Transformative Principal

TP Irene Daria
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Transformative Principal. I am your host, Jethro Jones.

Jethro Jones: You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones. This month we are continuing our literacy focus, and today I have Irene Daria, who is the author of the book, I Didn't Believe Him, that has a longer subtitle that I'm not gonna read right now, but she'll get into later. And she talks about the balanced literacy versus science of reading approach [00:01:00] and what we should be doing in schools and how to help.

Your school make the better choice in that regard. We also bring up some stuff about AI and computers teaching that, so this should be a good conversation. She is a cognitive developmental psychologist and a reading tutor to the stars, including the children of Kate Winslet, Tom Brady and Kate Blanchet.

She wrote this book called, I didn't Believe him about her son who was not learning how to read in school and said that his teachers were not teaching him and what she did after that. We'll get into that also in the show. Irene, welcome to Transformative Principles. So great to have you here.

Irene Daria: Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you for

Jethro Jones: My pleasure.

What's your big takeaway from our conversation?

Irene Daria: You said very, very wise words, Jethro. You said that parents are ultimately the ones who are ultimately responsible for their children's. Education I, one of my messages that I try to get across to people is that they should not blindly trust their children's school. They should trust, but they should not blindly trust.[00:02:00]

And I love how you said that you often say to teachers that quote, I wrote it down. See, it was so important to me, quote, we need to be supporting them. Meaning teachers need to be supporting the parents not asking them to support. Us. I love that. And I just think those are very wise words and how teachers should switch from saying, I have all the answers about your child to saying to parents, help me better understand your child. What a wonderful world it would be if teachers and parents had those conversations and teachers and parents worked as a team

Jethro Jones: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. So one of my takeaways is you said a lot of great things also. Here's where I'll quote you. You said teaching a child to read is remarkably easy, but teaching a child who has been taught incorrectly to read, I. Is not easy. And I think that's a great distinction that you said as just a mom, you could teach your child to read and that you believe anybody [00:03:00] can, and you share resources to do that on steps to reading, which is your your website.

So, we're gonna get to my interview here as part of this focus on literacy and partnership with reading is fundamental. We're gonna get to our conversation with Irene in just a moment.

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Jethro Jones: ​All right, Irene, would you tell us about your son's story? Especially your book is called, I didn't Believe Him. what Happened? Tell us the short version.

Irene Daria: So the full title of my book is, I didn't Believe Him. My son told me his school wasn't teaching him how to read. I told him to trust his teacher, and this is the story of what happened next. So the book, I'll just talk a little bit about a book. The book, because the book is the story.

So, so the book uses my son's story as a window to show exactly how schools have turned millions of kids into struggling readers. It takes you behind the scenes of a really well regarded school. So you're in the classroom seeing the teacher teaching, seeing how she's approaching the teaching, what she's telling the children to [00:04:00] do. You're behind the scenes of my family's life, seeing how this teaching which was balanced literacy not the teaching of systematic phonics, how that type of teaching. Caused the pain that caused. My younger son, he really, really, really struggled. He had no idea how to read in kindergarten, and I had no idea.

He had no idea how to read. I'll explain that later. The worry and work and exhaustion that it caused me, the stress it put on my marriage and how my older son was impacted by what was happening in school. I think it's really important for principals and teachers and parents to realize the. The effect a school can have on a family's life. It tells the history of reading instruction in our country all the way back, starting in the late 18 hundreds. And even, although it's a story about reading or it has a broader, more global message, which is. I feel no parent should ever blindly trust their child's school.

Absolutely, they should trust, but that trust should be earned. [00:05:00] It should not be blind trust. A belief that the teacher knows how to teach in the most effective. Method just to really ask questions. And reviewers are saying that it reads like a novel. They've called it entertaining and informative, horrifying and inspiring.

Horrifying, because a lot of teachers see themselves in the teacher. I find that very interesting. I'm shocked honestly at the support that I'm getting from teachers. I'm on Twitter a lot and I was worried that teachers would not like this book. Right. It says that they've been teaching incorrectly for a really long time.

But of course, teachers are now becoming more and more aware that they've been teaching incorrectly. And they're many are changing the way they're teaching. They're being retrained. They feel really guilty about the pain that they have caused to so many children by using incorrect methods. So it's really wonderful to hear that teachers see themselves in the teacher. And inspiring because of how my son and I [00:06:00] overcame all of this and in the end had a happy ending. But what happened? I know you asked for the short version and I'm just kind of, sort of giving you the

Jethro Jones: Sometimes.

The thing that I really appreciate is this idea that you cannot trust blindly what the school is saying. You should trust, but you can't trust blindly. And the reality is that I keep harping on all the time is nobody cares about your child's education as much as you do as the parent. And let me illustrate this real quick.

I was. Having a similar conversation to this with somebody another educator, another principal. And he said, well, the problem is that there's no accountability for parents if they're not doing what they should be doing. And I was like, what are you talking about? Accountability for parents. They have to live with this kid forever after the year's over.

You don't have to worry about this kid ever again. And they don't shut down schools all that often if you're not [00:07:00] doing. Well, in fact, if you're not doing well, they give you more money, which doesn't make any sense. So when it comes to accountability, the parent's gonna have accountability. When this kid is 30 years old and still living in her basement, they're still going to have that accountability.

That's the real accountability. None of this stuff you're gonna be retired by that point. Like, what are you talking about? So anyway I hate to interrupt, but I just wanted to set that common ground real quick 'cause I think that's really important.

Irene Daria: And I love hearing that. I actually at the very bottom of my book there's a line it goes an intimate look at how schools cause millions of kids to be struggling readers and. How you can help a child succeed. It used to be. And why no parent should ever blindly trust their child's school.

And I was afraid to put that on the

cover chicken.

Jethro Jones: It took me a while to get to where I could feel comfortable saying that the education of children is the responsibility of the parent and the state steps in to assist the parent. And we have it backwards in education where we think that we [00:08:00] need to have parents be partners with us when the reality is we need to be partners with parents because they're the ones who are ultimately responsible and we need to be supporting them, not asking them to support us, but not everybody.

Irene Daria: I am writing that down. I love that. I love those words.

Go ahead. Sorry.

Jethro Jones: no, not everybody agrees with me. So it's not that is not the most popular opinion, and whenever I say it, that bluntly. Educators often get get a little ruffling of their feathers happening. But it's the truth. The parents are the ones that are responsible. And once I personally made that shift, then it changed how I interacted with parents.

How I asked them to interact with me changed how I interacted with students. And it's, it is their responsibility and we just help them out. And that changes us from a. From a, I have all the answers to a, help me understand your child better so I can serve them better. Which the parents definitely know their kids better, and there's no parent out there who doesn't want their kid to be more successful [00:09:00] than them at everything.

And everybody wants that. Even the most quote unquote deadbeat parents out there want their kids to be better and are striving for that. And that's what they're focusing on.

Irene Daria: Wise words, really wise words.

Jethro Jones: Alright, so continue with your short version of your story.

Irene Daria: My the long version of my short story. Okay, so, so. This is what happened. And I think th this is what fueled the writing of this book, because writing a book is a long endeavor, right? And there are a lot of other things that, that one could do. But like I was driven to write this book Beha because I had to process and understand how all of this could possibly have happened.

And I feel like my son and I escaped a train wreck, like a wreck that got a lot of other kids and we escaped only because of my son. Not because of me. He at age five, five years old, came home from kindergarten and said to me these exact [00:10:00] words, mommy, my school isn't teaching me how to read. They tell us to look at the pictures and guess what the words are. And that's not reading. Mommy, how do you read? And I fool still kicking myself many years later, said to him, honey, you go to a great school. I don't understand how they teach reading either, but they know what they're doing. You see that blind trust, they know what they're doing, they will teach you how to read. And to make a very long story short, they did not, and I did not realize it. Kindergarten year for my son was an absolute nightmare. And this is something that I am trying to get across to anyone who will listen. Not being taught to read so affects children. It's not just, oh, they don't know how to read.

The emotional impact that that has on a child in the classroom and at home is huge. He went from [00:11:00] being an extroverted little chatter box to being a child who was sitting in the back of his classroom hanging his head in shame because he didn't know how to read and I didn't know what was wrong.

I didn't know why he was, I. Went in during open school weekend witnesses, I had no idea why this was happening. He brought home he start, sorry. He started having nightmares. He dreamed he was drowning. He dreamed he got lost forever. He started saying he didn't like school, he didn't wanna go to school.

He started saying he hated reading. Now he is the son of, I was a professional writer before I went back to school and became a psychologist. So he's the. Child of someone who adores reading, who was always read to, who loved to be read to, who was looking forward to learning how to read all of a sudden just completely turned off to school. And his school.

Jethro Jones: the, the power here is that when kids know how to read, they have access to everything else, and it [00:12:00] doesn't just affect them at school and at home, but in every aspect of their life. Because our society is so text heavy that being able to read is such a superpower that it can unlock access to so many other things, even with AI and voice assistance and YouTube today.

Still being able to read. If you can't read those things are much less helpful to you because you still need to have access to being able to read. Otherwise you're just gonna miss out completely on so much, which is why we're doing this big focus on literacy this month, is because it is such an important skill that has to happen.

And if you don't have it it is just detrimental for forever. So talk to me about what was being taught. And why that was wrong and what should have been taught and what you do now to teach people to read.

Irene Daria: Okay. I hope I remember all the parts of that question, [00:13:00] but I'll start. What was being taught was the method is known as balanced literacy. And balanced literacy has actually excellent roots that got warped and misapplied balanced literacy. Well I won't talk about what it really should have been, but what it is now.

But balance literacy uses a method called three queuing. And that has the children use three clues as they read to basically guess what words are. It has the kids, look at pictures to guess what words are, use context to figure out what a word could be. And when I say could be within balanced literacy, if a child read the word horse as pony, that would be accepted as correct because the meaning was basically there.

It was, it's not reading the literal word and using the first letter of a word to understand to figure out what a word could be. What should have been taught, and I wanna come back to how this began to be taught. What should have been being taught was the explicit [00:14:00] and systematic knowledge of how to sound outwards. Yes, context plays a role for older readers, of course. You know, if there's a picture, if you go to a museum and there's some weird word and you don't know what it is, and there's a picture, of course a picture helps you we're talking later. This should not be taught to beginning readers. They need to know how to sound out each word and the way this came to be. I don't know how many people know the history of it, but what happened was a man named Kenneth Goodman, who is one of the founders of Whole Language, which was what balanced literacy was called before it began to be called balanced literacy did quote unquote a study. I wouldn't glorify it as a study, but he called it a study.

He observed how. Children read. Now this man who had a PhD, right? You would think that he would think about how to set up a well, how to set up a good study and to really think about who he [00:15:00] was observing. He was observing children who had been taught using an earlier whole word method of memorizing words, not sounding out. Read, right? He is watching kids who had never been taught phonics, who had never been taught how to sound out words, and, but he's thinking, this is how kids read, right? They come to text and if it's unfamiliar to them, he observed that they used those three strategies, these struggling readers, and he wasn't thinking of them as struggling readers.

He was thinking of them as kids reading, right? Regular readers. He observed that they used these three cues, pictures, context, and only the first letter of a word, and to him in his observation, this is why observational studies are so dangerous and why studies need to be replicated and repeated and done by other people, not just you as an individual.

[00:16:00] He observed that they may. The most mistakes when they used only the first letter of the word and therefore phonics came to be seen as terrible evil because they made the most mistakes. Well, they made the most mistakes 'cause they'd had no idea how to sound out the rest of the word. Do you know what I mean?

It wasn't because phonics was bad and this man then took these. This is how dyslexic children read. They use pictures context in the first letter. It's how struggling readers read. And he went on to say, this is how all children should be taught to read tragedy. That is a massive tragedy. And how in the world this came to be accepted in the world of education is. Beyond me. Not everyone accepted it. You know, there were teachers who closed their door and taught phonics and there are, there were schools that taught phonics but in most public [00:17:00] schools, in most parts of the country. And to this day, I just did a podcast with someone who had. Had been a teacher and is now doing podcasting and her daughter right now is being taught using this three queuing method.

So even though things seem to be changing and states are passing laws saying that school should follow the science of reading. And this three queuing, actually, I don't know if you know this, Jeff or three Queing is illegal against the law in Indiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Ohio. Schools cannot use three queuing.

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Jethro Jones: when it gets to the point where a slow moving bureaucratic system, like a state government says, you're not allowed to do this, so, so talk about what the science of reading is and what. How we should be teaching reading.

Irene Daria: So the Science of Reading is based on the findings of a panel called the National Reading Panel. It was convened by Congress in the late. 1990s. It was a [00:18:00] group of people, researchers, scientists a teacher, just people who were identified as psychologists as being knowledgeable about. Reading, they were tasked with going through a hun more than a hundred thousand studies that had been done on how children learn to read. And this came to be because these reading wars have been going on for decades since the 1920s. They were going on phonics whole language of the 1950s phonics whole language. You know, the seventies and in the nineties, California adopted whole language, which is this non phonics way of.

F using three queuing. They went from being towards the top in reading instruction to being dead last, only the territory of Guam was

lower. And the federal government finally said, oh my God the reading wars became louder. Parents were screaming, teach our kids phonics. You know, colleges of education, which were against phonics, were ignoring parents.

And it [00:19:00] was really pretty much of a mess. And the federal government. Realized children were being hurt. So they convened this national reading panel. They reviewed over a hundred thousand studies and they identified five pillars of effective reading instruction. And those five pillars are phonemic awareness.

That's being aware, hearing the spoken sound, the sounds in spoken words. He, the ability to hear the sounds. Phonics, being able to decode or sound out the word on a page vocabulary. If you're reading a word and you don't know what it means, that's not gonna help you. So, so for vocabulary to, to be taught and enriched comprehension is a matter of. Being aware of the world and having knowledge so that if you're reading a story about Cowboy, I actually own a tutoring company now, a K through 12 tutoring company. And we were teaching a little Chinese girl whose family had never exposed her to stories about the Wild West, and she [00:20:00] just could not understand a story about cowboys, made no sense to her lasso and j just stable j just couldn't understand the story. So an awareness of. What you're reading about and fluency, which is stopping at periods, reading in a natural tone of voice so that you know, sentences end where they should and don't blend into the next one, which can cause a complete misreading of what you're, you are reading. So, so the science of reading refers to those five pillars of reading instruction that were identified in the year 2000.

The year 2000. That's 24 years ago. That's a long time ago. And. Only president Bush tried to implement the Science of Reading. It wasn't called that then then it was called the Five Pillars of Effective Reading Instruction. He tried to put that into schools and denied federal funding to any schools that did not teach phonics that went by the wayside, not because phonics didn't work, but because of [00:21:00] just political. Errors and misjudgments and mistakes missteps unfortunately, and and the science of reading has resurfaced now, thanks to Emily Hanford did some great podcasts on the science of reading and teachers I personally, in my opinion, credit the fact that the science of reading. Is taking hold in many places to teachers.

They are the ones with the boots on the ground and they are the ones and to em. Emily Hanford did a wonderful thing people have been writing about this for years and talking about this for decades individuals or complaining about their school, their district, their state, whatever. Emily came in as an objective journalist and interviewed everybody, including teachers. All over the country, and she was the first one. Teachers have been very resistant to the science of reading because they [00:22:00] felt, who are these scientists who are sitting in their little research labs to come in and tell me how to teach My students?

They don't know anything about teaching. I'm not going to listen to them. And people like Kenneth Goodman encouraged them not to listen. And one of his books he wrote, I wanna give a shout out to teachers who were told what to do and quietly nodded their heads and closed the door and continued not to teach phonics, but the opposite is now happening. You know, it's like a perfect storm. Thank God for the internet and the availability to Google and read and become your own informed,

Jethro Jones: Yeah, which you couldn't do. What you couldn't do if you couldn't read anyway. Right? So

Irene Daria: Well,

Jethro Jones: all goes back to that.

So my big concern with the science of reading is that if it is so clear cut how kids learn, why are we still having flawed human beings teach it? If it's so clear cut, why don't we have computer programs that do it for them at this point?

Like, why can't [00:23:00] we just put a kid in front of a thing and have that work because that. If there's a science to it, and you know, the colloquial approach is that science is like this proven thing that can be replicated. Why aren't we doing that?

Irene Daria: You don't know how. I love that question because it brings the end of Eric's, Eric is my son who didn't know how to read in kindergarten. Eric now has a remarkable career in artificial intelligence training computers. He's working on autonomous vehicles and he will tell you computers are still stupid.

Chat GPT is amazing. Don't get me wrong. What it can do is amazing. But chat, GPT makes mistakes. Chat. GPT especially in math, oh my God, it needs tutoring in math and you tell chat GPT, that's not the right answer. Oh, I am sorry. Let me try it again. And you know, Eric, my son is working on developing an autonomous vehicle and just everything a computer does, you have to understand, is programmed by a human [00:24:00] being.

Computers are not yet autonomously teaching themselves. They are. The those inputs have been put into them by human beings. And you also need, and interestingly enough, and this is also Eric's experience, Eric volunteered with me at a school up in Harlem and created an a reading app for these kids to use.

And he watched them be put on a computer to be taught to read. Forget about it. These kids just press buttons they're little kids and they're back and forth, pressing buttons. They need a human being. They need a human being to say Charlie, stop pressing buttons. Pay attention. This is what you need to do. So computers have not yet, yet evolved to that point where they can empathize and see, oh, this kid isn't paying attention.

Jethro Jones: This is key. What you said right there, that it still requires the human touch, the human understanding, the empathy, the [00:25:00] awareness of what kids are doing and how they're interacting or not interacting. To know how to push and prod and encourage and support students in learning how to read because reading is not an easy thing to learn how to do.

It takes incredible effort and incredible strength and strength of will and determination to be able to push through the challenges and the feeling stupid when you don't know what the word say, and that takes time.

Irene Daria: But this is such an important, but 'cause I'm so afraid to send that message into the world because I personally really don't agree with it. Teaching a child to read if it's done correctly from the beginning is remarkably easy. Fixing problems when they have already happened. Is remarkably difficult and undoing bad habits. But if I've actually also written a series of workbooks that parents and teachers can use to teach a [00:26:00] child how to read. This has been used by babysitters. It's been used by older siblings. It has been used by prisoners at a low security prison in Ann Arbor to teach each other how to read. It is so easy if you start with short little words like cat and hat, and then teach words with I, and then teach the most frequently used sight words like the, and piece that together and review and give them decodable stories that support. What they have learned. You know, sometimes teachers will say, Ugh, phonics is so boring. No, it isn't. Phonics is so exciting to children because they can do that. You know, it's like they love these little stories and they don't stay with them forever. I mean, if they're taught correctly, they move through it in a matter of x number of months, depending on if it's one-on-one in a classroom, of course it'll go more slowly. But, unless there is an issue unless the child has certain processing [00:27:00] issues or something is going on neurologically. You'll see on online or on Twitter or wherever teachers saying, everyone is leaving kindergarten in my class, reading. You know, it is so simple.

Parents, like you said, parents are responsible. Parents used to teach their kids to read all the time in the late 18 hundreds, and they learned there was no problem with reading, by the way, until. The whole language method of reading was introduced to our schools in the 1920s. And do you know who the first person to realize there was a problem?

Was? Have you have Samuel Orton is the guy who created the Orton-Gillingham Method of teaching reading. That's the gold standard of teaching reading that is used to teach dyslexic children today. He was working with schools. I believe in Iowa. It was a state that begins with an I.

I'm so sorry. I'm a New Yorker. Terrible, terrible. I don't know which state it was, but it began with an I. And he went into the schools and saw that all [00:28:00] of a sudden. Kids were struggling with reading, and he wrote an article that was published in an educational journal called The Sight Word Method of Reading as a Source of Reading Disorder.

That's not the exact title, but something like that. Completely ignored by the educational establishment, completely ignored, and to help those children, he then went on to create the Orton-Gillingham Method. But until the 1920s, you had only genuinely, severely dyslexic children who had something going on in areas of their brains that were impacting their ability to read. You didn't have this vast number of children who are being called dyslexic now, when really the problem is, does teach you the teachers are not teaching them correctly. There's nothing. Neurologically wrong with those children at all. Yet so many of them, like if Eric had not gotten through to me.

Finally it took I haven't really told his [00:29:00] story, but it took an entire year in kindergarten. He brought home great grades in reading a kid who couldn't read a word, brought home fantastic grades in reading. He brought home a little book. The first book he ever brought home from school came home in January of kindergarten year.

It was called after School. And these books are pattern books, which means the same line is repeated on each page. So they're very easy to memorize. And then kids are to use a picture, to guess a ridiculously big word, like after school I, so after school I play with my brother. A kindergartner can't read the word brother.

After school, I go to the playground. A kindergartner can't really word read the word playground, right? They're guessing from the picture. Eric came to a page that said, after school, I have a snack. And the picture was of a girl holding a glass of milk and a plate with a sandwich on it. So he read after school, I have a glass of milk.

And I said, no, that's not the word. Sounded out. He had no idea how to sound it out. After [00:30:00] school. I have a sandwich. No, that's not the word. Sounded out. He had no idea how to sound it out. Right. So I tell him the word is snack and he, my 5-year-old says, well, how am I supposed to know that exactly how in the world,

Jethro Jones: That, that's a great illustration. I love that one. That's probably the best one I've ever heard because the picture doesn't reflect, that's not what I think of when I think of snack. I think of lunch. I. And so like, that's the problem with this whole approach is if you don't have the same context clues as the person who drew that, who was thinking the same exact way as you, if you're not thinking the same exact way as them, there's no way you're gonna get that with so many of those examples.

And that's a really good one.

Irene Daria: Right. And then how this kid finally got through to me what was going on. He took a book, he took a pattern book, it was called, something like, I don't remember the title, but the words on each page were a blank is a home. Okay. And like a different word was where the blank is. He took the book, he held it [00:31:00] behind his back.

He came home now an entire year had passed. Okay. Where he did not learn how to read. Came home in first grade and says, mommy, you wanna see how I read? I'll show you how I read. Takes the book, holds it behind his back and. Turning the pages at exactly the right time. Reads a house is a home. Turn the page behind his back. A teepee is a home. Turns the page behind his back. An apartment building is a home. Turns the page behind his back. I could have

died. I was like, wow. I get it. I get it. I understand. I understand now. I'm so sorry. I will teach you how to read. I had no idea how to do it, but I figured

If I could figure it out.

Back then, I was just a mom. Here we go back to just a mom, just a mom. I helped my son. I figured out how to teach him to read [00:32:00] and he went on to become a great reader. But this is a big but Jethro, 'cause I wanna really include this because it's literacy month and for families and teachers and principals and everybody to be aware of it. One of the most wonderful the book went out, advanced readers, copies of the book went out to some teachers and principals and the most meaningful reviews to come back. One was from a teacher and one was from a school psychologist. The teacher said, I am looking at every kid in my school who has an IEP differently now and wondering, right? Why is there this IEP? Is it the child or is it us? And the psychologist said, oh my God, she's older. And she said, oh my God, when I think about it, and how many children I evaluated to see, did they know phonics?

And if they didn't know phonics, then we assumed all these issues were going on and it was just. Wow. Maybe no one [00:33:00] ever taught them phonics. And it's Eric. This is a plot spoiler for the book, but it really isn't, I hope, because his story I am putting forth into the world as a window to so many other children and what can and did and does happen. I kept going to the school. What happened was Eric was making great progress with me at home on phonics. He was making no progress in school with the pattern books 'cause he just wasn't guessing correctly. And you had to read just one little story to make. You had to read, you had to guess correctly. One little story to make it to the next level.

He wasn't making progress in school. Right. But I kept going to them saying, please teach my child phonics. I don't wanna be teaching him at home. You know, he's going to school, he takes a school bus home, he's tired, he shouldn't come home and have to learn how to read. And the more I went to the school saying, please help him, I was a very polite parent.

I didn't say, what you guys are doing is insane, you know? I said, please teach him [00:34:00] phonics. They came back to me and said he should be evaluated. We believe something is wrong. They believed he had an issue with phonemic awareness. Now, mind you, I didn't know better then. I thought phonemic awareness was some inherent

trait that you're born with, right?

Like smell, I didn't realize phonemic awareness is something that should have been being taught to him. You don't evaluate a child to see if there's a disorder with phonemic awareness. You teach him phonemic awareness and then if he doesn't learn it, then perhaps something is wrong, right? they kept pushing and pushing, and my husband said, you know something, we're gonna have to let them evaluate him to prove that nothing's wrong with him, because it's the only way they're going to see that nothing's wrong with him. Something I wasn't gonna let that happen. Something else happened where he wrote some words backwards and didn't realize it, and that concerned me. And I thought, oh boy, that's strange. I didn't know that was normal for children that age still. But I thought, wow that's strange. [00:35:00] Let's let them evaluate him.

Maybe something is going on. If something was going on, I was completely open to hearing about it and to helping my son in any way that I could. Right. I just thought, well, why put the kid through it if there's no need? They evaluated him. His results came back with everything being either high, average, or superior, which is an outstanding result for an evaluation, right? I stand up to leave thinking everything's wonderful, right? Do you know what the principle says to me? We're going to label him learning disabled because his reading level does not match his very high iq.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine? And. If my child had not gotten through to me, my 6-year-old had not gotten through to me, I never would have helped my son.

I never would've taught him to read. I would have continued trusting his school. My son would've become a struggling reader. [00:36:00] My son would've become someone who needed special ed. My son would never in a million years have become someone who earned. All sorts of academic honors was accepted to the Johns Hopkins program for talented youth, was Salutorian of his high school. Came up with an idea for Apple for something to put on their iPhone that Apple hired him to go out and do this when he was 17

years old and it's now a feature on the iPhone and he's now doing AI and has this brilliant career. My kid would've been, I don't wanna disparage any job because every job on this planet is valuable and helps our society function, but he certainly would not have achieved what brings him joy now is what's important to me.

He loves doing what he does. And it is horrifying to me that the school labeled him learning disabled when really the. The [00:37:00] issue lay with the school and people say, aren't you mad? Aren't you mad at them? No, I'm really not. Because they were as much victims as my son was. Because these teachers and this principal in their colleges of education, this is how they were taught.

This is how they were trained. They believed, like I believed them, right? They believed their schools. They blindly trusted their schools of education. So

that's.

Jethro Jones: Well, and this comes back to that idea that you can't blindly trust, that you have to recognize that you're the one who cares. So, in closing let's talk about what. What it should look like and what a teacher or principal can do to to make some changes in their school if these things are happening.

And to be honest, if somebody's not already on the science of reading bandwagon I don't think this conversation's gonna do it, but.

But I still wanna say like, what, what should be [00:38:00] happening? And and I did link to the National Reading Panels report from the year 2000 in the show notes at Transformative principle.org.

So people can definitely go check that out. Which again, that's 24 years old now and I'm sure that there is continuing research coming out about that, but.

Irene Daria: No, no, no, no, no. It is proven science. They will not accept a study anymore on how children learn to read. It's done. It's like, do we need oxygen to breathe? Like, you know what I mean? There. There are no more studies like that being done. There are studies on reading, but not in terms of what goes into effective reading

Jethro Jones: Yes, the latter thing is what I was meaning that there's still studies on reading that hopefully we can learn more from. So anyway what would be your parting words to someone who's listening to this, who's still doing balanced literacy in their school? How can you encourage them to make some changes?

Irene Daria: My parting words would be to remember what balanced literacy was supposed to be in its [00:39:00] incarnation, and I cannot remember. The man's name, but he wrote a book where, and he had studied the what highly effective teachers do in their classrooms, and what they did was a combination of. The good in balanced literacy.

Balanced literacy is not all evil. I mean there is so much joy in a balanced literacy classroom. The only thing that's missing is teaching the kids how to read. But once they learn how to read, once they know how to read you know, the read alouds are wonderful. Definitely read alouds should continue but what? Must be implemented and I think is being implemented by many teachers now, if not by choice, that then sort of 'cause you have to realize a lot of teachers are doing balanced literacy and they're very aware that it's not working for a lot of kids. And they're often not looking like, is the parent helping as the child being tutored?

You know, how are they learning? But it [00:40:00] would be teach systematic, explicit phonics. To those young beginning readers, it's very easy. It's lots of fun. They love it. They learn so quickly. It's not as if you're going to be torturing them with something or that you have to leave out any of the joy. You should still be reading wonderful, authentic literature to them vocabulary.

I, it's hard for me to imagine any teacher. Not believing that vocabulary is important or that context. Context in terms of I guess really the issue is do you teach or do you let the child discover for themselves? I think that's where there's still conflict. And you wouldn't let a child discover how to drive a car by themselves, you know? Or you wouldn't let a child discover how to ski by themselves. You would teach them the basic. You know, skills, the beginning the s turns so that they don't kill themselves going down a ski mountain. You teach them those very basic fundamentals, and [00:41:00] then they can soar and you can be as creative and wonderful as you can or want to be as a teacher. But until those fundamentals of sounding out words are in place. None of the beauty of balanced literacy is going to work for them. Balanced literacy made my son hate reading. You know, if the kids can't read, they aren't going to be partaking in any of the joy that a balanced literacy teacher tries to give to his or her children.

Students.

Jethro Jones: that, that is a good point and I, a lot of what I believe about education is about self-directed and discovery learning. But like you said, you have to have the basics down first. So like, for example, if a student can't read yet, then you need to pull out all the stops to get that kid to be able to read.

Because without being able to read, you can't do any of the other things that you want kids to do. Irene how do people get in touch with you, learn more about you? Where would you like people to connect with you at?

Irene Daria: My website is steps to [00:42:00] reading.com. That has information about me. It has information about, I didn't believe them. It has information about my workbooks. It has free resources that people can download. It has a video. How to teach a child to read. It walks you systematically through the whole thing.

Someone, anyone, teacher, parent I know a lot of teachers do parent literacy workshops. That video walks you through step by step how to teach a child to read. So that's the one stop shop. And then if they're interested and I didn't believe them, they can just, they can find that book on Amazon.

But I also have a link to that and the workbooks on my steps to reading website.

Jethro Jones: Very good. Well, thank you so much for being part of Transformative Principle today. This was a great conversation. I appreciate it and thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Irene Daria: Thank you. A pleasure.