Reading Crisis: Drs. Hassler Discuss Her Research and Book

In this deeply personal and inspiring episode, Dr. Lisa Hassler—educator, researcher, and host of The Brighter Side of Education—shares the story behind her transformative book: America’s Embarrassing Reading Crisis: What We Learned from COVID. Co-hosted by her husband, Dr. Gregg Hassler Jr., this episode offers a candid look at her journey from a life-changing trip to Brazil to writing a book that’s become a call to action for educational leaders, teachers, and parents across the country.

The conversation covers:

• The origin of Lisa’s interest in family second language acquisition and online teaching
• How a rejected dissertation idea led to the research question: “Does virtual school work in second grade for third grade reading proficiency?”
• The surprising and significant research findings that emerged from her dissertation on virtual learning
• The design and implementation of a HyFlex (hybrid-flexible) classroom model for early reading intervention
• Practical, replicable strategies that led to improved outcomes in her own classroom
• The systemic barriers—and opportunities—for improving early reading instruction in a post-COVID landscape

This episode provides both professional and personal insight into the urgency of the U.S. reading crisis, offering hope, research-based solutions, and a look at how innovation can emerge from adversity.

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Transcript

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Husband Interviews Host About Her Research and Book: The Drs Hasslers Have a Convo

Lisa Hassler

Welcome to the brighter side of education. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hasler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing in what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables, and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? In today's episode, I'm going to continue with my personal background in education and discuss the research I conducted and how it led me to podcasting. I've chosen Dr. Gregg Hassler Jr. DMD to join me as a co host.

He was a school board president, is a dentist, but most importantly, is my husband. Welcome to the show, Gregg. What else do you want the audience to know about you?

Gregg Hassler

Hi, Lisa. Thanks for having me on. Finally thought I'd never get on. I have a background in dentistry, but I've always been active in the local elementary school. This is because I was an alum, and my kids went there. I was always a classroom parent and would help organize class activities like the parties. I also coached the middle school soccer team and was a member of the school board. I eventually became president for a couple of years, and then I had to end my educational leadership aspirations. When we started the date.

Lisa Hassler

Yeah, you're not supposed to talk about that, Greg.

Gregg Hassler

I remember.

Lisa Hassler

Yeah, but that is how we met. I was teacher, and he was school board president, and it sounds a little more shady than it really was.

Gregg Hassler

Highly frowned upon.

Lisa Hassler

No.

Gregg Hassler

Well, anyways, let's focus on why we're here today. I've always said that I think it's important that your audience understands and gets to know you and who you are as an educational podcaster. When we met, you had just started your master's degree in online teaching and learning. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Lisa Hassler

Yeah. So when we met, I had come back from a trip to Brazil that I had taken in 2015, and when I went down there, I was really very struck by the deep poverty that I saw. I was not anticipating that. And when I did speak to people in the area, there were some local little villages and stuff that I'd visited and very heavily tourist driven, and what I noticed was deep pockets of poverty. And I was really struck by people's desire to want to learn English. I mean, I didn't understand that at all, but I guess they did.

And the reason was because if they had learned English, they would be able to get better jobs in the town that they were living in and then would be able to kind of raise their socioeconomic status. And so they actually wanted to learn English, and they had these English schools, and if they were able to have the money to go to these English schools, they could be able to open up their opportunities by just learning another language. And so I thought that was pretty amazing. But the problem was that they were expensive. The English schools were expensive.

They didn't have the money to be able to go to them. English was not being taught in the school systems. And so really the only way to learn it was either have the money to go to these English schools or have someone be able to teach it to you. And so I thought, well, I'm a teacher, I can do that. So I looked into me being able to teach these families English, and I thought, well, what if I did? Not just one person, but what if I did like whole families? And if I did a whole family, they could learn from each other.

And then I would be able to give everybody in their family an opportunity to be able to increase their opportunities. The parents would be able to get better jobs, the students would be able to go to school abroad, and so it would just stop this intergenerational poverty and lift the entire family's socioeconomic status, and it would impact them for generations to come. So yeah, I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity, and so I was inspired by it. I thought I could do this. So I came back. I wrote my thesis on second family acquisition. I looked at the family as a single support unit, and the idea was that I would teach them using the internet, so online.

I would teach them online while I was teaching at school here in the States. During the school year, I would be able to give the whole family lessons using virtual distance education and then in the summers go back and spend time with them in the summers. And I didn't know how long this was going to take. I thought it might take years, but I was really excited about it. So that's what made me have to do my master's in online teaching and learning, was to be able to have those skills and strategies and knowledge to be able to teach them virtually, and then they would roll into my doctorate, and so I would finish my studies with my doctorate.

So that was the idea. But then that all changed. I met you, and I didn't want to spend my summers in Brazil, and I also was impacted by the policy changes in Brazil. They actually started to teach English as a second language in their schools, and so there was no longer a need for me to provide that service, so it was no longer necessary.

Gregg Hassler

So that's good. So you finished your master's degree in 2018 and you just somewhat, a little bit explained why you couldn't do your doctorate in It.

Lisa Hassler

Well, kind of I didn't.

Gregg Hassler

So why didn't you do your doctorate in It?

Lisa Hassler

You can't do online teaching and learning as a doctorate. It's kind of more I don't want to say broad, but it's very narrow when you start to go up. There's limited amounts of choices when it comes to doctorates, but there was an educational leadership, and so I thought that there would be more opportunities with that degree. And so I went down that route.

Gregg Hassler

Yeah. So then you were trying to figure out what to do your thesis on. So I think you started interviewing or talking to other people, like Eric Robinson.

Lisa Hassler

Yeah, so then that's when Eric came in. So I thought, oh, I'll finish my thesis work in my doctorate. And then when I proposed that idea, even though I changed the place, I thought, well, maybe I won't do it in Brazil, but I'll do it maybe for families that needed it, like refugee families or migrant families here in the United States. And they said, no, it has to be more student outcome focused. So I couldn't do whole families. So what? My prior study didn't actually qualify for my doctorate study. And so then yeah, you pointed me in the direction of a friend who worked for the school board.

Gregg Hassler

And at the time, he was on the public school board for a county. So I thought he would help point you in the right direction.

Lisa Hassler

And he did. He was looking at things obviously as a stakeholder in a different perspective that I was as a teacher. And so he said, what about virtual education? Third graders are struggling. Their reading numbers in third grade reading fluency are low. And so it's kind of like, well, why is it happening? And so if there's virtual education? And he knew that I had my background in virtual education, and so he proposed the question, does virtual education in second grade work for third grade reading proficiency? So as a stakeholder, he was looking at third grade reading levels and how to increase it, and then saying, well, does this virtual education because our county had a virtual school, but then our state also has a large virtual school, and just to say, like, do they work?

And so I thought that was really interesting, taking, of course, me being a second grade teacher at the time, having my master's in online teaching and learning. So it kind of just brought those two areas of interest in my background together. So I looked into it, and I found out that there had been no research done in those lower elementary grades, those primary grades for virtual education validity. And so there was a gap in the knowledge, and that's where I focused. What I was surprised to know was that I did not even know that the reading fluency was an issue.

Gregg Hassler

So you've been teaching second grade in elementary school for how many years at this point?

Lisa Hassler

Yeah, up until this point, it had been 17 years. And so I did not even know that the reading fluency was a really big issue.

Gregg Hassler

So how do you build a dissertation and focus on a problem that you don't even know exists?

Lisa Hassler

Right? So I had to look into it, and then this is when I found out that the nation had been struggling with this. It really was quite a big ideal, and I was very surprised that here I am teaching primary classes, and I had no idea that this was even occurring. So here I am. I'm in the thick of it. I mean, I'm a teacher, and I don't know this is going on. So how many other teachers don't know that this is happening? How many parents don't know this is happening? I was really surprised by it.

So, yeah, I was going into the research and all these studies and how many years this had been an issue. I look back and I go, well, why didn't I know this? This is not something that when they're teaching you in in school to become a teacher, hey, by the way, reading fluency in third grade is really important, and you need to be aware of these things that are going on, like our national crisis. They don't say these things to you. It's not on the books. That's not on the literature that we're reading. And of course, even my principals never it had never come up in a conversation when we were doing our testing.

And I was doing private schools, so we were doing a different type of testing, but it was still norm based. We were looking at our results to try to figure out, of course, areas of growth, but it wasn't the same pressure, I guess, that in a state, they look at it and then go, your school's failing or something. And of course, our students were doing well. And in first grade, I didn't even test my students, and so testing didn't even occur until I was in second grade. And that's really when it became something I would think about.

But my scores were good, and so I never really had this major concern. It was never this, like, priority in our schools, but now I'm hearing it as a public school sector and saying, this really is a big deal. And then I look at national results and all of the reports that are coming. And so I was very surprised that this was happening. And I saw it as an urgent area that we really needed to try to figure out how do we fix it and let's look into virtual school and can it make a difference? Does it work?

Gregg Hassler

So you started your study before COVID Can you give me a little bit more detail about it?

Lisa Hassler

Yes, I started in 2019, and I published in 2021, so the study was two years long, where I had really looked into the study for two years. The data actually started 2015. It went to 2019. So I collected five years of quantitative data from the Doe in my state. I had to stop at 2020 because there was no data from that time because of COVID And then in the fall, I did surveys across the country for second and third grade teachers, and they needed to have experience teaching virtually and face to face in second and in third grade.

So my teachers prior to this didn't think I was going to be able to have very many teachers to be able to survey and then to do follow up interviews with. And of course, COVID gave teachers a lot of different exposure to virtual education that they had not obviously, we were not aware that was going to happen. And so it opened up this opportunity to discuss virtual education with a lot of teachers. And of course, I did look into their backgrounds to say, what type of virtual education did you have? And some had been trained, some did not.

Some were teaching in virtual schools because that was the set up and the desire, and some were, of course, not given an opportunity of a choice, and they had to go on there because of the pandemic. So I ended up getting a lot of data from teachers across the country in different types of environments, urban, suburban, rural, and it was great conversations about whether or not the validity, their viewpoints on there, and whether or not it worked.

Gregg Hassler

Yeah, I remember us having a lot of conversations about what we thought the results were going to be. And I think we were both surprised when the data showed that virtual school students did seven percentage points better than face to face students on the reading tests. So how did you feel about that? Were you upset? I know you were somewhat defensive.

Lisa Hassler

Yeah, I was really surprised by it because as a face to face teacher, you just think that proximity matters. And I'm doing the best that I can for my students. And I see them, I know them, I love them. And when you hear something, you're able to intervene and you're able to take them aside, and you're able to do all of these things that we're trained to do in a face to face setting. And you feel like that really works very well. And it does. There's not that that doesn't work. It's just that me being a face to face teacher, I just thought that was better.

And then when I saw the data, that five years of quantitative data, and I was very surprised by the results because it wasn't just one year, and it wasn't by just a small amount. There was consistently outperforming face to face methods, and I was very surprised by this. So the study was English language arts. It was ela. Five years of the state Ela test results is what I was looking at.

Gregg Hassler

And why'd you use that? Because it was the only baseline where Florida virtual, right? And face to face, they had to.

Lisa Hassler

Take the same test. Yeah, that's exactly it. And there was no test in second grade. There was only a test in third grade. And that was the state test. And every student in the state has to take that test if you're in the public school section. So Florida virtual, it was a charter school option. It's free to all students in the state of Florida. And so it's free, it's for everybody, and it's a charter school, so it's considered public. And so they had to take the same test. Florida virtual is K through twelve. So those students aren't just arriving in third grade.

We know that they have to have a history. And so these students, that was one of the things was that they wanted to see whether or not virtual school in second grade worked for third grade reading proficiency. So we knew that we had to have a student body that actually was in there for second grade taking that virtual education to be able to then have those third grade reading tests. And so there needed to be that growth. There had to be a continuation from second into third grade. And there was that. They had 17 years of experience at the time with the state.

So this was not new. It was free, open to everybody. So it wasn't as though you had to test to get in. Your smart kittens were not the only ones in there. And then, yes, the results were one through five. So your scales are one through five. Five being the highest means that you're like above average. Four is like, yeah, you're doing really great. Three is like, you made it, you're meeting the requirements. You can read and understand at grade level at the minimum. But then you have your twos and your ones, and your twos are like, oh, there's some gaps there.

You may be able to read, but maybe you're not understanding everything you're reading. And then there's ones, and so the ones are like, oh, there's very large gaps here, and there's going to be some obviously gaps in fluency, which is going to lead to gaps in comprehension. And so what we saw is that 44% of third graders in Florida were not reading proficiently. 21% of those were at risk for failing. So that meant that 44% of them were three, four, or five. They had scored on that reading test, and then 21% actually were in that one range where they were at risk for being retained.

And so this was not just for our state, though. What I recognized when I got into the research was that it was actually nationally. Yes. So we were not alone in that. And so it was not just a state concern, it was actually a national concern.

Gregg Hassler

So why are these results important?

Lisa Hassler

Well, I think it looks at online education and it says that at the primary level it works. Not only can it work, but it works better than face to face. When looking at these ela results, it was seven percentage points higher between 2015 to 2019. There was a gap in 2020, and then I continue to follow up on that. And in 2021, actually, they had outperformed by 18%, which I thought was amazing. So if you just looked at that one sliver, that one year, you're looking at 18% difference. And then we continue to follow up on that and say, well now what does it look like?

So then if you averaged all that in, it would have been an eight percentage points difference if you threw it on with all that data. But it's just showing that pre COVID, it was working, and then after COVID, it was continuing to out to perform.

Gregg Hassler

Yeah. So now COVID hits. Now what do you do with this knowledge that you've gained from your research to make teaching during COVID better?

Lisa Hassler

Right, so I was fortunate enough to have my background in online teaching and learning when everything shut down. And then of course we go to Spring and I'm using it to create my online platform. So we use Google Classroom, then we go back in the fall and we find out that we're not going to be totally online, but we're actually going to have students that are going to be coming and going. And so this was like, how do you do that? I'm a face to face teacher, so I know how to do that and then I know how to do the online.

And I was doing solely that in the spring of 2020, but I've got to blend the two. And so you call that my new favorite definition. Yeah. So I found out that they call this high flex, and at the time I thought we were doing like a hybrid or like a hybrid kind of a thing. And then I find out that people locally are calling it concurrent teaching because you're teaching both face to face and online. So I would have at that time, it started off half my kids were in front of me, the other half were, I hate to say, in front of me, behind me, but they were on the clear TouchBoard.

So they're using their cameras to be able to be in the classroom as well. So you're kind of torn between these two platforms. So half are face to face and half are virtual, but they weren't stagnant in those numbers. They were able to come in when they wanted to come in. And then of course, you had quarantine issues. And so what I found is that you really needed to maintain and teach from the online platform so that there were no missing lessons and that students were able to be very flexible in their choices of school settings and in their environments.

And I needed to be able to give them that flexibility so that they could still perform.

Gregg Hassler

So you're in the classroom break down what one class would be and how you would run one class with your knowledge from virtual education and your prior knowledge to face to face. So just run through one class.

Lisa Hassler

One class.

Gregg Hassler

How did you do a reading class.

Lisa Hassler

A reading class, okay.

Gregg Hassler

Because I'm super proud that you in the thick of all the pandemic and everything that's going on. You're thinking, okay, how am I going to take care of these kids? How am I going to get everybody on the same level to make sure that they're successful and that the parents are involved? And I think that's we'll get to this in a little bit on what she wrote her book on, but I find it very interesting that you were successful. Give me a brief rundown on how.

Lisa Hassler

A class would run, how it would run. Okay. So I would have created the online platform. I used Google Classroom. I created those courses in the way that a college would, I want to say. So I made it very complete. I made sure that the lessons were written in language that my second grade students would have been able to understand. So I made sure that then all of the lessons were complete. And so let's say if I was doing ela, I would have made sure that I would have had a grammar module, I would have had a writing module, I would have had a spelling module, and then I would have had the reading.

And within that I also had five groups. And so I would have had groups that according to fluency, I would have been able to have breakouts. And so if a student was to be able to pull up their learning platform, they would see not only the whole class instruction, but then they would have their breakout, individual groups that they would have had as well. And I would have the lessons completely on there. So it would have given them the step by step. You're going to read this passage, we are going to do this activity, you're going to do this independent work, and then we're going to correct it.

It would have broken out into my lesson, which would have been they were seven years old, so my target lesson would be seven minutes and maybe 1 minute. So I would look at an eight minute lesson, and then I would do an activity where I would have them doing things together, and the kids at home would be doing it with my kids in the classroom. And then I would have them doing practice work, and they could be doing it in groups. And then we would come back together, and then we would review that. And then I want to give them individual independent work.

And when it came to guided reading groups, we would do breakouts and they would be able to be able to move around. Now, what was really great about this is that the information was not only completely online, but they had their materials and everything was turned in online. So it's very transparent. I saw that the parents were able to follow along with the steps. The students were able to read it. They were trained in how to be able to click on all of the materials. Everything had to be accessible online because if the student was at home, they had to be able to access the exact same materials.

So I had to be very mindful of my materials, and then I had to be mindful of how are they going to be able to work together, how we be able to share those results, and how would they be able to turn it in, and the parents would be able to turn it in with ease. And the kids were able to do this as well. So everything was extremely transparent, and the parents and the students got very used to that system.

Gregg Hassler

Right. So I think this system worked really well, and I think you cover that in the book. You write a book about your study and your experience in your high flex classroom titled America's Embarrassing Reading Crisis what We Learned from COVID a Guide to help educational leaders, teachers and parents change the game. That's a really big title, by the way.

Lisa Hassler

Did you come up with that all by yourself? No, I think you had a lot to do with that.

Gregg Hassler

So what was your goal in writing this book?

Lisa Hassler

Well, I wanted to look at not only to be able to get the information out there about the study, to say, virtual education can and does work very well when implemented in the right way. So I wanted people to understand that it has a space and a place in our educational system, even at the primary level. So I wanted that information to get out there. And I also wanted to show that you can use those theories and those methods, those strategies, to influence the face to face classroom and use it in a way with this high flex that really can work very well.

And so to give steps on how a face to face teacher can implement those online teaching methods with success, and I'll tell you that I did that for two years, the high flex model, and that the students really excelled. I saw no decline in their success. As a matter of fact, I saw an increase. And I saw that my teaching practice really was very refined. I became a better teacher when I was able to implement those strategies, because you're very focused and you're very organized, and you have to be in order to be able to balance that well.

And I found that the parents loved it and that they had not only the ability to support the students best, but they actually went, when they no longer had it, missed it.

Gregg Hassler

And your fellow teachers really appreciated your knowledge from online teaching. And I know you should do a whole podcast on how this all went right, but I think you made a difference, and that worked out. Your study actually won an award from National Lewis University for the Advancement of Professional Practice in 2022, and a month later, your book was an Amazon bestseller in seven educational categories. What is your biggest challenge with informing people about the validity of online education, despite the academic acknowledgment of your work?

Lisa Hassler

I think it's overcoming people's mindset. We had a very bittersweet experience with COVID and as we know that we were not prepared as a nation to be able to handle that. And so then people's first experience into it maybe was not the best as it could have been. So to shift the mindset to say, it really shouldn't have been that way. And so let's take what we did do right? And then use it to inform our practice to grow as teachers, as educational institutions, to say, let's not just run back to normal, as a lot of teachers and parents are saying, but to say, hey, you know what?

There were a lot of benefits for what we had done. We grew so much. I mean, our system was not able to handle that infrastructure change, but yet we did it, and we have it in place now, so let's not abandon those things. Let's use the infrastructure that we now have and be able to advance education, learn from what went wrong, and implement and grow on what we did right?

Gregg Hassler

Yeah, because I feel like most of the feedback we get from other teachers and everyone that we discuss this with is that COVID was a disaster. And I feel like your experience was totally the opposite. I'll brag about it all day long. But that's why I think you're so adamant about getting this information out. Like, we have an opportunity to do better for these kids.

Lisa Hassler

We do.

Gregg Hassler

Why aren't we? And why are we going back to what didn't work before?

Lisa Hassler

Right?

Gregg Hassler

And why do we feel like because it's comfortable, it's the right thing to do?

Lisa Hassler

I think a lot of people say, well, this is what I was trained in. I am comfortable in those strategies because this is my training. And so it was very uncomfortable, and it was uncomfortable for me. I mean, I have the background in it, yet you have to create an entire classroom with all of these courses, and you're supposed to do it in, like, two weeks. Well, that's unrealistic. And so, yes, when placed under that very stressful circumstances, it was very difficult. However, I saw that when I was able to do things in my classroom that I had never thought could ever happen, I never dreamed could ever happen.

And so it was a great opportunity for me to be able to have this online instruction in my face to face classroom and grow from it. And one of. The biggest things I didn't say was that being able to have a face to face classroom with an online platform, not only the transparency for the LMS system and the parents being able to support, but also there's no gaps in lessons. I had students that moved across the state, some that moved to another part of the country. I was able to connect with those students, have the parents support them.

No lessons were ever missed. Kids would go on vacation, people were sick, they had a quarantine. But they always had access to their information. They always had access to their lessons. And the parents always knew by the lesson format and with the materials and being able to submit their information, they could do everything. They could test, they could do the work, they could do the lessons, they could review the lessons. If they didn't understand something, you can come back and you could say, you know what? I didn't really understand adjectives. I'm going to look back at my video.

Let's look back at that practice. What was that activity? And the parents could do it and support it at home with their child on Saturday night. If they had the opportunity. They were sick on Friday. But you know what? How many times do we have kids that are sick and then we send them home with the homework after they come back, and then they're trying to do this catch up. Well, here there's no gaps. The lessons are always there. They're in real time, and they have access not only to the materials like, hey, do page 25 and 26 and turn it in.

Well, they're missing the lesson. But if you've got everything on your online platform, the lesson is there. And so I just saw that that was so beneficial. There's no gaps in knowledge. That was a really big win.

Gregg Hassler

So in the end, the children get the face to face and the time with you. Then they also have no way of missing any portion of the class that needs to be taught.

Lisa Hassler

That's so important. And I think that's what we find with absenteeism when people are on vacations. When it comes to a parent saying, well, what are you doing in your class? Or what? I didn't know that there was this project. Well, the parents always are there, present and supportive, and it's so transparent. And I just found that not only did kids really succeed in that, but the parents as well. They're very happy with that.

Gregg Hassler

Well, great. Let's move on to something else. Can you tell me a personal success story that came from all of this?

Lisa Hassler

My biggest was my interaction with the theorist in my study, Dr. Michael Graham Moore. I was able to reach out to him and he read my work and he fully supported it, embraced it, loved it. That was a reaction that I never saw coming when I was doing my study. I didn't never thought about actually interacting with the theorists that I based my work off of. And he was very excited that I was picking up this work and moving forward with it and trying to talk to people about the importance of not only virtual education, but the theories behind it and how to implement it correctly.

And so being able to talk with him then on the phone to correspond with emails, and then to eventually be able to interview him on this show, that, to me, was the most exhilarating experience of this whole process, was being able to talk with the theorist that created the theory of transactional distance.

Gregg Hassler

And he's a big deal.

Lisa Hassler

He is. He's the man. Not only did he do the theory, but he heads the Distance Education Department up at Penn State. So I think that just being able to talk with someone that's been there since its birth and then see what was it that was going through his life that led to that, but also then what his intention was and how does he see and use distance education, and then how was I doing it? And so to be able to talk with someone that actually was the one that creates it, to say, well, I'm implementing this, and I'm using your strategies, I mean, to talk to the theorists about this is is pretty amazing.

So that, to me, was was huge. He has three areas or clusters that he really focused on, and those were areas that I used not only in my own classroom, but then in my book. And I talked about that instructional Dialogue program, structure and Learner Autonomy really focused on those. When I created the structure for my own classroom, to be able to have that online platform, and those were the four areas. Well, he had three, and then I actually just made it more for how I was doing. The high flex model, especially in primary education. For teachers that would be able to use a high flex model, you would design your online classrooms, use your online instruction methods, consider student attributes, and then set and maintain consistent communication with the parents.

And those four areas really provided the base using his theory. The ultimate success for my classroom, and.

Gregg Hassler

I think another success story for you is also becoming the first in your family to earn a doctorate degree.

Lisa Hassler

Yes, I am on the first to earn my doctorate, and so that's really very big for me. It was a lifelong dream, and I never well, I always hoped so. Earning it was a really big sense of pride for me. It was just a personal success story, and for my family as well, just to be able to say, I did it. Yay.

Gregg Hassler

So with all this experience and all this knowledge, what's your hope for the future of education?

Lisa Hassler

Well, my hope is that people look at all the positives and they approach distance education with a growth mindset. I'd love to see more collaboration from the K Twelve sector with Higher Ed to be able to advance online learning in a more sustainable model. K through Twelve teachers cannot be siloed into the great one man band that they usually are expected to perform in. So the way that I created my High Flex model, I had to do all of that work myself, but Higher Ed does not do it that way. Higher Ed has teams and I think that that's what K through Twelve, if they want to be able to implement this type of classroom with success, that you can't just dump it all on your teachers and say, okay, now everyone go and do that.

You need to have those support systems in place to be able to have a more team effect, to be able to divide the workload just like Higher Ed uses. So I'd like to see more collaboration where K through Twelve is collaborating with Higher Ed to say, all right, I want to see your sustainable model and let's start to implement that and to pull it down in the K through Twelve sector. And then I think that teachers need training and online teaching and learning skills and strategies. Higher Ed needs to do their part in training them before they're certified to be able to go out and to teach into the classrooms so that they're able to work in any conditions, in any environment, and that we're not throwing teachers into the sharks like we did for COVID.

So had we had some background in that, I think we would have had much more success with our teachers, less stress. Higher Ed really needs to say, distance education is here to stay, it's not going anywhere. Let's make sure our teachers have the knowledge and skills that they need to not only, oh, if we have a school shutdown, which there are school shutdowns still, I mean, the pandemic was not the end of it. When you have school systems that are shutting down because of blizzards or natural disasters, yeah, we still see that having these skills is very important and it can serve everybody well.

If we just make sure that we all have the same base states. If you could give teachers the certification of the training, that they also need to be able to continue that and to use it along with their face to face strategies where there's no cost to them. I don't think teachers need to go out and get a Master's degree like I did in this, to be able to have those skills. I think that all teachers need to have it. You shouldn't have to go get a master's degree to get it. And so we all need to level the playing field and give teachers this knowledge.

It needs to be included in their training. And my hope is that online class opportunities are offered through district collaboration to support student services. And this is where money is tight when it comes to districts, when it comes to specialists. And so let's use these online platforms to be able to collaborate with our different schools within the district, to be able to offer students the services that they need. Let's share our resources, share them across the district, and even share across districts. I mean, it's really about the kids, and they need to be the ones that are winning.

And so I think we need to put aside those differences and learn how to work together. And I think that distance education allows that bridge of distance. I'd love to see that every face to face classroom has an online platform giving students the flexibility and constant support that they need in order to advance and succeed. And this way, there are absolutely no gaps in learning. There is student accountability and a system of transparency for parents to better support their child.

Gregg Hassler

I think that's all we have time for today. I want to thank you for having me on. I'm honored in this great work that you're doing.

Lisa Hassler

Thank you.

Gregg Hassler

But we have to wrap it up.

Lisa Hassler

Yes, we do. And just as a heads up, this is a constant, normal banter for Gregg and I. We are always having these educational conversations, and Gregg has to listen to them.

Gregg Hassler

It's not only that, but they don't always go this smoothly.

Lisa Hassler

They don't? No, they don't. So I think that is a conversation that we can continue in later podcasts. It would be nice to be able to continue to have what we discuss as people obviously very heavily invested in education. And so we go into these deep topics often, and I think that we should start to record some of them.

Gregg Hassler

No, we should. Definitely.

Lisa Hassler

All right, well, if you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at drlisarichardsonhassler@gmail.com or visit my website@www.drlisarhassler.com, and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. If you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads affecting positive change.

So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.