Reading First

Let's go.

You know, I was the director of Reading First since I public and have done a number of jobs trying to build MTSS systems in schools and had some great success that I'm very proud of.

But I feel like one missing piece was always kind of the ability to kind of build it from the beginning.

Right.

Core Knowledge Language Arts came out of the Common Core days, right? This was out of Engage New York originally.

And Open Court, I remember from my days with Reading First back in the No Child Left Behind days was kind of the darling way back then.

All right.

So two approved programs.

So, I mean, between 2003 and 2011, Alabama made huge jumps in their NAEP scores, fourth grade NAEP scores.

And they were, I think 2005 to 2007, they grew more than any other state.

And then in about, it was in 2012, the state took a different tack and decided, the Like reading first was focused on K-3.

They expanded not just to K-12, but I heard from people they were using coaches for math, too.

So I wrote about pre-K first, and that was because it was at a time when there was a lot of discussion about universal pre-K, so that was the news hook, my excuse for getting in there.

Reading First came along, which was a big federal program that tried to improve reading instruction.

So I wrote about that and DI in relation to that.

Then I started looking at schools.

Uh, but when I left, uh, I started doing lots of work.

I was consulting the schools, and then I connected with Louisa Moats, who I had been at graduate school at the same time, and this was around the time of Reading First, um, early 2000s.

And in Massachusetts, where I continue to live, uh, w- I was asked by our Department of Ed to be one of three lead trainers for that initiative.

And we trained, I don't know, uh, well, I trained 70 trainers who then went on to train thousands of teachers.

Amazing.

Wow.

And so going off of that, because I'm really glad that you brought up that the, you know, the Reading First, like all of that training was initially or maybe still is for K to three.

Um, there's so much energy and resources and training all about K to three instruction right now.

Um, I started doing reading pullout, so for students who were struggling or behind.

Um, and then my second year we got the Reading First grant, and so ended up really diving deep into the research around reading, the components of reading.

Um, I became our designated interventionist, and so I started doing a lot of tier two and tier three intervention.

Um, got a lot of training on different intervention programs, on how to teach phonics and decoding, on the importance of systematic and explicit phonics instruction, um, and really just developed a love for literacy.