Structured Literacy: The Answer We’ve Had All Along

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 Stacey 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.

Donell Pons 0:48
We invited Dr David Hereford, because of his vast knowledge of dyslexia and reading difficulties, and because he co authored the introduction to the International Dyslexia Association’s 75th anniversary issue of perspectives, which focuses entirely on structured literacy. He generously shares his expertise, providing insights that are both fascinating and practical, while our conversation flowed organically. Dr Hurford did most of the talking, and the result is an episode packed with valuable information you won’t find anywhere else. So again, although unconventional in terms of a typical conversation, our time with Dr Hereford covered everything from why the science of reading has been so challenging to implement, to his thoughts on dyslexia legislation, and many things in between. So enjoy the episode.

Stacy Hurst 1:36
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I’m Stacy Hurst and I’m joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny and a guest today, but I’m going to let Donell introduce our guest. Those of you who have been listening know that we are doing this season. We are addressing topics in the perspectives on language and literacy. 75th anniversary issue from Ida titled structured literacy grounded in the science of reading. And Donelle, you have arranged for us to have a very awesome out of the gate first guest. So I will turn the time over to you to introduce who we’re going to be talking with today.

Donell Pons 2:11
Great. Thank you, Stacy, this is a pleasure, so I just kind of we had a little moment to chat before we got started here, and reminding David here that that we had met years ago at a presentation that he had done for the International Dyslexia Association, and that I had introduced my husband, who has dyslexia, and I’d spoken about him many times on the podcast, and you were so kind and gracious, and had some really good conversations with him, and that was a really pleasant memory. And then all these years later, to come back around and you are now editor in chief of the International Dyslexia Association publication perspectives. And so this very big issue that we’re going to be talking about, all regarding structured literacy, has been very much in the forefront for you as well. So it’s great here for this conversation. But first, David, I’d love for you to give us a little background, because, as you have said you’ve been in this thing, reading and with dyslexia and reading difficulties for a long time, so maybe kind of give us a little bit of that background and then bring us up to where you are with Ida and this perspectives publication, sure.

Speaker 1 3:14
Well, you know, I don’t know how far back you want me to go, but if you’d asked me when I was four years old, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said I wanted to be a scientist, and astronomy and astrophysics were my thing. And I love that I had a little astronomy book that I took everywhere. And when I got in high school, I found out that humans were way more interesting. So you know, when you apply science and humans together. That’s psychology. So I majored in psychology and did my doctoral work in developmental psychology, and I had planned to work with older adults, because I thought that’s where all the really good research was being done. And I was really interested in developmental issues, and so I was working on a doctorate in developmental psychology with a certificate in gerontology, and we took a course on the psychology of learning disabilities. It was like, boom, that’s where it’s at. All the things you know, neurology, information processing, language, speech, memory, learning, all those things were involved in this particular course. And in that course, since it was a research based type of doctoral program, we had to create a research proposal for each course, and that one became my dissertation. And we were interested in looking at why children who are struggling readers struggle to read, and we looked at from a language perspective, so the ability to process speech sounds, and we found that struggling readers actually process speech sounds differently than children who were actually good readers. And so. Well, it’s interesting now this, this now emphasis in developmental learning disabilities, and you know, the difficulties with language I should I meant to say this developmental language disability, but it’s kind of come kind of full circle for me. And you know the perspectives issue that was such a great one for the 75th anniversary of the International Dyslexia Association had so many great authors. And, you know, the whole impetus for that particular issue is that we’ve known the science for a long time. You know, in reality, we could argue we’ve known the science to some extent for 100 years, and there’s this been, you know, this rocky back and forth with, hey, we want kids to get to meaning really quickly. How do we get to kids to get to meaning really quickly? Well, we can just forget about the words and have them guess at them, which, is we know as a three cueing system today, which we know is a tragic mistake, absolutely tragic mistake, in teaching acquisition of reading skills. And so we’ve, we’ve got really 50 amazing years of wonderful research that shows us really what’s going on with reading and how we should be teaching it. And at this point in time, you know, really, teachers accept the fact that there is a science based mechanism to examine how we do reading and what that should look like in terms of teaching reading. And teachers are now saying, Hey, we get it. We get it. Can you just tell us how to freaking do it? That’s what we want to know. How do we do it in our classrooms? Because we weren’t taught when we’re in school how to do it. And so let us know how that goes. And so that’s kind of the impetus, you know, because as my kind of tenure as the executive editor. You know, my goals have been, and I think the goal of idea, obviously, in lots of people, so it’s not just my goal, but I’m really invested and interested in helping teachers understand how to do structured literacy, which is a term coined by the International Dyslexia Association that just really refers to, what are the mechanisms that a person has to do to be able to read? You know, what are those small, little pieces they have to conquer and be able to master before they get to the point where they’re reading competently and understanding what they’re reading. And so I just love that we had, you know, those individuals involved with that particular issue. I think it’s, it’s pretty amazing. And you know, they, we kind of partnered with Boone philanthropy to produce the actual paper version of or their magazine version of it, which was given out at the idea conference. And, you know, yep, there it is. Looks, it’s pretty sweet, yeah. So

Donell Pons 8:13
David, you touched on a lot of really great points. And your hope for the issue, as I’m understanding it, as you were talking about for this particular issue. Your hope was to provide a lot of that information, your that feedback you were hearing from teachers that said, Hey, we get it. We’re on board. We understand it now exactly, how do we do it?

Speaker 1 8:31
Right? Yeah. And in reality, you know, they understand that it’s important, and they understand that is something that they’re finding out really is helpful to their students, but I’m not really sure they really understand all of those pieces yet, and they’re interested, as practitioners, to actually use structured literacy to teach their children. And in reality, we know that structured literacy is an absolute must for struggling readers, for kids who have dyslexia and reading difficulties of other issues, but it’s also the way that we should be teaching reading period, whether you have the genetic basis for you know, reading difficulty or dyslexia or not is the way that we should be teaching it. And, you know, I think part of the argument that people who are saying, I don’t want to change, I’ve been teaching kids for 30 years how to read, and I’ve been doing it successfully. Well, the last statement probably is not accurate. You know, they’ve been teaching some children to read successfully using those particular methods, and these are children who would have likely learned how to read period, no matter what method you used. And we can make that argument because, in reality, when we look at. At the 37 39% of children who are not reading at the basic level in fourth grade on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, those kids aren’t certainly not learning how to read because the basic level means you have the fundamental skills, you just haven’t gotten them up to speed yet. So if you’re reading below the basic level, that means you don’t even have that, which means you’re a struggling reader. You’re belaboring the process of reading. It’s a struggle for you, and as a function of struggling to do those things, you certainly are not comprehending what you’re reading. And so I think teachers, most teachers, got into the field because they love kids, and they love teaching, and they want their students to learn how to read, and they’re not happy with what’s going on in their classrooms. And they’re listening to other people, you know, lots of good teachers go to all kinds of in service training and that. And they say things like, well, if I can just learn one thing that’s going to help me become a better teacher, it’s worth it for me. And so I think at this point, you know, it’s becoming an overwhelming amount of evidence at this point, and it’s been that way for decades. There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence, and I think some fairly significant things have happened. Number one, the science has been there all along, and the science has told us. You know for sure, for kids who are struggling readers, we have to use this type of approach to teach them to read. And in reality, for a lot of other people who it’s going to be a struggle to learn how to read, that’s how they should learn how to read, too. Granted, there are some kids, maybe 10% of them. No matter what you do, they’re probably going to figure it out. But that’s such a small group of people to say, Yeah, I’ve been teaching kids for 30 years, and it’s like, actually, you probably have it. So if you look at the percentage of kids which the estimate of children who have dyslexia, somewhere between seven and 15% sometimes people argue 15 to 20% if you look at the number of kids who have dyslexia and subtract them from the percentage of children who are struggling readers reading below the basic level, that tells us there’s a bunch of kids who could learn how to read if we use the correct methodology to do so. So that’s that’s almost 25% of kids who are struggling readers and don’t need to be if we’re using the correct methodology. And I would argue that if we’re using structure literacy techniques in kindergarten to introduce the whole concept of reading, that even children who have the genetics, for some of you know the difficulties learning how to read, probably would learn how to read because I wrote a curriculum 25 years ago that I referred to, really as the mechanics of reading. But now, you know the term is structured literacy was based essentially on the research and structured literacy my interpretation of it. And when kids use that curriculum, they come out reading. You know, very few struggling readers, because if you give them the concept without confusing them with a whole bunch of other things at the same time, you know, then we’re in pretty good shape. So number one, the science has been there steadily for decades, and granted, we’re still learning things. There’s no doubt about that, but we absolutely know enough at this point how to teach most kids how to read. I think that’s almost an inarguable point. You know, there’s other researchers like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a little bit like, No, I’m all in on that one. So we’ve had the science, and then we had four or five parents in New Jersey, 2011 that said, You know what? We’re really sick and tired of people telling us we don’t know anything about dyslexia and we don’t have to know anything about dyslexia, where, if you look at idea, idea 2004 iteration of it, it clearly says dyslexia. So you really can’t make that argument. We don’t know anything about it. We don’t have to know anything about it. And these parents came up with a really clever name for their organization decoding, which is super important to learning how to read, because the alphabetically based systems are codes that you have to decode, right and you have to encode to spell. You decode to read and code to spell and write. So decoding is a really cool word, and then Decoding Dyslexia, it’s like, wow. I, I just love that. I I love that name. I mean, when I heard about them in 2013 I thought, Man, that’s a great name. And you guys are doing some really good work. And. And I’ve been telling my colleagues that, you know, if we don’t, if we don’t start teaching science based methods of teaching reading, that eventually parents will come to colleges of education like the scene in Frankenstein with it pitchforks and torches and they’re going to burn you down. And, you know, basically my colleagues are saying, Go back to your office. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And here we are, 2011 I’m like, there it is. I mean, I saw it for what it was, and that is a group of parents who wanted to be advocates for their children because they wanted their children to learn how to read, because we know how vitally important reading is, not just for academic success, not just for career success, but to be successful in our culture, In life. You know it’s you can’t. You can really not do much without reading, just not really possible. Can’t apply for a bank loan or an apartment or pass your driver’s license test, you know, read your prescriptions well enough to take them. You know, of course, you guys know all this, and so too do your listeners. And so you know parents are saying we’re going to do something about this. And so parents went about seeing how they could influence individuals to start dealing with this issue of dyslexia. And they’re also pretty smart people who are learning awful lot about the science of reading are finding out, Hey, these are the ways that we should be assessing kids early on to identify them as potentially as having a problem. And here are methodologies that should be used to help them. Now, you know, as people who are reading the scientific literature, you know they’re going to have different kind of interpretations of it. So, you know, there have been some arguments. Well, we all have all these different state laws now, but they all have different notions of what this looks like. It’s like, yeah, because we’ve been telling parents, here’s what you need to know, and now parents are out there doing it. So I certainly don’t fault parents for having a law in Arkansas that’s different than a law in Connecticut that’s different than a dyslexia law in California. You know, would it be nice if we got everything all synced together? Sure, but show me 10 researchers who’ve been studying reading for, you know, 1020, years or more. Get them in a room, 10 of them, and say, Hey, come up with the exact way that we should be doing this. They’re going to argue about it and come up with different things too.

Speaker 1 17:49
So I think that was a really significant part of our history. And then, of course, we had the brilliant writer Emily Hanford, who started thinking, why do we have so many kids who are struggling readers? What is going on here? And she’s very good at asking questions, and she’s very good at asking questions in a way that people want to answer them and they don’t feel attacked. And I think that a lot of teachers, for example, are listening to those podcasts and are thinking to themselves, huh, she’s talking about the way I’m teaching. And I do have a lot of kids who are struggling readers, huh? What can I do about that? And you know, now we’ve got things going on, really a whole shift in the way that things are progressing. You know, last week, a class action lawsuit was brought against Heineman, who is a publisher of many of these three queuing system types of approaches. You know, even though they’ll argue, well, we put phonics in there. But, you know, the reading wars isn’t really about phonics versus whole language. I mean, if you just did phonics, that wouldn’t be enough. And whole language is, you know, based on this notion of psycholinguistic guessing that Goodman came up with in the 60s. And so, you know, neither one of those approaches are going to be the the answer. But structure literacy is when you’re looking at how to process phonemes and how to encode, how to synthesize, you know, building a language into it, in how to do comprehension, all those things which are structured literacy, phonics is a part of it. It’s not a phonics program. It’s a program that has phonics in it. And I think one of the other things that I want your readers to know is when you hear the science of reading, I think sometimes people think that that is a curriculum, or that is a program, and. It’s not the science of reading refers to what we know about reading based on science. And the reason why that’s important is because a lot of these ideas, like psycholinguistic guessing, is not based in science. Because when you look and watch how kids learn how to read. They’re, you know, I mean, they will guess if they have to, but if you teach them the mechanics of how to decode and synthesize and read words, then you’re going to find out that there’s no need for kids to guess at words, because they can decode them. And granted, not all words are decodable. So, you know, it’s even within that context. There’s a lot of other things going on that’s complicated. So, you know, so I think there’s a lot of things happening right now that are very exciting for those of us who’ve either starting into the field right now, it’s still, it’s very exciting, because the focus is on reading and science based aspects of reading. And for those of us who’ve been in the field for decades, it’s exciting to see that people are actually starting to listen, which, you know, for me, that’s really exciting. Because Sure, my colleagues in in, you know, Ida and other places who were looking at reading from a scientific standpoint, they understood that too. But you know, I’m in Kansas at a regional institution, and it’s, you know, a little different, but at the same time, you know, if you take a look at what’s going on in Kansas, Senator Baumgartner, who is a state legislator here, was hearing a lot from her constituents about, hey, we need To do something about reading. And she spoke to other colleagues in the legislature, and they came up with the legislative Task Force in dyslexia to look at what’s going on with dyslexia. And of course, you know, I think looking at dyslexia is a great thing, but let’s look at the reading crisis in total. Not just focus just on dyslexia, certainly an important piece of it. But a lot of the things that we learned by studying people who had dyslexia actually are completely relevant to people who don’t who struggle to learn how to read. So it’s just been fascinating. And you know, our governor signed Senate Bill 438, which is the Kansas blueprint for literacy into law last April, and we are changing the way that reading is being taught in Kansas from every which way you want to look at it, how pre service teachers are taught they must be taught the Science of reading and particularly structured literacy techniques, the three tuning system is banished from Kansas. School systems must use structured literacy based curricula, and anyone relate remotely related to elementary education of reading, have to get training in structural literacy, and there’s some other components to it, but our Department of Education will not allow an institution of higher education to be accredited if they can’t show that they’re doing structured literacy training and science of reading training. So we’re getting rid of all the stuff that’s not science based, that’s people made up that they thought were great ideas, and in reality, I don’t really condemn them for thinking of ways to teach reading that they thought would help kids, but it doesn’t, and at this point in time, we should stop saying that it does, because we look at the harm that it causes kids, not just in terms of not being able to Read and all the things that occur with that. But every child who starts kindergarten wants to learn how to read, right? They want to learn how to read. And you know that because when they’re four years old, they’re at home and they’re scribbling on paper, and you’re like, What are you doing? I’m writing. Well, they’re excited about it, and then they get into kindergarten and find out, wow, I this. This doesn’t work for me. The way you guys are teaching this stuff. I don’t get it. And as a function of that, we see children our center. We do about 300 evaluations per year. We see children in our center as young as kindergarten who have anxiety about going to school, and that anxiety in first grade increases, and hand in hand with anxiety, typically, is depression, and then when you look at depression, there’s other issues along with that, including suicide ideation, drug usage, dropping out of school minute. This is. The most solvable problem that we’re facing today in education, solvable problem. We just have to get people on board. And in Kansas, you know, the literacy advisory committee is made up of 25 people from various aspects of Kansas state legislators, people from the Department of Ed, people from the Board of Regents, people from higher education, teachers, administrators. I mean, it’s, it’s a pretty comprehensive group that you know is kind of guiding this process, which now we have some pretty quick deadlines, so we’re moving quickly. So you know, when you move quickly, you’re bound to make, you know, stumble or make a mistake, but we’ll give ourselves grace to go change those and modify them. But yeah, I just, I know that’s a long answer to the first question, but in reality, it’s, it’s super exciting for me to still be in this space and to have contributed to the science piece of it and some other aspects of what is happening and then see it being played out.

Narrator 26:08
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Donell Pons 26:45
David, I love the way that you drew a through line that we’re not talking about just kids that we know are going to struggle. Maybe there’s a genetic, you know, component that’s that’s there, but this is teaching, this is information, this is science that informs reading for all students, and that’s a really clear, good message that people need to hear. And

Speaker 1 27:06
I think too when, when people hear the science of reading, you know, unfortunately, there, there are too many people today who revel in their ignorance of science, like there are people who say, you know, happy to say, I’m a flat earther, even though, since the seventh century, we have known that the most common object in the universe is a sphere. And in fact, the earth is a sphere. And you know, other aspects of science. And so I think really, to say the science of reading is important for us to claim that is a science, because, you know, we don’t say things like, you know, the science of biology or the science of physics, because everyone knows that biology and physics are a science, but reading hasn’t been that way. And so we need to reclaim the science part of it, the reality part of it, because in reality, what science does is to help us understand what reality is, and we use the scientific method to extract as much of our personal biases out of what we’re doing. Because as human beings, when we have an idea, we really hope the idea works, and then if it looks like it’s working, we’re going to stick with it. And that’s precisely what happened with the three cueing system, because some kids did learn how to read using the three cueing system, because they were able to read on their own. You know? I mean, when you look at the history of writing systems, alphabetically based writing systems are beautiful because they’re a code for us to represent the sounds, and so even as adults, when we get to a word we’ve never read before, there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to be able to read it based on our knowledge of morphology and phonology and how all those things work. But if it was just like logographic, we’d have absolutely no clue what it meant. So it’s a beautifully based system, but you’ve got to teach it as a code first. And even horse man, some time ago, who was considered the father of progressive education, did so many great things, but he was absolutely, totally wrong about how to teach reading. You know that the drill and kill or whatever. You know it’s like, if you teach them decoding, they’re gonna hate to learn how to read. It’s like, no, they’re gonna love it, because the more things that they can decode, the more things they can read. That’s exciting. I’ve never met a kid that was learning how to read who wasn’t excited about learning the code, because that’s the basis for what we’re doing.

Donell Pons 29:47
And David, you mentioned also some of the folks who had contributed to this issue, and there’s some luminaries right in reading, and there’s something about the International Dyslexia Association that they’re able to get people. People who have deep backgrounds to step up and want to be a part of it and tell us a little bit about that camaraderie, that sharing of information, because I think it’s important.

Speaker 1 30:10
Well, you know, if you look at the very beginning of the Orton society, these were researchers and people who wanted to help children learn how to read. And, you know, the research, it’s, it’s kind of interesting, because there’s different types of science, you know, there’s basic science, just to see how things work. And, you know, people make fun of scientists for, you know, why are you looking at this? Why aren’t you looking at world hunger? It’s like, because this is of interest to me, and I want to know how this works. And so you got basic science, which is just helping us understand how the universe works. And every little tidbit of how we can figure out how the universe works is interesting. It just is whether there’s application in real life or not, which a lot of times there are. And then you have the Applied Science, which is how you apply some of that basic research to help people and in in this field, like when I first got into this field, you know, I didn’t get into it to help solve the reading problem, or I didn’t really know much about dyslexia at all. Remember, I wanted to be a developmental psychologist. I knew what dyslexia was, kind of just some familiarity with it, but that one, course, you know, that kind of set me on fire, because it was so interesting. But you know, if you look at some of the people in the field, why did they get in the field? You know, they were teachers who are like, Why is this kid not learning how to read? Like Louisa Moats, his background. Why was this kid not learning how to read? Maybe I need to get more educated to figure this out. You know, look at, you know, read Lion’s work. You know, the quintessential expert on the science of reading pushed forward the No Child Left Behind to help kids become competent readers. Of course, it was not as successful as we’d like, certainly not Dr Lyon his expectations. Because, in reality, with reading first, and, you know, other aspects that were connected to No Child applying, we really had, we had it figured out. We did, but the implementation of it, right? That’s, that’s the hard part. And, you know, how do you make things work? You know, do you create a law that beats up schools if they’re not doing a good job? Or do you provide some other type of incentive, right? And Dr Lyon has been very interested, and has visited Kansas a few times to kind of help us on our journey with the Kansas blueprint, because he’s infested, you know, and he’s retired. But you’re never really retired when you’re working in this area. You’re just not, because there’s interesting and exciting things you know, that are happening. And so I think if you look at the particular field, yes, there are scientists in there who are trying to figure out exactly how the brain is processing reading types of information and how. What does it look like when you have a child who’s a struggling reader, if you do an appropriate intervention, how does the brain process that information now? And it turns out differently, which really is no surprise, because you know, behavior is rooted in the brain. So if you have different behavior, probably got some different brain mechanisms that are doing things differently than they did before. So you got this just enormous group of individuals who their research actually has told us how we should be teaching reading, and how that should look. And in this particular issue was, yeah, let’s, let’s have an issue where all these various individuals who really do care about not only science, but also individuals learning how to read. Now let’s have them talk about, you know, learning how to read and so that that’s kind of the impetus for it. And you know, in this field, people are always willing to help, even people who are retired, like read lyre like, Hey, can you come to Kansas? And he’s like, Well, you know, I really don’t do any traveling for business anymore, and I’m like, Well, why don’t you take a look at what we’re doing here with this blueprint? And he did. He’s like, wait a minute, let’s go see this. And he’s been as he and Diane lion have been a huge help and many others across the country, because this isn’t for us. It’s not just a Kansas thing. We we can just do things in Kansas, because this is where we’re at, and we have a law in Kansas, but, you know, we’re hoping that our if we have success, which I can’t imagine, that we won’t I mean, granted, there’s always something that can happen, right? But if we’re successful, it’s going to be something that other states want to emulate, you know, like the Miss. Mississippi miracle, right? You know, people see that. They’re like, Well, how did you do that? We want to know how to do that. And in reality, you know, it’s not really a miracle, is it? It’s just the science. You know, they’ve applied science, which, I guess in itself, in itself, is kind of a miracle, right? But they applied the science. And, you know, Mississippi still has a lot of struggling readers. They’ve got growth to do. I mean, we’re not going to, no one’s going to say we’ve got this licked at this point in time. We’re in the process of getting things going in the right direction. So

Lindsay Kemeny 35:39
there’s something that I love that you said in in the article, it reads as science advanced idea evolved as we evolved, our vision sharpened. And I like that because, as you’re saying, we have all this science, but it is evolving. And I love this idea, you know, we need to be evolving too. And I love this idea of our vision sharpening as we’re working with kids. Yes,

Speaker 1 36:04
yeah. And I think that, you know, like you said, you know, we’re it’s still evolving. You know, for example, when you look at the simple view of reading, and the simple view of reading came out, actually, when I was still in my doctoral training, and I remember looking at the title of it, going a simple view of reading. What are you talking about? Nothing simple about reading. And then you read the article, and you’re like, Oh, I get what you’re talking about, right? And, you know, I you know. Again, for your readers who may not know what the simple view of reading is, but it’s this notion of decoding ability, multiplied by your language ability, helps you understand your reading ability, right? So if you cannot decode, then you can’t comprehend what you’re reading, because you’re not reading, you’re not decoding. And you know the flip is also true, like if you’re a great decoder, but you really don’t know the language, then you don’t understand what you’re reading. And to give an example of the latter, you know, for people who have taken high school Spanish, you know, Spanish is one of those languages. It’s a very efficient language in itself, but the writing system is also, you know, pretty easy to pick up on in terms of decoding. So if you learned how to read Spanish in high school, you can still decode it because it’s, you know, what we call transparent writing system. So the vial, the vowel sounds are always going to be the same vowel sounds. It’s not like, you know, in English, where there’s many different ways of writing a particular vowel sound. So, you know, right now, those of individuals who are listening who took Spanish, like, yeah, I can, I can decode and read pretty well. But do you know what you’re reading? Well, no, I don’t know the words. That’s what we’re talking about with the language. Piece of the simple view of reading. It takes both the language piece and then, you know, the decoding piece to be able to comprehend what you’re reading. And so, yeah, all those little pieces we’re learning more and more. You know, there are children who have, you know, developmental language disorder and have problems with language. We have a lot of English language learners who are in the United States, which, you know, we need for them to learn how to read. And, you know, we have different dialects. You know, it’s, it’s, really, is a fascinating area, truly,

Donell Pons 38:35
yeah. And it’s interesting, David, as we’ve all, you know, talked, and our backgrounds are so very different, but involved in reading in some way or another. You’re so right. It reaches into so many aspects of our lives, of people’s lives, that really, you could never get bored with this field or with the ability to learn more about how to improve doing it too. So that’s another thing. It’s you’re a lifelong learner. If you’re in the field and you’re helping anybody, you learn that very quickly, is that there is always something new to learn. The science is evolving. So that’s you have to be people who are okay with that and up to date and ready to go there when the next piece comes out and update their information. So that piece about evolving is really important too. David, this has been a fantastic conversation. We could probably listen to you for days, because you’re just so full of wisdom about this area. But really appreciate you taking the time to not only discuss the issue, but also give us some broader understanding right of not only your entry point into this field, but then what came before you, what’s around you. So we really appreciated you taking the time to do that with us. Thank you. Well,

Speaker 1 39:35
thank you for giving me the opportunity. As as my friends and family know, you don’t give them too much time because he won’t stop talking. That’s great.

Stacy Hurst 39:46
Do you know? I think that’s probably on each of our report cards going back in some form or another. So we can relate and appreciate that. Thank you for podcasters. Doesn’t it? Yes, it does. And learning to read, right? That language components important. As a first grade teacher, I used to say, give me the chatty kids. I’ll take them. Yeah, yes. Thank you so much. And we do want to end this episode by thanking our listeners for joining us for this awesome episode, and we hope you’ll join us next time on another episode of literacy talks.

Narrator 40:24
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where literacy momentum begins. Visit Reading horizons.com/literacy. Talks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading you.