A Conversation with Leigh Hall

Dr. Leigh Hall talks to us about supporting adolescent readers who struggle and readers’ perceptions and identities. Leigh is known for her work in Adolescent Literacy, educational technology, online learning, and for supporting colleagues to increase research impact. Dr. Hall is the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Adolescent Literacy and a Professor at the University of Wyoming.

To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Jan. 26). A conversation with Leigh Hall. (Season 1, No. 12) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/0DCD-6695-E944-6671-B9C2-Y

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Transcript

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Lindsay Persohn: 0:11

Education Research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. Each week, I invite a top education researcher to sit down and talk with teachers about what they have learned from years of study. This week, Dr. Leigh Hall talks to us about supporting adolescent readers who struggle and readers perceptions and identities. Leigh is known for her work in adolescent literacy, educational technology, online learning and for supporting colleagues to increase research impact. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite morning drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Lee, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.

Leigh Hall: 1:16

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Lindsay Persohn: 1:19

From your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?

Unknown: 1:26

Yes. Oh my goodness. Okay. So I my mind always goes immediately to this moment. And it was my gosh, probably like 17 or 18 years ago that this happened. So I was working with an eighth grade science teacher. And I was working really closely following one of the students in her classroom, I really wanted to know this particular student and her pseudonym and that she went by in my when I when I write about her was Elisa, Elisa, Elisa or Alicia, it's been a while. So it's a little go with Elisa, at least it was categorized as a struggling reader. So she was someone who'd had reading difficulties all her life, she saw herself that way. Her science teacher saw herself that way. And you know, her science teacher was really working very hard to try to help, you know, not just Elisa by everybody in that class, get better at improving their abilities to read in science. And you know, once a month, the science teacher would have them do labs. And I was always in there when they did a lab and we would always see Elisa doing the same thing. So the teacher would go over the lab and Elisa would sit there. She wouldn't ask questions. She wouldn't take notes. But you know, she was sitting there, she she looked like she was paying attention. And then they were getting their groups. And when she was in her group, she always stood at the end of the table. And she never talked to anybody. She you know, she never she never did anything really in the group unless a group member specifically told her will you go, you know, get a beaker, will you go get you know, a piece of equipment, and she would go get it, she would come back. And then she would go back to being quiet. When they always had questions, you know, work she thinks they had to answer. And so basically, she would just write down what her group members told her to write down. But she didn't offer any contributions herself. So I was interviewing her about this. And I said to her, how do you think the labs are going and I had her most recent lab assignment with me, and it was a 50% and had 50%, with a big ol F written across the top. And so I said, How's it going? And she's like, Oh, it's going great. These, these are going really, really well. And I said to her, you know, you're gonna have to help me understand why you would say that. Because, you know, here's your most recent lab, and it's a 50%. It's an F, and from my perspective, and from her teacher's perspective, she just wasn't really trying to do and things that her teacher was, you know, teaching her to do. And she told me how difficult it was to read and to understand the text in probably not just that classroom, but any classroom, but specifically in that science classroom. And the labs were very, very challenging for her. And so her goal was to listen, her goal was to listen and watch, which my observation showed she was listening and watching which would support that. And she said, you know, if I had to do these labs, by myself, I don't even know if I get any points, just like, I probably just get a zero because I wouldn't know what I was doing. And I'd be so confused. And she's like, but I've learned in her mind, I've learned 50% of the material. And by her standards, that was a success. And what it really did for me was really just flipped my understanding of these assumptions that we put on kids and that we particularly put on kids that are having these reading and writing difficulties right in school, based on our own observations and what we think counts as success. Like we wouldn't necessarily say hey, 50% That's great. She saw it as great and she had a strategy and a plan. And so from that point on, I really, you know, it taught she taught me so much that just guided everything I did after that In terms of thinking about struggling readers, right, she taught me to really hone in on speaking with students to understand their perspectives, their experiences, because what I have learned about struggling readers with including her, and since her is, they all want to get better at reading, they all want to get better at writing, they all want to learn content, but they've got some social challenges and putting themselves out there to do so right seems very risky to them. But that doesn't mean that they're uninterested in learning or that they're unmotivated to learn, because honestly, I have yet to meet a single adolescent, once you sort of get to know them and build a relationship with them that that doesn't want those things they actually want, what it is that their teachers wants, they are just straddling or, you know, sort of like trying to navigate, how do I make that happen in a way that's not going to be, you know, embarrassing for me or having to reveal that you know, that I have these weaknesses publicly because of the social, you know, the social interactions that happened with adolescence. So I think for me that moment, when I think about what's a defining moment in in a classroom with a struggling readers, I think that changed my outlook and career, I always think of her. And I think I always will,

Lindsay Persohn: 6:13

what a interesting and different way to frame successes, right? It makes me actually think about the work we do. As scholars, if you had a 50% rate for grants, or publications, you know, you would be in pretty good shape, you know, so so it's, it's very interesting to hear that an adolescent framed her thinking of success in that same way.

Unknown: 6:39

She, you know, I had for the longest time, I used to have this quote up on my website, and it was from her, and it said, was a, you might wait, wait a second, you might, you might say, I failed, but you can't say I didn't learn anything, you know, and that was her talking about, you know, the educational system, kind of as a whole, right? You might say, I'm a failure, but I learned something. And you can't say I didn't. Wow.

Lindsay Persohn: 7:02

Yeah, that's, that is really powerful. Yeah. So, Leigh, I know, You've done a lot of work in the area of adolescent literacy, and what would you like teachers to know about your research?

Leigh Hall: 7:14

I think and this will build off a little bit of at least, you know, I think the thing that I think the thing to know is that when students get to middle school, they've got an and they're struggling readers, right? Because that's who I work with primarily, like my work, I'm really interested in those kids that have academic reading difficulties, but they don't have an identified learning disability. But as a classroom teacher, especially in middle school, and high school, right, they're sitting there with kids, I have a range of abilities, right? So how do you think about addressing those needs within the context of a diverse classroom in terms of their, you know, overall abilities and needs. So that's where I start, right, that's, that's my issue that I that I'm interested in. And then as far as thinking about struggling readers, by the time they get to middle school, they've got lots and lots of negative histories with reading, particularly in school, not necessarily outside of school, but particularly in school. And they have in their mind, lots of data and evidence of all kinds, right? It can be test scores, it can be, you know, grades, it can be experiences, which is reading and talking about text with their teachers, or their you know, peers, but they've got this body of evidence that tells them, I'm no good at this. And, and a lot of them don't think that they can be good at it, because they've got 6, 7, 8 years, right in school of showing them that they can't be good at it. But I will tell you, every single one of them wants to be better at it. So as a middle school teacher, or as a high school teacher, then what what becomes your job is I think, being aware that, that they're going to bring those experiences that baggage with them into the classroom. And so first of all, just understanding that they have it and you're part of your job becomes about giving them positive experiences with reading and showing them that they can do it because what I have consistently found is they're really initially afraid to put themselves out there, because they just don't want to keep showing people in their mind that and these are basically their words, that they're dumb that they're stupid, that they're slow, okay? And you know, as a teacher, you might say, Well, no, you're not, you're none of those things. But you have to accept the fact that that's how they perceive themselves. And if you just go with that, and don't like try to argue against it, I think you make more progress. So if they have to, if they have to make a decision about doing something that they think is going to reveal to their peers, because they generally trust their teachers for the most part, but they have to reveal something to their peers or they perceive that they're going to have to reveal to their peers that there's somehow less standing down, they will choose to not learn content, they will choose to not become a better reader, they will choose to not use those skills and strategies you've been teaching them, they will choose not to speak, if you ask them to make that choice. So it really becomes about creating an environment where you're going to be able to let kids take risks and let it be acceptable, that we're all in different places and sort of working on it together. So I really think about it as know that your students probably want the exact same things that you do. But you've got to show them that they're in a community and an environment where they can take those social risks that they perceive, right, they perceive it as risky to make it happen.

Lindsay Persohn: 10:42

So I think that message of show them they're good at things, rather than telling them they're good at things is something that I think we can really all run with no matter what age students we're working with, right? Because, you know, we know that it takes many positive messages to overcome one negative. So thinking about that, that build up of negative experiences that our students have had, by the time they are adolescents who are still struggling and reading. It takes a lot to overcome that. But But I think you're really right here that the experience and showing them how to be successful is much more powerful than praise, let's

Leigh Hall: 11:25

Yeah, I mean, I think praise has its place, but say. they have, you've got to disrupt that negative pattern and give them these positive experiences. So they can start having those connections.

Lindsay Persohn: 11:36

Right, you have to feel it rather than just hear it. Yeah,

Leigh Hall: 11:39

yeah. Some of your students that are outstanding Those questions are super helpful, I think that would be a readers, right. I mean, like, I've been in middle schools and had kids, you know, testing at a college level. And they're, you know, they're just they're reading, you know, these very complicated literary texts and on their own, not because they were assigned, right, and they can talk to you about them. Some of those students do not think they're good readers. Okay. And again, right, like, that's something that we would disagree with. And we would say, No, wait a minute, here's all of our evidence, right, that you are a good reader. Um, so pay attention to those kids, too. Because the way what some of my research has shown is that if you think you're not a good great way to get to know students at the beginning of the reader, despite what a test score might say, or your parents or the teachers might say, you are also more likely to inhabit or exhibits right the qualities of a kid that meets the definition of a struggling reader or a poor reader. So just be mindful of that. And you'll actually see some kids that you that you would define as a struggling reader, um acting in ways that are more in line with kids that you don't think are struggling readers, because they don't think they're struggling readers. Um, you know, they think they're really good readers, and they don't really care about your evidence to suggest otherwise. So kids are forming these these understandings of who they are as readers, we don't necessarily always agree with their assessments, but treat their assessments as valid. And I think taking some time to just get to just asking kids, how do you see yourself as a reader? And why do you think this about yourself? Like, if you just ask them those two questions, you will get a lot of interesting information that you can then use to feed into your instruction, year, or a new semester or really any time but you know, if that's part of our introduction to a class, and we gather that information from students, I think it really could set our sights in a little bit different direction. So Leigh, given the challenges of today's educational climate, and we know there are many, what message do you want teachers to hear? So I think, you know, if you want your struggling readers, not just your struggling readers, right, but but all the students in your class to be successful, and and work together? You know, one of the things that I've had the best I've had the best success with with two things. One is we create a community that supports our growth as readers, which means we're going to get rid of this language around being a good reader, which implies yeah, there's that language about a good readers, do this good readers do that. What does it mean to be a good reader? I've worked with teachers where we just talk about what it means to be readers in this class. And because when you say, This is what good readers do, then you're implying this is if you can't do this, then you're probably not a good reader, right? Or at least that's what they hear. Even if you don't ever, ever say anything like that, right? That's what they take away. And that's a really easy fix that you can do tomorrow is to just sort of clean up the language around that. Or one of the other things as an extension of that, is that you can have your students build like a charter around what do we expect from ourselves and each other in terms of as readers, right, like when we read texts, when we're talking about texts when we're confused about text, and just something just to know more than three sentences where you have this sort of community agreement about what we expect from one another, and then we will be held accountable to that will hold each other accountable to that all the you know, the teacher will hold us accountable to that. I've had, I've seen teachers have success doing that as well. And then within that, we've asked students to set their own goals for themselves as readers. And their goals won't necessarily align with your goals as a teacher. And sometimes students will ask to say they need help with things that you know, they're really, really good on. But we don't we don't negate those, we, you know, we say, okay, great. And then when we're doing lessons with them, we highlight for them, okay, hey, guess what a lot of you said, you want to learn like harder vocabulary words, you want to increase your vocabulary. You know, students get into wanting to know like these long, hard technical words, I'm going to show you had to do that today. And it's not that everything that you're doing in class always hits on everybody's goals, right? But highlighting that for them and saying, Hey, make sure you pay attention today, because some of you said you had this goal on increasing your vocabulary, I'm going to show you how to make that happen today. And everything we're doing in the next hour is going to be focused on that. And what I've heard students and struggling readers specifically say about that is that over time, and I mean, it can take four or five, six months when I say over time before they're sort of willing to start sort of stepping out is that they see that their teacher values, the things that are important to them, I have made see that you know, they value some of the stuff obviously isn't always going to be aligned with like my personal goal as a reader, but they can see, hey, she values what what I value, I see that she values what other students want. And they'll say, hey, my teacher is really trying to help us become better readers. And I see you're doing that. So sometimes, she'll ask me to do things that are not in line with my goal, but because she's willing to help me and the ways that I'm asking, it builds a better relationship, I build a relationship of trust, I know you're willing to come and help me with things that are important to me, you asked me to do this thing over here that I would normally do or care about, I'm going to buy into it, I'm going to try it out. So I've had students say like, I'll do it, because she does the things that I that I asked her to do that helped me. And so I mean, that's a really simple thing that you can start doing that it doesn't require you to change your curriculum, you do not have to teach in a different way you do not have to use a specific book, you do not have to do it just it's a matter of changing up how we talk about reading and framing it around. Here are the things we said we want to work on. Let's get busy, let's get to it. And over time. And again, it takes four or five, six months, in my experience before your struggling readers are really going to start reaching out and doing some of these different things. So it's a matter of just keeping just giving them those continued experiences that are going to disrupt their negative ones, just leaving the door open for them. And then very slowly, they will start to come in.

Lindsay Persohn: 17:59

What you just said reminds me of a couple of things like what you're talking about here, in my mind is a part of differentiation. It's so we often think of differentiation as a very technical kind of thing, right? Like it has to be different for everybody in the plans. But I think tapping into student's interests and like you're saying being being responsive to what they want out of their education. That's another way. It's like a socio cultural kind of way to differentiate in classrooms. And it also reminds me of something that I used to do on the other end of the spectrum, when I taught kindergarten, I would reflect at the end of each day and think about all of my students and what I had in that day that was just for them. So that for me, I think was was a very powerful way to reflect on a school day because I don't want any kid to go home from school. And their parents says, What did you learn today? Or what did you like about your school day? And their answer is nothing. You know, you want them

Leigh Hall: 18:58

That's a teenage thing to do to have

Lindsay Persohn: 19:00

It is. I have teenagers at home, I know how that goes. I was school boring. But you know, once you start saying, Well, what did you learn about? You know, that I think it does give us something real concrete to hold on to when we think about what we can give students for the the time and the effort they're giving us.

Leigh Hall: 19:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they will really value that it's you show them consistency over time. And your students, you know, those are hard to win over hard to get them to change their patterns, they will they will start to change.

Lindsay Persohn: 19:32

That's a great reminder, too, that this doesn't happen overnight. It does take four or six months of doing these things consistently. And again, reflecting on that and thinking about how we can can reflect our students interests and goals in the work we do with them in schools. Well Leigh, thank you so much for your time today. And thank you for your contributions to education. Thank you for having me. Dr. Leigh hall is known for her work in adolescent literacy, educational technology, online learning and for supporting early scholars to increase their research impact. She was named one of the top 30 Higher Ed it influencers by Ed Tech magazine, and is active on her teaching academia blog and on Twitter. Lee is the winner of the Edward B Frey Book Award for her book entitled, empowering struggling readers practices for the middle grades. She has served on the editorial review board for major literacy publications and her own work has been published in the Journal of adolescent and adult literacy research in the teaching of English literacy Research and Instruction. The review of research and education reading and writing quarterly, Journal of literacy research, Journal of Educational Research, the reading teacher, reading Research Quarterly, Teachers College record, and Harvard educational review. She is the author or co author of six book chapters. Dr. Hall is the Wyoming excellence and higher education endowed chair in adolescent literacy and a professor at the University of Wyoming. For the good of all students, good research should inform good practice and vice versa. listeners are invited to respond to our guests. Learn more about our guests research, and suggest a topic for an upcoming episode through this podcast website at classroom caffeine.com. If you've learned something today, or just enjoyed listening, please subscribe to this podcast. I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me