Equal parts educational leader, educator, and life-long learner of reading science, Mitchell Brookins has leveraged his passion and dedication to affect change in the lives of the students and teachers he works with, as well as the many educators he has inspired online. In this episode, he opens up about the emotional journey he took—from realizing everything he’d been doing wasn’t working and that he’d never actually learned how to teach kids to read, to seeking out reading research and encountering the Science of Reading—a path that brought unparalleled transformation and success to his schools. Mitchell talks about how he is still learning and keeping students at the forefront of what he does every day, ending on a powerful story of a student who changed his life forever.
Additional Resources:
Quotes:
“My calling is so that children can one day stand on their own without scaffolds, that children will one day reap the benefits that literacy is liberty, that children will one day be able to teach someone else the power that only literacy can bring.” – Mitchell Brookins
Equal parts educational leader, educator, and life-long learner of reading science, Mitchell Brookins has leveraged his passion and dedication to affect change in the lives of the students and teachers he works with, as well as the many educators he has inspired online. In this episode, he opens up about the emotional journey he took—from realizing everything he’d been doing wasn’t working and that he’d never actually learned how to teach kids to read, to seeking out reading research and encountering the Science of Reading—a path that brought unparalleled transformation and success to his schools. Mitchell talks about how he is still learning and keeping students at the forefront of what he does every day, ending on a powerful story of a student who changed his life forever.
Additional Resources:
Quotes:
“My calling is so that children can one day stand on their own without scaffolds, that children will one day reap the benefits that literacy is liberty, that children will one day be able to teach someone else the power that only literacy can bring.” – Mitchell Brookins
This is Susan Lambert and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast. On this sixth season of the show, we're focusing on how to effectively begin and sustain a transition to the Science of Reading at all levels of education. And on this episode, we're focusing on change at the school level. For expertise on this topic, I spoke with Mitchell Brookins, a former school administrator in New Orleans and with Chicago Public Schools. Mitchell spoke in depth about his own experiences trying to radically transform schools, and he explains why he believes instructional leadership is so critical for embracing the Science of Reading. Mitchell gets into the nitty gritty of instructional monitoring and instructional coaching, sharing best practices for classroom visits, and communicating with teachers. You're going to learn a lot from my conversation with Mitchell Brookins.
:Well, welcome Mitchell. Thank you for joining us on today's episode.
Mitchell Brookins:Good morning. I'm so excited to be here. Totally excited!
Susan Lambert:That's great. You know, before you introduce yourself, I wanna say a couple words about you, which is, you are all over social media, so I bet a lot of people--so in the Facebook groups, you are always supplying great content and conversation. And so I just wanted to make that connection before you introduced yourself, because I want people to put your voice and your personhood with those comments that you're making in the Facebook pages. So thanks for that. But, let's now let you introduce yourself.
Mitchell Brookins:Well, I am Mitchell Brookins, and I always tell people this, I started my education career in my bedroom, <laugh> playing school as a seven-year-old with the teddy bears and my mom just nurtured and cultivated that experience. And yeah, I always tell you that because that is my roots. I love teaching and learning. But professionally, I started back in 2004 as a third grade teacher on the South Side of Chicago. And that matriculated into me teaching third to fifth to sixth , dropping back down to first, coming back up to the middle school area as well, because I always was the type of person that didn't want to be pigeonholed into one thing. And so I had a principal instructional leader who really saw that and allowed me to just explore where was my best fit. But beyond that , from teaching on the South Side of Chicago, I matriculated into district level leadership where I supported MTSS, literacy , within the Chicago public schools as well. But that wasn't enough. I thought that district level leadership was just too far removed. You know, I love kids. I love the schoolhouse. And so I said, "You know what? I want to go into school administration." And so I went back into school administration at a school on the South Side of Chicago that was actually 60% English language learners. And that was an experience to be a first-year administrator trying to understand who I was as my identity as an instructional leader. But that same year, I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and I fell in love with the whole New Orleans culture.
Susan Lambert:I love it.
Mitchell Brookins:I fell in love with the socialization, having a party, go out, meeting new people, just the energy of New Orleans. And I decided to move to New Orleans and really go full-fledged into school administration where I've worked with three different charter school networks here. And then finally in 2020, I said, It's time to transition. And I left school administration to move into consultancy. And so now I am in a place where I work with leading educators as a senior director, I facilitate for multiple different organizations around the Science of Reading. People have seen me on Twitter, they see me on Facebook, <laugh> . I don't know, some people say, I was told yesterday, "Mitchell, you're like the hustler of education. You're everywhere." <Laugh> And I guess I am. I just, I'm a nerd for literacy. I'm a nerd for reading and writing, like it's what I breathe , It's how I move, it's how I have my being.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . So it started with a teddy bear and now it's exploded into being a mover and shaker in the world of literacy. That's a great story 'cause not everybody says I wanna be a teacher when I grow up. So that's really cool to hear that trajectory. So we really wanna hone in and talk a little bit about who you were as a teacher, what did literacy look like in your classroom? And then we'll sort of talk about what that looked like when you were a coach or at the district level. So were you a Science of Reading advocate when you were in the classroom teaching those third graders?
Mitchell Brookins:I didn't even know what Science of Reading was when I was teaching the third graders <laugh> . I remember, I remember vividly in 2004, there was a big move in Chicago Public Schools. It was around reading and writing workshop. And I had never heard of it, you know, in my pre-service education. But when I got to the school, it was very clear that I needed to read, I believe it was The Guided Readers and Writer's book by Fountas and Pinnell . I had to learn about level texts and I remember just learning a lot about ... you're supposed to have many lessons in shared reading, in small group instruction, in the writing workshop, and reading a lot of the texts by Lucy Calkins , I can't remember what the exact title was back then, but that was my introduction to literacy. And what I, what I took from those experiences is that you're supposed to put worthy text in front of your children and you're supposed to teach them, you know, comprehension lessons around those pieces as well. But for some reason it never really stuck with me. I hung on to shared reading and I never really did the whole guided reading approach.
Susan Lambert:What do you think it was about it that just didn't stick with you?
Mitchell Brookins:I think because, I guess my philosophy of education at that time was that, you're supposed to help children construct meaning from print. And so I really fell in love with, like, deep comprehension and writing about reading. And what I did in my classroom, I didn't even do ... it's funny, I remember having literacy coaches come to my room and they're saying, "You're supposed to be doing balanced literacy, but it doesn't look like balanced literacy because it's not a mini lesson." I would have the students for like 40 minutes. We would dig into the text, I would have them stop at certain points and annotate and really discuss. And I would give them advanced graphic organizers to help them, you know, write their thoughts out. And even small group instruction, like I said , Well what's the hardest part the kids are struggling with? I would bring those excerpts to small group instruction, reread it with the kids and talked about it and help them process it more. But then, I remember having, you know, a coach say, "Well, you're doing it wrong." And when they said that, I said, "Well, what do you mean?" And they were saying, "Well, you know, this is the level, you need to look at the literacy continuum of learning, and you need to follow what it's telling you to do per level." And so I started bringing my groups together and I put 'em in level, you know, J K M E L and started doing that work. And it just felt so different. It felt so weird that I just did away with it and never returned. But one thing that always stuck with me is that I had about six kids in my class who, nothing worked for them, they didn't know how to read. And I found myself in a place saying my pre-service education never taught me how to teach kids who don't know how to read. And I remember as a third grade teacher feeling somewhat defeated that there were like six kids in my class that I just could not reach. And I didn't know what to do and no one could help me. And they just said , "Well, guided reading groups." And I was putting them in the guided reading groups, but they weren't moving out of the level.
Susan Lambert:Yeah .
Mitchell Brookins:But I didn't know what to do. And that became the impetus for me trying to figure out like, well, do you coach these kids? Do you have these reading conferences that everyone talks about? And again, they didn't move. And so as a teacher, when you say like, what was my experience? I think I was successful with children who definitely were like a little bit below grade level and beyond, and up, but that select group of children who needed something extra, I could not provide it.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . So when was it that you moved into working at the district level then? Was it as a literacy coach? Is that right? Yeah? And when you were a literacy coach, what kind of training did you get to coach and what were you coaching? The way the coaches were coaching you or ...?
Mitchell Brookins:I got no training. You know, if we're gonna be honest, sometimes in education you learn on the job. All I knew was that at this time, balanced literacy was, you know, it was the thing. And so what did I do? I ordered as many books as I can about balanced literacy. I learned guided reading protocols, I learned with shared reading and many lessons and those things, and I processed it. And I went into schools and trained teachers on how to implement that model. And I'll be honest, Susan, those schools never moved.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Mitchell Brookins:And I remember having so many teachers saying that, Mr. Brookins is not like, this is not working. And I was so adamant about, well this is what we're supposed to be doing and if you do it , you do it this way and you're just doing it wrong. And it was crazy 'cause in the back of my mind I'm like, it's not working. And I did feel bad because even as a school administrator the first year, I went into this school where there were so many English language learners who did not know the language, they didn't know how to read. And here I was promoting grade level complex text . You've gotta read this and you have to have these wonderful discussions and in these lengthy writing samples, and the children didn't even know how to construct a sentence, let alone read a word.
Susan Lambert:Oh, ouch.
Mitchell Brookins:And I'm the school administrator and you know, you come to realize like something is not right.
Susan Lambert:So it didn't feel right in the classroom. When you were a coach, it wasn't quite right. When you were first at an administrator, it wasn't quite right. What happened that you made this shift or started to explore or understand?
Mitchell Brookins:It was in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. It was my third school as a school administrator, and we were at that time, when I took on the grades three through five, we were at about 20% of children that were reading on grade level. And we were using a grade level curriculum. Kids were reading these novels and you know, you know how it is, the complex novels in ... as soon as the teacher would say, "Hey, now read on your own," the class would go silent. And I had this moment that enough was enough. And I said to myself, "How are you a school leader? This is your third school and you are still failing children. Something must be wrong with your leadership. You don't belong in this seat." And I remember that weekend I had this epiphany because at the same time, which is crazy, I was in a doctoral program. I am learning around research about how to be an instructional leader, and this weekend I said to myself, "You've been reading all these studies about instructional leadership, what about reading?" And so I started going on the, at this time I am now at the University of New Orleans, I go into the database and I just started putting in, you know, going to the search engine. How do you teach reading? What about fluency? And just all of that. And I landed on the National Reading Panel Report. I read that report that weekend and it was just like something happened in my soul that said, "You have been doing it wrong all this time. "
Susan Lambert:Now what's interesting about that is that's the first time you encountered the National Reading Panel Report, right? Is that right?
Mitchell Brookins:Yep . And this is now what, 2015 ? I started my career in 2004.
Susan Lambert:And the National Reading Panel Report came out in 2000.
Mitchell Brookins:Yeah.
Susan Lambert:And the lead of the National Reading Panel, Tim Shanahan was right there in Chicago. He probably wasn't there at the time right when you first started?
Mitchell Brookins:I don't remember Shanahan at that particular moment. I remember him, you know, I like, I remember going to a professional learning experience where he was one of the speakers. But I was so young, you know how you're so young in the field? You don't really process.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. You didn't get who Tim Shanahan was.
Mitchell Brookins:<laugh> Had no clue.
Susan Lambert:Shout out Tim Shanahan <laugh> .
Mitchell Brookins:Like , now I know who he is and now I read the blogs. But it was that weekend, Susan, that I read that report and then I said, "Ooh, let me go in here and dig into fluency." And I learned about wide reading, I learned about repeated reading. And I remember coming back on Monday morning, I brought my 3-5 team together and I said, "You guys, I've got to share with you what I learned this weekend and I think it could possibly work." And I share with them the fluency research on repeated reading. And I said, "You know what? I've been up all night. I've got this model. I want you all to try, you know, let's choose what I call the V.I.P., the very important part of the section that you're reading today. And this is what I want you all to do. I want you to engage the kids in 10 minutes of rereading it. Go from, you read it as a teacher read aloud, then you do it as echo reading , call reading , partner reading. And then after you do that experience, I want you to give children the task of reread it by themselves and actually annotate it for a purpose." They were like, "Mr. Brookins, okay, we trust you" <laugh> . They went in on Tuesday that next day and did it. I have never seen my teachers come out of their classroom smiling the way they smiled that day. And I said , "Well, what was it?" They were like, "they're, they're reading it like they were able to annotate on their own." I was like, "That's what the research says that's supposed to happen, <laugh> . That's what it's supposed to happen." And we got so excited and I said, "You know what, what if we brought this into our intervention block ?" The studies were saying that if you chose like a , you know, two or three passages of the week and you take kids through that process , you could see gains. And so that next week we decided like, okay, we're gonna have a weekly passage and they're gonna have this weekly reading, you know, everyday experience with it. And 20 weeks later we gave the children that oral reading fluency assessment. And we were like, Oh my goodness! The growth that we had saw just by doing this for 20 weeks! I know that's probably a long time to do something, but I was like, we just need to stick with it and just see if it's gonna work. Our ELA scores that year went up 10% on state assessments. And that's when we all stood back and said, there's something about this. And so we came back the second year and they started implementing. They just kept implementing it and doing it again. And then, we had an opportunity where I said, "Look at our data. There are children who are not moving though, with fluency." And there was about, I would say in third grade we had like eight children, in fourth grade it was definitely 10. I can't remember what fifth grade was, but we gave them assessments and realized like they were so low in their re-word reading skills that fluency was just not helping them. And of course what I did, I said, "Well, let me go back in and figure out like why fluency's not helping them." And I found myself going back to the National Reading Report, looked at phonics and word reading and said, "oh, they need phonics instruction." And then I'm thinking, you know, as a, you know, I'm young and I'm like, I remember my mom and my grandmother talking about Hooked on Phonics. And I remember like we, I didn't teach that as a teacher and I thought to myself, maybe they need phonics. And so we started doing small group instruction with those group of students and teaching them the spelling patterns and the sounds that associated with them. And then I found out about decodable texts, all of that, and they started to grow. So all that to say , I know that was a long story Susan, but it's like I failed into the Science of Reading. I didn't know that that's what it was called.
Susan Lambert:Right.
Mitchell Brookins:But, I'm really glad that I did that because of that experience. By the time that I left that school and that two-year experience, ELA had went up 16% at that time. And so when I went to the next school, when I was asked to move into the turnaround school setting and I was given the charge that, yeah, in this one year, you gotta move this school from an F to a passing school and you have one year.
Susan Lambert:Oh my gosh. No pressure.
Mitchell Brookins:All the pressure <laugh> . But I said, if I'm doing this, I need to figure out and we have to decide what the ELA curriculum was. And we chose a curriculum that actually had a foundational skill strain and a language comprehension retention strain, because I told them, all that work we were doing in 3-5, this work needs to start in K2 because there was just too much we were doing trying to catch kids up. And we did. So I'm glad that I fell into it. I'm glad that, you know, I had the aha moment of, "Mitchell, you're doing all this study around instructional leadership. Why don't you study the area that your children are struggling in the most?"
Susan Lambert:Well, I'm gonna pause you right there because I feel like you didn't fall into it. You actually sought it out. And for, I mean that's like Mitchell, this is like real leadership, right? To look yourself in the mirror and say, "Who am I? It's not working for these kids. What do I need to do differently?" is commendable, amazing, beyond amazing. And that you had a university library to get access to this, a lot of people don't. Right? So you were sort of lucky that you were in that doctoral program and had access to be able to dig in and find that research. So I mean, I think it's a little bit amazing. And the other thing that I wanna say is, you started small with one thing. Your teachers trusted you, but they also saw the results. Right? And how powerful is that when teachers see that things work?
Mitchell Brookins:That was the impetus because I think what we don't always talk about, Susan, is this, this: if you've been in education long enough, your self-efficacy probably has been shaken. And when you're talking about teachers who are teaching in New Orleans in the Ninth Ward and you're dealing with all types of issues and you come to work and you show up for these kids and you feel the brunt that they are not learning how to read, that eats away at your confidence, it eats away at ... should I even be here? That was the same thing that I was experiencing as a leader. Like maybe I'm just the wrong person.
Susan Lambert:Yeah.
Mitchell Brookins:And so to see those results, to see that the very thing that you came into education to achieve is actually happening, It's like the greatest gift that can be given. And so I think my teachers felt that and once they felt that, and once they saw how the kids were moving, you couldn't tell them any different .
Susan Lambert:Hmm . Yeah. I have goosebumps. That's, that's really powerful. And one thing led to another, so you didn't stop there. You kept going and kept going to figure out and unlock all that kids need to have. So then you went to this turnaround school. You went from failing? Did you turn around in a year?
Mitchell Brookins:We did. We did. And I say we did because it was the tenacity of my teachers. It was the efforts of my children that made it happen. And it's a very great victory from me because I learned as a leader, you know, I did a mindset shift, Susan, that year. If you don't mind if I share this , um ...
Susan Lambert:Please.
Mitchell Brookins:I was always the leader that said, I never wanted my children to leave the same way they came in. If my children would just grow, I was okay with it. I was satisfied if they would just grow. But when I left one school to move to that turnaround school that summer, I still was unsettled. Because it was not okay to me to be a leader, and you're gonna say that you still have 40 to 50% of your kids who are not reading on grade level. That is unacceptable. And I remember it was a night that I was in California and I was at the beach and I just reflected in myself and I said, "Growth is not attainment. Growth is not attainment." And that sat with me and it shifted my mindset and I said, "No longer am I going to speak growth from my students, but I'm going to speak attainment." And I wanted to ensure that the children that I serve, that they will get access. And so that shift in my mindset where I said, "No, you have to expect that children are going to be proficient. You have to set goals that children are going to be proficient. And you have to communicate those goals to your staff and you have to monitor those goals to your staff. And then guess what, when those goals are not reached, you have to then bring your staff together and say, it is not okay that these goals are not being reached." That was a shift in my leadership that I went into the next school, that turnaround school and I said , "Well, in order for us to be a "C" in one year, we have to achieve this. And that means this many kids have to be here and we have to set these goals." I had never done that before. I never realized that. And again, you know, here I am in a doctoral program. Right? I should know this. And it was the shift in my mindset that I said "no". And I remember that here , I told my staff, "mastery is a mandate". That was the theme. And every step of the way, I said, "Okay, so where are we at now? What's going on with the students? Why are we not there? What needs to happen?" Because these children have to have access. And so if we don't reach this goal, they don't get access. And so I began to realize that you have to lead with the head and the heart. And so because of that shift Yeah. We did it. And I'm proud to say that we reached that goal, but it wasn't just me. It was the children that attained that.
Susan Lambert:Hmm hmm . So it was a real, I mean ... I wanted to talk to you about like what does it take to get this work off the ground, Right? In terms of a building leader and making that shift at the building level. But it sounds to me like you might say, well at first it starts with a leader.
Mitchell Brookins:Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, I always say this, "So goes the principal, so goes the school." As an instructional leader, you set the vision, you set the expectation, whatever you expect, you have to inspect. All of that plays a role in instructional leadership. And so when you say what takes, you know, what does it take to get it off the ground? The first step is setting the expectation and setting that vision. The next step for me, which I think is missing...you have to study. You can't lead a work that you don't know about. How is it that you're going to improve literacy instruction and you don't know literacy instruction. And that is something I struggled with because in the early days of my career, I was always told that you think too much like a teacher and you're an administrator. You have to be an administrator. You're so busy trying to learn about how to teach kids. And I began to be shaken in my voice and who I am as a leader because I thought, oh, well maybe I'm not supposed to study instruction. Maybe I shouldn't study how to teach literacy. I should be, you know, a manager. But I'm gonna speak for myself. What allowed me to be successful is not me being a manager, it was me studying the issues that my children were struggling with in the classroom, understanding those instructional problems, understanding their needs, understanding the evidence-based practice that was going to move them. Because guess what, as a leader, teachers are expecting me to develop them. I should not leave the development of my teachers to them alone, if I'm the leader. And so you have to study. And then the next step is, I truly believe that you have to really engage in instructional monitoring. You have to go where the learning is. If you are spending every day in your office handing logistical issues, you don't know the instructional problems, you don't know what your teachers are dealing with, and you don't even know what they need to do to grow in their capacity. So it's about making sacred time, even if it's an hour a day. And I get it as a leader, trust me, there was a week or two, I'm like, I did not go to classroom, but something in myself said, "Stop, you have not been in the classroom in a week. Change your schedule next week." Why? 'Cause I believe in people work by day and paperwork by night. I had to be in that space. Does that make sense?
Susan Lambert:It does make sense. And I know too , the work of a building leader is tough, tough, tough. But the research tells us that the closest you are to the kid, that's where you can impact the learning. And so I love that you said that you got in to see what was happening in the classroom so that you could support the teachers then and grow together.
Mitchell Brookins:And not only that, once you do that instructional monitoring, another piece of the puzzle is instructional coaching. So often people think professional development: send the teachers to a six-hour PD or your s ystemic PD days. I always tell people, "PD is truly the tier one instruction. It's the coaching. The coaching is the true learning." And in that coaching session, what one of my hallmarks t hat my teachers w ill tell you this, that they h ad to g row to love me. I believe it, I believe in role p lay. My coaching session is, here's the instructional routine. I am now the student. Practice it in front of me and we're gonna do two, three rounds of it, until you build automaticity with that instructional routine. I'm going to ensure that you feel confident before you go out in front of our children.
Susan Lambert:Wow. That's great.
Mitchell Brookins:So that coaching is important. Then finally, it's the data analysis, right? You have to be deep in that data, not just, you know, <laugh> at the screening level, you know, who is at risk. But I'm the type of leader where no, I'm gonna know who's at risk, what area they're at risk in, what sub skill are they at risk in? And then here's the instructional routine.
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm.
Mitchell Brookins:Because I need to get teachers at the place where you know how to provide that prescriptive diagnostic instruction.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . Yeah .
Mitchell Brookins:So yeah, I would say you gotta study, you gotta set those expectations, you have to monitor instruction, you have to coach teachers, and you have to analyze that data. It's really a cycle of inquiry.
Susan Lambert:Yep.
Mitchell Brookins:And you just start over and you just keep going over and over again until you see it move.
Susan Lambert:Mm . And so that's a good explanation of how you then sustain the work because that cycle should never stop. Right? Because you have a new year, you have new kids, you have new teachers, you have new learnings within the building. And so that inquiry process needs to continue to sustain that work.
Mitchell Brookins:And you know, I love using the word inquiry because it's not punitive. I'm not here to tell you that you're doing it wrong. I'm not here to make you feel like you're being punished. I'm letting my teachers know that I'm in it with them. Like, we need to figure this out together. And this is a process and every child is gonna be different, every group is gonna be different. But we need to have a process that we can use over and over again so that we get a clear understanding of the instructional core.
Susan Lambert:That's, that's great. I love that. Use the word inquiry because that's really what it is. Because you have to get curious about where kids are and what they need. And if it's not working, then what do we need to do next?
Mitchell Brookins:It's important because even when I go on walkthroughs, you know, instructional rounds, some people call it, you know, classroom observations ... they always ask me, "What's your focus?" And I say, "The kids."
Susan Lambert:<laugh>,
Mitchell Brookins:The first thing you'll see me going to a classroom, I'll go straight to the child. I talk to them, I'm asking them questions about what they understand or not. Why? 'Cause I believe the whole point of me going into that classroom is to figure out what that child needs. So that when I go to the teacher, I can say, "Hey, this is what the kids need. What can we provide for them?" This is not about get out of your feelings teacher. I'm not here to tell you how you did something horrible. That's not what this is. Children are the center and we are providing a service to them. And so we need to talk about what they need. And so that's my whole point of doing instruction rounds and the classroom observations. It's all about figuring out what my babies need so that we can move them forward.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . Yeah. That's a great point of view. Oh, I know I have to ask you a question. I'm sorry this seems out of the blue, but what I really wanna know is, when did you first discover that all this stuff is called Science of Reading? When did you put that phrase to "Oh, Science of Reading. I get it."
Mitchell Brookins:Oh wow. That's a good question. In 20, if I can be honest, the pandemic. 2020 in March, world shuts down, right? And all of a sudden on social media, this new phrase of SoR and Science of Reading just exploding , exploding , exploding. And I'm thinking, what is the Science of Reading? What are they saying? And as I was engaging in social media, I said, "Oh, so that National Reading Panel Report, that was the Science of Reading! Got it! And <laugh> , I end up labeling. It's as if social media gave me the vocabulary to label the experience that I've been having for the past couple years.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That's so cool though. <laugh> .
Mitchell Brookins:And then all of a sudden I'm like , okay, I get it now. And then of course on social media, everyone's saying like, "Hey, you gotta read this book, this book, this book, this book." And I just, I fell in love with it and I was like, this is, this is what I've been experiencing and now I have a community that understands my experience and affirms my experience. And now it's giving me the language to talk about my experience.
Susan Lambert:That's really cool. And you're giving people really good, pointing people in really good directions and helping them get more curious and more excited with all that you're doing in terms of the engagement in social media and Twitter. Okay, so like in your work now, that you're working with schools, how is this learning that you've taken from building an infrastructure within a school, helping to turn it around, putting them on track to see positive success in student outcomes ... how has that helped you for the work that you're doing now?
Mitchell Brookins:It allows me to give, interesting enough, direct explicit instruction in instructional leadership. When I work with a principal, I can say, "Hey, data analysis, this is the area. So these are the tools. Do you have a universal screener? Do you have a diagnostic? You need to know, these are the common issues that children have." I'm able to now sit at the table and be very clear with instructional leaders and then I can help them build, "Here's your walkthrough tool." I have a principal now like just told me like, "Hey, that walkthrough tool that you helped me build last week, I'm using it. I get it." Right? I created another observational tool where now I had a district leader who said, "You know, when I used to go and see phonemic awareness, I was so, you know, worried about, is the teacher doing the routine right and now I'm identifying what phonemes are children struggling with.
Susan Lambert:Oh, that's a great shift. <laugh>,
Mitchell Brookins:Right? From fidelity to instructional quality. So the knowledge allows me just to be a lot more clearer and specific and efficient in my support. But it also allows me to help them navigate some of those complexities as well, of where do you start. You know, I've had some conversations even yesterday when a leader told me their assessment tool and I said, 'Well, I'll be honest with you, that assessment tool is not going to give you the information you need to move your children." So it's that directness that I'm able to give now that I owe to the body of literature that I've been studying and the experiences I've had that allows me to codify and to communicate in such a way that it can shift practice.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . You talked earlier about having some kind of imposter syndrome and wondering, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I here, should I be leading a building?" What you just described now is a lot of confidence because you've seen some success in evidence-based practices.
Mitchell Brookins:I still deal with it. Because I don't, you know, I'm not an expert. I'm a learner 'cause it's all about the kids. I don't, you know, speak to know everything. And I don't think that, you know, I am somewhat different from everyone else. I often struggle with that because sometimes in these spaces, you know, if you don't have the right name, if you don't have the right platform, if you don't have people that are rallying for you, you may feel like you're not, you know, you're not wanted. And even as you know, Susan, even as an African American male, being in the community, you can feel somewhat excluded. Like, maybe I don't belong here.
Susan Lambert:Yeah .
Mitchell Brookins:But I've been embraced so much. Although I can have this imposter syndrome, I feel like I have a whole, you know, whole stadium of cheerleaders saying, "Mitchell, keep going, keep going." And it's affirming and I'm doing this not for myself because I don't want anyone to have the experience of what I experienced. I felt like as a teacher, I had to learn this on my own.
Susan Lambert:Yeah .
Mitchell Brookins:As a leader, I had to figure it out. And now I feel that my calling, my vocation is to make this pathway clearer for others. Make it clear. Because for me, we have too many children who cannot read. And if they cannot read, what is their life outcome going to be? And they don't have time for adults to be trying to figure it out, you don't get to do third grade again. And so I take it as a, a privilege to say I'm one piece of the puzzle trying to help that pathway become clear for instructional leaders and for teachers and whoever wants to, you know, nerd out with me and talk about reading and writing
Susan Lambert:<laugh>. Well a lot of people would love to nerd out with you and talk reading and writing. And I'm gonna like shout out in that social media community for all the people that are super thankful for the work that you do and embrace you and say thank you for being part of this community. Your voice needs to continue. You've sort of already answered this, but I'm gonna ask you this explicitly anyway. When I say the phrase, it's all about the students, what does that mean to you in your work?
Mitchell Brookins:Hmm . I said I was gonna get emotional on this one, but I think I probably will. Two years ago, one of my students, as a school administrator, came to me on the playground and he said, "Mr. Brookins, I wanna be like the other kids." And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Mr. Brooks, I wanna learn how to read." I said, "What do you mean you don't know how to read?" Here I am the school leader and have a fifth grader in my building who's telling me he doesn't know how to read. So being who I am in that moment, I told his teachers he won't be in class this afternoon. And I took him back to my office and I gave him DEIBEL's assessment. I looked at his MAP scores, NWEA. I also gave him the Phonics Core Survey, and I found out that my child was reading at the end of kindergarten. He was at the partial alphabetic phase. And in that moment I looked into his eyes and I said, "From this day forward, you will never be illiterate again." And so for a whole year and a half, four days a week, 45 minutes a day, summer, winter break, spring break, he was tired of me. I taught him how to read. And in that year and a half he went from end of kindergarten to early fourth grade.
Susan Lambert:Wow.
Mitchell Brookins:He is my biggest victory. And when I think about that story, as much as you know, you'll say he's grateful for me. He does not know what he did for me. He changed my life. He gave me the urgency that made me realize that if nobody else wants to listen to Mr. Brookins, I'm gonna still sing the same tune. I'm gonna yell it from the mountaintop that evidence-based practices work and they work because that little Black boy who would've gone on to sixth grade and seventh grade, a kindergarten reader, is not. He now can experience other life outcomes as he continues to grow. And so when you say, is it all about the students and what does that mean for my work? That's what it means for me. That my calling is so that children can then one day stand on their own without the scaffolds, that children would one day reap the benefits that literacy is liberty, that children would one day be able to teach someone else the power that only literacy can bring. He is, he is the umph in my movement. The children, all of the kids that I've taught along the way, they're why I do this work, they are the very reasons why I'm actually getting a Ph. D. 'Cause I've always wanted to live a life that my children could be proud of me. And so that's what they mean for me when it comes to this work. They, they are, yeah ... they're my heartbeat.
Susan Lambert:I don't even know what to say after that. All I wanna tell you again is thank you for who you are and what you bring to this really important work and for keeping students as your heartbeat. Thank you so much for joining us.
Mitchell Brookins:Thank you.
Susan Lambert:Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Mitchell Brookins. Check out the show notes for a link to that National Reading Panel Report that was so critical in Mitchell's story. You can stay in touch with us by joining our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading the Community. Keep an eye out for Mitchell there too. Next time on the show, we're going to look at change at the state level by focusing on New Mexico. We'll be joined by state Senator Mimi Stewart , who walks us through the process of getting a piece of literacy legislation drafted, passed , and signed into law,
Mimi Stewart:... and how many lobbyists helping me or didn't have any money behind it. It takes experience and it takes the ability to just continue pushing when you think you've lost.
Susan Lambert:Stay tuned for that. And thank you again for listening.