what you just said. You can guarantee I will be playing that on loop for my students. I will be putting it in their coursework. They will hear that, and you might get some teacher candidates from Utah too. They understand how supportive they'd be. And I

Unknown:
47:06

want to say this too. You know, there's we're not selling anything. We just spent the last five years trying to trying to give teachers everything they need, and want to let them be successful. We put some structures in place, right? So we talking with principals, talking with a piece, talking with board members lining the budget. But I'll say this to everybody listening, and you can put my email address in the podcast notes, but we have an entire bank of everything we have built over the last five years. It's every assessment how we do, I mean, again, how we how we do cycles each month in order to create job embedded, professional development, everything, everything that we have is available on a link that I would share with anybody at the end of the day. We want to share this work with others, so that way we have we are stronger together. And I think that's, you know, my my offer to anybody who cares about this work and cares about children, I don't care where the bus stop is. I don't care where the school is. At the end of the day, we're all trying to help kids reach their fullest potential. There's anything Marietta can do to support that? You are welcome to put those resources in there, and I'm happy to share accordingly.

Stacy Hurst:
48:10

Great, fantastic. We will do that. How expansive, too. And you're growing where you are, but then it's impacting things in a larger and larger space. So that is so powerful. One question I'm wondering about specifically, if there are superintendents who are listening to this, and perhaps, if you're a teacher or literacy coach listening to this, you could send it to your superintendent to hear but what advice would you give to them for superintendents or district leaders who want to lead this type of meaningful literacy change, but they might feel overwhelmed by it.

Unknown:
48:47

Yeah, I'll go back and grab a couple bits of what we talked about thus far. I think first of all, the leaders in our case cabinet, all right, the leaders of the leaders of central office, your principals, your APS, the leaders have to understand the work well enough to lead it. And if this is our priority as a district, you need to understand this work as well as you do the fire drill. So I think that's one part. I think Part Two is to start to look at how you can align every system in the district to now what you value. So if you've established this as a North Star, how do you align as many things as possible to make sure that everything is in alignment to that work? Those are the two things that I think most accelerated our progress, acknowledging that we have to make subtle tweaks. Again, I mentioned it constantly out. I'll share this with you. We have a we have a partnership with the University of Georgia. Dr Sally Zepeda is one of the national leading experts and researchers in professional development. We work with her research team and have for last five years. And it's interesting, because if you know, you talk to me, I'm going to make it sound like everything's perfect, but what we do with the University of Georgia and with Dr Zepeda and her team is she will go and enter. You teachers, APS, principals, reading, coaches, facilitators, and really ask them, so how's it going, and what's the alignment and what's the coherence, and where are you struggling? And I'll never forget Sally coming back to me saying, hey, you know what? GRANT You call it structured literacy, but everybody else calls it science of reading. And there's like, five different, five different descriptors out there, and you got to get all the districts are saying using the same language, because, because it matters. And so one of the things that we've done that I think is also important for anybody leading this work is who's going to check you to make sure that what you think you're doing, you're actually doing it well. And I think that's where we partnered with a research team listen when I get their quarterly reports, it's like a full body physical, like it's not always pleasant. Always pleasant, but it allows us to step back and be reflective on where we can do better, and then we achieve a greater degree of alignment and coherence. I think that's that's another dynamic to this, which is, who is giving you the unfiltered water that you sometimes don't want to hear but it's critical to prevent the failure that you've seen over your shoulder for the last three decades.

Stacy Hurst:
51:04

And that could, that's another powerful partnership, right, like that. There's, I think, that would serve everybody involved in that, that report so great.

Unknown:
51:15

And you know, I'll share with you, maybe this is like, A, I'll share with you a story that occurred in one of our schools, and it could have been any school, any elementary school, but one of the things we do often is we give tours to people who want to see what it looks like. And again, you know, is it perfect? No. Is it real? Yes. And I remember walking up a group of people we went to go see some different classrooms at an elementary school. And this, this this parent who was there actually as a community partner, but she had a child who was at a nearby school in Atlanta, who she paid on the upwards of 30,000 a year for her child to go to a special school for dyslexia. And she was walked visiting our classrooms, and she came with me afterwards with tears running down her face, and she said, Grant, what I saw in every one of those classrooms is what I pay $30,000 a year for my kid to get, and they're getting it for free here in Marietta. Yeah. And the idea is, how do we give our kids the very best classroom environment, regardless whether their parent can write a check for it, and regardless of how big their house is and what kind of car they drive? And that's really where we are. It's like, how do we give every child the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. This work is life changing. The work that you three are doing is life changing. And for us, it's just a chance to be a part of this broader community that I know extends so far beyond just Mississippi. I mean, it extends across this entire country, all of us trying to do this most important work, because every child deserves that type of the classroom.

Stacy Hurst:
52:42

Yeah, I love that. I It's thank you so much for being with us today. I think this has been such an inspiring conversation. Donell Lindsay, I don't know if you have anything else to add or ask before we wrap up, I just

Lindsay Kemeny:
52:58

want to say that I can tell why you don't have a lot of teacher turnover in your school district. Thank you for like, it sounds like an incredible supportive environment, and you're doing the work, and I love that you're really putting a priority on literacy instruction. So thank you, and thank you for sharing.

Unknown:
53:17

Yeah, thank you. I take it as the highest compliment coming from a classroom teacher, so we're just trying to be right by you, Lindsay and everybody else who stands in front

Donell Pons:
53:26

of kids every day. That's fantastic, Grant. I'm going to say to our listeners, this is the episode you share. Think of those folks you've wanted to have this message, folks who need it, folks who want to help. This is the one you share. Thank you, Grant.

Stacy Hurst:
53:38

That's a great way to emphasize that Donell because grant I don't, we don't actually emphasize frequently to share our episodes, but I think we've all mentioned that in the in the last in this episode, for sure. So thank you. I think it's definitely testament to you and the great work that you and your teachers and and all the implementation coaches are doing in your district, that you are so willing to share and be authentic and not say, you know, it's not perfect, but we're working on it, and to really demonstrate that that consistency, and I feel, I feel the support that the people in your district must feel. And when you spoke to us in Atlanta, I remember you saying, and I think you're quoting Home Depot's policy of, you know, company problems on company time with company people, that was already appealing as teachers spend way more time outside of the classroom trying to solve problems like that. But I think many takeaways today I will be listening to this episode again, but when you said you need to know this stuff as well as you know how to do the fire drill, that is not pithy, that's important. How great would it be to work in a district like that? And so thank you so much for being so willing to join us and for all the hard. Work you're doing and that the people in your district are doing, and for sharing that with us today. Thank you.

Unknown:
55:08

Thank you, ladies. I appreciate you pulling a community together so we can all share in this work. So thank you. Yeah.

Stacy Hurst:
55:12

Thank you so much. And to our listeners, thank you for being part of this very important episode. We do hope you share it and please join us for the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator:
55:27

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.