S1 E3: What I Didn’t Know About Dyslexia as an Educator & Mom - A Family’s Journey with Dr. Katherine Casey Spengler

Dr. Katherine Casey Spengler shares her family’s advocacy journey following their daughter Anna’s dyslexia diagnosis. Katherine sheds light on experts in the field, potential screening ideas for early intervention, and her vision for literacy instruction moving forward.

Katherine’s Book: Literacy Coaching: The Essentials (2006)

Katherine's Recommended Experts:

• Dr. Nadine Gaab
  • Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: linking neuroscience and education  GAAB LAB @ HGSE
• Dr. David Kilpatrick
  • Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment)
• Dr. Lynne Thrope, Ph.D. (Anna’s Reading Therapist)
  • The Reading Room - “The place where students learn to read so they can read to learn.”
• Stanislas Deahane
  • Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Schoolutions – S1 E3: What I Didn’t Know About Dyslexia as an Educator & Mom - A Family’s Journey with Dr. Katherine Casey Spengler

[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome toSchoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I amOlivia Wahl, and I am thrilled to introduce you to my guest, Dr. Katherine Casey Spengler. Katherine is an education consultant and more recently a clinical reading therapist.

[00:00:26] Olivia: Katherine published a wonderful book called Literacy Coaching: The Essentials, in 2006 that I still refer to often and used to support coaches today. Welcome, Katherine. 

[00:00:36] Katherine: Thank you Olivia. I'm so excited to be here. 

[00:00:39] Olivia: I'm excited to have you. I've had the gift of knowing you for I realized this morning over 20 years, and we've had quite a journey together.

[00:00:47] Olivia: Before we jump into that for listeners, I would love to hear who your most inspiring teacher has been, is now, whomever that is for you? 

[00:00:58] Katherine: There's so many. Of course, I always point to my mother, who was not an official educator, but my most inspirational educator because she taught me the value of education.

[00:01:07] Katherine: I'm currently really inspired by a Dr. Nadine Gaab, who's an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of developmental medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. She's also, uh, an Associate Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She runs something called the GAAB Lab, which is a um, department where she is researching through functional MRIs, the brains of children at risk for language and learning disabilities around dyslexia.

[00:01:37] Katherine: And I had the privilege of listening to her speak in person, I just caught a one-hour presentation where she talked about our ability as educators to identify risk factors for failure to read as early as four years old. And her vision is that at the pediatrics appointment, you know, when they're four, they don't get shots, they just go in for like their well visit?

[00:01:58] Olivia: Yes. Yeah. 

[00:01:58] Katherine: Her vision is that you would be able to identify for families that their children may be at risk for reading failure and then provide families with activities that they can do at home. 

[00:02:09] Katherine: And when I was listening to that and thinking, oh my gosh, the implications in that idea of saying to a family, your child may be at risk, here are some things to do to help mediate some of that risk was so inspirational. And she's enormously generous in her desire to help translate research into practice for us as teachers. And so, I follow her on Twitter @GaabLab. I go to every presentation possible.

[00:02:32] Katherine: I watch her webinars because the way she positions science and research and education and the desire to help. All children be successful and all teachers be successful gives me so much inspiration. So, Dr. Nadine Gaab is my current inspiration, but there's so many others I could mention.

[00:02:49] Olivia: Wow! I'm sure our listeners will be following Dr. Nadine Gaab as well!

[00:02:53] Olivia: I will be now. One of my favorite aspects of our relationship is how it's evolved over the years. In the late nineties, I was teaching in San Diego and I had the privilege of having you walk into my intermediate classroom. I think I had a fourth and fifth-grade combination class out in the middle of the dust in a trailer, and you saved me.

[00:03:15] Olivia: I was a struggling beginning teacher and you gave me so much inspiration to keep going. Um, with a really difficult group of children that I was not connecting with, and you helped me build relationships and engage them. I, I think the next time, uh, our paths crossed, it was many years later, actually, when we were working for the Center for Educational Leadership out of the University of Washington.

[00:03:42] Olivia: You became a mentor again to me as a consultant. I think one of the hardest parts of that work was having a newborn, a baby at that time. Before we jump into being moms together, I'd love for listeners to know your background because you have numerous degrees, so if you would share your journey, I'd love to hear it.

[00:04:04] Katherine: Sure. I actually graduated from University of Chicago in 1990 and then spent two years as a researcher at a place called the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. My job was actually to work on management of foster care data and education data, and it got me really interested in children at risk.

[00:04:22] Katherine: And then I thought, you know, my parents were like, okay, so what are you gonna be when you grow up? And I thought, well, maybe I'll become a teacher, which I thought was like a profound revelation. And my family will tell you that of course, they always knew that I was gonna become a teacher. It took me a while to decide that though.

[00:04:36] Katherine: I pursued my, uh, master's degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, where I said to myself, I'm going to live in New York City for exactly one year, get that master's degree and move on. But then I was, um, sucked into the powerful professional development network that is New York City Public Schools.

[00:04:53] Katherine: It was for me then in district two I became a classroom teacher and then as a classroom teacher of upper elementary, where I promised myself, I would never have to teach anyone to read, which was quite ironic because then I inherited a class where most children in fourth grade couldn't read. 

[00:05:08] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:05:08] Katherine: Um, you know, and then my principal, who has been an inspiration my whole career said, Katherine, you really should pursue an administrative credential because you should become a principal.

[00:05:19] Katherine: So, I got my administrative credential at Baruch College, at City College as part of district two. And then when my superintendent decided to move to San Diego and start a literacy initiative there, and I started to do consulting work, I thought, this is where my passion lies. So, I was done getting degrees.

[00:05:34] Katherine: I was done in school, I thought, I've got my degree, I'm a consultant, I'm working in school districts. I'm working for places like the University of Washington. And then when our daughter failed to learn to read and I met her clinical reading therapist, I said, I really wanna know what you know about reading. And she said, well, if you wanna do what I do, you have to go get a PhD.

[00:05:56] Katherine: And I walked out of her office with my husband cuz we had just learned that our daughter has dyslexia. And I turned to him and I said: I think I need to get a PhD. And he said: You could just read the book about how to parent a child with dyslexia. And I said: No. I think like every moment in my life has led up to this particular moment.

[00:06:16] Katherine: And with the support of my husband and family, including my in-laws, my mother, everyone said: Okay, go ahead and do this. So, I started that journey and then successfully, defended my dissertation in 2020. I was the last one at my university to do it in person because it was March 6th.  

[00:06:32] Katherine: And that was at San Diego State Claremont Graduate University has a joint public-private university program, and I received my PhD in education then. So, I thought I was done with school until my daughter's journey really compelled me to pursue an advanced degree.

[00:06:46] Olivia: And that is a perfect segue because I remember when Ben, my older son, and Anna were born, we’re traveling and then fast forward to when language is being developed.

[00:06:59] Olivia: And I'd love to hear how did you discover Anna had dyslexia? What was the journey that you've had along her educational path? 

[00:07:09] Katherine: So, our daughter, um, was born in 2007, acquired language really early. Um, she was a little girl at two years old who I remember the pediatrician said, you know, at this age she should be able to put two words together 

[00:07:22] Katherine: And her pediatrician said: Anna, you need to sit on that, uh, table there. And she said: This table is really cold. And the pediatrician was like: Okay, we've, we've like developed that language. She would say things like: Mommy, this is precarious. When she was up on the top of a, of the playground structure, not wanting to jump off it.

[00:07:39] Katherine: And the person at the park was like: Did she just say precarious? Does she know what it means? And she said: On the edge of danger. Yeah. You know, this is a child who like loved language. We read to her, she memorized so many books, she was surrounded by board books and just great children's literature. The benefit of being the child of a literacy person.

[00:07:59] Olivia: Yes. Indeed.

[00:07:59] Katherine: Right? Yes, indeed. Tons of language. So, our expectation was that she would begin school and learn to read, right? She had every advantage, um, in terms of language, in terms of being read to, in terms of listening to high-level language. And then in kindergarten, when we did the initial alphabet screening, she knew all the letters of the alphabet, all her colors, but the teacher said she doesn't know all of her sounds.

[00:08:23] Katherine: I was like, what do you mean she doesn't know all of her letter sounds? That's interesting. And then early on in kindergarten, um, it wasn't clicking for her. You know, they would, they did like a rainbow sight word program where I think it was like red words and there was a list of 10, and then you would graduate to the next color, like orange words and yellow words.

[00:08:41] Katherine: And she wasn't learning those words, she wasn't learning the patterns. And I thought, something's not right here. And I consulted of course with her classroom teacher cuz I'm, you know, first time mom of course like over nervous that my child isn't learning language. And and the teacher said: No, it'll click.

[00:08:57] Katherine: She tends to be a perfectionist, which is not our daughter's characteristic. 

[00:09:01] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:09:02] Katherine: And she tends to be really reluctant to try things and she was starting to withdraw. I knew something was really amiss when in about January of that year, her classroom teacher used that, um, red, green, yellow system for behavior, right?

[00:09:15] Katherine: But Anna said: Mommy, there's this boy in my class and he's always on red. And I said: Oh. And she's like: It makes me sad cuz he has to go home half day. And I said: Oh yeah. You know, so we were talking about behavior. And then she said, but he can read... 

[00:09:28] Olivia: Oh…

[00:09:28] Katherine:…and I can't, I'm always on green. And I thought to myself, this is a child who's saying: I'm trying…

[00:09:35] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:09:35] Katherine: …I'm behaving, but I can't read. So, we ended up switching her to a private school in first grade, because the private school class size was 19. 

[00:09:45] Olivia: Okay. 

[00:09:45] Katherine: Her kindergarten class size was 35 because of public school funding, because of the recession. You know, it just happened to be bad timing, right? In first grade, they had Open Court Phonics.

[00:09:55] Katherine: She started to make some progress, but then her school had a developmental vision therapist come and screen all the students, and he said, she has vision issues that are preventing her from learning to read. And even though I intellectually knew that learning to read wasn't a visual issue, we signed her up for 28 weeks of vision therapy….

[00:10:15] Olivia: Wow. 

[00:10:15] Katherine: …with this vision therapist. And of course, it didn't help her learn to read because vision and learning, I mean, once you have 20/20 vision, you're like all set in terms of your vision. But we thought, okay, she did it all through first grade. She's gonna be ready, she's gonna be ready to learn to read in second grade.

[00:10:32] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:10:32] Katherine: She continued to fail. Right? And then we, I was sitting in a meeting with a bunch of principals saying: My child can't read. And someone said: There's a great clinical reading therapist two miles from you. Take her to Dr. Lynne Thrope. Have her assessed. Anna was diagnosed with, um, dyslexia by Dr. Lynne Thrope.

[00:10:49] Katherine: And when we went back to the private school saying we need small group instruction, the private school said: We don't provide small group instruction. 

[00:10:58] Olivia: What was your response? 

[00:10:59] Katherine: Our response was: You have 19 people. She said: Because then it would be at a deficit to other children. And I was like: I had, I had 36 children in my classroom.

[00:11:07] Olivia: That's so short-sighted. That's, that's crazy. Yeah.

[00:11:09] Katherine: Right? And I provided small group instruction, so like 19 felt kind of like a small group. But so, we said, you know, if we're paying for four hours a week of clinical reading therapy and private school. We can't afford to do that. We'll switch her back to public school.

[00:11:24] Katherine: She had the most marvelous fourth grade teacher, unbelievably wonderful woman. Her fifth-grade experience was fabulous. So, we got her sort of on the right track. But all along the way we had to advocate, advocate, advocate, and deal with the shame, frankly, that some people made us feel like we hadn't done enough as parents.

[00:11:43] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:11:43] Katherine: And one of the pieces that I want every teacher to hear is when a parent says: I'm trying and my child isn't succeeding, we have got to listen to them. We have got to know that parents want the very best for their children. Right? So, lots of obstacles along that sort of elementary pathway that luckily, I had the resilience and our family had the resilience to persist through because it's very difficult when your child isn't learning the way you expect it. 

[00:12:12] Katherine: And to be told you're not really seeing reading failure; you're seeing lack of will on the child's part. The child needs to try harder. That's not true. Every child goes to school wanting to learn to read. 

[00:12:23] Olivia: Absolutely. 

[00:12:23] Katherine: There isn't a single child who says: Hey, I'm gonna tap out of this reading thing early on. Right? It's their first job. Dr. Gaab talks about, imagine the pressure these children feel when they're realizing they're not learning to read. And in our daughter's case, it was January of her kindergarten year where that that feeling like she wasn't being successful because she wasn't trying hard enough started to set in.

[00:12:44] Olivia: Well, it's heartbreaking on many levels and, uh, one reason I'm so excited to have you as a guest is because you have unbelievable resilience and you also have the knowledge, yes, you went on, uh, to get your doctorate, but there are families-non-educators that don't know the signals, don't know the signs. 

[00:13:04] Olivia: And unless the schools do a better job preparing teachers with this background knowledge. So that's a journey I've been exploring with many primary teachers of how can we steep ourselves in this study? And I know you have a beautiful repertoire of many experts that have supported you along the way with Anna. We've heard a couple names.

[00:13:26] Olivia: Are there any other experts you think we need to be studying or researching ourselves? 

[00:13:31] Katherine: I follow lots of different people on education. You know, I think that the piece that I want us to think about in terms of experts is there's so many different areas of reading development that we can get, get ourselves, like mired in the reading wars.

[00:13:45] Katherine: We can look down these different paths and sort of be almost adversarial in our role sometimes of like, oh, they said this and now they've changed their thought pattern. I think, you know, when teachers really ask themselves, have they had lots of education in the different realms of early childhood foundational skills pieces.

[00:14:04] Katherine: I personally really like the work of Dr. David Kilpatrick's work. I like, you know, obviously Dr. Nadine Gaab’s work, but I think the important piece is to say: When we have a large percentage of our students not learning to read, we have to seek other information. Right? I've, I continue to get trained by other people.

[00:14:24] Katherine: I continue to say, let me be open to the different strands of research. Let us kind of flood ourselves. So, I'm not gonna be able to name like a specific person. But that idea of when your gut instinct as a teacher is, wow, there's people in my classroom not learning. If they're English Language Learners, who do I seek out?

[00:14:42] Katherine: Right? I think the Amplify podcast series has so many different strands, like I just listened to ones where it's about like children who don't learn English, um, as a first language and their, their languages are so separate from English. Of course, we'd need to really supplement the sounds of their language because reading is about going from sounds to print.

[00:15:01] Katherine: I love Stanislas Dehaene. He's all about how the brain learns to read. So, there's lots of different experts that I consult. But in terms of teachers, you mentioned families, right? Research says that 40 to 60% of children who have dyslexia have a family member who also has dyslexia, a first-generation family member.

[00:15:23] Katherine: Could we just ask, in kindergarten screenings, has anyone in your family ever struggled to learn to read? That's such a basic question, and if the answer is yes; you know I did, my husband did, my cousin did, my sister did. Then we say to ourselves, this child is likely coming to us with the need for more repetition, more explicit instruction, and then understanding when we have reading failure in our classrooms and we say, well, their parents aren't doing enough.

[00:15:52] Katherine: Again, think about it. If you have a child who's at risk for reading challenges, coming from a family, where they've been at risk for reading challenges. You're asking parents to provide support in an area that they're not strong in already. Help your child learn to read. Right? 

[00:16:08] Olivia: And they probably found shame with that struggle themselves and don't know how to step out of that.

[00:16:16] Olivia: Katherine, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to share your journey. To wrap the interview, I know something we have grappled with is the notion of. A simple view of reading that's not simple at all. I had the privilege of reading 10 or so pages of your doctoral research. Would you leave us with, what do you think is best moving forth with literacy instruction at this point, after all of your research?

[00:16:43] Katherine: So, I started my career as a balanced literacy educator, right? I was very well versed in literacy practices around balance and what I recognized for my own child and in my own work is my balance was unbalanced. 

[00:16:56] Olivia: Yes

[00:16:57] Katherine: I wasn't focusing enough on the foundational literacy skill pieces. Explicit instruction in phonological awareness, specifically phonemic awareness.

[00:17:06] Katherine: That connection of sounds and letters. Not enough explicit repetition in those letter-sound correspondences and teaching students the generalizations around how the English language works. Saying we're studying this pattern, and then I'm gonna give you some dictation in this pattern and I'm gonna have you write sentences using these words.

[00:17:26] Katherine: And my balance was unbalanced all the way through. And as an upper elementary teacher, I wasn't teaching suffixes and prefixes and explicitly how words work. So, I think as we get kind of buffered and some sort of back and forth in these reading wars, and what do I believe? What do I not believe? Really rich read alouds.

[00:17:46] Katherine: Gorgeous language, right? Beautiful shared writing and interactive writing, which I learned from you. My interactive writing is so informed by your work. Those pieces are foundational and so supportive, as well as really explicit instruction in how students go from speech to print and how students understand that print represents sounds.

[00:18:07] Katherine: So that means phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, and shoring up our own knowledge. If we find ourselves unbalanced, if we look and say, I don't know enough in that area, there's no shame in not knowing. You go out, get some information, take some webinars, learn some professional development, and then ask how do we put that balance into our work?

[00:18:28] Olivia: Yes.

[00:18:28] Katherine: And I think that's the most important takeaway in my research, is about what I didn't know as an educator. The fact that there's a lot of information we can gather and that we don't have to get stuck in: Oh, I thought I knew and now I was wrong. I just didn't know. I don't know everything as an educator and I need to move forward in that direction, especially in foundational skills.

[00:18:49] Olivia: Yes, and that has been a, a newer journey for me, and it's been absolutely fascinating to study the experts and also to steep myself in connecting all of the work that I didn't know well enough with our foundation of balanced literacy. So, uh, for me it's both are needed, and I'm honored to have you as a guest.

[00:19:13] Olivia: As a colleague as a friend and a fellow caregiver. I hope families know that there's no shame in struggle. It's about what do we do to move forward together as a community? So, thank you so much, Katherine, for joining us. 

[00:19:28] Katherine: You're so welcome. It's my pleasure, Olivia.