SEL in EDU
Real stories. Practical insights. Everyday Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
SEL in EDU
086: How Routines, Safety, And Science Turn Students Into Readers with Dr. Steven Underwood
What if the difference between a struggling reader and a confident one is not a love of books, but the routines around them? Dr. Steve Underwood joins us to unpack how predictable, evidence-based instruction changes the math on literacy and identity. From a childhood marked by poverty and round-robin dread to a career leading systems change, Steve shows why consistency, safety, and the science of reading can give every student a fair shot at comprehension and confidence.
We dive into the simple view of reading and then get practical. Steve walks through explicit, systematic phonics with everyday moves teachers can adopt: stable sound-spelling routines, precise finger cues that highlight graphemes, and three targeted blending approaches that keep the process consistent and the thinking focused. We connect those micro-moves to SEL - how choral response boosts participation without shame, how steady sequences reduce anxiety, and how emotional and psychological safety sets the stage for real learning. We also explore audio supports that preserve dignity and allow students to control the pace while building meaning.
We reframe reading as a purpose-driven cycle: preview strategically, monitor understanding as you read, apply insights afterward, and then discuss because learning is social. Finally, we zoom out to the systems level. When a school aligns on routines, students don’t have to relearn directions each year; they build skills.
If you’re ready to trade guesswork for what works, and to pair solid research with human-centered teaching, this conversation will equip you with steps you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague who teaches reading in any content area, and leave a review to tell us which strategy you’ll try first.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Welcome to SEL in EDU, the podcast where we explore how educators bring social emotional learning to life by sharing stories, strategies, and sparks of inspiration. I'm your host, Dr. Krista Lay, owner of Residence Education. Thank you for joining us on this SEL journey. Dr. Steve Underwood is the founder of Veritas Educational Consulting, where he partners with leaders, educators, and organizations to create customized, evidence-based solutions that drive lasting improvement in teaching, learning, and leadership. He specializes in leadership coaching, whole system improvement, and the science of reading. His career began as a teacher and literacy coach, later leading statewide school improvement efforts in Idaho. Steve has held senior leadership roles at NWEA and Education Northwest, guiding large-scale professional learning and consulting initiatives for districts and state education agencies. He holds a Doctor of Education with an emphasis in school and system improvement. Welcome, Steve to SEL and EDU. I'm so excited to dig in today to some of our topics. So we were connected through a mutual friend, Lindsay Prendergast, who has been on a couple months ago. And one of the things, there were many things that intrigued me about the work that you do around leadership and systems change. And one of the things that really caught my attention as a secondary person is your work in the science of reading. Here's the reason why. My bonus son was a very reluctant reader. And it has me thinking about how important reading is to access knowledge, but then also how it impacts our sense of identity as young learners and people. I'd love for you to share what led you to the work around the science of reading.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that is a good question and a big question. So yeah, you you mentioned the idea of identity and people who love reading and so forth. And I am one of those conundrums who I don't love to read. I'm a literacy expert that doesn't like to read. And I don't know. I've joked about that a lot over the years, but it's it's really true. One of the things that I've come to notice over the years is that a lot of teachers, most teachers, had to be true for their kids that they're teaching as well. Um, but they don't have the perspective of what it's like to be a struggling reader. I, on the other hand, was a struggling reader when I was in, I don't remember it's probably first grade, I had a horrible stutter. I still stutter, but thanks to speech language pathology, like I know how to more or less control it now. But I had a really bad stutter. I grew up in poverty, grew up with some other kind of trauma and some other things. And so for various reasons, I was not a good reader, and I knew it. Back in those days, it was really typical for the round robin reading and for uh teachers to put kids in different groups, like the bluebird, the the buzz, you know, like the I was in the buzzards for math. Yeah, and like I knew it. I knew that I was in the buzzards group for reading, and it would just terrify me every time the it would be my turn to read out loud publicly because it just didn't feel good. Anyhow, yeah, uh all that to say is like as I was learning to read, my teachers didn't make English make sense to me. In fact, I have teachers that that taught me things like they would explosively say, you know, English doesn't make sense, you just have to memorize it. Or looking back, I learned things that were just plain rough. The whole I before e except after C, or when it sounds like A is a neighbored way, you know, that's not an English rule. And there's a bunch of other things like that. Not only did I struggle, but the code didn't make sense, and it was painful. It wasn't until I was in college and I was studying Poin A Greek of all things, first century Greek, that I had this professor that he had self-taught himself, like I think it was 10 or 11 different languages, and he could make connections between all of them. He was talking about how this English word was related to this Greek word, related to this Russian word, related to this Sanskrit word, etc. I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of difference. That makes a lot more sense. So fast forward when I became a teacher, I the National Reading Panel report in 2000 had just come out, and I was reading that as part of my master's program, and it's like, oh, all this makes sense. Like you can actually learn to read effectively and make English make sense. And so by the time I became a teacher, it was it was just like I kind of had this, don't care if kids learn to love to read, because I don't love to read, but I do care that they learn to read. And so, more than anything, I want to make sure that whatever I do is evidence-based and helps the kids who struggle, like me, so that they have that access to read. Or so, anyways, and I took off from there and you know became a coach and consultant and so forth over the years, but that's kind of where it began. Long story.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that was fascinating, and I reminded me of you know, while I loved reading and felt confident there, I always had anxiety when we did the round robins, so I keep coming ahead to what paragraph I was going to have to read, or when people did popcorn, I'm like, oh good Lord, can we like and I couldn't listen to what and comprehend what was being shared because I was so stressed out that I was going to be called on and make a fool out of myself.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and when that happened, when a kid is so focused on like the making a fool of himself, right? They can't learn. So using evidence-based literacy teaching strategies, those are actually designed in ways to take the cognitive load off of all the processes, etc., so that kids can actually focus on the stuff they're supposed to learn.
SPEAKER_01:So, can you give me an example of that? Because I understood what you said in terms of like cognitive load and those words, but then when you put it all together, I'm like, what does that look like in practice?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I'll kind of start with an overarching frame and then give some examples. So basically, the way I would describe the job of an early reading teacher, especially, and I think this actually applies to secondary disciplinary literacy as well, just in different ways. But the job is to teach students how to think like a good reader, as opposed to a lot of teachers approach their weekly lesson because they've got a curricular program that they're supposed to teach, right? They approach that as, oh, this week has this story or this expository text. I need to make sure that the kid learns everything about this particular text, blah, blah, blah. So I'm gonna ask them questions, I'm gonna make sure they read the text three times, et cetera, et cetera. And especially in K3, it's less about teaching the kid the content of the specific thing, and it's more about teaching kids how to think like a reader and building the kind of skills that it takes to approach text. And so, anyways, what that looks like, you know, you've got the simple view of reading that kind of guides all the people in the literacy space, where the idea is written language is the printed side of the equation. You've got language comprehension, which is all of our ability to engage with thinking, reasoning, speaking, all the oral side of the language. And you put those two things together, you multiply them, and word recognition times language comprehension equals uh reading comprehension. That's how you frame it. So on the word recognition side, to like the phonics and all that, there is a lot of evidence around what we call explicit systematic phonics instruction. And so because we're teaching more or less from speech to print, we're we will have an oral warm-up where maybe we're focused on the sound today, a thimble, right? And so we get the kids listening and have them identify the sound, and then we move into an introduction of that sound. So we take a sound spelling card off the wall, the picture is a thimble, the it has the spelling th on it, and then we go through this process when we that's the same. It's the process is always the same every single day. So it's like class, this is the thimble. What's the card? Thimble card. The sound it makes is what's the sound? How's it spelled? TH. How's it spelled? And the kids say th. So it's kind of always routinized, if that's a word. And that way the kids know what to expect. And then when you get into using it in context, there are basically three blending routines. So there's what's called the sound by sound blending routine, a continuous whole word blending routine, and then a spelling focus blending routine. And so, depending on what you're trying to accomplish with the kids, you use that specific routine with, say, 20 words in that lesson, and the routine is always exactly the same. And you use finger cues to point out exactly what the kids need to be doing. You get into a problem if today your routine looks one way, tomorrow your routine looks different, the next day it looks a third way, et cetera, et cetera. Because for kids who struggle, if they're trying to spend their mental effort trying to figure out what your directions are and following you, then that's where your cognitive load goes. Your cognitive load goes to directions, not content of learning. Whereas if you use these scientifically based reading research practices, you're doing the same thing over. So the process stays the same. Kids can focus on what they need to learn.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for that. And there's a couple pieces that I'm pulling out and starting to have some aha connections to. We often in SEL talk about routinization and having those routines because that helps students feel emotionally and physically safe. They're not wondering what's going to happen next. Because there's so many other aspects of their lives where maybe things aren't in a routine they can count on. And I also like that you talked about views that help support that. So it's more than one approach to that particular routine. I was just talking with a school on Monday about emotional safety and psychological safety and how sometimes they're used interchangeably, but really emotional safety is feeling like you're seen and you're heard and you're valued. And when that happens, you can engage in psychological safety, which is a willingness to make a mistake.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And know that you're not going to be made fun of or put down, and that it's a learning opportunity. So what you said involved a lot of class um vocalization. And I cut myself back in even if I wasn't sure, I could hear what other people were saying around me, and it wasn't a spotlight on me.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So there that there's a couple of things that you just said that are direct connections. So one is that everybody's responding. So part of that is the safety side of it. Like if you don't know, at least you're hearing it, and so it's being reinforced. But also there's part of it that back to the round robin or popcorn examples. If we if you use a popcorn or a round robin example, then each individual child is getting maybe 30 seconds of response time. If you use a process where you've got choral responses, then every single child is responding multiple times in every single lesson. And so it's that response part of it that reinforces learning too. So there's that part that kind of helps. So you're talking about routinization and cues. And so just by example, I have a couple old YouTube videos that I did to teach people how to do these blending routines. And I am a big stickler on all the tiny little bits and pieces about the cues. So for example, if you do the word, if you're teaching kids to blend the word flash, then that the word flash has what is it, five phonemes? No, four phonemes. It's got four phonemes, uh, but five letters. And so when you are pointing the to the cues, you would point to the F, point to the L, point to the A, the A, then use two fingers to point to the SH because that is one grapheme, and you want the kid to visualize that it's one thing. And so then even like how you swoop and the sequence in which you do it, you know, if you're doing a continuous word blend where you write the whole word up, you're gonna just point to each of those graphemes one at a time and then blend through the whole word. But if you're doing a sound by sound blending routine, you would do F, say say in uh write and then pronounce the sound, write and pronounce the L, write and pronounce the A. But then you'd blend through the A because the sound by sound routine is intentionally working on the individual phoning pieces, and vowels are the hardest things for kids to learn. So you do that by you reinforce the vowel, and then you finish the word, and then you blend through the whole word again, and then you say it quickly at a normal speed. And so there's all sorts of just little bitty things that we teach teachers to do these things again because of the individual student, and then ideally, you mentioned my leadership and school improvement work. Ideally, you teach every teacher in the building to do it the exact same way, and a lot of times you'll hear teachers say, Oh, but that takes my freedom, my academic freedom, right? Yeah, and I say that I understand that, but does the child in your class, will that child in your class ever go to somebody else's class? Will that child ever go to another grade level? And if so, do they need to relearn all these things because now they've got a different adult interacting with them? So if you if you really want to talk about fairness to the kid, we're talking about doing it for their sake, not because we want to control anybody. We want to just help the kids learn.
SPEAKER_01:There's a couple pieces that really have resonated with me. One is that you mentioned before evidence-based. And our students do deserve routine and consistency across grade levels and across teachers. As one of two 11th grade American US history teachers, we had the same symbol of us, but we taught it two completely different ways. And that was fun in my mind. But then after a while, I'm like, what if they both go on to AP US history? What if they both go on to from each class? We did not do right by them because I like talking about Vietnam and he liked talking about the music group, The Beatles. So we were both doing what we wanted and not putting students first. The other piece that has me thinking on what you said is how this does affect us in secondary or outside of ELA contents, working with what we called tier three vocabulary, so vocab that was specific to history or social studies. And let's say I had a student who came in who was beginning to learn English as a second language or was an English language developer. How could I better support them by having some of this foundational knowledge?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I don't need to do everything because I'm not trained in that, but how could I provide as much support as possible for students at the secondary levels as well?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great question. Back to that simple view of reading that I was talking about that you've got word recognition and language comprehension, that the product of those two things equals your ability to have good reading comprehension. By the time kids get into secondary teachers are not well prepared to deal with word recognition, phonics, all that kind of stuff. However, there are aspects of that side of the equation that you can do. So, like when it comes to teaching vocabulary, the more that you reinforce the roots of words, Germanic roots, Latin roots, Greek roots, and so forth, the more kids understand that, then that that exponentially expands their vocabulary. So reinforcing that, giving them opportunity to engage with those types of root words and so forth supports their vocabulary. The other thing that I would say that's a really easy strategy for uh any teacher is related to specifically vocabulary, like you're talking about with tier three words. I've seen in a lot of classrooms people belabor vocabulary, get it out the worksheet, write the word, write it in a friendly definition, draw a picture, put it in a paragraph. And that is not necessarily the most productive way to do vocabulary, and it's just it takes so long. And so by the time you're done, if you write the word, put in write the definition, write a sentence, write a paragraph, you've said it what four times maybe. Four times is not enough to teach you that word. So there's actually a really easy strategy called fast mapping that is basically Anita Archer was the researcher who made this really popular. But essentially what it does is it's like, okay, I need to very quickly make this word part of the this child's vocabulary, or my whole class's vocabulary. And so it goes something like you you put it up on the screen and say, okay, class, the word is um what was the example I saw her doing most recently? Oh I don't know. Give me a good word, but then I can just make up.
SPEAKER_01:So I was talking about Vietnam, and the word that comes up in my head during that conflict was vietnamization.
SPEAKER_00:Vietnamization. Okay. All right. So yeah, Vietnamization. So the word is vietnamity. What's the word? And you have everybody say the word, right? So again, response. What's the word? Vietnamization. Vietnamization is, and then I put up a definition on the board, and then I'd have to You define it because I don't know what it is, but it has something to do with the people of Vietnam and etc. etc. Vietnam, and then I'd use it in an example. Vietnamization is what happens when, and then I say uh right, and then I'd have the class, I'd give a bunch of examples and non-examples, like class, such and such and such happened. Is that vietnamization? The whole class, yes. Do it again, whole class, no, okay. And then I might say, okay, such and such and such happened, and that is an example of, and the class would say vietnamized, right? So you're doing these processes where the kids are using the word multiple times over and over again, and then you end with the process of saying, okay, I want you to talk to a neighbor, and I want you to begin with this sentence frame, and you'd have a sentence frame prepared, and use the word vietnamization in your sentence, and then the class, they pair up, say it, et cetera. So, Max, you're spending just a couple minutes on this idea, and that's why it's called fast map. You're very quickly mapping the vocabulary term in the students learning in their mind so that they're able to then engage with it in whatever you read and work on in that lesson.
SPEAKER_01:I really like this idea of the examples and non-examples, and that was honestly something as a secondary person, I did not learn until my elementary friends, once I started teaching, told me you need to give non-examples to make it even more clear. But it had never even been a thought in my mind before. And I can see how it helps with some differentiation around a definition. And by the way, I had to look up Vietnamization because it's been a while since I thought about. So it's the policy of the Nixon administration where we were trying to end US involvement and transfer responsibility of fighting the war back to the Vietnamese. So it was us trying to extract ourselves. Um, but I knew it was going to be on my mind, and so I can see that then giving examples of is this an example of Vietnamization or not, and then give you a chance to make sense of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I also think I taught 10th grade world history, and we read Animal Farm when we were talking about the revolution. And I fully know as you were talking, I'm like, oh, I want to go back and apologize. But I used to have the students read out loud and they only had to do a sentence but could go up to a paragraph. But they would call on each other, and I wish I could take that back. But then as the years went on, I only asked people who wanted to read out loud, or I would read. And I've learned the value through my bonus son of listening to the audio while seeing the words.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And he loved the audio because he could slow it down or speed it up as he needed it to follow and comprehend.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I would agree with that. I think that's partly why audiobooks have taken off so much just in general, is because it helps. So it helps tremendously, especially if your identity is a slow you're a slow reader, right? Then it helps to have that backup. And I don't know. A lot of people feel shame around those types of things too. And I'd say, no, it's just do whatever you need. Again, the end of the day isn't whether or not you can read the word hyperalgostronism.
SPEAKER_02:What?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is a condition I learned about this year related to my health, which was crazy. I had this weird cause for high blood pressure that was caused by a weird growth on an adrenal gland. And it was like, once that was removed, my high blood pressure went away. But nobody knew what hyperaldosterinism was until I was there. And all the medical professionals were like, We have never seen this before. We're so excited. I'm like, Yay for you.
SPEAKER_02:And not excited, but good job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, anyways, fun word, uh, very interesting. Anyhow, so yeah, the point is not, especially as adults, the point is not whether or not you can read that word, it's we are all engaging with text for various purposes. And can we get the purpose out of that text? And that thing is another kind of soapbox that I get on is people ought to think like a good reader involves understanding that whole side of things. So if you want to talk about that, we can talk about that too.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I do. Please keep moving forward because I'm also having flashes of different organizations I've worked with where the curriculum side of the hallway doesn't talk to the human resources side. And so they're not seeing that there's a partnership and there's this, there might be a push for literacy, which is incredibly important. And I think the SEL pieces go with it. Your sense of identity and your strengths and what you bring to the table. So, one other quick thing, and I hope this doesn't derail you, but I think about my husband who often asks me, What does this word mean? What does that word mean? And I'm like, oh my gosh, I got slammed with vocabulary in high school, ad nauseum, and I know I just had to memorize, right? And yeah, but he speaks many languages. He grew up speaking English and Italian, he learned Spanish on his own fluently, he is learning Portuguese. So it's interesting that he is seeing some of those codes that your professor did, even not having that extensive vocabulary language that I had drilled into me. And actually, I'd rather speak many languages to communicate with lots of people than know big words.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, syllabic words.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I like words. Words are fun, especially after I took Greek, it became more and more interesting for me because yeah, I don't know that I can think of a good example off the top of my head. If you if you saw that old wedding, that that old movie, My Big Pat Greek Wedding, it was like, what is that, 20 years ago now? The dad, it was a joke in the movie that the dad said kept finding this word, and he make like he even did kimono in Japanese. Well, that comes from this, which comes from this, which comes from this, which comes from Greek. And I'm like, it's not exactly true, but there is a lot of truth in that. That if you know the history of the word or how our language has evolved over time, it does empower you to see things in different ways. Absolutely. So purpose this to me was mind-blowing when I first came to this realization that I needed to think and teach this way. So I mentioned earlier that the I think the goal of teaching reading in particular is to teach kids to think like good readers. And so when we as adults stop and actually do some metacognitive reflection on what we do as readers on a typical day, I think it's super insightful. Can you off the top of your head, like what's an example of a book you have read recently, either for pleasure or for work purposes?
SPEAKER_01:Just yesterday, I finished Sunrise on the Reaping, the newest Hunger Games book.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Okay, okay. So why did you choose that book?
SPEAKER_01:Because I had enjoyed the first four books or three books. There were four movies. I didn't read the book about the game maker, but I watched the movie and I enjoyed that. Like dystopian lyrics.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh. Okay. So your purpose was to enjoy maybe getting lost in the story or so forth. Or maybe there are themes in the story that you enjoy, right? You pick up on. Okay. So did you get the physical copy of the book or an electronic copy?
SPEAKER_01:I had the audio book.
SPEAKER_00:Audio book. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Does that count?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Let's role play for a minute. Let's pretend you had a physical copy of the book. If you had a physical copy of the book, what would be the first thing you did before you actually started reading the book?
SPEAKER_01:I open up and I read what's on the inside cover.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And you might turn to the back cover too, right? Because there might be reviews or whatever and so forth. So do you know why you would open up the first cover and like what you're doing? What does your mind do? Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_01:I think for me it's to get the arc of the story or part of it to figure out what the overall exactly. Oh, I was right.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, exactly. Because what you're doing is you're actually you're making some predictions about the story, right? Because like you you read the previous books or had them on audio, you saw the movies, etc. But you're wanting to get something out of this book. Like that's why you picked it, right? And a lot of this is subconscious. We want to get something out of it. So what we do as readers is before we actually invest our time in reading the whole thing, we will do certain things to see if that text is going to meet our purpose. And if it doesn't, we chuck it, right? We don't bother. Anyways, let's bounce to a professional example. Do you have a professional book or tech? Not even a book, it could be an article or web something, whatever, something you've read.
SPEAKER_01:The one that is still resonating with me is Unreasonable Hospitality. I read it last fall, and it's about a restaurant, a gentleman, Will Ghidara, who built this amazing restaurant that provided wonderful experiences for people.
SPEAKER_00:And is it was it an expository style text or a narrative style text? What's the difference? So expository is like facts or just written like to explain the thing. Uh narrative is more like it, more like your Hunger Game story. It's telling the story, but it's not necessarily written like a textbook.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Oh, see, I feel silly. I should know these. I want to say it's probably more of an expository, but it did have some stories to back up what it was.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let's say it's expository. And how did you first pick up that book? Like why what brought you to it?
SPEAKER_01:Two of my friends recommended it and I value their opinion.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And then did you have the print version or the audio version or e-version?
SPEAKER_01:I actually had both the print and the audio because I needed to go back and mark it up.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So then with the print version, what did you do before you actually started reading the whole thing?
SPEAKER_01:This is gonna sound silly, but I do take off the cover if it's a hardback book because I don't want to get it ruined.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Like the feel of it and the feel of what the pages feel like.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Did you flip through the book at all?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, feeling the pages, like what do the edges look like? Sometimes they're a little like gripped and sometimes they're straight or thicker pages, but yes, and I do look through sometimes. Sometimes I go right to the back and I'll read the last page.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That is normal. So the reason I'm asking these things is because some of the typical types of things that we do is like you had that book referred to you by your friends. You they probably said something about it that hooked you, right? And so your purpose in reading that book was to get whatever it was that they hooked you with. You're like, okay, that sounds interesting, and I want to learn about that too. And so typically the behavior is okay, I have this interest, it's for whatever reason I'm gonna go to this text. And then the first thing that readers do is they will preview it. And people preview text in all sorts of different ways. Like, you give me a magazine, without fail, I will start in the back. I will flip forward and I'll look through it. And basically, what my mind is doing is like, I'm basically asking myself the question, is it worth my time? Is this thing worth reading? And so then when we're looking at chapter headings, text structure, like the beginning and the end, the reviews of the book, etc., our mind is very quickly doing this process of comparing what we see in the text structure to the purpose that we want to get out of the thing. And we're comparing them, making some predictions. And if we think, based on that quick preview, that it's going to meet our purpose, we'll go ahead and start reading it. But if it's not going to meet our purpose, we will ditch it and we'll say, ah, whatever. It looks interesting, but maybe another time. And that kind of process holds true for whether or not you're reading an article online or any. I saw this interesting thing on YouTube once that like the thumbnail about this interesting train that was created in somewhere in Europe that that ended up being put aside and not used. It was this long video. I'm like, I don't want to watch a long video, but I am interested. So I did some research, I Google searched it, found an article on the topic, and I quickly was looking through this long article. I'm looking at the headings, and I'm like, okay, the headings are helpful, but I don't think I want to spend my time. So basically, I had this purpose, reviewed the article, scanned it, like that's not gonna meet my purpose. Forget it, I'm done. So, anyways, all that to say, like that's a big part of the initial phase of reading is understanding that as adults, we read with purpose, and nobody is telling us as adults, you, Krista or me, Steve, you must read this by Saturday at 10 and write a paper on it, blah, blah, blah. Nobody's doing. We are choosing our way, but it's intentional, right? And what we as teachers need to do is understand that's where we need to get is we need to help kids understand. These are the things readers do to understand if a text is reading their purpose. So then you move forward a little bit. That's the before reading phase that we talked about. Once you're in reading, now you're more invested, right? And so you what happens with your mind, because let me ask you a question. Have you ever experienced a moment where you just stopped reading and realized, oh, I don't know what I just read. And you go back and you reread it, right? So that happens to everybody, and so it's a natural process of like my brain or my mind is constantly evaluating, did I just understand what I read? Not because there's somebody telling me I have to understand this text, but because I have a reason for reading this text. And if I get to the point where I'm like, oh, I just zoned out, okay, I need to reread that. I go back, okay, I reread it. Do I get it now? Yeah. Did I not get it? Oh, I reread it a third time, whatever. So the mind is doing these things again to meet our purpose, right? And so that continuously happened throughout what good readers do. And then finally, like once you're done with reading, let's go back to your what was that that book that you're just talking about?
SPEAKER_01:Reasonable hospitality.
SPEAKER_00:What did you do after you read that?
SPEAKER_01:I honestly thought about all the different ways that I could infuse ideas from the book into my personal and professional life, and then recommended it to as many people as would listen to me.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Right? Okay, so that's totally typical of what happens with the good reading process. You think about application, and application can be mental, emotional, business, whatever. And then we're social learners, so we typically convey it to other people, right? So we talk about it with our friends and our colleagues at a high level. That's what good readers do. And so when teachers teach, if they can convey that, then it makes the world a difference. So, like in an elementary textbook, for example, it's usually broken up into before reading, during reading, and after reading. And a lot of teachers think that the point of that is like, oh, well, this is just what I need to do to prepare the kids. This is what I need to do to make sure they understand it during, and this is what I need to make do afterwards to make sure they really got it. And it's like, oh no, you're you're what you're intended to do is model the cognitive processes that kids need to learn how to do on their own in the long run. And then the same perspective from disciplinary literacy. If if I am a physicist, for example, physicists still have to engage with text, but I might engage with text in a different way, but I'm still doing the same process. I'm still studying purpose, I'm still reading a research paper to understand how it relates to the thing I'm studying. And then afterwards I figure out how to apply it, and I might talk with my colleagues about it, etc. And so these same processes apply regardless of what level you're at. And I would just love to see teachers take the reins on that and help kids realize, oh, okay, yeah, I'm using this as a practice, and my teacher's making me read this one. But in the long run, this is what we do with everything.
SPEAKER_01:I'm making connections to specific SEL skills in the process that you just shared, and that it could be under responsible decision making is demonstrating curiosity. So as you're skimming through, what do you notice? What do you wonder? Um, making predictions, maybe even marking up the book with self-discipline and self-motivation. What would you want to have happen?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What did you notice about other characters' dispositions or the way that they took advantage or didn't take advantage of opportunities that arose and leveraging that piece no matter what the content is, or even if it's a primary source document, which I'm thinking I used to stay away from as much as I could because I'm like, I'm not an ELA teacher, I don't know how to do this, it's the con. And I had it all wrong. I wish I could go back, but thinking about other ways of being able to help students have access to knowledge and the process of gaining knowledge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I like what you were saying about being curious because I think that's a large part of it. Another thing that I really struggled with when I was in school was being forced to do all the assignments, right? Like not having any choice. And when I went to college, it's like, oh, I get to choose my own classes. This is awesome. And they were harder, but I was invested. Anyways, back to the idea of curious, it's like that's really what reading is all about, is you have some sort of curiosity or you want something out of it. And I don't know, it was I think the cool thing, it applies to every field. Like my brother-in-law is a mathematician, and so a long time ago, I used to think, well, how does how does disciplinary literacy relate to mathematics? And now he's a professor, and it's like he actually writes on things like these false statistics and genetics and all these different things. And it's like he He has to do a lot of reading to do that, but the way he applies his reading is just the same as what I just did. Like he will apply, he'll bring it there, like he'll look at a text because he's trying to get something out of it. If it looks like it's going to meet his purpose, he'll read it. If not, set aside, go find something else, etc. And so, anyways, it works for all of us.
SPEAKER_01:I want to build off of what you said about being forced to read something and not having a choice. And I felt like that too, even though I loved reading. And I feel that I missed out probably on a lot of really good texts in high school. Didn't like being told what to do. And because I was told I had to read something, I'm like, I don't want to. And I had a conversation with a high school teacher in another state who said that they have a student who wants to be an auto mechanic and doesn't see the value of high school. And it's an ELA class, and they're reading Romeo and Juliet. He's totally disengaged. And I thought, I can see why he would be disengaged, not seeing a connection. And I put into chat what's the connection, what connections are there between auto mechanics and Romeo and Juliet? And it listed 11 different things. The first that two just jumped out at my head were thinking about the two families who were warring and like Lamborghini and Ferrari up against each other and how there's feuds over time. And also about how characters in the story made immediate decisions without collecting all the knowledge and information about the situation. As an auto mechanic, you wouldn't do that. Somebody wouldn't bring in their car to get diagnosed and you'd be like, oh, here's what's wrong with it. You would collect this information, you'd do tests and study. And so it goes back to also, I think, can we in the later grades think about using the literature? Maybe it's not the topic or the content, but as a vehicle or as a metaphor simile for something that they are interested in.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Students' choice and making those connections on their own.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And their world.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's important because yeah, if you have a system around you that says the kids must, then at minimum, we should be finding ways to make connections for them.
SPEAKER_01:So this has been so neat. And I know I have a lot of friends who are an elementary and they're like, the science of reading, and I see all this stuff online, and I'm like, I don't understand. People have tried to explain it to me. And I'm like, okay, I get it. But the cognitive overload a little bit later, I'm like, ah, because it's not applying to me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not seeing that. But this conversation has helped me connect it to identity and our students feeling good about who they are and that they have an ability. And I know in talking with you, you have the growth mindset and that you're just not where you want to be yet.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:There are steps that we can take, and people are on their own time. And you've given strategies that anybody in any grade and any content can use when they're working with students around reading and making sense of what they're reading and how it applies to them. So thank you for that. My pleasure. Steve, I know that you are doing work around the country on systems leadership and change management and literacy. Anyone who's listening here, how would they get a hold of you to learn more or to find out more about your services?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you. The best place to reach out to me is on my website. I have a website. It's called Veritas Ed Consulting. Veritas is the Latin word for truth. And so yeah, Veritas Edconsulting.com. I'm also on LinkedIn and would love to connect with anybody who's interested. So yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:My last question is we've had a musical theme this year because I think about how music connects to our emotions and connects us to other people. And so I'm curious who or what has been on your playlist most recently?
SPEAKER_00:I actually just wrote a LinkedIn post about this one. So I love a band called Brand Collective, and they have a new song out called Wild Love, which is really cool. And it is inspired by a line in C. S. C. S. Lewis's book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And so there's this line where the children are talking to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. They've just entered the land of Narnia and they're trying to get their bearings. Mr. Beaver is talking about needing to take the children to Oslan, the lion. And they're like, Oslan. And at first they don't know he's a lion. And when it comes out that he's a lion, one of the kids says, Is he safe? And Mr. Beaver says, Of course he's not safe, but he's good. It's like that line talking, and this connects the music and literacy for me, right? That line, good lit good literature moves you. And that line moved me when I first read it 30 years ago, still moves me today. And so when that song came out and has reference to that line in the chorus, I'm like, oh, that's cool. And so it's been on my mind a lot that I just like it. So Ren Collective, they're a band out of Ireland, and they have really good music.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. I need to share with you one of the books I was forced to read my senior year was Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. Loved it. And courage is my number one core value. So one of my tattoos says it's in Italian as a nod to my husband, but courage dear heart from the Narnia books. And the lion who said it. And I haven't said this a whole lot, but I have been in a bunny adoption phase, and one of my bunnies is named Lewis for C.S. Lewis.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. C.S. Lewis, I love him. He is such a talented author, both on the narrative side and the expository philosophical side. I had whole class on C.S. Lewis when I was in college. It was awesome.
SPEAKER_01:I'm so jealous. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm glad we have that C.S. Lewis connection because he's a good one.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I look forward to having more conversations with you. And perhaps even next year you'll want to come back on and share about systems management as we do podcasts into 2020. So thank you for your time and for sharing. And really, this has just been a great collaborative conversation. And so I value you and I appreciate you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Appreciate you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you again for tuning in to this episode of SEL in EDU. At Residence Education, we equip educators with knowledge, skills, and resources to design learning experiences that foster students' academic, social, and emotional growth. We believe that every small action to foster connections and growth creates ripples shaping the future.
