Plain Talk: Sharing Our Plain Talk Conference Takeaways

In this episode of Literacy Talks, our three literacy experts share their experiences at the recent 2022 Plain Talk conference in New Orleans. Listeners will get a “you are there” recap of the most memorable sessions they attended, tips for making the most of conference learning opportunities, and updates from the research sessions. It’s like a conference tour in just 30 minutes. Don’t miss it!

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Transcript

Narrator: 0:03

Hello literacy leaders and champions. Welcome to literacy talks. We are so excited to welcome you to this podcast series from Reading Horizons dedicated to exploring the ideas, trends, insights and practical issues that will help us all improve our professional practice in teaching reading. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Officer at Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education. And Lindsay Kemeny, a Utah based elementary classroom teacher. Recently, our three podcast hosts attended the plain talk conference in New Orleans, and they're excited to share all they learned in this discussion led by Lindsay Kemeny, let's get started.

Stacy Hurst: 0:59

Welcome to another episode of literacy talks. I am Stacy Hurst. And I'm joined today by the lovely people have joined us every week, Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny, we have some exciting things to talk about today. And Lindsey, it was your turn to choose the topic. So I will just turn the time over to you.

Lindsay Kemeny: 1:20

It was easy to choose the topic this week, because we just got back from New Orleans last week at the plane talk conference. And if you haven't heard of this conference, it's kind of like the Woodstock of literacy conferences. It's full of experts, people in the field sharing all kinds of things related to the science of reading. So it was an amazing few days together. Let's just start by sharing some maybe just some overall observations of the conference. It was my first time but Stacy, you have been there before and Darnell, it was your first time as well. So Stacy, any overall observations you

Stacy Hurst: 2:00

want to share? Yes, there were way more people there than I've seen before. And I think that's a good sign because that means more people are being drawn to the science of reading, and conferences addressing that. I also noted that there were more educators from Louisiana there, it seems like than in the past. And that I think is great for the state of Louisiana, it seemed very practitioner based compared to in the past. I mean, it's always had very useful things for practitioners. But it was more in the past a little bit more like the experts talking about what they're working on maybe.

Lindsay Kemeny: 2:41

So there was a record number of attendees this year. Any thoughts? Why do you think that is why there are so many more.

Donell Pons: 2:48

So I've never been before. But I can say that there's a lot of action happening with states these days about reading and the science of reading. And so to me, that's what I could see just in conversations that I overheard in some of the presentations that were given that was mentioned. And to me that seemed to be again, I you know, it's I'm new to the conference, I don't know everything, but just picking that up being at the conference. It's because of the traction that the science of reading is getting, and legislation that's happening to AI. We've discussed that here on this podcast before. Those two are two key pieces, I think that are now leading to folks being more interested in going to conferences and getting information to take back and disseminate. And like Stacy said I thought it was interesting, cuz I've heard Stacy talk about this conference, I was excited to attend. In the past, it did sound more researcher based. So I kind of went with that in mind. But this was definitely more for the practitioner, and and coaches a lot of coaches too. And Stacy, what do you what are your thoughts on that?

Stacy Hurst: 3:48

I just wanted to mention that that was my supposition. And I've only been to other of these conferences. So I wasn't 100% That that was accurate. But I will say the first session that I attended was Julie Washington's. And she started out by saying normally at conferences, I talk about what I know. But today I'm going to talk about what I wonder, and I got so excited by that, by the way. But she said and I think this is the place for that because I'm going to talk to you about what I wonder and then at the end, I want to hear what you think about it. And that's not probably typical practice in a conference that's solely based for practitioners. And so I thought about that later and that maybe that is a little accurate. I don't know if there any listeners out there who can inform us on this, but those were just my thoughts.

Lindsay Kemeny: 4:39

Yeah, it was definitely there was a lot of people there. It was crowded, I just remember there was a lot of sessions where there there were not any more chairs and people were sitting on the ground. And it is like, like you guys mentioned it's an exciting problem to have that there's so many people there. I still think the majority of people there were, you know, literacy coaches. I know we were Sitting in in sessions where they'd have you raise your hand and there still were not a lot of teachers there. Why do you guys think that is? Why don't districts send more teachers?

Donell Pons: 5:11

I have some thoughts on this. So I got back and I got to thinking about all the coaches that had been at the conference. And I have to admit that I said to my husband, who was asking me, how did it go? Would you like he always loves to hear about the conference? And one of the things he did say to me is, so what do you think about that, that there were more coaches than teachers? And I said, I don't know. It's almost like we're adding yet another layer between the teacher and the information. And now we've got this thing called coach in between, and why are we just so reluctant to find a way to get the teachers to the conferences directly to the information? It just kind of interesting to me? And I don't know, you know, maybe it's the nature of this particular conference, but I see it in my own state, too. And I know if anybody else has some thoughts, I'd love to hear him.

Stacy Hurst: 5:57

No, I was thinking about that. In fact, just today, I was telling a teacher who was asking me for the conference was, and I do think it was fantastic. I love there are so many people there no matter their role, because that does tell us about the hunger that people have to learn about besides reading, and that is great. I feel like would be awesome if we could provide more venues for that. But my thought was this going along with what you were saying? I know, in fact, I said to this teacher, you know, ironically, I've had better professional development since I left public school setting, then I had when I was there, as a literacy coach, I was a coach. And we did have better PD than the teachers did, for sure. Because part of our job was to disseminate that information. Some of these conferences are held in the middle of the school year. So teachers are busy teaching, we have the same issue we talked about with legislation. And that time of year, teachers can't be involved in that, because in the classroom, right now, there are shortages, that might have factored into it. I just think there's a lot to consider there. I wish we had more opportunities. We have great conferences, like the IDA conference and the reading league conference, but it seems like we might need more.

Lindsay Kemeny: 7:13

And none of them are in the summer, right. And it would be wonderful to have some more in the summer, because writing sub plans is a pain. And it takes me forever. And I had to write, you know, a whole bunch of sub plans last week. And I usually do almost anything I can to avoid writing sub plans and being gone. It was worth it. But you know, I had the opportunity to go and that's not very normal, I think. And I've sat in presentations before where the information is maybe trickling through a presenter that maybe is not even as knowledgeable, you know, and I have found myself being like, I want to go right to the source A lot of times and hear that for myself. And I just think the whole PD thing in general, it can be frustrating, because usually teachers, we just have to sit through whatever someone chooses to tell us and teach us about, I like going to a conference because then I can choose my track. And I can choose what I think I need to learn, you know, yeah,

Stacy Hurst: 8:12

I think they're conferences too. There's something else to be said about networking. But just getting to know whether educators if you're, they're in the same room with them, it's a lot easier than randomly chatting somebody up on a Zoom meeting.

Lindsay Kemeny: 8:26

Okay, so that, that leads me to something I was going to ask Darnell about. Because I know you were talking about how there are so many different ways to learn at conferences. And I just wanted I was wondering if you wanted to elaborate kind of share some of those benefits that you see

Donell Pons: 8:40

at the conferences. One thing I did want to mention, too, that it tags on to this, I've been involved in putting together reading conferences in my state. And we did do a survey of for teachers about when we held a conference this time of year gave them choices. And interestingly enough, they didn't want one in the summer. Overwhelmingly, the reason was they had vacations, it was their downtime, and they didn't want to give that up and try to plan their summer around. So it was just something to think about. I hadn't thought of that before. Then I also thought, You know what, you're a professional. And we should find a way while you're in your profession to provide that to you a Quality Conference. That's true, too. So I don't know, I have thoughts on that. But additionally, at the conference, the way you get the information, there's a couple of things going on at the conference that I think are really valuable. And like you say, Lindsey, one is choosing your own track, rather than someone coming back to you and saying, Here's what I thought was really important from the conference, I'm going to tell you what I took away. There's a whole lot that can be lost in translation, depending on my experience. The other piece is Stacey and I sat in on a few where we are very familiar with the presenter. This might be the fourth, fifth, maybe even 6/7 or eighth time I've heard this particular presenter view that I had seen that many times and the information the topic wasn't even very different from what I've heard before. And I've read maybe the two or three books or four this individual has written so that means a lot of information about this person, and I still walk away with If new insights, things just come together for me, I'm making connections. And they're just there's a lot of value to that. So I also caution people who look at a conference and say, Oh, I've heard that person present. If they're really good, and they they've done a lot of research, you can get so much value out of hearing that person. Again, I really love about

Stacy Hurst: 10:18

the depth of the science that goes into reading development and teaching reading. Because I will tell you, I'm thinking of a conference that I attended as a literacy coach. I guess it's okay to say names. It was Fountas and Pinnell themselves, and I went there thinking just what you said, Darnell, yes, I this was back in the height that when I was doing all the things, his talents, literacy, and expecting and hoping to learn from them, and I didn't beyond that, there was a group of educators there who were angry about that. And they went right up to them and said, we read your books, you said nothing new. There was anything else to say. But I love I loved going to David Kilpatrick's session, and status. Last thing, which I you know, I gain insight, I understand things better every time. And there's so much more I could learn.

Lindsay Kemeny: 11:13

Yeah, I love that. We're gonna get into our favorite sessions in just a minute. But another thing we were talking about is that another benefit of the conferences is just networking with others. And it was so fun to connect with people. Some of them I had only, you know, ever talked to, or spoken to, or interacted with online. So it was just so fun to see people in person. And I had the opportunity to have lunch with Nora Shahbazi, who I would consider her a friend. Even though this is the first time we we'd ever spoken with or seen each other we had, we've spoken and done zoom calls the different things. And then David chalk, and he is this entrepreneur, millionaire from Canada. And it was so fascinating to hear his story, and just have this private conversation with him where he shared his story of his struggles with dyslexia, and he just learned to read last year. So it was so interesting, he said something because he had all this anxiety and pain. And then he learned to read and he told me reading solves my pain. And I just love that. And it's just little moments like that, you know, you, you can always like you, we can sit to the presentations, and they're amazing. But it's sometimes just those other little moments are just sitting next to another teacher that you meet from somewhere and talking to them. There's just so many things I love about about in person conferences, in general. And it's been a while since we've had them, thanks to COVID and everything.

Donell Pons: 12:44

So I was gonna mention Linzi. That was interesting. You're talking about networking, because I found that challenging because we were all masked. And so I may very well have walked by somebody and not known it because we were all masked up. And the other thing is, is that I felt kind of I didn't hesitant, I didn't want to take down or get too close. I don't know how people were feeling because we're all kind of venturing back into this shared space, kind of tentatively. So I thought that was interesting too. But along those lines of what you take away from the conference are important things. And we'll get into I guess, talking about some of the sessions we want to buy already this week. I mean, we've only been back for a short number of days, it has informed and changed my practice with all of my students. So I've had an opportunity to teach at least one round with all of my students since returning. And my practice is different because of what I picked up from this conference. So that's another thing that I think is sometimes pushback we get is okay, so you went you enjoyed you, you loved it. You took notes, you're you love talking about it. What difference does it make on the ground really, and I have to say a big difference. And it just myself. I was it just informed my practice this week, and My poor husband is exhausted because he has dyslexia. And so I love to bring back and ask him to do a few activities with me. But I think even by Tuesday, Wednesday had been home for a few days, even he said, Wow, you really did gain a lot from this conference. So I think that's interesting, too.

Lindsay Kemeny: 14:05

Well, Darnell, you're faster than me because I went to several sessions on vocabulary, that's just an area I want to improve. So there's this fabulous teacher, Ms. usin. Teaches is like her handle or her name. She shared all these great strategies about teaching vocabulary. And then I went to Jennifer hacer and she taught all these great things. And I went to Deb Glaser, and she talked about morphology and vocabulary. And then we got home late Friday night, I enjoyed my weekend. On Monday. I had no prep time on Monday, I get in front of my class, and I'm like, what was he supposed to do again? And I just like go into my normal routine of introducing vocabulary words and I'm like, dang it, but it took a little bit but today, by golly today, I added some things we did these little vocabulary skits that you know, we had learned about different things and it just took me a little bit of time. Yeah, I

Stacy Hurst: 15:01

totally get that I actually attended Laura Stewart's handwriting session, and it was fantastic. And speaking of networking, I did get to meet her. She is as delightful as she sound. But she changed my practice already. And I am obviously I'm in a different setting. I'm a university professor, but one of my Foundations of Reading classes were right, at the alphabetic principle stage. Perfect time to talk about handwriting. So I already changed the way that I teach that to my students. So to darnos point that is really great. And Lindsey, I did lose some sleep in order to be able to do that. Well. I get it. I

Lindsay Kemeny: 15:47

just need a little bit more. Yes, a little more prep time and that I'm good.

Narrator: 15:53

Conferences offer a valuable opportunity to learn new ideas, connect with colleagues and take time to reflect on your own professional growth. Each literacy talks podcast episode is a convenient way to stay current with all the great new things happening in literacy learning. Get the latest insights and tips from the literacy talks podcast team, Sign up today for our newsletter by visiting reading horizons.com/literacy talks.

Lindsay Kemeny: 16:24

Okay, well, let's just share maybe some favorite sessions, any key takeaways you had? Darnell, let's start with you.

Donell Pons: 16:31

Oh, Stanislaus to Hain for me. I mean, he's always, you know, it's like seeing your favorite rock band or so. He never disappoints, and he dropped a lot of great stuff. He went, you know, he clarified a lot of things had some great moments there. But he mentioned just in passing, that he hosts a conference himself in Paris, of individuals who are doing research on the brain and the brain reading the reading brain. And one of the researchers he just dropped into his presentation lightly touched on and talked about that we don't talk about at least he doesn't anymore, dyslexia, singular, he talks about dyslexia is with an S, and named 19 types so far that have been identified by some of these researchers. Well, that was just enough for me, because really interested in fascinated because obviously, dyslexia is a point for me and my work, came home, started doing a deep dive research. And there's a lot of really good information. And it's good for me to have an opportunity like that, because in my day to day and the individuals in my community here, we're not really talking about these things, as I'm not going to find it here. But having gone to the conference, I'm able to access this information. And then because we live in an information age, I can now access more information online and that sort of thing and start making connections and networking to get additional information. That's something you couldn't do before. So again, the conferences themselves may provide that little spark, the avenue the touch that you need. And then in the information age, you can continue on with that. I think that's something more that we get from conferences in this day and age too.

Lindsay Kemeny: 18:00

Yeah, I loved Stanislaus to Hain as well. And one thing that he said that stuck out to me, and I just had to like, go and tweet it afterwards. Because he said, According to researchers, there are no reading wars, we know how reading works. And that kind of follows up, you know, to with what we were talking about last week in our podcast

Stacy Hurst: 18:20

that was down to, for me listening to his presentation, which I've heard much of what he said before, but the man is so brilliant. I had insight this time to how reversals and why reversals happen when kids are writing and reading and why they confuse them. I've known about that generally as a practitioner before, but this time I understood what's happening in the brain, he extensively explained the visual system, and how our brain slowly develops. And then it was kind of cool to just sort of meld all that information together and recognize the importance and lead of letter formation, and making sure the brain recognizes those letters in the accurate way. Also, maybe a good time to mention that Reading Horizons actually sponsored Stannis last name, so that was kind of fun to watch. He could have been here in person, it was good to hear him either way.

Lindsay Kemeny: 19:16

I really enjoyed a presentation by David Kilpatrick. And he talked about critical thinking versus political thinking. And he talked about how political thinking your goal is to persuade others. Whereas critical thinking the goal is to find out what is actually true. It's so easy to slip into political thinking, but where we should be is really at the critical thinking level. And he said that humility is a central tenet of that. I

Stacy Hurst: 19:47

didn't want to add to that a that sounds a little bit like Adam Grant or anything, don't know. B. This is the thing the presenters that I feel like I got the most out started their talks, not asserting this themselves as experts, but more as learners. And that goes back to I think we talked about it in the last episode, maybe last week when we talked about the importance of humility, and learning, and teaching. And I thought that was really true. David Kilpatrick, I feel like just exemplifies that no matter what. So he is a good role model, but it really helped me want to work on that myself.

Lindsay Kemeny: 20:24

Okay, any other key takeaways, favorite sessions, Darnell,

Donell Pons: 20:28

so Tim Odegard. So he's out of Tennessee, and a lot of folks may be familiar with him. And he runs a literacy center there, too. This was the first time I heard him talk personally about having dyslexia. I've never heard him speak about it himself. And that was really compelling. He's a professor as a PhD. But his story was really interesting, because and I won't get into all the details, because it's a really good story. And if he ever tells it again, I might record it. But he talks about the fact that when he was young and clearly struggling with reading, that his mother asked for help from the school, and they do the testing, the testing for special education, and come back to his mother and they say, oh, Tim doesn't qualify for services, because there just isn't enough discrepancy, because he's just not smart enough. And so there's not enough discrepancy between how poorly he's performing and reading and his intelligence. And thankfully, he said, My mom didn't tell me any of that, until he was much older. When he got his PhD. That his mother shared with him oh, by the way, that was really, I thought, a great story. But also it speaks to because Dr. Odegaard, what he was saying in his talk was, we really need to be careful about the assumptions that we make, and always asking questions about why we're doing what we're doing and how it's going to help the student. And he said, We need to stop having blinders on and getting stuck in that, that way of doing things systems, and really think about the student. And that really, you know, that is how I like to do my work. But I love the reminder, that every time I'm with a student or with a class, it's all about my learner's, and that's how it needs to be. So I thought that was great.

Lindsay Kemeny: 22:11

It kind of reminds me of Sean Robinson gave a it wasn't a keynote, but in his session, where he was sharing his and his nickname is Dr. Dyslexia dude, he's written some stories, and he just shared his experience growing up in that system. And just, you know, he said, Don't let test scores predict your future, because over and over, he was just failing. And his teachers told them, you know, you can graduate from high school, maybe you'll get a job at McDonald's, but there's nothing really you know, else out there for you. And he just persevered. He got his bachelor's degree, and even still, they were saying, Okay, you're done. But he went and got his master's, and he got his doctorate. And I just loved some of his little quotes where he says, you know, a test scores can't predict a student's drive. They didn't know, my drive, just some great messaging. I loved it. Stacy, do you have another favorite session?

Stacy Hurst: 23:07

You know, I liked so I think I liked every session I want to mostly um, Pam, caster sessions. Fantastic. She positioned herself as the learner by saying, Oh, 10 years ago, I would have told you my name was Pam decodable, texts Kassner because that's what I was fascinated with. Now, my name is Param spelling Kassner. She really demonstrated that well, she had a lot of great things to say about spelling. Nancy Hennessy gave a great presentation. She flat out said I'm a learner, not an expert. But the way that she talked about syntax made me feel like I can do this I've got this is very actionable and sensible. Also, Stephanie Stoller who I did get to meet in person for the first time, and I appreciated that she was there. I feel like a nobody asked if there were college professors in the room. So I'm not sure how many of us are we're at the conference. But I know her through my association as a professor. And so first time I met her in person, she's great. But I really appreciated her session on MTS s. And I found myself frustrated, not with anything she said, by any means. But the fact that we have been implemented MTSS has been around for over 20 years, well, about 20 years, right, we're still getting to the point of implementing it. And that kind of frustrated me, but one thing she said that was insightful, and I was lucky enough to be in a school in a district where we fully embraced it and we got to make a lot of great decisions based on that model. And I had a lot of really valuable experience during that. One thing she said that would be such a time saver for anybody who is implementing MTS s is to have meetings around groups of students, just individual students. And at first that provided a little cognitive dissonance for me because we have meetings for individual students as teacher focused on individual students, but then I realized, oh no, we've got groups of kids with similar profiles, or who have similar needs, why not meet about a group of students, and then we can meet all of their needs individually. Anyway, I'm excited to direct people to do that.

Lindsay Kemeny: 25:21

I loved her session, too, I was in there. Just listen to the listen to her title. It was weighing the hog doesn't make it fatter. And you know, she's talking about assessments here. And it's just so true, we can test and test and test. But if you don't do anything with that data, then there's really no point to the testing. And so that was a great session, Donal, anything else,

Donell Pons: 25:44

I've got to do a shout out for some of the sessions that were involved in this conference that at first, I was wondering, oh, with everything that we need to learn about the science of reading, I don't know about taking up some sessions with us. And it was about inclusivity. And I wondered how they were going to put that together with the session. And it ended up being fantastic. And in fact, a couple of those sessions, I came away thinking those were really valuable. And I'm still thinking about them. And one was by a woman named Jeanette Washington. And a lot of her work is on social media with equity. And when she started talking, she had these ideas about how you can be more inclusive, and one of the activities involves social media and posting and that sort of thing. And I noticed some folks kind of glazed over a little bit, but the further she got into a presentation, I really appreciated the messages that she was sending. And they all had to do with just opening up wider the types of stories and narratives that we include, when we are teaching our students to learn to read, and that we can do a lot of work in helping students to be kinder to each other, more accepting of each other, to think more about other communities that might be different from your own all within reading. And I just really started to see the potential of not just the work that I'm doing on the decoding and encoding and all those pieces that I do with the science of reading, but also how that expands the mind kind of just brought it full circle for me. So I really appreciated those sessions.

Stacy Hurst: 27:01

My favorite if I had to choose a favorite, which will be hard, but it would be Julie Washington session. And going along with the way you're saying don't know, she was talking about equity without talking about equity, who's talking about dialect and the role that plays in learning to read, I just get a sense as I listened to her talk how powerful that would be for all of us, as educators to understand that fully, and how much more equitable reading instruction would be if we just understood that one thing. And I know there's many more facets and many more things that we need to understand in order to have an equitable educational experience for all kids. But I felt like that would move the dial a lot, because we would help those students who have dialect differences in Thai, like from our own as teachers, we can understand it and know how to meet their needs.

Lindsay Kemeny: 27:54

Thank you for sharing all those a lot of important takeaways, we love to conference, but how would you guys make it better? What would you change? Or what suggestions do you have for conferences in the future?

Stacy Hurst: 28:05

I appreciate that the venue has been the same for a long time, I feel like it was very crowded for how many participants there were. So I might start with that. I think had the three of us we had those discussions about maybe having different strands like they've done other conferences,

Lindsay Kemeny: 28:24

yeah, strands, like we were talking about. Here's a strand for teachers, here's a strand for coaches, here's ones for administrators. So you could just get you know, a little more tailored to what you need.

Donell Pons: 28:35

The other thing I think that would be an improvement is during one session, you've got like seven or eight choices, and there might be three that you really wanted to attend, I think I would pair those down. And I would have them color coded. So if it say involved spelling, you saw that spelling color code show up at different times. So if I didn't get it here, I could choose it here. And then when I put my schedule together, I might be able to stagger it and get all of those sessions in. So I wouldn't offer so many sessions on pare down the sessions, and then have the topics and repeat those sessions so that people would be able to do more than one of a session that they want because I felt like I missed out on some stuff.

Lindsay Kemeny: 29:11

Sometimes there was like four I wanted to go to all at the same time. This was a great conversation, you guys. I can't wait to the Next Conference.

Donell Pons: 29:18

I was just going to say I do like going to another place outside of the place where I live because you get to see another community and how they react. I think the way that the individuals reacted to the presenters, it was very vocal, it was very enthusiastic. I love that where I'm from you don't typically see that was fantastic to be a part of it. I loved the energy. I love Southern hospitality. So that was really nice. This you know, I know that we can't always travel. But that really adds something to the instruction is to also see the participants in that community and how they react to the information which was really fun to

Stacy Hurst: 29:51

and Lindsay and Danelle got to see Bourbon Street for the first time and have Yeah, that's

Lindsay Kemeny: 29:55

right. We had a bit. Yeah, I had the best gumbo I've ever had. All right, well thanks Excited for our next conference. I'm just glad to be in person again. It's been too long. So anyway, thank you for this discussion. You guys. This was great.

Stacy Hurst: 30:08

Thank you, Wendy. It was a great topic next fall, we have a lot of other conferences to look forward to. So the reading league will probably be in person, right, Ida. So hopefully we'll see some of you there. In the meantime, you will hear us next session of literacy talks. So thank you for joining us today and we will see you next time.

Narrator: 30:29

Thanks for joining us today for literacy talks, the podcast series for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Literacy talks comes to you for Reading Horizons where reading momentum begins. Join us next time