[00:00:00] Olivia: Hi there. I'm so happy you're here. Your time is precious. And because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this episode. My conversation with Jen McCarty Plucker focused on her work with Mackin Educational Resources and how they serve as thought partners to support teachers and librarians and caregivers and curating book collections for their students.

[00:00:25] Olivia: In this bonus episode, I offer my insights about what I think it takes to build effective classroom libraries and ensure equitable book access to students. I feature insights from various educational experts and authors. And you'll learn why book access is fundamental to literacy development and still why teachers need support in curating these resources.

[00:00:48] Olivia: Why students should be empowered to build their own text sets and companion materials. And why addressing book deserts requires more than just providing books. It needs strategic partnerships, community engagement, and careful attention to representation and book selections. Stay with me. I'm so happy to have you as a listener today.

[00:01:13] Olivia: This is Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies. The podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive. Hi there, this is a bonus episode and I left my conversation Season 4 Episode 16 with Jennifer McCarty Plucker so inspired.

[00:01:43] Olivia: Her work with Mackin supports educators, librarians, caregivers in getting books into their teachers hands as well as then kids hands. As a result, and it made me think so much about book access and how we're cultivating classroom libraries, book rooms in our schools, building libraries, but also how we're empowering our children to find accompanying text sets.

[00:02:11] Olivia: So again, I walked over to my professional bookshelf. I thought of some humans in the world doing this really hard work. And I wanted to share that with you. So I wanted to begin with a book that I think is a treasure. It's by Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan. It's called All About the Books: How to Create Book Rooms and Classroom Libraries that Inspire Readers.

[00:02:35] Olivia: And I'm going to jump to page 5. And the section on this page is called How to Get the Books We Need in Schools. And they open by sharing a little bit about the work they do with school districts. And there's a quote here that strikes, uh, because it's so true, and it's, I think, a nice way to open with why we need to make sure that students have access to books.

[00:03:02] Olivia: “We find again and again that teachers do not have the tools they need to bring the research on literacy best practices to life. Richard Allington's research (from 2002) on the essential components of effective literacy instruction identified the following. Number one: Increase actual reading activity. 

[00:03:23] Olivia: Two: Select more appropriate literacy texts. Three: Enhance useful strategy instruction.” And then they go on. “If we build the structures and develop the curriculum for this work to happen, but do not have a wide variety of books for the students to read, it fails. Books matter. We cannot teach literacy without authentic literature.”

[00:03:49] Olivia: And one of the nuances I appreciate that Jen spoke to often during our conversation is that teachers really need more time to focus on the needs of their students, not necessarily cultivating their own classroom libraries. And yet a book that came to mind that I've leaned on often is by Towanda Harris and it's called The Right Tools: A Guide to Selecting, Evaluating, and Implementing Classroom Resources and Practices.

[00:04:14] Olivia: The I lean on this book often with teachers, and there's a tool that I have shared countless times with educators. It's the Resource Inventory Checklist. And just to give some context on page 28, Towanda's sharing about her literacy journey of having required curricula or different materials that she had to use, but the idea of, you know, you still have to make sure the resources are meeting your needs, meeting your students’ needs.

[00:04:43] Olivia: And so she goes on to say, “As educators, we're all familiar with this kind of judicious use of resources. But, as we collect resources that we trust, we need to be mindful of the overall effect of the resources we choose. It could be that our favorite resources tend to be teacher-centered, giving students little time for independent practice.

[00:05:06] Olivia: Or, we might find that the resources we use year after year focus on introducing concepts, but that we have few supports for remediation or for mastery. As time went on, I, (being Towanda), created a system for inventorying my trusted resources that helped me to determine the areas in which they were helping me and my students, and to determine the areas in which I needed to find additional resources.

[00:05:34] Olivia: At the time, I used the required materials as my starting point, but I found over the years that these questions are useful in considering whether any resource fills a need in my classroom.” And then she goes on and offers questions that are on her inventory and how they fall into five different categories.

[00:05:52] Olivia: And these questions are incredible, so applicable, so useful, so I wanted to share these questions. Stage: and she has, um, what she wants for her students. “I want my students to be able to independently use what they learned.” And then she says, “to support this goal, I want to be sure that I have resources that address the stages of gradual release of responsibility to students.

[00:06:22] Olivia: I do, teacher driven, we do, cooperative work, and you do, independent work.” And then on page 30, she focuses on “Skill: I want my instruction to support students in the skills they need most. To support this goal, I rely on the needs I identified in my review of student data on the Student Progress Tracker.”

[00:06:48] Olivia: That's another spectacular tool in Chapter 1. You have to get this book. The next, she focuses on “Grouping: I want to be sure I have opportunities to differentiate instruction. To ensure that I'll have these opportunities, I identify the grouping configurations that each resource accommodates. Whole group, small group, one on one, and independent work.”

[00:07:14] Olivia: I want to just pause there. It makes me think of work I was just doing with a lovely coach, and we were creating instructional playbook one pagers. We created a one pager for responsive teaching. And something I'm now realizing that we left off is considering how the resources in the classroom can support the whole small and one on one instruction.

[00:07:34] Olivia: So we'll have to add that in. And then she focuses on “Expected Outcome: I want to be able to support my students wherever they are. To do this, I need a range of resources to expose students to a skill, remediate, assess mastery, and provide opportunities for practice.” And lastly, she focuses on “Depth of Knowledge:

[00:07:59] Olivia: I want my students to be working toward greater levels of complexity in their work. To move them ahead, I need to provide an appropriate level of challenge for where they are at the moment, and plan to progress them to levels of greater challenge.” And she ends that excerpt with the questions, “The criteria on your list may look different depending on your goals for your students.

[00:08:24] Olivia: The important thing is that we look carefully at what our approaches and materials are actually supporting.” So again, The Right Tools and just that resource is incredible to assess and look at the materials in your classroom and how you are able to know what you're actually supporting with the resources and their connections to your curriculum.

[00:08:50] Olivia: I've had the privilege for the last few years of not only having Cris Tovani as a mentor, but working alongside her. And before our journey began, she sent me a copy of her most recent book. Why do I have to read this? Literacy strategies to engage our most reluctant students. And as I was listening to Jen and in conversation with her, I continued to think about page 44 from chapter two.

[00:09:19] Olivia: If you do not own this book yet, you need a hook in order to pick it up. Um, chapter two is titled Wedgies, Drunken Bears, and the Stress of Short-sighted Planning. So right there, that should pique your interest. And there's an excerpt, uh, providing choice of accessible text and strategy instruction to read complex text.

[00:09:42] Olivia: So, Towanda was just speaking in the right tools to that idea, um, the last question she focuses on around helping students stretch themselves as readers. And that's another piece that text sets and access to choice can really do. Cris goes on to say, “if I want all readers to grow, I need to have a variety of texts at the ready.

[00:10:07] Olivia: Text sets should represent the diverse voices and perspectives, as well as different text structures that range in levels of complexity. Often I'll include a complex anchor text in a unit, giving me an opportunity to mentally model how to read and access information.” I've lived this with Cris. I've seen her in a room of high school students, of middle school students, and I watch how she chooses really complex portions of text.

[00:10:36] Olivia: To model her think aloud and then offer students opportunity to practice that same type of thinking and less complex aspects of the anchor text. She goes on to say, “this text gives students an opportunity to see different ways to construct meaning. I also look for texts that will give students choices and how they build their background knowledge.

[00:10:59] Olivia: I try to provide texts on the topic that accommodates the different reading levels. Cultures and perspectives of students represented in the room. I want to give students opportunities not only to practice using thinking strategies to improve their comprehension, but also to build their background knowledge on how to read different text structures.

[00:11:22] Olivia: The more variety, the better. I look for picture books, articles, and primary documents. I collect photos, infographics, charts and graphs, lyrics, poetry. Any text that can be found in the world, outside of school, that will give students context as they build their background knowledge, develop vocabulary, and increase comprehension skills.”

[00:11:46] Olivia: That idea of helping students see a topic through multiple lenses, multiple perspectives. I've watched Cris do this, and I'll never forget the moment where she had a high school student at the end of one of her labs and workshop periods pass her a note, and the note actually said, “Thank you for teaching us how to think, not what to think.”

[00:12:13] Olivia: And that's powerful. So more variety, the better. The other nuance I've seen Cris do with text sets is lean on the educator, lean on the teacher of that group of students. To say, we read different types of texts in different ways. And so if you speak to a scientist, the way you read science journals or research or data, you may start and end at different points on the page compared to jumping into a piece of fiction or a novel.

[00:12:45] Olivia: I think that's important to consider too, how are we considering reading different types of texts within different content areas. A changemaker in the world I've leaned on for years and now I have the privilege of calling her a friend, Kate Roberts. Recently self-published a book called The Heart of Fiction: Reading for Character, Theme and Craft.

[00:13:10] Olivia: And it is steeped with fantastic strategies and lessons. And I'm jumping to chapter two, how to teach interpretation of theme. The reason this has to be shared with you. And again, you have to grab this book. It's amazing. Um, the reason this empowered me and made me think of a different way. You know, Jen spoke to that idea of agency and autonomy for educators to be able to cultivate text sets and work with Mackin as a company.

[00:13:43] Olivia: Kate has a really fascinating perspective on this with this, uh, thinking about the strategy of developing a text set. She actually offers this to children, to her students to do. Basically saying, look, if we're going to be interpreting texts around this theme, you need to develop your own text set. So I thought that was a fascinating take on this conversation.

[00:14:09] Olivia: And so I wanted to share Kate's perspective and what she shares as a strategy, because most resources lean on the teachers or outside companies creating text sets. But Kate flips it and says, no, we've got to empower our kids to do this for themselves. On page 93, she illuminates this. “The books our students read are rarely obscure texts that no one has heard about.

[00:14:32] Olivia: If they are whole class novels, then chances are they are very well-known books that have a long tradition of thinking and criticism surrounding them. If the books are chosen by the students, then they're often popular books that also have lots written about them. There are often film adaptations of books, graphic novel versions, online playlists, and this really hits.

[00:14:56] Olivia: Helping students collect some text sets that they will want by their side as they begin a theme study of a novel does two things. It offers readers backup for both their reading and their thinking, and it offers new ways of looking at the text that can help inform their interpretation.” So she offers more strategies then, she goes a little bit deeper.

[00:15:19] Olivia: “Have students do some research on people, publications, podcasts, movies, films, and social media platforms that have devoted time to the books they are about to read. I have never done this.” And after reading this book a couple of times, I'm like, why? Why have we not thought of this? It's brilliant. I think of how that would fit so beautifully into the immersion phase of a unit of study where students are building background knowledge.

[00:15:46] Olivia: And how it offers them such autonomy to do that work themselves. And then I love how Kate offers on page 94, a potential lesson flow on page 95. She offers providing feedback. Like if your students say, or demonstrate this, then you can coach them on. Steps three through five and her lesson flow are so helpful.

[00:16:09] Olivia: And it goes back to how Cris models her think aloud. With a complex text and Kate offers what you can model for how to find companion texts. So she says, “model how you find companion texts for a book you're reading, highlight the types of materials you're looking for, essays, podcasts, YouTube essays, movie interpretations, graphic novels, and so on.

[00:16:32] Olivia: Again, give students time to look online for available materials that might help support their thinking and challenge their interpretations as they read. You have to set up a structure for the rest of this unit, where once a week you encourage or assign students to use their companion text to rethink the text or clarify their thinking, ask students to write a quick response during this time where they name what the companion texts offered them.”

[00:17:02] Olivia: This is so brilliant. And I think of the pressure we put on ourselves as teachers to find texts for students. I so appreciate that idea of the students doing the work. I'll also never forget when Sam Bennett in another session said to a huge room of teachers, Our students should not be running out of the school at the end of the day while the teachers are exhausted.

[00:17:31] Olivia: We're doing too much for kids. They need to be doing the work. They need time to practice. They need time to build their reading muscles, their writing muscles, their thinking muscles, problem solving during the school day. And then going back to page 95. Kate gives us the different ways we can phrase and offer feedback for students as they're creating their own companion text sets.

[00:17:57] Olivia: So she says, “if your students say or demonstrate, for example, I'm struggling to find any companion text for my book, or I found one companion text and I think it'll be fine, or I found a bunch of companion texts.” As you can see the different layers there,” if they're struggling, you could coach them on looking for a different kind of text, like podcast, YouTube review, spark notes, adaptation, audiobook.

[00:18:22] Olivia: If they found one, and they're good, you could encourage them to look for a few different kinds of companion text so that they'll choose which one feels most interesting to use as they read. If they found a bunch of companion texts, they'll still need to survey the materials they have to see which ones might be the most helpful to them based on how in-depth they go, um, what kind of support they need, or what is most interesting to them.”

[00:18:47] Olivia: So, again, Kate self-published this book, and huge kudos to her for doing that. It's an incredible resource that you can jump in and out of based on the needs of your students. So I also really appreciate a book, uh, by Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp, Game Changer: Book Access for All Kids. So I'm going to end this episode talking book access and they speak to how to build your book knowledge muscle in 76.

[00:19:18] Olivia: So one of them is dedicate time for reading. When I lived in New York City and was teaching, I loved being able to read during the subway rides. Now, commuting and driving, living in upstate New York, it's not the same. So you really have to intentionally carve time to read students' literature. But they offer, then, “read strategically.

[00:19:40] Olivia: Accept your inability to read everything you want. Time is limited in our day, so make sure that you're abandoning books that are not working for you. Abandon series two that are, if necessary. And alternate book lengths. These are all tips under there, Read Strategically. And then they go on to say, read winners and nominees on national and state awards lists.”

[00:20:05] Olivia: So key into those lists, because that's a great starting point. And “read widely. They say the more widely we read, the more likely we can lead children to relevant, engaging books. And if all else fails, befriend a librarian.” They speak to how “librarians know about the latest books and resources, and can support educators and caregivers in locating texts that support both curricular and independent reading goals.

[00:20:33] Olivia: School and public librarians can also connect you with books in various formats, like audiobooks and ebooks, and help you locate credible book review resources. And, don't forget the kids. Ask kids what you should read. If we see several kids reading a book that we have not read, we will track down a copy and read it.

[00:20:55] Olivia: No matter how strong our book knowledge, the best people to recommend books to young readers are their peers.” That section in the book is super helpful. They offer “browse bookstores, library shelves, read with your ears, start a book club, follow reviewers and authors blogs.” I do that. It's extremely helpful. “Attend professional learning workshops and sessions on literature for young people, and read publications that contain book reviews. Again, Game Changer: Book Access for All Kids, Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp. And I will end with the inspiring Dr. Molly Ness. I had the privilege of interviewing Molly for her book around read alouds and the science of reading.

[00:21:42] Olivia: And Molly wears countless hats to ensure that students have access to books. She has a mission and book deserts. And, um, if you go to that website, I'll tuck a link in the show notes. There is an about who we are page, and I'll just describe that to you. And hopefully you'll feel inspired to make a charitable donation to this cause and, um, it's put books in the hands of countless children.

[00:22:11] Olivia: “End Book Deserts is the brainchild of Dr. Molly Ness, who had the great fortune of growing up in a literacy-rich community. As a former classroom teacher, a teacher educator, a university professor, and a self-professed book nerd, she embraces book access as a fundamental component in growing lifelong readers.

[00:22:31] Olivia: Amazed and inspired by the work of literacy innovators, she created End Book Deserts to shine the spotlight on those building book oases in high-poverty communities. Her hope is that by raising awareness and advocacy, the collective stories will help others adapt similar programs to eliminate book deserts in their communities.

[00:22:52] Olivia: For more information on Dr. Ness's books, professional offerings, publications, and teaching, please visit DrMollyNess.com. And then this is what they do, “The advocacy and awareness. The podcast features people in programs that espouse the End Book Deserts mission. You can tune in to hear from innovative literacy, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are getting books into the hands of readers.

[00:23:16] Olivia: By connecting these stories, we draw together shared experiences so that others may replicate their work.” Brilliant. We also need to spread book culture, and that is what End Book Deserts does. Not only do they aim to provide concrete resources, they build book culture in communities by bringing authors to communities, creating ways for children to interact around books, and providing ongoing learning opportunities for literacy leaders.

[00:23:44] Olivia: One of the important things they also do is share research. “They share out the staggering statistics about the implications of book deserts, as well as the transformative results of the programs that they highlight. And they are a connector. They draw together like-minded organizations. Molly knows that eliminating book deserts entails more than flooding neighborhoods with books in mere quantity.

[00:24:13] Olivia: We purposefully aim to bring quality books that represent the identities and realities of children today. As such, we aim to work with publishers, professional organizations, and authors to match books to readers.” Molly lives this in everything she is, and she partners with the Other incredible organizations, because this mission means so much to her.

[00:24:42] Olivia: I hope you listen to season four, episode 16 with Jennifer McCarty Plucker. Her work with Mackin is inspiring, helping teachers and caregivers and librarians get books and books curated cultivated resources into the hands of children. And I also hope these resources that I offered you give you different ways of building your own stack for your students.

[00:25:11] Olivia: Again, Kate Roberts offers that flip of have your students build their stack, have your students understand what it means to develop a tech set. And that to me is what this work is all about creating better humans and empowering our students to do this work far after they leave the walls of our public school system.

[00:25:34] Olivia: Thanks for tuning in. I hope you have a wonderful start to your new year and I appreciate you. I appreciate you tuning in every week and I cannot wait to share the amazing stories and strategies from guests in 2025. Take care. Schoolutions Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl.

[00:26:01] Olivia: Thank you to my older son Benjamin who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know how your school or district works to build effective classroom libraries and ensure equitable book access for students.

[00:26:28] Olivia: Tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll share how I applied what I learned from guests in schools that week. See you then.