Reading Realities

Messy Work for Meaningful Change feat. Cherie Kent

• Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz • Season 1 • Episode 3

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What happens when educators realize the way they were taught to teach reading may not have served their students well?

In this episode of Reading Realities, Cherie Kent, a literacy coach and consultant based in Auburn, Massachusetts, discusses her realization about the instructional and emotional shifts involved in adopting evidence-based instructional practices.

She reflects on her own ah-ha moments from whole language instruction, grief and growth that came with learning more how to teach reading, and how she now supports teachers today through change. 

Rose and Cherie talk about coaching, data-informed instruction, and why explicit teaching can be motivating for students. They also explore what a literacy leader can do — from building teacher confidence to creating systems of support — to help entrench change beyond a single event, person, or program to drive reading outcomes.

References and Resources:

Credits:

  • Guest: Cherie Kent, Literacy Coach, Consultant, and Doctoral Student based in Auburn, Massachusetts
  • Host: Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz
  • Produced by the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz, Rose Else-Mitchell, and Onalee Smith
  • Original music and audio editing by Ross Gentry

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Keywords: science of reading, structured literacy, literacy coaching, teacher professional learning, balanced literacy, reading fluency, phonics instruction, literacy leadership, explicit instruction, educational change, oral language development, reading assessment, teacher mindset shifts, literacy systems, early literacy instruction

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Rose Else-Mitchell

Welcome to Reading Realities, a podcast about what it takes to change how we teach reading. Each episode, I talk candidly with educators about the instructional shifts they're making. Because changing reading instruction is not simple. It can be challenging, it can be messy, and it often asks us to rethink what we've believed about ourselves and students for a long time. I'm your host, Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz. I've spent my career in education as a teacher, a learning and product designer, a professional developer, and working alongside schools and districts as they navigate change. Today I'm joined by Cherie Kent, a literacy coach and consultant based in central Massachusetts. Cherie reflects on what it means to revisit literally decades of practice in the light of new understanding and the very real emotions that came with that. We talk about the complexity of supporting teachers through change, not just in terms of how to teach differently, but also the conditions that can make change possible. Cherie shares how she approaches coaching both as a technical and a very human process, creating systems of support, building real trust, and helping teachers move forward without dismissing what they've been doing or what they know. We also dig into what it looks like to make structured literacy practices engaging and effective in real classrooms and how tiny intentional shifts, which can be grounded and validated by data, can lead to meaningful change for every student. Let's get started.

Cherie Kent

Thank you so much for having me.

Rose Else-Mitchell

I'm really happy to be able to have this conversation together about what we've learned and mistakes we've made and and reparations that we've put in place.

Cherie Kent

Yeah, it's um it's it's exciting to see the work that's being done now and how how we're able to support teachers that are making these shifts, teachers that are coming out of school. It's challenging for sure, but exciting at the same time.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Gotta stay optimistic. Um what what's happening in Massachusetts? It's been a little bit like New York. It's been slower as a state to kind of embrace and and run with run with legislation.

Cherie Kent

So there's legislation just uh passed, but um what this new legislation is going to do is um require districts to report out on the data that they're collecting from uh the early screening. Whatever assessments that you're using will have to um be reported to the Department of Ed. Um it's also impacting ed prep programs, the types of materials that are using uh that are being used. There seems to be a a wide range of people who are really on board to people that we're still trying to share the knowledge and research. And and now we have substantial data showing the progress when students are engaged in materials and instruction that's aligned with the research that's out there, structured literacy, sharing that kind of data that's showing. Look at how the growth these students are making.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, yeah. That i I mean, some people really need to see it. They need to see not just the data, but they also need to see what does it look like in a classroom. I mean, we we have a habit of embracing new initiatives, I think, and just expecting teachers will learn it. But it's a big gap between what you understand to be right and how to do that right thing.

Cherie Kent

Yeah. It's it's hard because you look at the people who have become really knowledgeable in this area, right? Who have who have engaged in training for structured literacy, training with the science of reading and understanding not just what it's gonna look like when we do it in the classroom with students, but how we're providing professional development to teachers.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Sure.

Cherie Kent

And then taking that, right? You can't just say, I'm gonna give you a professional development on the science of reading, and then you're gonna go and you're gonna change everything in your classroom and do it, right? Like there's there's there's that coaching piece of it where working on those skills and and and starting to embrace those skills, apply them, learn how to make the adjustments in the classroom, that's where the real power of it is. Um, and you know, I've had people say to me, like, this is pop culture.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Right.

Cherie Kent

Or this is great. I'm gonna what? I'm gonna buy into this this week and then next week we're gonna we're gonna move on to something else. No, we're really not gonna be moving on to something else. We're we're gonna continue to evolve and strengthen what we're doing, but it's not going to be sort of that pendulum swing.

Rose Else-Mitchell

It's hard though. It's hard for teachers not to think that because they have been subjected to so many different changes. And I mean, I know when we were talking previously, you said, you know, we we taught like that because we were told it was the right way. How does that make you feel when you think about that now?

Cherie Kent

So it took me some time going through that that grieving process when I became aware of what the science of reading is outside of the reading wars, right? Because it was hard to know. And especially, you know, I when I became an educator 30 years ago, it was whole language. We were all in, it was so much fun. You know, and even when I got my reading specialist licensure, and that was almost 20 years ago, most of the training was using Bass, small group instruction, targeted benchmarking bass, benchmark.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, yeah.

Cherie Kent

Yes, yep. So, and and it was I I worked for a district who bought into Fountus and Pennell Classroom um in 2018. Like I started in the district after they had purchased it. So, how am I going to support teachers through this implementation with some ideas that I was kind of mulling around in my head? And it wasn't until 2021 that uh I went to work for a consulting firm that what we were doing was uh science of reading series, doing training. So as I started there, I engaged in the training. And and it was this sort of aha moment almost, because there were so many things that I thought, I've wondered about this for 25 years. So for example, um, I always wondered, I'm giving, I'm instructing my students on this, right? I there was this explicit instruction, but then how many practice opportunities? Like I know this one might need five, this one might need more, but I didn't really realize the vast difference there. For many years, I worked in a in an urban school district in central Massachusetts. So you had that very wide range of ability, but I never quite felt like I was doing enough. And then engaging in this training, and especially when I listened to Sold the Story, and that was heartbreaking to me. Yeah. Thinking about not just the fact that I felt like I did a grave disservice to all these children that that sat in my classroom. And even I worked as a Title I teacher, like these students I'm delivering small group instruction to, and I I just feel like felt at that time like I did a grave disservice. I probably have these students in their mid-30s now, and they still can't really read the way that they would most benefit them. Um I had to, I had to sort of come to terms with, I didn't know any better. I mean, I'm a reading specialist, and I had been a reading specialist for 10 years. Does that make you mad when you think about that? Yes, because I I really feel like there were things that should have been done, could have been done to to to make sure that what we were doing for students was the right thing.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Just while you were we're talking about sort of story, I'm wondering one of the things I thought about in the final episode six, I think it is, of that first series was was when Hanford uncovers the idea that um, you know, that teaching phonics is and structured literacy, et cetera, is is boring. You know, I teach a teacher course at the Harvard Grad School, and one of the students was talking about, we were talking about myths around science of reading, and she was great. She was like, yeah, one of the myths is it's kind of like got a bad vibe. And I was like, I can see how, in a way, that's what Hanford was saying. I mean, how do you reconcile that idea of that it was fun and now we really know the science and it's serious? How do you think about that difference? And it doesn't have to be boring and technical, like Hanford said.

Cherie Kent

No, it absolutely doesn't. And it for sure is one of those things that people are like, the number of practice opportunities of the the, you know, and and it doesn't have to be that way. We're really, really, if we're framing it to children like you're learning a whole new way to look at the language, it's almost like you're looking at another language, right? Because you can speak it really well for most children, but now you're learning how to take what's coming out of your mouth and look at it on paper. And you know, I've all screened. Or screen. Right. Yeah, both. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it depends, right? But you're learning this, so it's gonna make it easier for you to be able to apply it when you're reading and you're gonna be able to become a much better reader. And I think that's one thing that is missing in professional learning for educators, and it's missing for students. That why part of it, right? Where, look, yes, we are having explicit systematic instruction, but that doesn't mean that that we're Charlie Brown's teacher delivering it. I've watched as a as a coach and as a district level leader, teachers delivering these lessons, and it's exciting to watch. And kids are like, oh my gosh, like I I just read those words. They might some of those kids are like a half a second behind the rest of the class, but they're still like right along with it, they're getting validated, and you're building that confidence level along with the skills that they need. So I for sure, yeah, it's not, I don't think it's boring, but it's it's trying to get teachers to to sort of understand it's a process, but it's, you know, it's it's worth it.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. I mean, uh on on uh this podcast, we generally talk to teachers who've changed their instruction. So it's it's you've changed your instruction, but you're also helping to help teachers change. You just talked about how teachers validate kids. How do you validate teachers in that process of their getting more fluent with the routines?

Cherie Kent

So we've had to sort of look at it in a careful way, right? Because you, you know, you even mentioned like this is a hard shift. We're not just learning something new or getting a new book. This is there's a grieving process. And I think identifying the fact that there's that grieving process that so many of us that have have done it for such a long time go through. And we have to, we have to let teachers sit sit with that and kind of come to their their own terms. We don't want it to happen for too long, right? But we have to honor that where teachers are invested and you know they're they're really passionate about what they're doing for their students. Um, so sort of sharing that with them, and I share my story. Like I'm right along with so many of you where this is what we did for years and years and years, and it feels like a loss, and it feels like that we did a disservice to students. But now we have this. Like we have information that's that's gonna help us. And we we sort of staggered a lot of the work that we did. There were some people who had knowledge, they have knowledge or they have an idea of what the science of reading is and they're really excited about it. So we've we've jumped on board with those people, right?

Rose Else-Mitchell

Early adopters who are yeah, and and brave adopters too, right? They're not just early, they're brave because if they didn't know and now they know and they're ready to try, they're the, you know, hold your nose and jump in.

Cherie Kent

Yeah, right. They're hoping like I'm gonna cross my fingers and hope this is gonna work, right? And making sure that teachers know and and principals, because they're the one evaluating on it, but making sure that they know this isn't gonna be perfect. It's going to be messy, change is messy.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah.

Cherie Kent

And and that's okay. Because

Rose Else-Mitchell

lots of teachers don't like that though. I mean, you look at so especially elementary teachers, like you just think about their classrooms and their beautiful places and they're building routines with kids, which were about keeping that a beautiful community place and space. So where do you see where do you see teachers sort of most likely to fall and where do you catch them?

Cherie Kent

I think it depends on the teacher. I think I think the way I try and set it up with teachers is it's not gonna be perfect the first time, it's not gonna be perfect the second time, it may take you many times. But now here's here's a colleague you can reach out to to watch them. Nice. You can reach out to me. If you don't feel comfortable reaching out to me, here here's a list of people that can help to support you. Here are some videos that can help. So I give them lots of options of who they can reach out to for support. And again, like knowing that they have the support, the the people that I think that sort of fall down are the people that are having a hard time getting started to begin with. For most of the teachers, it's the it's a fear of failure. Like, I've been doing this for so long, and 75% of my students are meeting or exceeding benchmark. Like, why do we need to well, it's because that 25% hasn't moved in like 10 years.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah.

Cherie Kent

So we need to try something different. And for most of them, especially the primary teachers, K to 2 teachers really know that they're that change needs to happen and them sort of getting there is is where the challenge is. So we we started slow and we started in a way that they can see incremental progress. Sometimes it's not even with their own students, it's with the person who's next door. And and sometimes it's like, let's look at this data because it's taking it's taking them out of the out of the equation and they're looking at at somebody else's. And I think it's also it's also how you present present the data too, right?

Rose Else-Mitchell

Um And are you talking about data for for an individual child to understand how an individual child is doing, or more aggregate data about a class's progress through the scope and sequence?

Cherie Kent

Both. Both. Yeah, yeah. Um because both have like a different, a different impact.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, that's that's great. One of the things I love about what you're sharing is, you know, from the very beginning as a teacher myself, but and seeing it in professional learning all the time, is that teachers are so they're alone as adults learning, and they're never alone because they're with kids, but they it's a challenging place to try new things. And so what I'm hearing is that there's a support that you're providing as a coach, but you've got all of these other supports that you're doing, which is that you're giving them videos, you're giving them another mentor or a buddy who's also perhaps at the same kind of level of trying new things. And you're building a little bit of a community around, you know, we talk about gradual release when you teach with kids, but it sounds like it's also gradual release when you're coaching, which is, you know, using the data and doing that sort of work as a coach, but also doing this immense sort of support system building. And that really has got to be making a difference.

Cherie Kent

It I think the the feedback that we got was from the teachers themselves, from the reading specialists themselves, they received a lot of positive feedback. And you know, I love teachers. Teachers are going to be honest, and if it was not a process, but but if this wasn't a process that they were really invested in, yeah, you're gonna know it. There was no negative feedback. You've got to be able to do that. Even if I had one teacher, right? Even if I had one teacher, I would have been happy. But so many of these teachers really they understood that why. And having that understanding and seeing the success really helped them to make that, you know, make that shift toward more aligned, structured literacy.

Rose Else-Mitchell

You know, we were talking earlier about the, you know, the doing something new creates fear and anxiety. But in fact, vagueness and ambiguity does too, right? Like what am I supposed to be doing? And I think especially about new teachers. I mean, I imagine being a new first grade teacher. Well, you must have been at some point, right? And trying to do this and not really know what it is to to be trying to teach a kid to read. Yeah. It's sort of it's kind of mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah. So um, I know, I know we're coming up to time, and I'd love to just get a sense of what does this experience and your own personal change and move away from whole language and you know, these aha moments you had and really understanding what reading what what reading is and can be as a as an educator. How's it changed the way you see yourself and your role?

Cherie Kent

It makes me want to do more and set up systems to be able to do more because it is like you say, it's messy work. It is. And it's okay. Like I I'm really okay with it being messy work. I appreciate that about the process. And like I w I look at myself when I come inside from my garden. My gardens in a few months are going to be beautiful, but I'm really messy these days coming, you know, coming out of it. Um, and you know, I am in a doctoral program currently. Um, and my problem of practice is about setting up systems and structures for literacy leaders to be able to guide the change that's happening in schools. So, really, sort of taking that structure that I talked to you about, because we can't do all of it. As a district level leader, you know, with a hundred teachers under me, I can't support people that the way that they need to be supported. Right. I mean, as much as I want to, I can't. And reading specialists that are their job is working with students, they can't support the process. So how can we build structures in the school that and when I say literacy leaders, I'm not just talking about like somebody with a with a reading specialist license or that has a job as a reading, you know, as a reading teacher in the building. I'm talking about people who have a passion and love for what they do. Um, they have a level of understanding about the the shifts that have to be made or the shifts that are made and uh and uh have some leadership skills where they want to help to support the people that are around them. So it's the principal who's working on schedules in the building. That's a literacy leader. That principal is also assessing their teachers, right? So they have to know if I'm going in to watch this lesson, is this teacher using these routines and delivering these routines the way they should? Are they giving the kind of specific feedback that's going to help students to grow? So the principal has to be able to be a literacy leader of sorts.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah.

Cherie Kent

You, you know, your specific literacy leaders, but also who are the teachers in the building that are trusted? Who are the teachers that are developing those skills? And you can see it in their lessons, you can see it in the what students are doing in the classroom and students confidence. Right, student confidence too, and in their data, right? It's not just about what a number says, but it's about the whole picture and and including these people as as part of this structure to be able to say to their friend, yeah, hey, come on over. And that's the work that I just that I love to do because sharing my love of all this work and and you know, being able to build leadership capacity and literacy capacity is important, sustainable long term.

Rose Else-Mitchell

I'm so so I'm grateful for what you shared about the work that you've done and the structures that you're putting in place to both respect individual change as well as make that a little bit more systemic so that it's not just up to everybody's willingness to, you know, hold their nose and jump in, like we were talking about. Before I let you go, is there a book that you'd like to share with our listeners that's important?

Cherie Kent

you so I I it's a book that I've been reading for my one of my courses. It's called The Big Beautiful Book of Questions. And I mean it's more of a leadership book, but it it really is a is a beautiful way to approach the work that we do. So yeah. I love that. That's a great can I grab it so I can show it?

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. I love that. Yes. I'm a I'm a big fan of the idea of curiosity and um so book of beautiful questions. I love it.

Cherie Kent

Yeah. Yeah.

Rose Else-Mitchell

And you're right. Questions open up the world. Someone described me recently as having a novice mindset. And at first I was like, is that good? I don't know. Is that good? And then I decided it was awesome because it's it's that sense of wonder and questioning. So yeah. Thank you, Cherie, for spending time with us, for sharing your story. And and uh I'm so glad your teachers have had uh have had your wisdom and coaching as as part of their learning experience.

Cherie Kent

Thank you so much for having me today Rose this was great this is a great day

Rose Else-Mitchell

thank you for listening to this episode of Reading Realities and thank you to Cherie for such a thoughtful conversation. What stands out to me is the clarity Cherie brings to the process of change. Not just what needs to shift but how does that shift actually happen in a classroom with real constraints and real feelings. Her reflections on ambiguity are especially striking. The idea that unclear or overly broad approaches don't just make teaching harder. They can actually create more anxiety. And in contrast how structured, explicit approaches actually can bring a sense of order and of direction and purpose to the teaching process. Teaching reading is not about abandoning everything that came before or going with the pendulum shift, but about building a deeper understanding of what each student needs and how you as a teacher are fully able to meet those needs effectively. If this episode resonated with you please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss our next conversation with an awesome educator. Or please share it with someone who's on this journey and cares about teaching reading. And if you can, take a moment to rate and review the show. It really helps us so that we can reach many more educators in this online community. And if you'd like to reach out, learn more about our work with educators or even be part of a Reading Realities podcast in the future, you can reach me Rose at scienceofreading paltz dot edu, which is in the show notes. We'll be back soon with more stories from educators doing this incredibly important work to help kids learn to read. Thanks for listening. Have a great week