Director of Elementary Education Laura Steabner joins Coffee Cast and talks about all things literacy, including transformative changes throughout the nation in philosophy and pedagogy, and LETRS, the professional development program recently adopted by St. Cloud Area School District that focuses on the science of reading. This episode also celebrates the parent and community’s role in a child’s reading life through programs like PAKRAT and One District One Book. Join us for an enlightening conversation that promises to spark a revolution in the way we approach literacy, both in the classroom and at home.
Have a great podcast idea? Submit your idea to communications@isd742.org
Subscribe and thanks for listening!
Director of Elementary Education Laura Steabner joins Coffee Cast and talks about all things literacy, including transformative changes throughout the nation in philosophy and pedagogy, and LETRS, the professional development program recently adopted by St. Cloud Area School District that focuses on the science of reading. This episode also celebrates the parent and community’s role in a child’s reading life through programs like PAKRAT and One District One Book. Join us for an enlightening conversation that promises to spark a revolution in the way we approach literacy, both in the classroom and at home.
Have a great podcast idea? Submit your idea to communications@isd742.org
Subscribe and thanks for listening!
The 742CoffeeCast is your ultimate destination for insightful conversations, thought-provoking ideas and innovative strategies in St Cloud Area School District. Your host is Director of Community Engagement and Communications, tammy Dilan. Grab a cup of coffee and join us. Welcome to CoffeeCast. Today. Our guest is Laura Stevner, director of Elementary Education for St Cloud Area Schools. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, tammy, and we are so glad you're here. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, how long you've been with District 742.
Speaker 2:Sure, I have been in District 742 for 10 years and I started as an elementary classroom teacher in a different district and I taught primarily fifth grade, loved working with older kids, but I was a person who needed a change every couple of years, and so I had a funny experience where I was getting my master's degree and my teacher was a retired person in my district who was planning a new gifted ed program and through my master's I spent a lot of time thinking about differentiation, meeting the needs of all kinds of kids, and she said to me you should teach this gifted ed thing I'm working on.
Speaker 2:And I said no, thank you. And then my principal said you should teach this gifted ed thing that we're working on. And then I started to think more about that and so I transitioned into teaching gifted education and I did that for about four years and came over to District 742 because they had an opening for a gifted coordinator and my son was a kindergartner here. So I was really excited to join the 742 team, be part of the same community as my kids, and then I did that for a while and took on more responsibilities. But at one point I had said to my supervisor you know, if there was ever a gig that was just focused on just elementary, that would be my jam, and so that actually came to fruition, and so I've been doing this role. I think this is my fourth year as director of elementary curriculum or elementary education.
Speaker 1:We're so lucky to have you. You actually started that talent development program here.
Speaker 2:I did For the district I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just, do you want to talk about that just a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah.
Speaker 1:How it's different than gifted and talented.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so here in District 742 we call it talent development and accelerated services programming, and when I came in, we really didn't have consistent programming throughout the district, and so I got to build something from the ground up, which is always a super fun experience.
Speaker 2:Really. To just come in and have a blank canvas is. You can't ask for anything better than that. I spent a lot of time learning the community of learners and the diverse needs, and then spent a lot of time in other districts who had similar communities, and we really take an approach that we want to ensure students have access to programming when they are high achieving and also when they have high potential, and so that really means kids who have indicators of giftedness but maybe aren't achieving at high levels also receive service through our young scholars program at the elementary, and so it's different from some districts where you really have to prove or have that test score as an entry point. We use test scores as we look at students, but we also do this responding to instruction. We give kids access to gifted instruction and see what happens, and kids who demonstrate high potential are able to access service. So it's a pretty cool, unique program that responds in a lot of ways. That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1:It makes us very, very unique in in the approach for that kind of programming. So thank you for that. But now you have your director's hat on, and today I am personally very excited to be talking about a subject that you and I both love, which is literacy reading books, right.
Speaker 2:All the things.
Speaker 1:So I hardly know where to begin, but I think maybe the best place to start is to talk about what's going on in general with literacy, because it's not just us right, that is correct. Big things are happening with literacy all across the street, all across the country. Do you want to talk about the big picture? To get us started?
Speaker 2:I will do my very best to recap everything literacy.
Speaker 2:So I think we're all start is at the national level, which maybe feels big, but we'll start there and we'll kind of zoom in. So at the national level, we've got data across the United States of America that students are struggling to learn to read. Our fourth grade proficiency rates are not great and they've been really stagnant for a very long time. So what that tells us is the approach we're taking to teaching students how to read isn't really working for a good chunk of our students, and that doesn't necessarily matter where those students live. We see the same predictable results over and over and over again, and Minnesota is no different.
Speaker 2:Minnesota has very similar data to what we see at the national level and actually one of the things that's a really good visual that I've seen a couple of times is when you look at the amount of kids in Minnesota in fourth grade who aren't reading at grade level. It's enough kids to fill US Bank Stadium seven and a half times. So that visual, really that's profound. You think about faces and you think about, if you've been to that stadium, what it feels like just to have one stadium full of people and we're really talking about so, so many students and so within the last few years there's been a few things that have happened that have sort of made people sit up and take notice, and one of those things happened in Mississippi. So Mississippi actually was the only state who showed statewide reading growth, and that was something that people just sort of put their heads on a swivel and said what happened there?
Speaker 1:I was just, if I may interject, the first time I heard you talk about this.
Speaker 2:I literally said Mississippi right, because it's not something that we typically think of as a leader in literacy. And so what Mississippi did is they took an approach that was statewide. They said we need to change things, and we're gonna do that through some statewide work. We're gonna ensure all of our teachers are trained in the very best, most effective and efficient strategies for teaching kids to read. We're gonna bring in coaches. We're gonna ensure our curriculum aligns, and so other states have really followed suit, and Minnesota has followed suit as well with the passing of the Historic Read Act, which is reading to ensure academic development, and that is legislation that now is really responding to. Minnesota also needs to take some pretty significant steps to make sure that students who exit our school systems are reading proficiently, and so, like Mississippi, the state is moving toward training teachers in evidence-based, effective, efficient strategies, and I think what I'll say about that is that there are lots of ways to teach kids to read.
Speaker 2:Adults, listening to the podcast today, some of them will say I have no idea, it just happened, and that's true.
Speaker 2:That's actually true for a certain percentage of people that the instruction doesn't necessarily matter as long as they're given some instruction.
Speaker 2:There's a small percentage maybe 20% of people or so that will kind of just pick up reading.
Speaker 2:But for most people they need direct, explicit instruction in how to pull words off the page and then how to understand vocabulary and language, and that when we take an approach that leans into that method, we just have such a higher chance of ensuring everybody has what they need to be successful, because that percentage of the population that will pick it up is only going to be helped by this approach. And so the read act really says teachers need to know, they need to know the effective, efficient strategies, schools need to be using curriculums that are aligned with those strategies and that we need to be assessing students. We need to be ensuring that each year that they're in school we're checking to see who's on grade level, who's not, and if they're not on grade level, that we're responding to their needs. So the read acts bigger than that, but those are the big points and so that's kind of what's going on the national and state level and then that feeds into districts as we work to implement this legislation.
Speaker 1:And what you're describing right now is what's known as the science of reading, isn't it? That's kind of the buzz phrase that we hear and read everywhere. Can you, without like, diving so deeply that we get lost? But can you talk about how the science of reading is different than what we've already been doing? I'm imagining that there are parents listening to the podcast today that are what you know. Or, conversely, there are people like English majors, like me, who say science of reading. That's really scary, because English majors and scientists they don't usually party together, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's different? What's different is it's pulling together lots of fields of research that have to do with the processes the brain employs when it learns to read. One thing that's really interesting that was new learning for me was that the brain, the human brain, is not hardwired to read or hardwired to speak right. So if you take a student or a child and you put them in an environment, you don't have to do any explicit instruction on how to speak. You expose them to speech. Kids pick it up. It's a natural process. You don't need instruction.
Speaker 2:Reading is not this. Reading involves visual processing, working memory. It involves making sounds, hearing sounds, connecting words to meaning, understanding context, understanding all these nuanced pieces that our brain does learn how to do this in just lightning speed, right. So what the science of reading is doing is it saying okay, the cognitive science teaches us this and visual processing teaches us this, and all of these components more and more come together to help us understand how all of this works together to develop a reader. And what the science of reading is is really the collection of work that explains how the brain learns to read. What it tells us is there's two big things that people have to do to learn to read. So this is called the simple view of reading Tammy.
Speaker 2:So this should be just perfect for your simple explanation. So the simple view of reading says if you wanna be able to comprehend or understand what you read, you have to do have two things. One, you have to literally be able to read the words on the page, right, you have to be able to decode those words, understand what the letters on the page make when they become a word, and then you have to understand what those words mean. That's called language comprehension. So I literally know that word or I can understand that sentence, and when you have both of those things working, you have reading comprehension.
Speaker 2:But for students who maybe struggle with lifting words off the page, maybe have some skills in that area but have to spend a lot of energy sounding out words because it's not necessarily automatic, it's hard to comprehend reading.
Speaker 2:Lots of energy is going into sounding out words and by the time I've sounded out that word I maybe have forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was. And so part of the evidence-based practices is really ensuring students have that skill automatic. That takes years. Right by the end of third grade kids are really automatic with sounding out words and being able to lift words off the page, and then from there it's vocabulary and background knowledge that's really the key. I've heard once that you'll never understand a word in print that you don't understand in speech, and so sometimes we can pull context and help us, but that really struck with me too. So the more that students are exposed to words, are spoken to, are read to, the more words that they understand and the higher the chances that when they come across that word in print, they'll be able to understand the meaning.
Speaker 2:So when those two things combine, we understand what we read. So that's really the simple view of science of reading, if you will.
Speaker 1:That's no that's really helpful and I think that, again, for listeners this is being talked about so often Having a good explanation of what it is is really especially for parents is really powerful. So we talked national, we talked state. What exactly is happening in District 742?
Speaker 2:Yes, we are well on our way in elementary and in secondary as well, but elementary is my area of expertise, and so we've started training our kindergarten through fifth grade teachers, as well as some special education staff, our EL staff, our media specialists, our talent development staff, which we talked about earlier really anyone who's helping to support students in reading in a program called Letters, which stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling and this is a really in-depth training and it has teachers reading manuals, watching online models, watching model lessons, really applying their knowledge, thinking about their students, and it's intense and it's deep, but it really helps teachers understand. First that brain science how does the brain learn to read and then, for each of the critical parts of teaching reading, the most effective ways to do that, what are the ways that are proven to work for the most kids and what are the things that we can do in our classroom when we think about how we allocate time or what activities we have students engaging in that are most likely to produce readers. This is an eight-unit training and we'll be through two units this year, and so it really is a multi-year endeavor, and it's not just the learning, it's also the application. So we are working on the implementation of our new learning. After we have that chunk of learning, we engage in a unit. Then we move those practices into the classroom. So that's what's happening at elementary right now to help our teachers have that skill set.
Speaker 2:Because I will say and I've said this many times from my own experience coming in I did not know the things that I'm learning now.
Speaker 2:So I'm going through the training myself and there are many, many things that I wasn't given the opportunity to learn when I started my teaching career, and so I did have many situations where, as a fifth grade teacher, I had students who were struggling to read, were struggling to understand what they were reading, and I didn't really know why and I didn't really know what to do. And so a lot of times I just kept looking for the right book, like if I just find the right book, it's going to turn, it's going to click. You know, and we've all seen kids where it clicks, and I think that sometimes gives a false sense of hope or a false sense of security for an educator, because you've seen that work. We can all name instances where that's worked, but that isn't the best or most efficient way to teach reading, and so, while I was trying to find the right book, I wasn't employing any strategies that really would have been helpful, and so I know from personal experience that this is a game changer.
Speaker 1:You really expect outcomes to change. I really do. As a result of letters, this is, this is very big picture and and huge goals and and you pointed to Mississippi and there are others that you've seen the outcomes. So it is exciting. It is I. When you say it's a game changer, I believe you. It's really exciting. What about teachers of reading? I've been a teacher of reading for 25 years. How has this been for them to make a kind of seismic shift in how we go about things?
Speaker 2:You know that really hard it can be. There can be a lot of feelings, and I know personally, I experienced that myself. So when, when teachers come into a classroom, right, they're given a curriculum to teach, they're given their standards from the state level that they need to teach, they have their teacher training that they bring with them. But oftentimes you're really relying on experts outside of your classroom or maybe your district to say what's the best approach to take. And so for a lot of years, there were some really popular curriculums and methods of teaching literacy that really leaned into more intuition and what feels right than what's proven to work.
Speaker 2:A lot of these programs had a lot of appeal to teachers because it's the kind of thing that you would create with a whole room full of proficient readers. So giving kids lots of access to texts and giving kids lots of comfy spaces to read and giving kids lots of opportunities for their own choice, which sounds nice, right For you and I who are proficient readers, we would love to go into a beautiful space yes, beautiful space with lots of books and make our own choices about how to read and have really great conversations about what we're reading, but that's really not a way to teach a student to read.
Speaker 2:That's an outcome of being literate, and so for a long time, all across the nation, that was a very popular approach. It was called Readers Workshop, and teachers really loved it in some ways, but a lot of them were questioning it as well, like is this really helping my kids who are struggling? Am I doing enough? And then practice has sort of shifted to bring back more of the evidence based practices. But the biggest thing that's so important is that the instruction is explicit and direct and systematic.
Speaker 2:It's too important to have it be sort of off the cuff or not planned, and so when we're thinking about how students learn their letters, their sounds, how to blend letters together, how to spell tricky spelling patterns, we really have to be well planned out.
Speaker 2:We have to know exactly what kids are getting in kindergarten, to build on that in first grade, to ensure there aren't gaps when we go into second grade, and that is something that really, from my perspective, has been missing so oftentimes. Teachers would have access to lessons that do align with the science of reading, but there wasn't that very prescriptive scope, sequence order that things need to be taught, and then there was teachers who took one approach and teachers who took another approach and then those kids all go into the next grade level and the next grade level and so making sure that we're really thoughtful in our approach is really important. So for teachers who are kind of grappling with this, there can be this sense of guilt a little bit. Had I known this, I could have done a better job with former students and we know the kids were being left behind, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yes, yeah it does hurt.
Speaker 2:I hear lots of teachers say that if I had had this knowledge when I was starting out, I would have done such a better job, or I feel so guilty because I wasn't giving kids what I now know. And I just try to say when we know better, we do better. Right, and it wasn't an isolated thing. It was across our country and in other countries as well, where this was a very common approach and kids were impacted in a pretty systematic way.
Speaker 1:What about from a parent's point of view? Do I change what I do at home now, or am I? In my household, we just read books From the time we were babies, we had books everywhere and it was just right a culture of what we did. So if I'm a parent now listening to the podcast today, do I need to change something? Do I just keep reading to my children, or is something different for me too? I?
Speaker 2:think honestly, prioritizing reading and speaking are the best things that parents can do. So you remember I said there's two components. There's the ability to pull the words off the page, and parents can work on that. They can definitely help kids sound out words, they can point out words, they can draw their kids' attention to letters and sounds. But there is a pretty systematic, explicit way to do that part and schools actually are really good at that part. But the language and the words are so critical.
Speaker 2:I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for families to read to their kids and to talk to their kids, and there's really very clear outcomes. You can look at how many words a student knows when they come into kindergarten and you can look at their reading comprehension in third grade, and there's a direct correlation. The thing that I have recently spent a lot of time learning about is something called conversational turns, and so this is really the idea that when we speak to children, we're expecting them to speak back to us and we can help increase their language by taking their responses and elaborating. So I could maybe do some modeling for you. Oh, please do.
Speaker 2:So we're, going to do a little experiment. So, if your parents listening, I'm going to model three things for you that could happen in the grocery store and I'm going to just say we've all been, all three of these parents, I'm just saying, because it depends on the day and it depends on the time that you have available.
Speaker 2:So I want you to imagine maybe a three, four-year-old in the shopping cart and you're pushing the shopping cart along and the kiddo picks up an avocado. So in the first scenario a parent might say put that back, we don't have time for that. Why are you picking up an avocado? We have to get your brother from practice. In that scenario, parent is speaking but the student isn't or the child isn't engaged in any sort of conversation and the words that the child's hearing are pretty basic words that they've heard before. Put that back, we have to go. Maybe avocado, Maybe avocado. That might be a new one, but in general it's not a lot of exposure to new, interesting, sophisticated language.
Speaker 2:In the second scenario, we have the same parent. The avocado gets picked up and the parent might say what do you have there? Let's put that back and the child might ask a question. But there's a little bit of an exchange here where the parent is saying do you know what that is? Child might say no, that's an avocado. Have you had that before? No, but it's maybe more one or two word answers where the child's responding to the parent but they're not really asking to produce a whole lot of language and there isn't a lot that you can grab on to and extend.
Speaker 2:But, as a parent, if you can do something like this, you're holding an avocado. What do you notice about the avocado? It's green. It is green and it's kind of a dark green, isn't it? Yes, you know we might call that forest green. Can you say that Forest green? What else do you know that's forest green? And do you know what I see on this avocado? It says organic. Have you ever heard that word before? Now it might feel weird to have this much of a conversation with your child and, truthfully, it could get tiring to do this all the time. But any opportunity we have to do the conversational turns actually leads to higher intelligence levels and increased IQs for students. So it's imperative that parents understand their role in giving kids access to language is so important.
Speaker 1:And you actually do that too, and you actually did several things there. So vocabulary, because you've now not just talked about avocado, but you've introduced organic. Do you have you heard that word before? So that's an opportunity. But also you've entered into figurative language. Some people call this forest green. Why would that be? I mean, just that short example is perfect to show the layering and the richness of language. It's really quite fascinating.
Speaker 2:And do you know what Words are free? They're accessible all the time. You don't have to buy something fancy, you don't need an app, you don't. You just need those words.
Speaker 2:And then reading the book element of it is so critical because actually the language that's used in children's books is really sophisticated. Kids have a way higher chance of hearing unusual, interesting, complex words from listening to a children's book. That's way higher than watching even educational programming. So for students who are engaging in screen time, they're maybe learning. There's great resources out there that help students learn on a screen.
Speaker 2:But as far as language and hearing new words and being able to engage with those words and that back and forth reading offers a great way to do that. Because as a parent you're also going through your day to day and it's not always at the ready. What sophisticated word can I pull out of this grocery store exchange With sitting and reading a book and then having that in your mind like, oh, this is a word that my child probably doesn't know. Let's talk about this word. Let's have my child pronounce this word. Let's see if I can bring this word up again sometime later today. Let's see if we can reread the book tomorrow and see if the child remembers the word and maybe even can try to use the word themselves. So that is a great way to really create the space for those conversations and that additional vocabulary exposure. And it's fun, it's so fun and it's connecting.
Speaker 2:Just a kid in your lap right. There's nothing beats that in a good book.
Speaker 1:Nope and a rocking chair.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Well, we create all kinds of other opportunities in district. To you mention parents and the importance of parents and children reading together. Talk about.
Speaker 2:PACRAD. Yeah, pacrad is a great program that really leans into the fact that life is busy.
Speaker 2:It's sometimes tricky to say what's that new book we're going to pull off the shelf or can we get to the library or we're tired of reading all the books that we have. There's all those pieces that just can get in the way can be obstacles, and PACRAD is really just meant to create an easy way for families to engage in reading, so families are able to get. You know the plastic bag. It's got a book in it, it's got a few things that the family can do together and it's right in the kids backpack and it's something that's switched out. The books are curated to be high interest, age appropriate, have exciting vocabulary, and so for families it's just one of those win-wins. It's right there for you. All you got to do is pull that out, find that spot where you're going to engage in that book together and then, through the summer, visit the PACRAD.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's going to say in the summer there's a box.
Speaker 2:And it comes to you. It comes to you, it comes right into our neighborhoods and, being a person who lived in a rural area, I went to the bookmobile, which was the same sort of idea, same and I loved it.
Speaker 2:I loved just getting on the bus and picking out a book. And that's really what the PACRAD bus is all about Just taking away those obstacles of daily life that can get in the way and saying this beautiful bus full of books is literally right outside your door. Come and get books to read and bring them back. So when the bus comes back, get new ones and just focus on that literacy piece.
Speaker 1:It raises the level of engagement and excitement. It's here, it's here, yes, for sure. Almost as good as ice cream.
Speaker 2:Almost. There's not a. I don't think it has that music.
Speaker 1:Maybe we should get that going. And also we're in the midst of One District, One Book, which has been a tradition in our district for some time now. Talk about that. That's another opportunity.
Speaker 2:It's a great opportunity and we're so grateful for our partnership with Shields on this one where we have our whole elementary read the same book, and so this year we're reading Humphrey, which we read 10 years ago, which was the book my son read. Actually, when I, before I came to 742, he was in kindergarten and he read this book. So it's been fun for my heart to go back to the Humphrey book. But it is just a great opportunity where every family in elementary receives a book and there is a reading schedule. The families can read the book. There's also really great supports for families.
Speaker 2:So there's the chapters are read aloud. So families who maybe are in the car a lot or on the go or in a tight schedule where you're thinking, oh, I got to cook dinner, but we're going to listen to the chapter as well. So we've got that built in place. And then each day at our schools there's trivia questions from the night before, so the kids who were able to read the book with their families are able to engage in those trivia questions. And many of our elementary's really just go all out with decking out their libraries and having family engagement nights centered around the topic of the book and it's just a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I had the privilege of going out to Kennedy and their media center is completely everything about. One district, one book. I mean they have a child size hamster tunnels. They have remember those Zuzu pets. Oh, yes, they have a whole table set up with Zuzu pets, my personal favorite was the year we read Mr Popper's penguins.
Speaker 2:Oh Kil had live penguins that came from Hemker Zoo at their family night.
Speaker 1:Are you kidding? I don't remember that. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:And that's what literacy does, right. It just opens up these things, that how often are you thinking about hamsters or penguins or whatever it is? And it opens up this whole world of connections, vocabulary, experiences, fun. It's just a great thing all around.
Speaker 1:And I want to come full circle on that too, because you named Shields, who sponsors one district, one book, such a great, great partnership there. You just mentioned Hemker Zoo and Pat Gray has been supported by LEAF, our local education foundation, since its inception. We talked about teachers, we talked about parents, but honestly, d numerator D, numerator Three, okay Two, this idea of bringing children, of literacy and embracing children and bringing them along into the world where they need to be, that's all of us.
Speaker 2:That is. That is that's community, and so much of it happens before students even get to us. So the amount of brain development that's happening in that birth to five, and the amount of words that a child hears and uses, it's a big, big deal, and so we absolutely recognize that schools have a big responsibility to teach reading. But, as a community, everything that we can do to increase these opportunities for literacy and reading and speaking are so important because it just benefits our kids in such an amazing way and it's something we can all be part of. Everyone in the community can support literacy, think and now you're making something else.
Speaker 1:Come forward. Think of our volunteers, of our grandpa Johns and the people who come into our schools and read. We have high school athletes who come into the elementary and read. It is. It is about connection and also it's about joy. This is an opportunity not just for learning but to absolutely kind of rejoice. Sorry, english major here but, to rejoice in language and story. Yes, it's pretty beautiful. Can you tell I'm?
Speaker 2:really excited you came here today. I can tell that you're really excited because, like, what's better than literacy? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't need nothing. What's better than books? It just I can't think of it. Okay, now I'm going to put you on the spot. You ready?
Speaker 2:Favorite childhood book of yours that I read myself. Yes, I was really into the babysitters club, which is not high brow literature, but I bet.
Speaker 1:You read a lot of them.
Speaker 2:I read a lot of them but I think my favorite probably elementary school book that I was exposed to by a teacher was the classic hatchet. It really pulled me in. I was not an outdoorsy girl back in fifth grade but I can remember so clearly just waiting to hear what was going to happen and being completely sucked in to that story.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's. I remember that book well too. Yeah, I taught for 15 years actually in this district at the alternative school and hatchet even then was still a huge crowd favorite. Okay, now favorite childhood book that you read to your kids.
Speaker 2:Oh, this was easy.
Speaker 2:So I read the Harry Potter series to my kids and actually when I was getting my teaching license, I had to read the first Harry Potter. So this is a little bit of a fun story. I loved it. I was so sucked in and I will tell you now that, like having reread them many times, the first one is not as exciting to me as many of the subsequent books. I remember taking this book with me to my job, because I had a job where I was behind a counter and I could get some homework done. And then I got so sucked into it. I vividly remember having it on the passenger seat and then pulling it to read at stop lights, which is not safe.
Speaker 2:You should not do this I was so sucked into it and so I could. I can remember then I'm the age where I was an adult when the books were coming out the later books and so I would be buying it the first day at Barnes and Noble and staying up all night to read the books and having kids and literally thinking I cannot wait to read the series to my kids. So we read the whole series together and did the whole read aloud piece and some of the twists and turns that you know are coming. We're just delightful to watch my kids expressions and faces when some of these secrets get revealed. So I loved every single minute of reading those hundreds and hundreds of pages. Oh, yes, it's not a, it's not a small commitment. No, it's not.
Speaker 1:But fun. I have two daughters and we had a favorite remember reading Rainbow.
Speaker 1:We had a favorite reading Rainbow book called Just Us Women. Oh, it's so wonderful and I just looked it up, it's still in print and we absolutely love that book and read it all the time. Very slim, little volume but it's about an auntie who takes her niece on a road trip and it's Just Us Women no boys and no men allowed. And my daughters were like all about it. This was like this concept, I'm trying to think. We always talked about it and they picked, they packed a picnic, she had a convertible and and that's a title that I'll never forget. It's the experience, it's the connection.
Speaker 2:It's profound right. I can remember reading Rainbow the Capiti plane. Do you remember that one? No, it was about the. There's a line in it and I don't know if it was just the cadence of the speech, but it talked about this these cows being so skinny and dry, they moved from their. They moved for the rain to fall from the sky.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, it's a folk tale Like this boy has to shoot an arrow into the cloud and then it finally rains. But I can remember just vividly as a child reading Rainbow books. Really, you know they stick with you.
Speaker 1:They do. There's a magic. There's no denying there's a magic. Oh, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today about literacy. It's really, it's my pleasure. We appreciate you, thank you. Do you have a great podcast idea? Submit your idea to communications at ISD742.org. And thank you for listening to 742 Coffee Cast, the best place to stay informed and be inspired by St Cloud Area School District.