Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

[LIVE] Literacy & Justice for All

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Episode 221

This live podcast recording was part of the opening reception for the 2025 Literacy & Justice for All symposium in Oakland, CA on March 7 and 8. 

It is crucial to ensure every student becomes a proficient reader. In this live podcast, we’re diving into the amazing strides Oakland Unified School District is making with its bold literacy vision, the challenges they’re overcoming, and the innovative approaches transforming classrooms.

We’re joined by two incredible guests: Leroy Gaines, Elementary Network Superintendent at OUSD, overseeing 16 elementary schools, and Tala Kauzer, ELA Coach, who leads literacy intervention programs K-5 at Acorn Elementary School. 

About the Literacy & Justice for All symposium

The annual symposium is focused on promoting effective practice in literacy and reading skills and mobilizing the field of learning professionals around literacy as a vehicle for social justice and transformational life outcomes. 

Organized by the Oakland Literacy Coalition, the annual symposium brings together school and community-based educators, practitioners, funders, leaders, and literacy champions for a comprehensive learning experience that elevates literacy in the classroom and beyond. This year’s conference drew more than 600 attendees from across the US. 

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We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Melissa:

This podcast episode was recorded with a live audience at the Literacy and Justice for All Symposium in Oakland, California.

Lori:

It was our first live episode and we are so excited for you to hear our conversation with two awesome Oakland educators. Let's jump in. Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa:

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today. Well, this is our first live podcast. First one we've ever done this before and I'm Melissa, I'm Lori, hi, yeah, so our podcast is the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast and, as we said, this is our first live podcast.

Lori:

We know it's super important to make sure that every student becomes a proficient reader. I think that's why we're all here today and in this live podcast, we are going to talk with some amazing educators from Oakland Unified School District. They are making. They are making yeah, go ahead, cheer it on. Yeah, they have an incredible literacy vision. They're bringing it to life and we're going to hear all about it today, with their innovations and challenges and everything that goes along with. You know, implementing an incredible vision. So thank you so much, both of you for being here with us today, leroy and Tala.

Melissa:

Yeah. So our guests today are Leroy Gaines. He's an elementary network superintendent, as you heard before, and he oversees 16 elementary schools here in Oakland. And then we have Tala Kouser, who is a literacy coach and runs all of those intervention programs, kindergarten through fifth grade at Acorn Elementary. So welcome to the podcast.

Melissa:

Thank you, we're so excited to have you here Now, before we jump totally in to hearing all the amazing things they do, we wanted to let them tell you a little bit more about themselves. So if you all could tell us just a little bit more about your roles what do you do on a day-to-day basis? And, most importantly, these two. They've known each other for a while, so fill them in on how you two have crossed paths over the years.

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, no, absolutely no thanks for a while. So fill them in on how you two have crossed paths over the years. Yeah, no, absolutely no thanks for having us. Thanks for all the kind words.

Lori:

I was hoping that we would have like the smoke and I could come through. You wanted to walk out some? Yeah, I wanted to walk out some.

Leroy Gaines:

But this is okay, this works too. But no, I'm the network superintendent. Here in Oakland we have a lot of elementary schools and so we split up the elementaries into three networks and I oversee network four. But more importantly and I guess, the pride, my most proud position in Oakland has been as the principal of Acorn Woodland. That's how I know Tala. I hired Tala as our teacher and Tala came to us as our after school, as one of our after school instructors, and we just saw so much talent in her and begged and begged for her to come and join and get her credential and yeah, yeah, it was a really cool and unique opportunity.

Tala Kauzer:

I was very young, I was 21, and they're like you need to be in a classroom, you need to teach kindergarten. And I was like, yeah, I can absolutely teach kindergarten. Um, I got my credential and um, my degree is in linguistics, which is why they wanted me at kindergarten, because I deeply understand phonics and foundational skills, and so, yeah, then we worked together at Acorn for a few years before you moved on to become big network man.

Lori:

Well, we're so glad that it brought you back here with you with us today, and I know you both said it felt like a little party reuniting with everyone. So I think it might be a good time to think about the literacy vision for Oakland and thinking about that literacy and language framework. So I'm going to ask Leroy to just share the district vision, a little more about that and anything that you think would be important to kick us off today with this vision in mind.

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, so we see here and thank you for being able to get this on the screen, because it's hard to talk about this without having this image in front of you and really, what you see here is our conceptual framework that we've based our literacy work around. We have the four quadrants that are there. Our dream, our hope, our vision, our North Star is that all of our students and all the children here in Oakland are literate and critical thinkers, but, more importantly, we want to make sure that they're equity champions. I think that's particularly important in the current stage of where we are in our country, and it's important that we're producing deep thinkers and people who are able to make sense of the world. And so the work that we're doing here in Oakland is both the literacy work but also this justice work, and you know appropriate that we're here today, right with the LLC.

Leroy Gaines:

But, yeah, I wanted to also mention this is that we are in a very I always think of Oakland and the Bay, but particularly Oakland is almost like a bubble, and we assume that the politics and the work that we're doing here is what everybody's doing, and we're always shocked to find that this isn't necessarily the case. So when we're asked to come up, we're asked to come and talk about this. They're like whoa, talk about your framework, talk about what you guys are doing in Oakland. We're like why, like it's? We're just, you know, we're teaching kids to read and we're teaching them to be social justice warriors what's different? And so now I'm very excited to speak to and we're going to talk about this in more depth soon.

Lori:

Yeah, Now this is a live podcast, so we will have listeners.

Leroy Gaines:

Oh sorry, Do you mind?

Lori:

just sharing each of the four quadrants for our listeners.

Leroy Gaines:

I know everybody in the room can see it, yeah yeah, no, absolutely, I'm like I need to see them too. No, so it's based on these four. We talk about our the conversations on the science of reading, and we've been there and then we've sort of shifted away from it for a little while and I think nationally we're coming back to it and realizing that we have to have phonics and phonemic awareness and we have to be really explicit about how all those different pieces of early literacy come together. So that's a big part of this framework making sure we have standards-based, high-rigor, high-quality ELA program and curriculum in everybody's hands so our students have access to grade-level text Integrating with our ELD. We have our population here, a number of newcomers, a number of English language learners. We can't get to a place where we have strong literacy results without having to deal with our language needs right. So building that into this framework was a key part of it.

Leroy Gaines:

And because of all of this and you think about the science of reading we knew assessment and having a really clear assessment framework that's aligned and coherent to be able to then operationalize this MTSS model that would help us determine where and how we're distributing these resources to best impact student learning. So that's the framework, but all of this is couched and based in equity. And then at the bottom I think at the bottom you see that, yeah, equitable practices. So that's what it's all couched in and that's where our north star is. Um is that itself. So, yeah, at the center, you know, standards-based stuff yeah, I can't forget, all right.

Melissa:

So it's great to have this framework, so everyone's on the same page in the district and you know we all have the same goals right, very important. But we have to make some changes in order for anything to happen to get to that vision. So you all have made some really amazing changes in the past few years here in Oakland and we want to talk about two of them today. So we're going to dig in pretty deep to two of them. The two are curriculum. So number one they adopted curriculum. So we're going to dig in pretty deep to two of them. The two are curriculum. So number one they adopted curriculum, so we're going to talk about that. And then also coaching, so getting literacy coaches in all the schools for ongoing professional learning. So we'll start with the curriculum and, leroy, I'm going to start with you Curriculum adoption and curriculum implementation is big. So we want to hear first, what was it like at the district level, like how did that roll out?

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, it was easy.

Melissa:

Yeah, no problem, so easy.

Leroy Gaines:

No, I mean, it's hard to talk about this without talking about the source, where Oakland has been and where we are now. And we've, I mean, in many ways, oakland has been historically an autonomous small schools district, a lot of autonomy at the different sites. So then, what ended up happening over the course of years was each school sort of had their own version, their own curriculum for literacy, and what we noticed when you look at it and you sort of pull back, is that we had some winners and we had some losers, and some schools were doing really well and some weren't doing so well, and we realized that one of the at the base of that was that we were all using different curriculum. At the base of that was that we were all using different curriculum. So we made an effort to say hey, in order to be more equitable, to be able to support schools and make sure that we're lifting everyone up, let's start this initiative to have high-quality curriculum at all schools. And we would think it would be a technical thing. Let's figure out the funding, let's figure out who we're going to go with, let's figure out how we do the professional development and schedule it.

Leroy Gaines:

But it was a huge adaptive shift, and there's a lot of. Let's just say that I mean, as a former classroom teacher and as a person who likes, I always think I'm doing the right thing and I like the way I do my stuff and I invest in that, I have my own feelings around instruction and pedagogy. So to shift in that manner, even at our school we realized we had to give something up for the greater good and we thought we were doing some pretty good stuff at Acorn and we were like, okay, we're going to do this so we can all be aligned and be part of this unified school district. So that's where we were and, amazingly, every school, all the leaders, everyone was like, yeah, that makes sense. Like if this is going to help Oakland, then we're in, we're like great.

Leroy Gaines:

And then we tried to do it and we're like now we got to actually get this and we got to make this work. And we were like now we've got to actually get this and we've got to make this work. And that's when it became a challenge, because everyone was in different places. Some people had started some work with standards-based curriculum. Some folks were still using Lucy Calkins, some folks were still using OpenCore. Some were like I don't know what you guys are using and trying to get, so we had to figure out a method to be able to get the buy-in.

Leroy Gaines:

So we had pilots, we had different schools trying out different curriculum and once we sort of landed on one, it was just this is what we're doing, no waivers, you can't break away from this and we're just going full steam ahead. And I'll talk a little bit about some of the techniques and the things that we did and there's definitely learnings from that. But at the core was we just had to get people bought into a vision of a one Oakland model that we're all in this together and we're going to move ahead. The only way to move forward for our students was to move together.

Melissa:

All right, talha. So what did this feel like at the school level? Because that's where the work happens, right? So how did it feel at your school level? Because that's.

Tala Kauzer:

I mean, that's where the work happens right. So how did it feel at your school? Yeah, I was in the classroom when we decided to start adopting district-wide curriculum, especially for ELA at the time, and we first worked with Witt Wisdom and we had Witt Wisdom for two years before we started doing EL and I it was my first year in the classroom and I was given this very dense curriculum and was told okay, let's go Teach your kids. This is standards aligned, it's all you know X, y and Z that we're looking for. And I think, because it was my first year in the classroom, I had a slightly easier transition because I wasn't holding on to methods and practices that I'd already established and I was pretty willing to kind of take it and run with it.

Tala Kauzer:

But there was definitely a learning curve with that and how challenging the work seemed for me to be giving to five-year-olds and me not totally having my feet underneath me and understanding what I was doing. I mean, like, well, this is a huge ask, like they're five. But with a lot of coaching and support from Leroy and who our principal is now used to be, the TSA Jalissa, and a lot of support from y'all and guidance from y'all, we were able to get it rolled out, and then that was with Witten Wisdom, and then there was the pivot to EL, and I was like I just learned Witten Wisdom.

Lori:

Here's another.

Melissa:

How am I supposed?

Leroy Gaines:

to pivot now.

Tala Kauzer:

And so I think you know of course there are frustrations that come with that, but when you really think about it critically and the benefits that it has for your students and thinking about as an equity component, we need to be teaching the same thing to all of our kids across every single school site, and if we're not, kids are getting left behind and that's not fair. So you kind of got to roll with the punches and eventually you come out stronger on the other side. But there's definitely I think there's still a lot of teachers that are struggling with EL in particular, and there's a lot of elements that EL has. There's the core curriculum and then we also adopted the all-block curriculum for the upper grades, three to five, which is a centers model essentially, and we're still working on implementation of that at ACORN and at many other sites. We're all-block adjacent right now but we're slowly still rolling out and we've had EL for four, five years, five years now, yeah, yeah.

Leroy Gaines:

I think what's important to note about that too, and what Talha mentioned, is, at Acorn Woodland we adopted for ourselves. We adopted wit and wisdom, probably three years.

Leroy Gaines:

So Acorn's been doing this for almost eight years of having a very, you were a little ahead and when you look at it in terms of standards years- so we acorn's been doing this for almost eight years of having a little head and um and when you look at it in terms of standards and the way it's sort of structured and um and so to, to have a school go from three years of doing that and getting you know their feet wet and understanding it and then the district coming and saying we're going to go to el ed. It's a stiff. Even that was a shift right in your practice. But then if you're doing Lucy Calkins and they're like tomorrow we're doing EELED and we need to see you start this with those students, that's a huge lift for that school and for the folks and that's a big shift and change. And at the district office there was a recognition of this.

Leroy Gaines:

I think we knew that we need to have a differentiated model. We needed to roll this out and not have a one-size-fits-all. We couldn't bring all the teachers into a room like this and say, okay, step one, we're going to do this because people are at different steps. So we employed a model of essentially we're going to train the trainer and we're going to have those folks. And you mentioned Julissa who was our TSA and that's teacher on special assignment. So that's the school-based coach which each school had and currently has a teacher who is supporting professional development and coaching and supporting the rollout of these programs, and we thought that that was essential professional development and coaching and supporting the rollout of these programs and we thought that that was essential. That's a key piece to the puzzle, because everyone's in different places. We don't know the context necessarily as a district, because we have so many schools. These folks could take this information and tailor it and guide each teacher in the system that they're sort of building to. Yeah, to help get us there.

Melissa:

Can I just ask real quick about curriculum? Is this just for the like language comprehension side of things? What about the foundational skills?

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, we had to adopt that too. I'm like who wants to go first on that one? Do you want to go? El has both, so I wasn't sure where. Yeah, so we didn't adopt foundational skills with with el.

Tala Kauzer:

so we just adopted the core language arts curriculum, um, and then we, when I first started at acorn, we didn't have a phonics curriculum that we were using.

Tala Kauzer:

It was entirely differentiated. So I was doing an hour of centers teaching specifically to each of my group's needs, without a whole group component really per se, which at the time I was thinking like, okay, great, I'm specializing exactly to what my students need. But when I think about it now as a much more experienced educator, there's a huge gap there as well. It takes a lot of time and also that whole group instruction covering the grade level content that needs to happen was completely lacking. So if I have a group of kids who came in not knowing any letter names and sounds and by the end of the year we're on to CVC's early digraphs, that's where they cut off. Whereas if I had kids who already knew their letter sounds by the time they left kindergarten they were reading final E, blends digraphs, the whole everything prior, lens diagraphs, the whole everything prior. And so when I think about it on that side, you know it felt like it was good work and I was seeing kids grow, but there wasn't the broad scale overarching instruction.

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, yeah, no, we didn't have a tier one phonics program and I think our approach at Acorn Woodland we're at the site was really DIBLS, which is an assessment of early literacy. We used that to figure out where and we had I don't even remember this, but we had a room that had probably every early lit, every phonics program under the sun was just in this room.

Tala Kauzer:

They're still there. They're still there. I'm working on cleaning them out right now.

Leroy Gaines:

We're like everything was in there and we were just like, okay, we're going to use this if a kid needs digraphs, and we're going to use this program here.

Lori:

if we're thinking for autonomous, how overwhelming for teachers. Yeah.

Leroy Gaines:

So all the teachers are like in there all day long just pulling.

Lori:

And kids too.

Leroy Gaines:

right, like the systems are different in each program, yeah, so it was just, you know, in this hour long. So it was a heavy lift, along with the heavy lift of everything else, of adopting our core ELA program. And yeah, so, at this moment, right now, this week, we have come to a place where we finally landed on a tier one, a true tier one, phonics early literacy program that, then, will help us standardize this across the city, and what we've been using was essentially a very differentiated model. We were using SIPs as our you know, and I don't want to say what you're using as a tier one, but yeah, we were using as a tier one. That was what we were differentiating to that degree and it's, you know, we want to move that to tier two and to tier three. So that's what we're in the process currently.

Lori:

Okay, so I have some follow-up questions. I want to dig into the coaching a little bit more, because that's that's a shift that you talked about but we didn't dig into, and with the coaching, I think what you're talking about is shifting from materials to higher quality materials. You're shifting mindsets and also systems, like systems that are in place in your school buildings in your district. So, leroy, I'm going to ask you to kick us off and share a little bit about what this coaching looks like. Big picture zoomed out.

Leroy Gaines:

Yeah, so the coaching is, I mean it's, it's we have. And the thing about this is one thing you need to understand about OUSD and I'm very biased, obviously, because we have wonderful people, just brilliant, wonderful people, Just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant people and our academic team is so strong and we lean on the academic team to develop professional development for these coaches, and so the TSAs come together once a month as a cohort and that's where we're basically teaching them. This is what's coming up next in the curriculum. This is the assessment. These are the PDs that we're suggesting that you do.

Leroy Gaines:

How do you tailor these for your site? This is how you could go into a classroom and coach a teacher if they need support and this or that. So they're planning these PDs, we call them our academic partners, and then they're also going to the sites and providing on-the-ground support. So they'll go and they'll go on walkthroughs and support TSAs and observing and giving feedback to teachers or helping to assess and determine, like, how are we doing in terms of our implementation of EL right, and we have indicators that support with that.

Melissa:

We've already TSAs. Are there coaches oh?

Leroy Gaines:

teachers. Yeah, the district coaches, thank you. Yes, I need to. We have so many acronyms.

Melissa:

We have so many acronyms in education the airport folks.

Leroy Gaines:

This is like, yeah, literacy coaches and math coaches at the sites, but no, we really do lean on our academic team to support the sites in that manner, to coach and then from there they go into the sites and they're really um coaching on the ground, but also in these like once a month professional development sessions yeah, the the monthly professional development sessions are very cool.

Tala Kauzer:

It's our coaching collaborative, jamila is here, who was in charge of a lot of our network.

Leroy Gaines:

She's brilliant she's wonderful.

Tala Kauzer:

She's wonderful, yeah, and it's a really cool space where coaches can come together and kind of as thought partners and you do classroom walkthroughs. So you have all your TSAs, your coaches from your different sites within your network. So again, ousa has a couple networks, so I'm part of Network 3. So all of the TSAs from Network 3 come together once a month at a different school site and we do walk-throughs of classrooms and we observe instruction and kind of calibrate and norm on what we're seeing and provide group feedback for the TSA of that site to give to the teachers that we saw.

Tala Kauzer:

We have consultancy spaces where we normally on Zoom will log on and say, hey, I'm encountering this with a teacher and I'm really needing support or we're having a really hard time with writing right now. What are you doing with writing at your site? And it's just a very cool space that exists that I don't know that a lot of other districts have, per se, where it's just a huge group of thought partners that come together and make sense of what's happening at their school sites and then we bring that back to our individual sites and then distribute it out to teachers and give them the tools that they need to then put that into practice in their classrooms. So I think the model of having TSAs and I know a lot of districts have TSAs, but I think the way that OUSC does it is very productive in that you give us all the tools that we need. You train us very thoroughly so that then we can go to sites and make sure that our teachers are implementing strong, rigorous instruction so that our kids grow and it's normed across the sites.

Leroy Gaines:

Jamila is very happy to hear that, is very happy to hear that. One thing I would add is this is that we in Oakland we also have and this is probably not unique to our district, but we have so many new teachers and so many new teachers I don't know what the exact number is so I'm not going to say it, but it's definitely more than half of our teachers are professional within the first three years. And what we also notice is they're, um, they're not coming to us prepared to and in which makes this makes more sense, but they're not coming to us knowing how to take a curriculum, break it apart, understand what the focal and the high leverage standards are and then, like you know, and then deal with the classroom management growth that is necessary to develop in your first couple years. This is really difficult. So, in essence, a lot of our schools are almost like intern learning labs, like right, and to not have and not be able to support our teachers with a master teacher or instructor or coach is just, I mean, it's criminal for the teachers and also for the students who are in that building.

Leroy Gaines:

So we wanted to make sure we invested in this and we trained and we brought in our top teacher leaders, our top instructional minds, made them the TSAs and provide those guys with the coaching and the support that they need to enact this. So I'm happy to hear that it works. I'm just happy to hear that it works. We're all here. Hopefully my boss is hearing it. She's happy this works, but it's a system that you know. We're trying to acknowledge the reality of where we are too.

Tala Kauzer:

Yeah, I think about, like my individual school site and five of my 12 teachers that I work with are currently uncredentialed, either TFA, going through a program or enrolled in a program doing an intern credential. And I think about, like I did an intern credential and if I didn't have the support of a TSA, I would have been floundering. I would not have known what to do and how to differentiate appropriately and to make sure that I was meeting the needs of all of my students. I think I would have had a very hard time and I don't know if I still would be in education if I didn't have that support, um, and so I think a lot about that when I go into my coaching sessions, um, because I was in the exact shoes of the teachers that I'm working with, um and thinking about like do you want me to go into the coaching cycle and like what that looks like?

Lori:

I mean, I would like to. Would you all want to hear about it?

Leroy Gaines:

Everyone wants to hear about the coaching cycle.

Lori:

Yeah, we can take a poll from the audience.

Melissa:

Yeah, we can take a poll they want to hear.

Tala Kauzer:

Yeah, so it's a really I think each site does it slightly differently. I meet with every teacher at my site because I'm part of a small school, so we only have 12 teachers, which is pretty small in terms of an OUSD school. So I'm able to meet with each of my teachers once a week for 40 minutes and during that time we go through either lessons, unit planning, module planning or we analyze student data. But I think the really cool thing is just digging deep into the module and unit planning module planning or we analyze student data. But I think the really cool thing is just digging deep into the module and unit planning with the teachers and watching them make sense of it, even if they've taught it previously. Each time you go through it you go a little deeper and you make more sense of a different component that you didn't think about the first time or maybe you didn't touch on quite enough the first time you taught it. So we start with like orienting the unit or module at a pretty high level. Think about like big ideas and essential questions and the knowledge story, what knowledge we want kids to walk away with from it, standards, and then how the module connects to students, like what are they going to buy in? Are they going to find it important, are they going to connect with it? And if we think they might struggle with that, then how can we find that buy-in? And then after that we kind of go into the individual lesson level, and this happens across a few sessions, because 40 minutes isn't enough to unpack an entire module or unit. As we know, it takes much longer than that. But yeah, then we like backwards plan from the assessment. We identify the focal standards, what kids need to walk away with to show mastery, think about the demand of the task and which standards it targets. And then how are each of those lessons teaching to that standard? If we want kids to show X, then what is this lesson doing to pinpoint that standard?

Tala Kauzer:

And then thinking about also formative assessment opportunities. I think a lot of our, especially in ELA, we don't think about formative assessment. In math it's really easy to have an exit ticket where I can check and see did they understand it? Great, okay, I know what to do tomorrow. And in literacy that's a lot more vague and it's really hard to pinpoint exactly where your kids are at.

Tala Kauzer:

And so we try and work in opportunities for formative assessment, whether that is just a turn and talk, and you have an observational tracker and you're taking note of what you hear a student saying so that it informs your instruction for the following day or in the following moments. And so we think about high leverage questions, key questioning that you can ask in anticipating student misconception. If you're not anticipating student misconception, that's a huge loss for your learning in your class. So knowing where to pivot and how to pivot when there is that misconception, so it gets very juicy and it's very fun, it's a very fun cycle, and so we have like a planning cycle, the teaching, the assessing and the reflection. That all happens and we kind of go through those four stages over and over and occasionally there's a focal question or a focal skill that your teacher is working on that you dig deeper into. But that's the rough breakdown.

Lori:

Tyler, I want to ask one thing. So I know we're going to get this question from our. Our teachers are going to write in after we post this episode. How do you do this? Is it like literally, logistically? Is it on paper? Is it on chart paper? Where and how does it translate into the lesson? Is it like in a lesson plan and then we're taking notes and then we're holding our lesson plan that we've worked on with you and the curriculum? How do they come together? I know that's not like a brief question, but if you could, I just want to know what it looks like, like visualize it.

Tala Kauzer:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of work that we do. I'm a very I need to physically have my TE in front of me when I'm teaching. I need to touch it. I'm not remembering everything. There's no way. I need my note cards, I need my notes, and it also helps keep me on track because I can get sidetracked pretty easily. And so we do a lot of planning within our curriculum highlighting, underlining, annotating and then I also have a separate document that I use with my teachers that they print out and then put in the front of their TE or whatever lesson they are on. That is specifically geared towards the focal questions that they want to ask and then the back pocket questions for follow-up when there are misconceptions that they're referring to as they teach and so they might have like a star in their TE next to a question that they know might be higher leverage and their students might struggle with, and then they know to go to their paper to then ask that follow-up question.

Tala Kauzer:

Not all teachers want to use their TE or have their TE physically in front of them, which is, I think, a constant battle, and if that's the case, then it's okay. Then you're scripting it. Do you have a script in front of you of what you're going to say. Do you know exactly what you're going to say? Because you can't do this on the fly. Your kids aren't going to grow if you did it on the fly. That's not fair and it's not rigorous enough. So, a lot of either you're scrimping it or you're holding your tea.

Melissa:

I just love how much you all are anticipating things and getting in front of those challenges before they happen. Because it's, I mean, especially if, with first year teachers, you know you get in that point of oh gosh, they're not loving this book or they didn't get this thing that I thought they were going to get, and you don't know what to do, right. But I love that you all are thinking ahead, so they're ready for that. So you know it's not just standing up and reading a script, but it's. You know, I've already thought through what's going to happen if they don't get it, and I know where to go from there.

Tala Kauzer:

That is so powerful, and of course it doesn't always work. It's not like okay, and of course it doesn't always work. It's not like, okay, we have backup questions, we have scaffolding questions, they get it Like of course, there are going to be times when the teachers come back to me and they're like that didn't work. We're really struggling with the standards still, and then that's when we go back into our assess and reflect and then have a new cycle based on whatever standard it is that we need to focus on. But a good guide.

Melissa:

Well know that there's some challenges with these big changes. You brought it up already, leroy of you know that it's hard. Any change is hard, but especially here you're asking teachers to change what they're teaching, how they're teaching. For some teachers this was really big change. So that's hard anywhere that you are, especially in a large district like this, and we won't make you rehash all those challenges. That wouldn't be very fun. But we are curious about you know. What do you, from your perspectives, what do you feel like still needs to happen here in OUSD to meet that vision that we talked about at the beginning?

Leroy Gaines:

The first part is happening as we speak, which is our adoption of a tier one phonics program and, I think, the early literacy program. Once we get that in place, that's going to solve one of our quadrants. We're hoping, right, and then we're going to, we don't have to worry about that anymore, and then we're good, and then, but you know God, I'm like this is such a tough. There's so many things, there's so many things. There's so many things we need to do, but we can't do them all at once. And I think one of the big ones and I mentioned this earlier is language, and we really do need to figure out how are we supporting our students with developing language.

Leroy Gaines:

And the reason I say that is because there's this and I'll share this with you is that my mom is from Honduras. She speaks Spanish. I grew up speaking Spanish and then I went to school and I was told I can't speak Spanish anymore, because then they were like you're not learning English, you're not reading right, and so there's a conflict within our house about how do I keep my culture which is, you know, often culture is held in language right, in the way we speak, and also be able to be successful in this system, right, and be able to. So my mom was like then we're just going to, you're not going to, we're not going to speak Spanish, like you're just going to go and learn English and you're going to move forward and and, and and do that. And if now you'll see a stark difference between me and my family because I, I believe I speak well, I speak good English, and and, and my family speaks really good Spanish, I don't and, but that is this, this, it's like you go back home and you're like oh, you know you have. So we don't want that for our kids. They want to figure out how do we add and like, but we don't have enough time in the day and we don't have like a. So this is sort of a conundrum for us is to be to have this approach to language and literacy. That is additive, right. So we're trying to figure this out, especially as we get new newcomers all the time. So that's one that's a unique challenge for us.

Leroy Gaines:

I think the other is actually around our MTSS structure just generally, and I think all sides of MTSS, and we need to anchor that in a common assessment system that's coherent and actionable at the school site level and we're still developing that. So we have assessments. We have a lot of different assessments and versions, and still developing that. So we have assessments, we have a lot of different assessments and versions and forms of it, but we don't know how to. It's not like, I think, what we hear at the school sites is okay, great, we did this assessment, and what does this do for us? Now? What? Yeah, right now, what Is this for you, leroy? I'm like no, I don't want all these numbers, I want the assessment, but it's not for me, it's for you in the classroom, to inform what our students are doing. And so there's that aspect too, and I think you know I've been on this thing in this recent kick of that.

Leroy Gaines:

We need, we need the community, and this is one thing that I realized with our current program. We call it ELL, but it's really expeditionary. It's expeditionary learning, and for folks who have been in the game for a while, you know, expeditionary learning is you're out and you're learning, and kids are doing, and there's a lot of ownership of that, and I think the way that we've rolled out our program, which is a learning that we're coming to, is it feels scripted when you're in a classroom. It's like kids are like receiving and it's very much and we're like, no, we actually want to. We want a little bit of the expeditionary learning component. We want to be out in the community and we're very privileged.

Leroy Gaines:

Um, along with having just wonderful people, we have wonderful organizations like ll, like chapter five, one which is a phenomenal organization that doesn't get enough praise and acknowledgement, like and, and they're all here Fulcrum, I pointed over here, and the wonderful work that cream is organization is doing and and is doing. But we're sort of working in silos and as a district we haven't really created the vision of and we haven't tapped into folks to say, hey, help us bring this alive, help us with our bird unit so that our second graders, our first graders, are going to a bird sanctuary. Help us get the bus tickets to be able to do that and help us bring people in and those people are here right to be able to do this. And we just haven't done the work of tapping into our partners and creating a common vision that we're all working in the same direction, because I think folks are just sort of working in their own areas. So, because the lift is so huge Right now, we have.

Leroy Gaines:

According, I mean, to our last assessments we have, 28% of our students are proficient in reading in the city. And I think, with all the effort, all the things that we've done, the curriculum, we've made so much movement in these structures, in these systems, in our work, but we haven't seen it quite get. We haven't seen it move. The move we were like it's flat. We've just been flat. So I think that that's a big place that we need to invest in is bringing the community and bringing in the joy of this work, of working with kids and doing literacy. If you listen to tala for like a few minutes, one is tala is like one of the biggest like I mean this is the most loving like the biggest like literacy nerd. Like like she says her love language is like you start talking about like hegrity and you start talking about like the scarborough's rope and she gets really excited.

Lori:

So I think you're taken. Though, tala, right, you did get married, I heard, so anybody out?

Leroy Gaines:

there. Yeah, don't get any ideas, guys, but this is, this is, I mean, and I think like, it's just that, that like joy. And you know, we were in a classroom yesterday with a student and, oh my God, he, he looks at us and they're working in a group together and they were studying birds and God, I don't even know the term for birds. The teacher said ornithologists Is that right? Ornithologists? I wrote it down.

Leroy Gaines:

I was like what is the ornithologist? I was taking notes. I was like ornithologist and he's like orthonautology and he's like, oh, a person who studies birds. If you look at the beak, the beak is designed to crack the nut. And then I was like what is as a first grader is a six-year-old and I'm like this is amazing. But the joy of being able to share that learning, the joy of being like I'm an expert and I read this and I know this and I let me teach you, mr, whoever you are, and uh, and that was that was just a moment where I was like, yeah, we're on the right track, it's just we're not. We need more to be able to push us over the edge.

Tala Kauzer:

Yeah, but I think just using data to drive instruction is something that we're also really working with teachers on is you're teaching, but how do you know if what you're doing is impactful and how do you know if your kids are actually learning from it? And are you waiting for your summative at the end of the module? Are you waiting for the SBAC? Are you waiting for whatever it is to find out how your kids did? You shouldn't be. You should be constantly assessing your students using formative assessment to know where they're at, so that you are curating your instruction to their needs. And I think that that is a huge shift for teachers and it's a big ask to ask them to constantly be assessing and using anything that's happening in their class as data.

Tala Kauzer:

But I think it's a huge push that we're we're working towards and we have common assessments that we analyze across, like during coaching, collaborative across the school sites. We'll all look at ELN module two, unit three, end of unit assessment, whatever it is, and we look our what each school site is doing and we're moving towards more calibrated assessment systems. But that is a challenge again with the language demands and having different curriculums across across those strands.

Leroy Gaines:

No, there's, you know it's. It's funny. I was serious. I got really deep in the thought around the the, the bilingual program, particularly at Acorn-Winland, in the early transition, and you know it's funny. So when I was principal there this is years ago they were like you need to get rid of this program. It doesn't work. There's no science, there's like there's no research that says it works. And then I was showing the data. I I mean it wasn't that I was advocating necessarily for that particular form of and what an early transition program is.

Leroy Gaines:

For folks who might not know, this is a traditional sort of dual language program is very additive. It's saying, okay, we're going to teach you in your home language, but we're also going to teach you English or whatever the other thing is, and we're going to do both, so you're building on both languages. And then there was this other program which we were doing which was, I mean, it's not additive, it's actually saying we're transitioning to English because we need you to get English and we're going to teach you in your language, but it's not to build your language, it's actually get you to come into the English class and be able to, you know, perform at grade level in English. So we had this program that would end at third grade and the way that we and this is what you know if, listening to this, I was like, oh, we were actually intentional about this is the curriculum that we use what we did in the Spanish track was we were saying we actually need to teach you guys, we need to accelerate you in Spanish. Spanish track was we were saying we actually need to teach you guys, we need to accelerate you in Spanish and we need you to learn the standards at least a half a year ahead of where you should be in grade level. So if your third grade in English is at third grade, that's the benchmark End of third grade. We're in the bilingual program. You guys need to be at mid-fourth grade. And the reason we did that was because we were like, when you get to fourth grade, we need you to have already had experience in your home language of the content, the grade level standards, and have mastery of that, so that when you transition to English, you already have the conceptual understanding or the concepts you understand. It's just the language you need to build.

Leroy Gaines:

So then we saw that transition and we actually saw the students in the Spanish strand outperform our students in the English strand because they, you know. So we were like, okay, this, this works, but it wasn't, you know, like I said, it wasn't additive. So that aspect of like, maintaining the culture was always a challenge for us. But anyway, I share that because the intentionality and the classroom and the building of this, the teachers, had to understand this concept. They had to understand that. They were like we need to know the standards, we need to be intentional about pushing our kids as much and accelerating. So when a student wasn't performing, we actually pushed even harder. So instead of like we're like, oh, you're falling behind, we're like, okay, now we need to actually get you build the scaffold here, but we need to get you to grade level and beyond so that then we could do that. And you know, and it worked. But it's a heavy lift for teachers and it's a heavy lift for a school to manage that kind of complex All right.

Lori:

So with that I'm going to bring us to a close here. I'd love to know what advice would you give to teachers who are doing this work, and you can think about teachers in your own district. You're also talking to teachers all across the world on our podcast, so open for interpretation.

Tala Kauzer:

I think, trusting the process. These things are chosen for a reason and as a school, that was a part of a lot of different pilot programs, especially for our foundational skills. We tried program after program and then we've recently landed on something that I am super excited about and I think is very, very strong. We can't talk about it, but it's a very strong curriculum and.

Tala Kauzer:

I think, just knowing there is a method to the madness yes, it might be a lot of work and a really heavy lift and a lot of change and it might feel maddening, but in the end there is a reason and trusting that process with it, and I think also I mean you guys talk about the F word, fidelity Like teaching with fidelity and integrity.

Tala Kauzer:

And like really attempting as best you can to teach with fidelity and integrity. When you are adopting a new curriculum and knowing, like I was talking to one of my coaches this year and she had said something to me about when you change the question in the curriculum, it's not because you know your kids better. You're not making it more accessible to them. You're lowering the level of rigor. You need to teach it with fidelity. You don't know your kids better. You're lowering the rigor of rigor. You need to teach it with fidelity. You don't know your kids better. You're lowering the rigor. And like really holding on to that and keeping that in mind as we are working with teachers through this dense heady curriculum is trust the process, because in the end, like, yes, of course there's going to be the initial dip in scores with the new adoption of curriculum, but eventually we do see a lot of growth.

Leroy Gaines:

That's a good point. Yeah, I like this is. There's folks in East Coast listening to this, so I guess my it's beautiful. Here in Oakland it's like 65, almost 70 degrees.

Tala Kauzer:

It's wild.

Leroy Gaines:

We have hella positions open, so if you're listening, to.

Lori:

We'll help you get credential, I'll give you my credential, you get to work with you both right, directly with you both.

Leroy Gaines:

This is like so come first. That's my first message, and then no, you know what's? I've always felt that, um, like, as like me myself, I'm always been very content agnostic, and I say that because I think the curriculums they're publishers even the best of them they're publishers, and they're just trying to sell some stuff to you, right, they're like this, like this is a big business, like I think, yeah, like this is a big business. So I think I'm always like, yeah, it's just, and it's a tool to get to the standard.

Leroy Gaines:

And I think, if you're a teacher, what's in your best interest, the best interest of the kids in front of you, is like to really master your standards, like know your standard in and out, know what it looks like in real time, and that's actually going to make whatever curriculum you have come alive.

Leroy Gaines:

You'll be able to fill the gaps, because even the best curriculum and I love the curriculum that we currently have it has gaps. Like you have to understand, you have to take it apart, and once you're able to do that, I think that's the science, right, that's like the science of the work is to be able to do that. Then you get to do the art part of teaching, right, and then you get to paint with your stroke and design, but you have to, you have to sort of, you have to do the heavy lift of really mastering your own content standards and getting there where you're, where you're knowing that and able to adjust and fill those gaps, not to change the questions, but to be able to determine like is this, to be able to be critical consumer and be like actually it says this here, but is that actually the rigor that the standard is saying?

Tala Kauzer:

And I think also with that, with the standards point, knowing the vertical alignment as well, know what came before you and know what's coming after you, so that you know why you are teaching the standards that you are teaching. And you know what they can't write, what they're already coming in with and what they need to get to.

Leroy Gaines:

And if you don't understand the vertical alignment of your standards, you're still going to teach to the standards but it's not going to be as impactful yeah, can I have one more thing and this is along the standards, but I think there is um that we've been talking about the science of reading as a nation. I mean there's articles and this conference you're probably going to have multiple sessions just around science of reading and I think we've been doing this work right. The core book has been out there and people you can look at different, there's different tools to be able to understand it. But really getting into what does it actually mean? The science of reading, what are those components and how does that work?

Leroy Gaines:

And not being afraid, it's a lot of work to impact it because there's a lot of assessing. You're constantly checking to see are kids moving? Did you master this? Do you know your digraphs? Do you know your blend? How do you move kids through? And I think assessing is not being a strong, getting really strong with your assessments and your diagnostics and understand having some assessment. Literacy actually isn't a bad thing. It shouldn't be a bad word in our profession, because that's going to reinforce your ability to enact what we're calling the science of reading and be very intentional around that, the early literacy piece, because you have to have those. We can't do the work in eled or any of these curriculums, unless our kids are able to read, and you have to build that. That foundation has to be really strong. So, um, so those two things understand standards, understand scarborough's rope and the shufflebind framework and do the work of that and I think you're going to be good. Every we will hire you here.

Tala Kauzer:

We'll hire you. This is a recruitment fair. It's a recruitment fair. I was like I've got a little platform, we're going to go.

Lori:

We didn't know that was happening. You can't miss an opportunity for that, right? Yeah, no, well, thank you both so much. This is so fun, and thank you for being here for our very first live podcast. Thank you all for being here, thank you. Good job, good job yeah.

Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

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