Science of Reading: The Podcast

S2-03. The Reading League and the science of reading: Maria Murray and Pamela Snow

• Amplify Education • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In our first international episode, join The Reading League CEO and President Maria Murray and La Trobe University Professor of Cognitive Psychology Pamela Snow as they reflect on the long history of the science of reading. They’ll explain the true definition of “the science of reading” and explore why this knowledge has not been translated for the practitioners that need it the most—teachers. Our guests will also discuss the pandemic’s silver lining: the opportunity to reflect on instructional practices and how to best support educators and students now, and in the future.


Quotes:

“The science of reading informs approaches in all areas of reading.” —Maria Murray

“We’ve had knowledge for decades that has not been translated for the practitioners that need it the most.” —Pamela Snow

Resources:

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Susan Lambert: Welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Lambert. As the reading science movement continues to grow, even during this unprecedented time, it's so important to stay focused on what it takes to develop confident and capable readers. As we've learned, change can happen fast. That makes it even more important to stay connected and learn from each other.

Susan Lambert: The more we learn and listen, the more prepared we'll be to lead. Together, let's voice challenges and take action.

Susan Lambert: Today marks an exciting first for Science of Reading: The Podcast. It's an international episode. It was such a privilege to talk with Pam Snow, professor of cognitive psychology in the School of Education at Latrobe University in Melbourne, Australia; and Maria Murray, one of the founders of The Reading League here in the United States.

Susan Lambert: On our episode today, we go back to the foundations of reading science, myths, and scientific evidence and how that applies to our current reality. Maria and Pam, I'm so excited to have both of you join. And…I was going to say I think this is the first time we've done an international episode, but I know this is the first time we have. So for our listeners, we're coming to you from both Australia and the United States, which is really kind of fun.

Susan Lambert: So, Maria, let's start with you. How would you like to introduce yourself, a little bit of background? And we'd love to know how you ended up in the Science of Reading world.

Maria Murray: Hi, good morning and or good evening, depending on which of us is speaking. Thank you for this opportunity so much, and yep, I'm Maria Murray. And I am a unique person in the Science of Reading in that I was kind of born in it, in a sense. So I did have an undergraduate degree in secondary education and then I got my master's degree with Dr. Benita Blackman at Syracuse University. And as some people might know, she was very much involved in the scientific study of phonological awareness and preventing and remediating reading difficulty. So she rubbed elbows—I like that term—with the likes of Jeanne Chall, Donald Shankweiler, the folks at Haskins Lab, and so forth. So after learning from her the science, I also got to partake in her research studies—the large, federally funded NIH intervention studies.

Maria Murray: And I got to coordinate those. That gave me practice in training teachers and learning from teachers, implementing the interventions myself, coordinating big teams of people to go out and assess and monitor and coach in schools. So I think all of that was training for my current work now with The Reading League, because other than the research part, I still do all those things. But suffice it to say I kind of cut my teeth, right? As all of this was beginning, even including it being up against the brain activation studies and stuff like that.

Maria Murray: So then back out from that, I'll say one more phrase and then be done. During all this time, I was also getting my Ph.D., of course, and I was realizing that no matter what I was involved in, whether it was doing these studies—which down the road two years later, schools no longer implemented what we had taught them, so that would wash away. Then I became a professor for 10 years at another university, and I would teach; and I would publish; and I would present; and I would do professional development, all for naught. So none of that was making any headway in getting what the scientists of all these diverse backgrounds had learned about how the brain reads; how we can most benefit the most learners.

Maria Murray: And it was very frustrating to me. So I decided about five or six years ago to quit and do something entirely different. But then about a week later, the idea for The Reading League hit me. And so, now we're finally really making waves. More on that later, I hope.

Susan Lambert: Yeah, more on that later for sure.

Susan Lambert: And more later on what you learned about the Science of Reading. And so we'll talk about that in a minute. But thanks for that introduction, Maria. And Pam, how about you?

Pamela Snow: Well, we've all got different pathways, don't we, to this space? It's fascinating. And I, it's one of the reasons I love listening to these interviews to hear about the various different pathways that people have walked in order to get to the Science of Reading. In my case, my original training was in speech language pathology but I'm also a registered psychologist. And in the late 1990s…my Ph.D. was actually in the area of acquired brain injury, so that was in a different area.

Pamela Snow: And there's a long story behind how I came to be doing this research, but I started doing some research in the late 1990s on young people in the youth justice system with a particular focus on their oral language skills. Because the literature by then was already quite clear about the fact that young people in the youth justice system have quite compromised, patchy academic histories. So it was known that they leave school early and that they had poor literacy and numeracy skills. But with my speech language pathology background, I wanted to investigate what their oral language skills were like, because obviously oral language skills are important in their own right, but they're also important for making the transition to literacy, to reading, writing, and spelling.

Now, not surprisingly, my team was not the first team in the world to look at this. There had been some research done in the United States by Dixie Sanger and her colleagues in Nebraska. A little bit of research in the U.K. But we've done quite a number of fairly large-scale studies in this space now and have really identified young people in the youth justice system as a group of previously unidentified vulnerable young people.

Pamela Snow: We knew that they were vulnerable, but who have a high level of vulnerability for developmental language disorder or what is now known as developmental language disorder or language disorder in the context of other neurobiological diagnoses. So, and in fact, our research quite conservatively suggests that the prevalence rate of language disorder in the youth justice population is about 50 to 60 percent.

Pamela Snow: And research in places like the U.K. suggests that it's even higher than that. So that inevitably got me thinking about what was happening earlier on in the lives of these young people. I became really curious about their early years of school. I had always had an interest in reading.

Pamela Snow: My own children, I was interested in the process by which my own children learned to read. And I guess with my background in speech pathology, even though reading science was not a big part of my degree when I qualified back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I did have, I guess from my training in language and linguistics, I intuitively knew that what was needed was an explicit focus on mapping speech to print when my own children were learning how to read. And I followed our national inquiry into the teaching of literacy in 2005. But once I got into the youth justice space, I really started turning over the rocks to try and find out what was happening in the earlier years of school for vulnerable students. And I really became increasingly dismayed at what I discovered about the persistence of whole language, or more recently, what's been described as balanced literacy approaches that were really, and continue to be, pervasive in our education system.

Pamela Snow: And I became more aware of the problem of low teacher knowledge on the linguistic basis of early reading. And in fact, I've subsequently been involved in some research in that space. A Ph.D. student of ours, Hannah Stark, published a paper on teacher knowledge and teacher confidence back in 2015, and, in fact, identified, unfortunately, not only low levels of teacher knowledge, but an inverse relationship between teacher knowledge and teacher confidence about their knowledge. And if listeners have a think about that for a moment, I think people will appreciate just how worrying that is. So I guess I waded into the surf because of what I was discovering and the fact that I, you know, it was patently obvious to me.

Pamela Snow: And then I discovered literature on the school-to-prison pipeline, so it became patently obvious to me that at a system level, if we want to do anything about the futures of vulnerable students, we absolutely, categorically have to get them reading at an instructional level by after three years of school.

 Pamela Snow: Because it's just so difficult to catch them up after that time if we don't. Now, that's not a silver bullet; that won't protect against all adversities, but it's very difficult for these young people to change the trajectory of their lives if they're not successful readers by the middle of what you call elementary school and what we call primary school.

Pamela Snow: And for me, this is first and foremost a social justice issue. And as I discuss in my keynote presentation at the Reading League Conference this year, it's also a public health issue. So it's got a macro component at a public health level, and it's got a micro component at the level of linguistics.

Pamela Snow: So both of those ends are equally important.

Susan Lambert: Well, thanks very much for that introduction and we have so much to talk about, today. I can imagine we could extend into many more podcasts together. Before we jump into really defining for our listeners what we mean by the Science of Reading and why that's so important, I'm really curious to know, how did Pam Snow in Australia and Maria Murray in the United States get connected and start working together?

Pamela Snow: Oh, I think we have Twitter to thank for that probably, Maria? 

Maria Murray: Yes, we do. And just listening to you that last few minutes, Pam, I can't believe I'm so blessed to know you and that The Reading League is so fortunate to have you as our keynote this year.

Maria Murray: It's going to be amazing.

Pamela Snow: Well, that's very kind, Maria, and we can sit here and throw each other bouquets across the Pacific, which I'm very happy to do, but I really felt like I found my people when I found The Reading League. Because what I see in The Reading League is not only a commitment to science—and we can talk more about what that means—but I also see a very deep vein of kindness.

Pamela Snow: And that's not a trivial matter in this space because it can be very difficult for teachers to change the way they do things. And I've encountered a number of teachers who've experienced quite painful epiphanies, really, in coming to the conclusion that their practices are really not equipping all children with the success that they need.

Pamela Snow: And what those teachers need is a welcoming community of practice from whom they can learn new knowledge and new skills, and that kind of welcoming embrace that The Reading League gives to everybody I think affords a great deal of hope for the future.

Susan Lambert: Mmmmm. That's lovely. And we'll talk a little bit more about The Reading League.

Susan Lambert: And Maria, you can tell us a little bit more about that near the end, but…we are seeing…you said something about Twitter that kind of makes me laugh, but Twitter has really connected a lot of people. Social media has connected a lot of people that are very, very interested in learning more about and making strides in the Science of Reading.

Susan Lambert: And so with that, I know the term is thrown out all over and people define it differently. I would love, and maybe Maria, we can start with you. I would love if you could help our listeners and help me just get grounded in what we mean when we say, “the Science of Reading,” at least from both Amplify’s side and The Reading League.

Maria Murray: Thank you. This is a very important discussion to be having. And I venture to say that this podcast, and in the upcoming months, The Reading League, and just myself personally, want to focus on this exact question: the Science of Reading. A definition that we have been using is that, and I'm going to read these few sentences from the article I wrote for the American Educator Magazine, the summer issue. So we put forth that “it's a body of empirical research derived from multiple disciplines such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, communication sciences,” and so forth. And this empirical experimental research, taken together—the findings from those disciplines, which really encapsulate thousands of studies, over 40, or I could even say 50 years—have reached a consensus on how the brain learns to read and write, and why some students have difficulty with that. And more. So, it provides us this body of knowledge from these disciplines and provides us with very important knowledge—I would almost put a capital K on that word—about the most effective ways to assess and teach reading so we can provide the most benefit for the most learners.

Maria Murray: And we know how to prevent reading difficulties. It gives us that capital K knowledge about that. It gives us the knowledge about how to remediate difficulties if they are occurring. So, and, please, if I had a soapbox and was not just on audio, I would kneel and beg people to understand that the Science of Reading informs approaches in all areas of reading.

Maria Murray: Everybody is thinking it's phonics. It's not just phonics. It's not just phonemic awareness; it's everything related to reading, and spelling, language comprehension, vocabulary. Did I say spelling? I'm sure I did. So that's a definition that we are hanging our hat on now. What might need to be expanded, and maybe we can discuss that now is what it is not as well as what it is. And I'll pause if someone wants to chime in here, but there's a lot of, currently, attention paid to the Science of Reading, which makes me giddy with joy because it's been a long time coming for people to even use the term or be curious about the term or hungry to learn what it reveals. But because of all the attention it's getting, it's like the belle of the ball or something like that right now, people want in. And it's starting to worry me and many, many others that the term “Science of Reading” is something everyone wants in on even when they might not really fully understand what it is. I’ll pause.

Susan Lambert: Great. And, Pam, what would you like to add to that?

Pamela Snow: Oh, gosh. Well, Maria, you haven't left me very much to add. You've mentioned, which is wonderful, you've mentioned the word “empirical,” the fact that this is a body of multidisciplinary research, that it's experimental research, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

Pamela Snow: And that we take a body of research together. We're not cherry picking, looking at one study preferentially over another study. That we have the benefit, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years, of having some understanding of what's happening in the human brain in real time when children are learning to read and when adults, if you like, “expert readers” are reading.

Pamela Snow: And you also mentioned the fact that this is about trying to attain the most benefit for most learners. So for me, this is about the adults taking responsibility for ensuring the best possible outcomes at a population level, and accepting responsibility for the fact that high-quality teaching is what needs to be provided to students in order for them to learn how to read and write and spell. And part of that responsibility means not blaming children overtly or covertly and not blaming their families when they don't successfully learn how to read, write, and spell.

Pamela Snow: So for me the Science of Reading means that we're applying scientific principles to the way that we establish and test theories. It doesn't mean that our ideas are set in stone. It means that high-quality evidence should be used to steer and guide our practice. And here I look over the fence at what happens in health, where we talk about levels of evidence.

Pamela Snow: So we don't just say, “Is there evidence to support x, y, z approach?” We say, “What is the level of the evidence? What's the quality of the evidence? How many studies are there? What's the methodological rigor of that body of research?” So that goes back to the idea of not cherry picking. The Science of Reading also means being open to unexpected, and, perhaps, even sometimes what might seem like unwelcome, findings that we don't yet understand.

Pamela Snow: And being genuinely intellectually curious about what those findings might mean. It means a commitment to replicating findings before we necessarily run off and recommend changes in practice. And it also means accepting that some scientific concepts—and, of course, linguistics is itself a science—some scientific concepts are complex and they're mentally challenging for us to understand. And I think we will need to be disciplined to step up and understand those complex aspects of reading. And there are many aspects of reading and how speech and print map to each other in a language like English that has such a fascinating and rich history.

Pamela Snow: But we can't dumb this down. We have to work with the complexity that the English language has given us. So, it also, for me, means being professional and accountable. Accountability for me, at a professional level, means that it means a highly constrained, or professionalism for me means a highly constrained form of accountability.

Pamela Snow: Other professionals don't get free rein in day-to-day decisions and actions that they undertake that they need to be applying rigorous theoretical principles. So here, I'm thinking of doctors, nurses, psychologists, engineers—they don't get to pick and choose according to what their preference is.

Pamela Snow: The community expects them to apply scientific principles. And I think it's important for the professionalism of teaching that there's that same degree of rigor and public accountability. And going back to Maria's point, I think we do need to be careful that, you know, I do see evidence in the social media space of people perhaps trying to subvert teachers' confidence in the term “the Science of Reading.”

Pamela Snow: And we hear statements such as, “There is no Science of Reading.” But for me, that's as ludicrous as saying that there's no science of cognition or there's no science of perception or there's no science of learning. Of course there's a Science of Reading. There's a lot we don't know. And one of the scientific principles is that we continue to be curious, and ask questions, and change our theorizing and our practice as the evidence evolves. But it's really quite anti-science in general to say there is no Science of Reading.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. And, I'm wondering, Maria, I'm going to turn to you with this question, that, if a teacher, you know, for listeners that are listening right now, all of what you said, all of what Pam said, sounds like, “Well, of course! Of course we want to use evidence in the classroom and of course we want to use science to guide our instructional practices.”

Susan Lambert: Why Maria, do you think that there is such a disconnect between the understanding of how to do that in the classroom?

Maria Murray: So this is a very heavy question that we all scratch our head on and get frustrated about. And I'm hoping that improves in the years to come as the Science of Reading becomes more accessible and translatable.

Maria Murray: I want to pick up, to answer your question, on something Pam just said. I think teachers need to hear, and I hope my point is heard right now, that the Science of Reading is conducted and has formed completely for the benefit of the practitioner, I think, for the person who is actually teaching children to read.

Maria Murray: So it is for teachers, that's it. I don't think, I mean, it's also for others, not just teachers, but for other practitioners, right? Other professionals, educational professionals. But the science of medicine, people do research on bacteria, or blood clotting, or whatever, so that the person working with the patient knows what to do to benefit.

Pamela Snow: Correct.

Maria Murray: And so, the Science of Reading. These people that somehow get interested in conducting studies and forming large groups of children and spending months, if not years, on these studies, is to provide us answers on how we can help children. And those answers should be laid at the feet of those who work with children.

Maria Murray: But it's not very evident that we're doing a good job at that part yet. Some people call it a “clogged pipeline.” No, I don't even think we've built the pipeline yet. The Reading League is trying to do that by bringing together multiple people like Pam Snow from Australia, and Susan from Amplify, and all these organizations.

Maria Murray: Let's work together to do all that we can, individually and as a group, to quicken that knowledge into the practitioner's hands and in classrooms. Also, the science is not a pendulum. People may think that this is this “decades” thing. Science is not something that swings and is going to go away. I deign to say that we will never hear someone come in and say, “Phonological awareness? No. Oops, that's actually not important. You know, it's actually a vitamin A that we need,” or something silly. It thuds. It gets built upon. It gets, for lack of a better word, I'm struggling here, fine tuned…

Susan Lambert: Mmhmm. 

Maria Murray: Added to, but it doesn't go away. And we can rest assured that what it finds is the truth for what we need to be doing. I don't know my answer to your question. 

Susan Lambert: Yeah. That reminds me of the, I hear it over and over again, the idea that it's really settled science, that the base of what we know works for students to learn how to read and what they need, we know what that is.

Susan Lambert: We just need to continue to execute on that and understand more about it

Maria Murray: Right. And how to actually put it into practice is still…what we're looking at more now. And I also want to say that in this, you can tell, I get all worked up about it. But in our world, in our lives, we have so many public health issues. We have disease and illness. We have crime, we have issues with mental health and substance abuse, and we have poverty. And these cost us so much, and in so many ways. Low literacy is one of the largest public health issues we face because it does have a correlation with so many of these other issues I just mentioned.

Susan Lambert: Mmhmm.

Maria Murray: Now, is there an answer…a body of evidence that can address how to fix poverty in a decade? No. But we do have the answers. We have it. It's there. It's like it's on a plate, on a table, for how to ensure the most children succeed to become literate, functioning adults in our society. And I believe we can in the next decade, if we work together, we can really get close to eradicating low literacy in many of our countries. If we were to take a good look at what the Science of Reading has discovered.

Pamela Snow: Absolutely. Susan, can I jump in and pick up on a few of Maria's points there?

Susan Lambert: Absolutely. Yes, please. 

Pamela Snow: The first is that the point about the Science of Reading not being just about phonics, that's been a major stumbling block, I think. And there are lots of reasons why that is a stumbling block. I think advocates of the Science of Reading argue that it's not enough to have phonics in the mix somewhere. Phonics needs a particular focus, and it needs a scope and a sequence, and it needs to be taught by a teacher who's highly knowledgeable about the linguistics of language and how speech and print map to each other.

Pamela Snow: So it's not just about phonics. It is, as Maria mentioned, it's about linguistics, in fact, the Science of Reading. And if I can just put in a plug for my own university here, we've recently established what we are calling the SOLAR Lab, the Science of Language and Reading Lab. And we love the acronym SOLAR for all the obvious reasons. So, you know, we are literally and metaphorically putting language at the center of the Science of Reading. And when I say we, I'm referring to myself and my colleague, associate professor, Tanya Serry. And we happen to both be speech pathologists by background, and we are really wanting to promote this linguistic basis of early reading and really see off this red herring about this just being about phonics.

Pamela Snow: It's not just about phonics; it's actually about linguistics. I'd also like to reinforce Maria's point about the fact that we don't lack knowledge. You know, as Maria said, there are so many modern challenges in contemporary first-world industrialized nations such as your country and mine.

Pamela Snow: You know, look at COVID-19 for example. We don't actually, you know, we don't have a vaccine and none of us are particularly well-equipped to know how to deal with it. That's not the case with reading. We have a knowledge translation crisis with reading. So we've had knowledge for decades that just has not been translated into the hands of the practitioners who need it the most.

Pamela Snow: And that's why so many teachers get so upset when they discover that this knowledge has existed for a long time, but it wasn't taught to them in their teacher pre-service education. And I can well understand their indignation. But there's a great irony, I think, in the fact that education has had a long history, I think, well, certainly in my country and I think in yours because we do tend to follow the United States of America in a lot of things, reading included. Education has a history of fads and fashions. So, you know, shiny new things come along and people haven't asked, “Where is the evidence?” They've been willing just to pick things up and use them at a whole system level and throw out past practices. So it is ironic that there is that willingness to let in pseudoscience and fads and fashions, but resistance to what is, in many cases, quite settled science.

Maria Murray: That's a lot to ponder about that last part. 

Susan Lambert: Yes, it definitely is a lot to ponder. A lot to think about. And, I won't even tell you where my mind goes back to my undergrad degree and what I didn't receive then. And that's a whole other topic. I think another whole other topic is the why of this, and we sort of won't jump into that because that's also rather complicated.

Susan Lambert: But it does make me think about the how of it and what's happening in classrooms, or not happening in classrooms. And then the even more confounding issue of our current situation, meaning that there are kids that lost instruction due to COVID in school closures last year who are coming to us this year with mixed sort of implementation.

Susan Lambert: Some people are remote; some people are doing an in-person, out-of-person rotation. Some people are all in-person. And so if we think about the current context, how would you say, or how would you respond to, you know, understanding the Science of Reading is even more important now? I don't know. Who wants to jump on that one first?

Pamela Snow: Maria, go. 

Maria Murray: Well, actually I'm going to hit the ball back to you, Pam, on this because I think one of the last times we spoke, something you said really resonated with me about how certain teachers are feeling. Do you know what I'm referring to? 

Pamela Snow: Yes, I do remember that conversation.

Maria Murray: Good, good. 

Pamela Snow: And so we are still—our academic year in Australia is a calendar year, so we haven't had the end-of-year, start-of-year juncture that you've recently had. 

Susan Lambert: Right! That's right. 

Pamela Snow: So, and things are different in different states, but in Victoria where I live, it's predominantly remote learning at the moment, or probably exclusively remote learning at the moment, actually.

Pamela Snow: And my conversations with teachers indicate or suggest to me that the ones who are working in schools where there is a clear scope and sequence, where their pedagogical approach is one of explicit instruction, and where the teachers are highly knowledgeable about how language works… .There's an expression I often use that I don't think will work for American listeners, and that I talk about teachers needing to know how language works “under the bonnet.”

Pamela Snow: Now, I think for you, that has to be “under the hood.” So for teachers, it's not enough to get in the car and turn the key in the ignition in the classroom. They have to actually know, as I said earlier, quite a lot of linguistics. So my perception is that teachers who are teaching that way, and I'm talking here about the early years, have been less stressed and less overwhelmed because they've stuck to their scope and sequence that they were working with anyway, but they've had to change the platform.

Pamela Snow: I suspect it's more challenging for teachers who don't have a scope and sequence and who are perhaps more reliant on their instructional materials like leveled readers, for example. It's probably much harder to be keeping track of individual children and to be ensuring that the needs of those individual children are being met in a balanced literacy kind of framework.

Pamela Snow: Now, that's my hunch. And my caveat here is that I think in general, and I'm going to quote Daniel Willingham here because I heard him say this in a podcast interview recently, and it's something I've been thinking about myself a lot lately. Anyway, it’s  that the fact is that we don't really know a lot about what goes on inside classrooms. And I think we have a lot of proxy measures of how reading's taught when we can look at the kind of instructional texts that are used. We can look at information that's sent home to parents, and we can ask teachers and so forth. But, in general, I think we don't know a lot about what actually goes on inside the classroom.

Pamela Snow: And I think we're going to see quite a washup of that lack of knowledge in a post-COVID world when we are trying to backfill what will be inevitable gaps for some children in their learning.

Susan Lambert: Hmm. And, Maria? What about your concerns either about, you know, kids' development and growth in this situation, or teacher support?

Maria Murray: I mean, my concerns are the same as most others. What we talk about a lot is primarily the concern for [grades] pre-K, K, 1. You know, those foundations. What pieces they may be missing and falling behind on very much worry us, particularly for some populations of students that don't have the same level of accessibility. So we are really focusing a lot of our attention on addressing that or supporting others that are already on the road to doing so. It's terrifying.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. And specifically, Maria, what are those things that others are trying to do to support that issue?

Maria Murray: Oh, helping to provide, like Pam just said, methods of a new platform that could, you know, facilitate an educator understanding, “I just have to do what my scope and sequence was, and I can turnkey this and make my classroom work almost as it would've if we were face-to-face.” Reducing the panic load, the workload on educators as they do this has been really impressive—in such a short amount of time, too. Some publishers and curricula are providing guidance documents on how to step back into things with a new year. I know we don't have time to go into particulars and call out certain examples, but we're considering making a set of resources of who's doing what out there. But what that is yet, I don't know.

Susan Lambert: And I think one of the next natural questions is, it seems as if instruction can be translated in a remote environment or we can sort of account for things that were lost. What about assessment, knowing where each individual student is? What's the role of that? Both with, you know, instructional loss because of school closures, but also because of potential remote learning situations?

Pamela Snow: Hmm. Well, assessment's incredibly important, all of the time. And progress monitoring is incredibly important all of the time. I think it's another aspect of instruction that sees high levels of variability in the kinds of tools that are applied and the way that data are interpreted and used. So, without wanting to sound overly pessimistic, I suspect that that's an area that has been really compromised in terms of accurately monitoring children's progress using appropriate tools with appropriate sensitivity so that appropriate instructional decisions can be made. Speaking for what I understand of what happens here in Australia, there's a lot of variability in that space in the best of circumstances. So remote learning is only going to multiply and confound that.

Susan Lambert: Yeah…the process of teaching reading feels overwhelming in the best of circumstances, like you said.

Susan Lambert: But given the variability and students' knowledge base, and where they're at and what they missed, it seems a little scary. And what would you say to teachers right now, especially those ones in the early grades?

Pamela Snow: That—look, that's tricky—because I think I wouldn't want to be saying things that make their current situation more stressful or more difficult than it already is. But I think it will be important that we have a big conversation at some point about, you know, how children are faring when we come out the other side of this and look honestly at the gaps in their learning and at what's needed to to fill those gaps. A lot of students who previously wouldn't have needed Tier 2 interventions are going to need, effectively, Tier 2 interventions. And as Maria said, the ones that we're particularly concerned about are those students beginning school. So, we don't call that kindergarten here in Australia, we call it a range of things 'cause we've only got eight states and territories and we have to all call it something pretty much different.

Pamela Snow: In Victoria where I live, it's called “foundation.” In South Australia, it's called “reception.” You know, I'd be particularly concerned about those students, but I wonder in some ways whether one of the silver linings out of COVID-19 might be the opportunity to have a reflective discussion on instructional practices in particularly the first year of school, and the best ways of supporting teachers in that space. I really endorse Maria's sentiments about the fact that, and I've seen this many times, that high-quality instruction actually improves the teacher's day enormously. And, they get tremendous reinforcement and reward from seeing the rapid rate at which five year olds can make progress.

Pamela Snow: So maybe COVID-19 will create some opportunities for conversations that have previously been harder to have.

Susan Lambert: Yeah, that's really interesting. The concept of the silver lining of COVID-19 for reading science. And, maybe it is a moment that we can say, “We need to focus on stripping away everything else and hyper focus on the essentials and what we know about the essentials for students’ reading development.”

Susan Lambert: And I think, Maria, this feels like a really good time to sort of turn to you and help us understand who The Reading League is, their beginnings, how they're growing now. Because this is an important part of the work, right?

Maria Murray: I couldn't agree more. And that's just a perfect segue to our conference theme was just what we were just saying. The theme this year is now, more than ever, the Science of Reading can inform and bolster teachers’ work, and carry them through, and help them be stronger on the other side of this, which hopefully will be soon. So you said in your question to me about The Reading League, “What they are doing” So we need to just fix one little word there and say, ”What we are doing.” 

Susan Lambert: That's great. Thank you. 

Maria Murray: People say “you” and “they” and…it’s got to be “we” and “us.” 

Susan Lambert: I love that. 

Maria Murray: [They] have to be our pronouns. So, yes, there is a brick and mortar Reading League in Syracuse, New York, with some staff. But it's wider than that.

Maria Murray: The word “league” was chosen with great intentionality to signify togetherness. I'm just one little speck in it. I happen to have some expertise and some little, you know, parts of it, but I did have the idea of bringing other experts together. The original intentionality was born in October 2015, right when I was ready to do that whole quitting thing I had alluded to.

Maria Murray: And the story goes that my husband and I decided to consider starting an alpaca farm and just a complete swipe away of everything in a new thing that we had no business considering. We had flown to Louisville, Kentucky, met with a realtor, toured some little possible farms, realized, nope, not really for us.

Maria Murray: “What are we doing? Let's go home.” And I got home. And in the mail was David Kilpatrick's Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. I know David Kilpatrick. We both live in Syracuse. He lives nine miles from me. We both taught in the State University of New York system at different universities.

Maria Murray: We've met at scientific studies or research conferences. But he's a school psychologist. What does he know about reading? 

Susan Lambert: I hope he's listening right now.

Maria Murray: He knows. So I called David and congratulated him because chapter one, after getting off that plane, thinking of becoming an alpaca farmer and escaping into this dreamy world, set me straight.

Maria Murray: His chapter one talked a lot about why the Science of Reading has failed to make its way to where it's meant to be in practice. And we had an amazing conversation because misery adores company, and we were both frustrated. But it felt good to talk and we got off the phone after a few hours and decided to continue the conversation and bring others in.

Maria Murray: And that was the moment: “Wait, David knows a lot about this. I know a lot about that. Sheila that I used to work with… and so and so and so.” And a hundred names came to my mind of people I had gotten to know in the previous decades. People that know the Science of Reading or one very important aspect of it.

Maria Murray: Linguistics: I don't know anything about that. Speech pathology…you know, all of these integral parts that form a school system. We know people. So I went onto my computer. I made a logo. I started a website. I put out a call to action on Facebook and we had a hundred people in a day.

Maria Murray: And we just started to say, “Let's provide teachers”—most of us, by the way, are or were teachers. I'd say 67% or so of The Reading League is teachers, educators—”and what do we want to know more about? What are we lacking? What are we needing?” And we just started to provide professional development in area schools.

Maria Murray: We'd go around like a traveling troop and they were sold out—even though they were free—in an hour. Hundreds of people. And about 40, over 4,000 educators in central New York came to our live events within the first two or three years. And that’s when we were starting to see changes in districts.

Maria Murray: They were eliminating practices that were ineffective, all on their own. And just coming to listen to us. And now, a lot of us have left our positions and do this full time. We're very blessed to be able to do that. And we have state chapters forming around the United States and, we hope, internationally in a few years.

Maria Murray: And the point is just to provide any knowledge related to the Science of Reading as purely as we can, and as kindly and accepting as we can. There is some misinterpretation. I've heard it locally here in Syracuse. “Oh, The Reading League tells teachers they're doing things wrong.”

Maria Murray: No. We don't. We never have. That means you haven't come to one of our events. 

Pamela Snow: Nothing could be further from the truth.

Maria Murray: Nothing could be further from the truth. Absolutely not. And I think that's just fear speaking, right? We don't want to hear what The Reading League has to say, and look introspectively and what we might, you know, that heavy lift we might have to do. But, step by step.

Maria Murray: And I think that it was very nice to hear that at the opening of this, Pam, that you acknowledge that we are a safe space and accepting we do everything with just love.

Pamela Snow: Mmmhmm. Absolutely. And it comes through very strongly in all that you do and all that the organization does.

Susan Lambert: Maria, before we talk about the details of the conference, what's a good way for our listeners to, if they don't already follow you, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Maria Murray: Well, there's numerous ways. The most simple dip into the water is to become a member supporter on the website, thereadingleague.org.

Maria Murray: Easy to find. And we have a basic free membership because we want to provide it at all—different incomes, you know, whatever people can afford, time-wise, money-wise. But that would get you the e-newsletter and keep you informed. There's, of course, the social media following, which is huge.

Maria Murray: And we just started last month a new Facebook group for teachers that is more interactive and it's heavily moderated by a wide variety of experts from various disciplines. And then we're very, very excited about having launched the subscription membership that most large organizations have.

Maria Murray: So being a member of ILA or IDA gets you a journal. Well, now we have The Reading League Journal. Which is a periodical.

Susan Lambert: It's very exciting. Oh my goodness.

Pamela Snow: It’s a very accessible journal too. That's one of the things that I particularly like about your journal, Maria. That it is something that I can see sitting on the table in staff rooms and people sitting down and thumbing through and finding something of interest.

Maria Murray: Thank you. We hope that people use the articles to have conversations in their schools. The first three issues this year were themed to lay a basis or a foundation of the Science of Reading.

Maria Murray: And next year we're going to start some more loosely functioning issues. But the most exciting one, I think, is coming out in a few weeks. The National Reading Panel Report is turning 20 years old this month. 

Susan Lambert: That's right. 

Maria Murray: Twenty years old. And a lot of people have never read it. They just hear about it. They don't know about it. They’re so many misconceptions about it and what it really contained and said. So we have this exciting issue that'll have the same apple green cover as the National Reading Panel. We even…jazzed up the cover for it, to celebrate. And the articles cover all six chapters, not five, that the panel report had.

Maria Murray: And the introduction is written by Linnea Ehri, who was a panelist. The interview, which is currently available on our website, was written by Tim Shanahan, who chaired it. And it even covers teacher education methodology and technology, which were topics covered by the panel.

Susan Lambert: Yeah.

Maria Murray: So, very, very excited about that. I just want to say that I was told to remove the National Reading Panel from my reference list of my dissertation in 2008 because I was told it was dated information by somebody.

Susan Lambert: Well, just another one of those myths and misconceptions, right?

Maria Murray: 2000. It was only eight years old then and it was not dated. That's not how science works!

Susan Lambert: Yep, yeah. This is, it's really exciting. I mean, the first issue I got was…for me, sat down, read it, cover to cover. And it's, this is accessible to teachers. This is what teachers need in their hands to help them understand how to translate that research into practice.

Susan Lambert: So, congratulations.

Maria Murray: Thank you. Huge thank yous.

Susan Lambert: And tell us just a little bit of detail as we wrap up here about the conference itself.

Maria Murray: Oh, please, yes. So we have two amazing keynotes. One that you are fortunate to be listening to here, Pam Snow. And another keynote is a woman, Clark Janelle Setty, who I saw testifying in front of some legislative people in Kentucky. And she's a woman who did not learn to read and she was testifying to that effect as an adult. So I watched her and I wept. I weep a lot. I cry a lot. The pain of illiteracy never leaves my heart. And so she's a very engaging, motivating, important voice that we need heard.

Maria Murray: So she's going to start us off with a wow. And then the keynote sessions—oh, I'm sorry, the breakouts, which aren't really breakouts because we aren't breaking out into different groups—if you register for the conference, and we kept it very low priced at only $99, you get all 18 sessions, in addition to the keynote.

Maria Murray: So it's like $5 each, and you don't have to watch them all in one sitting. You can register; watch one; and then watch one a week for the next.

Susan Lambert: Oh, because they'll be recorded then. 

Maria Murray: Yes, they're recorded and you have them forever. 

Susan Lambert: That's great.

Maria Murray: So I think we're keeping it very simple… .There's no bells and whistles to this conference. It's just good, solid stuff. That's it. 

Susan Lambert: And the date. What's the date? 

Maria Murray: The date that it's going to launch is October 27th. 

Susan Lambert: Great. 

Maria Murray: And again, the video recordings are available after completion for nothing. No additional fee or anything. 

Susan Lambert: That's amazing. 

Maria Murray: So just register now and be there for that opening keynote and the closing keynote. We're very, very fortunate.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. And I feel very fortunate to have both of you on today. So, I do thank you for your time, both Australia time and New York time. We look forward to hearing more from The Reading League and for sure will link our listeners in the show notes to the details of the conference so that they can go out and get registered.

 Susan Lambert: So, ladies, thank you so much for joining me today.

Pamela Snow: Oh, thank you, Susan and Maria.

Maria Murray:  Thank you so much ladies.

Susan Lambert: Thank you so much for listening. Are you ready to learn more? Make sure you join our free virtual literacy symposium Literacy in a Changing World: Moving Forward Together. It's on Thursday, October 15th, and information is in the show notes.

Susan Lambert: Also, be sure to stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and join our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading: The Community. Until next time, keep the hope; take the action; and stay in touch.