The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Literacy Success Strategies with Amanda Carpena
Amanda Carpena, Senior Manager of Enablement Operations at Curriculum Associates, joins today's episode to discuss how schools like KIPP New Jersey and Mat-Su Alaska achieved remarkable reading growth through three strategic shifts anyone can implement!
Rather than focusing on deficits, these successful schools reframed their approach to Tier 1 instruction -- creating curriculum committees that examine student data with fresh eyes. This shift created the foundation for sustainable improvement across all classrooms and student populations.
Next comes the critical decision to invest in high-quality instructional materials (HQIM). Amanda demystifies this educational buzzword, explaining that truly effective literacy resources are grounded in the science of reading and designed for consistent implementation. She offers practical advice for forming stakeholder committees and evaluating potential materials to ensure they'll deliver results for your unique student population.
The final shift involves prioritizing professional learning throughout implementation. Amanda shares Mat-Su Alaska's "long runway to success" approach, where teachers received materials and training months before classroom implementation, followed by structured support during the critical first six weeks. This methodical process gave educators the confidence and skills to implement with fidelity, resulting in dramatic reading improvements.
These success stories prove that remarkable literacy growth doesn't require complete system overhauls or enormous resourcs... but rather strategic adjustments to existing approaches!
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Curriculum Associates, an education technology company, and the makers of iReady, presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Join host Haley Browning to hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We believe all educators are extraordinary and we are here to support you. Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Today we are joined by the wonderful Amanda Carpena, who is a Senior Manager of Enablement Operations here at Curriculum Associates, and in today's episode Amanda joins me to talk all about a couple of really wonderful schools that have seen incredible growth in literacy, with a few different shifts that they've made in their day-to-day. So we take a look at these three shifts thinking about how you can embrace a new mindset, looking at and investing in high quality instructional materials or HQIM for short, if you've heard that buzzword acronym. And shift number three, thinking about how you can prioritize professional learning and the importance of that in larger outcomes. So with that, we hope you enjoyed today's episode with Amanda. Hi, amanda, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi, thanks so much for having me today.
Speaker 1:We're so happy to have you and Amanda, you wrote this incredible blog, all about this idea of taking small shifts and how that can translate into these larger gains, especially thinking about literacy, and how we can create such a big impact with these small changes, and so I want to dive into that a little bit today, looking at a few of the shifts that you recommend based on a couple of wonderful schools that have seen some incredible growth.
Speaker 1:So we're looking at KIPP, new Jersey, as well as Mat-Su Alaska, and they were able to demonstrate and show some of this incredible growth and we'll make sure to link those success stories in the show notes for all of our listeners. But starting with shift number one, amanda, you talk about this idea of embracing a new mindset, taking a step back and seeing how you can kind of shift your perspective. In KIPP, new Jersey, they were able to take a look at their Tier 1 and their Tier 2 instructional models and make some changes. What advice would you have for our listeners to help see things, maybe at their schools, from a new perspective, anything that they can take away and make that their own shift and embracing a new mindset in their schools?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's something that I love about Curriculum Associates is we really take a look at our district partners and we create these really nice briefs called Success Spotlights. So KIPP, New Jersey, they're one of our success spotlights for the work that they've done to embrace a new mindset around their Tier 1 instruction. So I would encourage educators and leaders, instead of looking at gaps or challenges, think about improvements and ways that you can move forward in your tier one curriculum, your core curriculum for all students, perhaps by starting a curriculum committee, perhaps by diving deep into your student data and partnering with curriculum associates. I encourage all of our educators and leaders to look at tier one instruction and make decisions that will help all students move forward in the success with their literacy journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really powerful Thinking about how we can make tier one instruction accessible to all students and making sure that you are considering each and every one within your building is so, so powerful, and we saw that with KIPP, new Jersey, and so with that, amanda, I'm curious taking a look at this shift number two, you had mentioned investing in high quality instructional material. Number one what is high quality instructional material?
Speaker 2:That's a really great question. It's more than jargon. H-q-i-m. High quality instructional materials ensure that the curriculums and resources and teacher's guides that are in the hands of our educator are based on science. So, whether that's their research-based or based on the science of reading, it ensures that the materials in our educator's hands are what's best for all students, are the most efficient and effective ways for students to learn and, in this case, for students to learn how to read.
Speaker 1:That's really helpful and I'm sure our listeners have heard this HQIM acronym, or high-quality instructional material, you know, in their day-to-day, so to be able to have that background is really helpful. So thank you, amanda, and with that, as our teachers or our listeners potentially the admin, that are listening are considering potential materials for their own classrooms, do you have any advice of what this they may want to be looking for when considering HQIM or how they may know that it is HQIM?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great question. So, first off, I know that this is a big decision for districts, leaders and educators out there. So, as I mentioned before, it's always a great idea to have a committee with various stakeholders when you are making such a decision around HQIM or high quality instructional materials that you'll implement in your school for literacy. So I would say, start with a committee that includes a various amount of stakeholders and, after you have your committee of stakeholders, as an educator or a leader, for example, when you're partnering with the curriculum associates, we can provide you with all of the research information on our authors and advisors. We can inform you on the standards and the practices and instruction that are embedded into our curriculums to provide you with a roadmap for review during your HQIM committee work map for review during your HQIM committee work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this idea of a committee, I think, is really important. Bringing in as many people as you can, making sure you're thinking about all of the different classrooms across the school and ensuring that everybody is kind of covered within that you know those conversations is definitely something to consider there. So thank you, amanda. You also had talked about this idea of prioritizing professional learning, and we all know that professional learning is truly so, so powerful. You're getting all of this information about how the actual curriculum works, how you can apply it into your own classroom, but do you have any advice for teachers and we know they're all busy, you know, sometimes these professional learning sessions are not necessarily the thing that they want to be sitting in in the moment, and so do you have any advice for them that potentially can help them get the most out of those sessions?
Speaker 2:Yes. So this might be the most important shift that we talk about, because we've discussed that shift in focusing on tier one core curriculum and that shift in ensuring that your district is investing in high quality instructional materials with this committee of stakeholders. However, sometimes after we make a big purchase or start an implementation, we forget about professional learning and adult learning and making time to allow educators to adjust and digest and learn to implement this new curriculum to fidelity. So one of the things that we noticed in our most successful implementations here with our magnetic reading and magnetic literacy implementations is that districts and leaders who are most successful had a long runway to success. So, for example, you'll see in the Mat-Su Alaska success spotlight that after they decided to move forward with magnetic reading Mat-Su Alaska Success Spotlight but after they decided to move forward with magnetic reading, mat-su Alaska leaders partnered with curriculum associates to implement professional learning and share all of the materials with the teachers the summer prior to the fall implementation.
Speaker 2:So teachers went home over the summer with initial learning about their new curriculums. They went home with the materials and felt comfortable, knowing what they would be utilizing to teach literacy. In that upcoming fall they engaged in professional learning with our curriculum associates professional learning specialists. They were able to feel familiar with all the resources that the program came with the scope and sequence, the instructional routines, and then, when the school year started, they aligned with our professional learning specialists to incorporate six weeks of professional learning communities during the first six weeks of school and worked with us to arrange for learning walks and classroom visits to help ensure that the new literacy curriculum was implemented to fidelity. So there was really a long runway to success there. It wasn't a one and done professional learning day. It was a professional learning plan that spanned before the implementation and during the implementation.
Speaker 1:I really love how strategic it was. You know there have been many instances, you know when I was a classroom teacher, where pretty much the day before school you get that new curriculum and you're like okay. And so to be able to kind of plant that seed, give them something to ponder, as they're having some time at home and kind of going into the school year with this expectation that you're going to dive in and you're, but you're going to have the support. I think that's so crucial.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and clearly like it was so powerful, as we can see in the success story that we have linked below, and so with that, amanda, I just want to wrap up and say thank you for all of your great work on this blog. As I said, we'll make sure to link it in our show notes, and we really appreciate having you on today.
Speaker 2:I said we'll make sure to link it in our show notes and we really appreciate having you on today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me Get inspired by following us on social and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum Asoce and on Instagram at my iReady. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you, join the conversation, please leave us a review. Remember be you be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Curriculum Associates believes that with the right supports, all children can reach grade level. We provide evidence-based, high-quality instructional materials and world-class implementation services to classrooms across the United States. Editing completed by Shane Lowe, social media by Atsiti Hannon. Guest booking and production by Haley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.