Transformative Principal

TP Jodi Rubin
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Transformative Principal. I am Jethro Jones, your host, and you can find me on all the socials at Jethro Jones. We are excited to continue our partnership this month with RIF reading is Fundamental, and today I have Jody Rubin on the program. She's a marketing strategy and project management leader with more than 25 years of experience in the areas of strategic marketing, brand management, partnership marketing, communications and strategy development.

Jethro Jones: She's currently. R'S Senior Vice President of Marketing and Partnerships and is responsible for R'S Marketing Strategy, [00:01:00] communications and partnership, and was a major player in getting this whole month of partnership to happen. And we are so excited to have her here with us today, we're gonna talk about Rally to Read, which is her baby that she started at RIF four years ago.

Jody, welcome to Transformative Principle. Great to have you.

Jodi Rubin: Thank you.

Jethro Jones: Well, I'm so excited for our conversation this whole month. We've been hearing tons of shows about riff and about literacy. You can find all of those@literacy.bpodcast.network. And it's just been really fun to see so many different shows coming together, talking about this important topic.

What's your big takeaway from our conversation today, Jody?

Jodi Rubin: I think the big takeaway is just how there's such a, a need, but also an actual honest desire for. Great ways to engage and excite children to read, and that whether it's a read aloud or a puzzle or a pledge, that all those things make a big [00:02:00] difference. One child at a.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, absolutely. My takeaway is very selfish in that you helped me see something that you weren't intending to, but I realize that I might be sending the wrong message to my 13-year-old daughter. And so I'm gonna make some changes on that today. So we're gonna get to my interview here with Jody on Transformative principle in just a moment. (ad here) Well, Jody, start by telling me about what Rally to read 100 is and what we should know about it.

Jodi Rubin: Sure, thanks. As you know, reading is fundamental is all about creating a joy in reading and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to read and have access to books and reading resources and Rally to Read was a concept that started four years ago. We were in Covid and we were getting data from different research that we did and from others.

That the frequency and motivation for kids to reading was way down, and I mean, as you would expect it to be, right, [00:03:00] COVID hit. Families were trying to survive. They were doing homeschool. There was just a lot going on At the same time, we were hitting a huge milestone for reading's fundamental, where we were going to be reaching and supporting our 100000000th child. So we talked about what could we do that we could help motivate kids to read, that we could celebrate this big milestone? So the concept arose for Rally to Read 100. And in essence, it's a six month reading campaign to get kids excited to read, inspired to read, and it's all anchored on themes and monthly read.

Jethro Jones: Well that sounds good. So what, how does this work in practice and how do you, what are you keeping track of and what are you paying attention to?

Jodi Rubin: Okay, so in terms of practice it's basically a website, rally to read.org and every month. And this campaign will start off on October 1st of this year, and this will be the fourth year we're doing it. So every month we invite teachers and families and [00:04:00] literacy advocates and volunteers, and anyone who just loves books to go to Rally to read org. And there's a theme for the month. So in October that theme will be community. And on that theme, there'll be two read alouds. One we are very fortunate to partner with Barnes and Noble. So every month there's a Barnes and Noble Story Time Pick, which will be a story related to the theme. And then we also partner with Penguin Random House, who also generously participate and provide read aloud.

So there'll be a story read aloud by a Penwood house author. So we invite folks to. Watch the read alouds. We ask folks to take a pledge to read a hundred books by National Reading Month in March, which is when the initiative ends for the year. And I would say the pledge is very symbolic. As I mentioned when I started the conversation, one of the reasons we want rally to read out there is we just wanna motivate kids to be excited to read. And often kids are self-motivated when it's like, wow, can I read a hundred books? Can my classroom read a hundred books? Siblings and I read a hundred books. So it's very much just a very symbolic pledge. [00:05:00] And then our goal is to help it easy, make it easy for kids to reach that pledge by giving them read alouds. And for that theme, you'll have the, there'll be themed activities you can do to create a little bit more engagement. There'll be book activities that a student can do, and then we also have a variety. A general tools an award if you reach your a hundred books, a reading log for kids to be able to track their reading. Some ideas like ways to celebrate the theme of a hundred because it's have the rally to read 100, so the hundredth day of school. What are some things that an educator or family can do to celebrate that milestone? And then little book reports, so it's not just the read aloud because. That is super critical, but it's also how do you get kids to take that read aloud and then talk about it, talk about the story, get more involved, and that's what kind of creates that joy and that frequency.

And then hopefully they come back every month for two new read alouds, a new theme and new activities. And so we just kind of package it on a fun website. It's free to [00:06:00] everybody, you know, reading is fundamental. We often are only able to go into specific markets to give print books, which are obviously very, I. And that's based on, you know, where our funding is coming from, where our partners want. Something like Rally to Read is so mission centric because it's for anyone. You just have to go to the site and there it is all free access. So it's just a great opportunity for us to give back and meet our mission and not have to worry about whether there's funding or not.

It's just here for everybody to enjoy.

Jethro Jones: And why are these kinds of pledges and doing things together with other people during a certain timeframe, why are these so important and why do they make a difference as opposed to just saying, everybody should read a hundred books in a year, for example.

Jodi Rubin: I think there's something just motivational about the concept of taking a pledge. You know, we've talked about, honestly, Jeffery, should we create competitions and do contests, and they're all wonderful ideas, but at the end of the day, we're a nonprofit and we wanna [00:07:00] put everything we can into the books and the resources we support our children with. So I think just symbolically we've had. Teachers send us pictures where we provide downloadable posters where they can hang it up in their classroom. And every time a child reads a book or a student, they can mark it off and when they hit a hundred, and we don't even ask for pictures, but we'll receive them.

The kids are just extended to participate. So I think sometimes just giving that little extra motivation, and it doesn't have to be a lot, is exciting to a child. I mean, even in a family, I think of my kids, my daughters. Are a little competitive whether I like that or not. And if I, if they were young enough, I could see them seeing who could get to the finish line first with reading their books.

So it's just giving that little extra something. We are going to, there's, it's important to note. We are going to kind of create a little bit more motivation, so to go to Rally to Reed, in addition to all the wonderful free content. We are giving away 10,000 books. We, this'll be our fourth year [00:08:00] through the generosity of our partnership with Barnes and Noble. So an educator as wealth homeschoolers up in K through five grades can go to the website. They can enter every single day until the, the sweepstakes closes the end of February. And we're picking a hundred schools to 100 books. And these are great books. Many are hard covered as well as soft cover. And that's just one more way we can.

Extend the reading excitement for the classrooms because they may be receiving these books and something that we're gonna test this year because want this? Exciting and available to as many schools and families as possible is we're gonna run some social media contests where if you watch the read alouds and you can answer a quick question. I don't know what the questions will be yet, but let's say the character's color shirt is blue. We're gonna do a monthly drawing and give us collection of all the read aloud books to one lucky winner every month. So again, there's. Something about a little bit of competition, [00:09:00] something about taking a pledge, something about creating some motivation.

But at the end of the day, we just recognize how wonderful these readouts are. I just, I've been watching them as they've been coming in from the authors. They're so grassroots. It's, I personally think it's, they're sitting in their living room. They're talking to you and saying, Hey, I'm doing this for Rally to Read.

I'm talking to you directly. I'm so excited that you're participating in Rally to Read. Here's why I'm an author. Here's why my book relates to your theme. It's, it's something nice versus just a really polished, theatrical, read aloud that could be done for anybody. And I think there's a little distinction there for us.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, I, I, I like all those things you said. And I wanna highlight just a couple things real quick. I do wanna come back to, the book list, so don't let me forget about that, but we'll get to that second. But first I wanna talk about this idea of, of building this community and like getting people excited about something.

And you highlighted some of the pieces to that. And I just, I just wanna say that when, [00:10:00] when you're doing something by yourself, that's one thing, but when you're doing something with a bunch of other people. You, even if you don't know those people, but you know you're all part of a movement, that becomes a really powerful thing as well.

And this is something that I want my kids to be involved in. They're all. Older. So my youngest is 13 and I want them all to be involved because I think that will be a cool thing for us to do. And we've done reading challenges and things in our family before as a family and, you know, reading a certain number of books.

My wife reads a lot, like a quarter into the year. She was already at a hundred books or something, so she. Yeah, so she just zips through 'em. And you know, I, I just think that being able to do this with somebody is really important. So, you know, this, this starts in October and we encourage everybody to go to Rally to [00:11:00] read.org and check it out and, and participate in it.

And then each of these videos are going to be broadcast on rally to read.org. Is that what I understand correctly?

Jodi Rubin: So every month, two new videos will appear that relate to the theme, and they'll be available for the full month. And then if you happen to miss those two videos, there'll be a still available. An archived on the site, and then the next two videos come out for the new theme all the way through. And there's, what we tried to do also is we worked with our literacy team who are, you know, experts in what's going on in classrooms.

They, you know, our head of content has her PhD in literacy research and play-based learning. And so the themes were chosen very purposefully. So that they could align with things that a teacher would want to talk about in the classroom. And we recognize at RIF that we are not instructional teachers, we're not part of core curriculum.

We're supplemental, but we wanna make sure that we're relevant and engaging and impactful, supplemental, and that there's a real reason to wanna to partner with us. [00:12:00] So. The themes this year in October. I said, it's community. It's a great way to launch. You just talked about the sense of community and participating, and then we go into nature and to celebration, to wellness, to change makers, and then imagination.

And we change the themes sometimes every year. Sometimes there's a few themes that just seem to resonate and we don't wanna change 'em too much. And I think it's worth noting, especially for the younger kids. In addition for the themes, we have these packets that you can download where coloring sheets cross crisscross puzzles, word searches. Again, little things that you can take. After the book. So you have the other activities and, and actual things that a teacher might do in the classroom or recommended activities in the home. But then there's things that a child could just do very independently. You can just print these out and they're a great way, we like to call it at rif, creating a culture of literacy.

It's not just the book. And so we're always looking for ways to go beyond the book. The book is critical [00:13:00] and the read aloud is critical, but there's so many other elements to reading and to supporting a child in their reading journey.

Jethro Jones: And we are so excited to do this partnership with RIFF and have all these podcasts about about reading and about literacy. It's, it's incredibly powerful and it's been fun. As we talked about that community, to interview a bunch of people around a theme and to have a bunch of different shows focusing on this theme as well, different shows on the B podcast network.

And that's been, that's been really cool also. So let's talk about the book lists and I. And one of the things I'll just say that I love about Bookless is that you get somebody else's opinionated view about what they think you should read. And you know, you don't, you don't have to agree with them or like the books that they suggest or anything like that.

But what makes it so fun is that somebody went through some sort of process to say, this is a book that we. Should suggest that people read. [00:14:00] And that's fun in and of itself, but it's also like, hmm, what, what books would I put on this list? What books would I say align to these different themes? So talk to us about the book lists and the process you went through and, and how you ended up with some of the books.

You know, I talk about all of them, obviously, but some of the books that you included.

Jodi Rubin: And two pieces to this. There's the books that we showcase for the read alouds. These are 12 titles. So for example, October, the theme is community and we're focusing on jobs in the community. And so one of our titles is Maxine Gets a Job and one of the titles is called Built To Last. What we really did for our Real Allows is rely on the expertise of our two big partners for this. Barnes and Noble have access to some of the biggest names and authors. They know what books are coming out. We, we, we strive every year to have a majority of these books being newly released, so it's kind of exciting. So sometimes it may be the first time that a read aloud has existed for one of these [00:15:00] books. A great example of that is last year, and I'll talk about this, we always have a culminating live event at the Barnes and Noble in New York. And last year our guest author was Hood, a copy of the Today Show, and she read for the first time her book that was released that week. And that was the first time that many kids got an opportunity. To actually hear that book. So we try to bring new books out there. That's one part of it. Penguin Random House, obviously a huge publisher, access to so many different authors. We rely on them as well. We say to them, what are some of the titles that you think would be great to get out there for kids? This is their fourth year of participating and supporting the projects.

So what we do is our content team goes through and makes a big wishlist. And then we go back to Barnes and Noble and Penga house and we go back and forth. And you know, in all transparency, sometimes authors are not available. There's, you know, many reasons why they can participate or not participate. And I will say we so [00:16:00] sincerely appreciate every single author who commits to supporting this and spends their time to create the read aloud and be a part of this, just like we are so appreciative of the podcast.

Supporting riff and allowing us to be a part of your September theme and part of all of your podcasts. So it's a very collaborative process to get to the titles that we share. In addition, we work very hard with our content team. There's a recommended book list for everything, so there's 10 books. We try to provide an array of books for the younger elementary as well as the older elementary, so there's some for pre-K, some for K through three, some for more, four and five.

That provides a good spectrum of diversity and titles and genre. And authors. And characters. And so that book list goes with it. So let's say you do your read aloud and then you say to your students, your, your child at home. Well, we just spent, you know, a little while talking about community and looking at [00:17:00] jobs, but now here's 10 other books we could take a look at.

Should we go to the library and pick one or two of these out and see how many we can get through for the month of October towards our a hundred goals? So we try to have two different, so there's really two different pathways to the books that we offer.

Jethro Jones: Yeah. And so people aren't required to read those books, but they are suggestions according to a theme. And then the beautiful thing about books is that there are so many other books on those themes that you mentioned that people can go and find, and. And even read books and ask how this relates to the theme.

For, for example, how does this book about somebody who lives in a city relate to the theme of nature for for one month, when that's the theme and, and what, what is missing from nature in their life? And are there any examples in the book of nature? It just opens up so many great conversations, and that's the beauty of reading, is that it can mean so many different [00:18:00] things to so many different people.

And my mind just gets going on this because it's so, so much fun.

Jodi Rubin: You remind me of something, and actually maybe we should just hire you to do this for us next year for every recommended book list, there are very purposeful questions. So I know when I was working with my kids when they were younger, sometimes I'd think, what should I be asking them as they read this book?

What would be a good thought provoking question? I mean, teachers obviously have a, a knack at that, and they do it every day, but sometimes they're super busy and wouldn't be nice to take some of the burden off of them. So every recommended book list by theme has a suggested list of questions that could be relevant no matter which book you choose, or books you choose to read. So we try to make it a little bit easier to have those conversations and have those thought starters as the kids read the books.

(ad here) Yeah, that's so important. And the beauty of that approach is that when you have good questions that relate to any book you read in that theme, then it, it [00:19:00] shows the power of reading books as a way to learn. I. Deeper things. And, and I love that approach because one of my core beliefs is that all learning is personal.

Jethro Jones: And it's even deeper that all learning is spiritual and that when you connect with something spiritually, and I'm not talking like whatever religion you belong to, I'm talking like when you connect to it at a level that you can't describe, that is where. The real power is you never forget that. You never forget that learning or that lesson.

And you can go back years later and and reread that same book and remember that lesson that you got from that book. So my favorite kid's book is, are You My Mother by PD Eastman? And,

and I just. I just love that book for, for many reasons, and I don't, I don't remember exactly where this came in, but there's a part where it [00:20:00] says where it's talking to a, the bird's talking to a bulldozer and the, the bulldozer responds with Snor.

And I don't remember where, where that sound came into my mind, but every time I read that book, I hear the same thing. And, and that is just this core memory that I have of, I. Of a powerful reading interaction. I don't remember where it came from, but I remember the sound and I remember the feeling that I have when I, when I have it.

And I think that that's, that's really cool. So,

Jodi Rubin: That's interesting. I remember some of the favorite books that I read when my daughters were young were the Sandra Boyton books, and they're a lot based on Sound Mo. I don't know if you're familiar with Mo Ba la la

la and, and interestingly she actually participated in Rally to Read in our first year.

So it was such an honor for me to get to meet her and, and I mean we read every one of her chil, her board books when my kids were little, but they were very anchored on sounds and sometimes. Many years later, I'll still be triggered, be like, oh, [00:21:00] muah, la la, la because it's just kind of always been part of my heart that reminds me of being a first time mom and all that reading. I mean, to me reading was such a big part of my, as an experience as a mom, as, as a, as a family unit. It's all reading is kind of anchor

for us.

Jethro Jones: yeah, for sure. Same in my family, and, and it's, it's something that I remember when I first read The Hobbit to my kids and they were way too young to understand it, but they sure loved. The, the, the times when I would lie in bed with them and, and read that story to them. And, you know, it took a long time to get through, but it was totally worth it.

And something that I miss about having little kids is that that that time of reading books to them, you know, they, they can read on their own. They wanna read their own stories. There's not a lot of opportunity for that to happen anymore, but it sure is a fun thing to do.

Jodi Rubin: It's that only fun. And it's also partly behind rally read is there's research that validates the [00:22:00] importance of being read aloud to, it's just as important as reading on your own. I mean, vocabulary development, language comprehension, word recognition. There's so many benefits to the hearing, the story. Not just reading it yourself. And I mean, riff offers all kinds of tools and tips on reading aloud to your child, whether they're infants. 'cause there's a benefit to reading to a baby all the way to reading through middle and high school students. So I know it's a lot harder to get your middle school student to sit down and let you read aloud, but you know, one can wish and one can hope so.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, well, something funny that's that's happened in our family recently is that my my youngest daughter still likes to snuggle before bed. And

Jodi Rubin: Mm.

Jethro Jones: yeah, so we're grateful for that. But, but she wa likes to, my wife likes to be read out loud too, and she reads out loud to my wife as my wife is falling asleep.

And it's, it's such a, a cute thing. And when I come to bed, then it's time for her to go to bed herself to stay up a little bit later. But the [00:23:00] thing, the thing that I'm afraid of is that I'm sending the message that I don't want to hear you read because I'm telling you to go to bed and. That's, that's not the case, but it may appear that way.

So now I'm like thinking about maybe I should just let her stay in there a little bit longer. And yeah, I, I'm gonna repent of that. And, we're gonna,

yeah. So, as we close here, what, rally to read.org is where people should go. What other resources beyond that would you say people should look into and check out from R.

Jodi Rubin: Yeah, well, I'd just say a couple things on Rally to Read before we close, and then I'd love to share a little bit more about Riff is I just wanna reinforce because I think if educators are listening, this is a wonderful opportunity for a chance to get new books for your classroom or your school library. So when you go to Rally to read.org, you can enter every single day through the end of February. And like I said, we'll be picking a hundred winner will in Spring reinforce because. We get so much interest because it's, you know, budgets are [00:24:00] tight. Classroom teachers often purchase their own books. Unfortunately or fortunately, I know I have a, actually a daughter who's a fourth grade teacher.

So I think I'm the class purchaser of, for all of her books. But I'm happy to do that. That's my contribution. 'cause I recognize how important they are. So I didn't wanna minimize that part of this program. It's part of it then. I know it's. Very hard to plan ahead, but I also mentioned that at the end we always like to have a big kind of celebrate celebratory event. We've been hosting it live at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square in New York. We've gotten tremendous authors who come, like I said, last year we had ho a copy of the Today Show and we had Chris Gravenstein, who is the funniest author I think I've ever seen in person. And it's so much fun to be a part of that.

We'll announce that in January, usually who's gonna participate? In the back of your mind, we hope you follow rally degree.org. Know that there's a great way to end as well at the end. And then we always are looking for feedback. So when we hear a [00:25:00] teacher say, well, this would be a good resource, or, I really like this theme, know that we're listening and we try to adjust and improve every year and ensure that we're delivering. An initiative and a program. You know, we call it a reading engagement program for a reason. We wanted to get kids reading and listening and excited. So we're always open to hearing what's gonna do that and what's gonna move the needle. I just wanted to share those few things about Rally to read. 'cause I think I said you when we started this conversation.

For me, this is

my baby. I started this project and watched it come from an idea to fruition and we've had so many tremendous authors, Peter Reynolds, Jason Reynolds Philippe Au, Misty Copeland over the years, it's just been a great honor for RIF to be able to showcase these authors and the books that they care so much

about.

Jethro Jones: Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm glad you brought those things up again. Thank you all.

Jodi Rubin: And then. For all teachers. We have a platform called Literacy Central. It's rift.org/literacy-central. At the end of the day, we know that teachers and families are [00:26:00] looking for high quality vetting, reading resources, whether it's a puzzle, a curriculum, an activity, and so a lot of effort goes in. So it's basically everything about the book, but you can look up almost every popular title or not even popular title out there, and it'll give you. Lots of information on the book. There might be a lesson plan, there might be a puzzle, there might be a fun activity, but we really try to ensure that there's lot, there's about 30,000 resources on that website. I mentioned reading aloud to your child. There's tips on reading aloud to your kindergartner.

There's tips on reading aloud to your middle schoolers. So there's just a, a great deal of free high quality resources that many don't know about, and we constantly are adding and enhancing what goes on

there.

Jethro Jones: very good. Lots of good stuff. We've been talking about riff all month long and so grateful for the partnership. So grateful for such a focus on literacy and making it fun and enjoyable. 'cause it's so, so important. It really is the key that unlocks everything else. So, [00:27:00] Jody, thank you so much for being here and for being part of Transformative principle today.

Jodi Rubin: Thank you for having me. I.