Transformative Principal

Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Okay.

welcome to Transformative Principle.

I am very excited for our episode today.

Oh, by the way, I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones.

I was so excited.

I just started getting into it.

But this is a, another show where we're doing, uh, the partnership with Riff and.

Talking about why reading is so important, and we have Brandon Card Hernandez, who's the president of Mrs. Wordsmith, which is an innovative
children's education media company that creates award-winning books, card games, and video games to help radically improve literacy outcomes for kids.

Brandon has done a lot of things.

He was a principal, a teacher, a uh, senior education advisor to former New York City Mayor, bill DeBlasio, director of strategic initiatives for the New York Department.

Department of Education and he was also on the Boston School Board, uh, in Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Council for Latino Empowerment in 2023.

Uh, so he is got a lot to share and I'm really grateful that he's taken the time to chat with us today.

So Brandon, welcome to Transformative.

Principal.

Great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me.

So what's your big takeaway from our conversation today?

So many things, but I think one thing I'm leaving holding onto is just the power of, of technology and the power of data to help us build relationships with our kids.

Sometimes we're afraid of big tech coming into our classrooms and we should be, but if it's done well, it allows us to get even closer to the kids we serve, to know them better and to do better by them.

Yeah.

I, I really appreciated that.

And one of the things that I really enjoy from our conversation is talking about the dosage and how to increase that in a way that isn't, doesn't put extra work on everybody's shoulders, uh,

Yeah.

including the kids, that it's enjoyable, that it's fun, and a lot of things.

You just need time.

And space to do it and practice.

And if we can give that to kids, then that is really powerful.

So, uh, thank you Brandon.

We're gonna get to my interview with Brandon here in just a moment.

So Brandon, where I'd like to start is talking about how you left the principal position and are now doing this cool stuff with Ms. Words.

Wordsmith.

Yeah, listen, I, I spent my entire career trying to drive outcomes from the inside out, and I had success like all of us are having every single day, and then a lot of moments which.

A lot of us are having every single day where I felt like I was just like bumping my head against the wall.

And I just got really lucky.

I had left the principalship to go work for Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City as his, uh.

Education advisor really overseeing strategy around three K and pre-K and some of this, the big reforms that were happening in New York City during that time.

Uh, and at the end of the administration it was like, what am I doing?

Where am I going?

What, what's sort of next?

And I wanted to sort of leave the public sector for a bit.

And think about solutions that I was hungry for when I was a teacher.

And then at the same time, I'm a parent of a 7-year-old.

So I'm thinking about both things, like what do I want as a dad who's like deeply engaged in making sure my kid, my Latino son, is like reading proficiently and on grade level and sort of.

Driving past the expected outcomes.

What do I want as a parent?

And also what do I want as an educator in my classroom, helping me do good work and build close relationships with kids?

And so, so then what?

So when I, you know, I got really lucky.

I met someone who was funding this really incredible company and he was like, come help me think about what to do.

And sort of fast forward a year later, I, you know, I was appointed president of the company helping us sort of think through, I think two things.

You know, what are the products that we want to keep building?

What are we doing that's really successful?

How do we measure efficacy?

And then also, you know, how do we get this in the right hands and really drive the impact that we want to wanna achieve?

I'm not your traditional, I. Ed tech guy, right?

Like I'm coming from a classroom and I'm coming from a principalship and I'm coming from driving policy at a district level.

And so, you know, I'm coming in learning a lot and surrounding myself with really smart people who know the tech in a way that I don't.

But what I often say is I like know what the consumer wants.

Like I know what educators are looking for, what feels like a product that's.

Overbuilt and not useful.

What feels like the, the type of data that I'm looking to see, but also like what sparks joy with kids and so I get to, I get this incredible.

Opportunity, right.

To like lead from a very different vantage point.

And I think use, you know, everything.

I know I always say this, everything I know I learned from teaching.

And then all the other jobs after that have been just sort of like trying to pull all those pieces of what I learned about human behavior and interactions and kids and, and learning and, and trying to sort of bring it into a different light.

Yeah, I, I like that.

And I, I agree.

We learn a lot about people and how they work and what they think and what they really care about through.

teaching and it's, it's, It's like a superpower that, you know, a lot of people don't realize really is a superpower, but it, it definitely is.

So, I wanna talk about, you, you brought up the piece of efficacy and what you're doing is you're basically creating games at.

Uh, Mrs. Wordsmith, I know you do, uh, books also, but really the card games and the video games are probably the things that are, that are most appealing.

How do you measure the efficacy?

And let me set the question up a little bit because so many times we think we need to have a preor.

Or a post assessment to know how well people are doing.

We have to have data, we have to track it.

Um, and is that actually necessary or is playing a game enough that you can see that it is working?

How, how do you measure that efficacy?

It's a good, it's a really good question.

I think a few things, I think sort of four steps back, we have to sort of remember the context that we're in.

And I know most of your listeners are like educators, you know, through and through.

And so like they know this, they're living this reality every day.

But like we are living in a world where, you know, 67% of fourth graders are not reading proficiently.

69% of eighth graders are not reading proficiency.

Um.

Half of black and Latino students are reading below grade level by fourth grade.

We live in a, the sort of greater context, 40 million Americans are functionally illiterate.

I like the word sub literate 'cause I think it more accurately describes where people are, but they're unable to read above a fifth grade level.

And then you go even one step further, right?

Like.

70% of all incarcerated adults can't read at a fourth grade level.

And so what we know is that there has been limited exposure to the building blocks of foundational reading skills.

And you know, the sort of phrase of the moment is the science of reading.

But these are like the basic building blocks of what we know is true to teach reading, you know, phonemic awareness, phonics fluency, vocabulary, all of that leading to reading comprehension.

What I think is really special about games is that games are not going to replace all of those steps, nor are they gonna.

Replace the adults in the room who's gonna work shoulder to shoulder with a kid to teach those skills.

But what I do believe is that we've missed the appropriate amount of dosage that an individual kid needs to build.

What I think are the two most important pieces of that puzzle, the sort of phonemic awareness and phonics part of that, that learning to read journey.

And then obviously the vocabulary expansion part.

Like just knowing more words so that you are a more fluent reader.

And I think that is just time on task.

And what we see is the differentiating factor between those who are skilled readers and those who are not.

It's just how much time they get practicing.

And so like what I find fascinating about video games, and this is also me as like a former high school principal, is like kids are playing them.

And if you build good ones that are gamified and fun, they will play them.

And then they will build skills and I think like it.

So it's not about looking for something that's going to like somehow be the magic thing that solves all of our problems.

Great teaching will continue to be the thing that solves our problem.

In addition to the right amount of dosage based on what a kid needs, just practice.

Yeah.

And, and I think that is a really appropriate and healthy take.

Um, because sometimes, uh, people say, you know, we need to do X, Y, or Z, and that's gonna solve our problem and.

Like, we can do that better than teachers can.

Or there's a lot of AI companies out right now that are like, we wanna replace teachers.

Like, I don't know why, for example, Sal Khan gets so much press, because the whole point of Khan Academy and what he's doing is that we don't need teachers.

And yet, teachers are, are, he's speaking to all these national conferences about this stuff and, and his whole goal is to like eliminate teachers.

No, that's, that shouldn't be the point.

The real point is.

do we make sure that kids have the time doing the things that they need to do to be successful?

Uh, go ahead.

No, I, I wanna add on that too.

It's how do we make sure kids have the time doing the thing that is gonna allow them to be successful and how do we make sure teachers have the
information around a kid's progress so that they're able to tailor teaching in the right ways and not overwhelming them with data That's really different.

'cause then there's just like data overload and you're like, I dunno what to do with all of this.

But like, giving them like the right pieces of data so that they can like quickly turnkey it into something useful and.

Even more important, I think more important than all of this is if those two things are happening, you are creating space for kids to form really healthy attachments with adults and that there is no computer
or video game or AI that can take over the powerful thing that happens when a kid is known well, when they feel close to an adult in their lives and when they build a relationship with someone, they learn.

I mean, the, the.

The social emotional skills that are happening there are just, it's so deep, but it attaches more than just me to adult or me to kid.

It also like creates a relationship with their, with that young person's relationship to learning.

And so like you start building these really positive experiences as a vulnerable person, consuming new information.

And that happens in parallel with a teacher who's made it feel really safe and good.

You make that happen.

You really build lifelong learners.

You build young people who are willing to take risks, who are willing to be vulnerable, who are willing to fail and succeed, but that requires a lot of the right tools for a teacher to feel successful so that they can show up.

Really focused for that really hard part of the job, which is knowing kids well and building those meaningful relationships.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, so let's talk a little bit about how, how do you get those teachers.

The data that they need, or do you not even worry about that?

We do at the right time, and so on.

One of our games, word tag, which I love, this is like our video game for kids who are a little bit over sort of think seven to 12 with a very clear focus on.

Vocabulary.

So it's like a vocabulary acquisition game.

It's just about we use the science of space, repetition, sort of high level view.

Show a word with a set number of exposures, and you show that word in its context, in its form with synonyms, with antonyms, different sort of word, uh, activities that allow you to make meaning of a word.

And the goal of that is to, to increase vocabulary and word tag we did in efficacy study and the vocabulary scores, uh, increased, I don't know, 43% with the, within the first month of playing.

Because what started to happen is one.

Kids will play video games for 25 minutes.

They'll see that word over and over again.

That space repetition starts to build the, the knowledge that they need for that word to become part of their lexicon.

And so therefore, it does, and what we do on the backend for teachers is a really simple dashboard.

So like, I'm a teacher.

Let's say I'm reading, um, I don't know, I'm looking at my bookshelf here.

Let's say I'm reading Bridge to Terebithia.

There's a. Set of words from bridge to Terabithia that I know are us, like usually create a struggle for kids.

We've identified those words that our system will feed the kids those words over a three week period.

They'll learn those words.

You can either decide to do it, I'm gonna do this as a pre-reading, I'll do it in parallel with the reading.

It doesn't really matter.

'cause at I'm a teacher, like at my core, I, I just want you to know these words and to be able to use them in your everyday life.

But what I'll get on the backend through a dashboard from it.

Teacher is, did I complete the assignment?

Right?

If it's 20 minutes of gameplay a day, that's the homework assignment.

Did you do it?

That's something I just wanna know as a teacher.

Can I say, you did it or you did it right?

Like that's gonna impact the sort of relational experience in the classroom.

Two, are there words that despite the space repetition, your continuing to struggle once exposed to.

And so those become sort of flagged for you.

And then what words have you learned based on the assessment of the game?

Which words have you seen six to eight times and you've gotten right.

And now been able to sort of move and show mastery.

And so then let's high level what I need to know as a teacher, I get to then like celebrate the words you have learned, use them, make them just feel like fun and part of the sort of classroom environment.

I know which ones you haven't.

So like I'm thinking of another way to create exposure in the classroom.

So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna use that word again, or I'm gonna just like really sort of think about ways to keep introducing it.

There's a challenge here and then I just get to know if you did the homework, you did the assignment or not.

You use that type of really simple data to drive focus in the relationship, then again, it allows the teacher not to be like sifting through a bunch of stuff they don't need.

And then on our other game, ridiculous.

Which is our phonics sort of early reading game.

Right?

Like moving through.

Yeah.

is the best name ever, by the

Thank you.

We love that name.

Yeah, it's so good.

I love It

It is such a good name.

Ridiculous.

And it's like a little, it's a ridiculous adventure.

They have a good time.

Our characters on it.

and and spelled read I,

Yeah, that's.

I just think, it's great and especially since we're teaching kids to read and then we're spelling a word wrong.

I love it when we do that 'cause it shows the beauty and the flexibility of language that I think is powerful for kids to be able to understand.

And so, you know, somebody may come after you about that, but I think it's

No, they love it.

And you know what's funny?

The, I remember this moment with my own son who I mentioned at the top is, is seven the moment he realized this play on words, you know?

And like, I don't know, we all have those moments if you think about yourself as a young person, right?

Like.

Where you just like started to realize sort of the joy of words.

You sort of like started to master a, a phrasing or you found a funny rhyme or, and it's just, it's amazing.

That's the beauty of reading, right?

'cause there's so much creative potential in being able to consume.

Words and then play with them and have your own relationship to language.

There's like a liberation in it, obviously.

It's why we know s you know, health outcomes and all of the things for folks who are, are fluent readers.

Um, but also just the joy of it.

Yeah.

It's joyful and I, so two experiences that were really Transformative for me was reading, uh, I don't remember the book, but I remember understanding how the author used words and phrases in different ways that made me say, oh, I see what you did there.

And, and that was like, okay, I really get this.

That was sometime in high school.

I don't remember exactly what book, but I remember sitting in class saying.

This is funny because of how they phrased it, not because it's inherently funny, but it wouldn't have been as funny if they would've said it differently and it's, it made me laugh out loud while reading silently and, and like, I was like, okay.

That was the, the moment.

The second piece was, was when I was living in Russian and learning to speak Russian and I started making word jokes in.

Russian.

And then I was like, okay, I get it

I get this.

I totally get it.

And, and that is like this powerful moment where you can do that, uh, in, in whatever language you speak.

It's really, really cool.

So, uh, I do love that joy.

So it's powerful.

love it.

And how many kids are sitting in our classrooms feeling like they don't have that command.

Right.

And I remember that even as a, a high school principal, I would have young folks come in, there'd be some sort of altercation, and I try to get them
to the place of like explaining what happened, what were you feeling, what was going on, and witnessing that, the barrier to repair in those moments.

It wasn't like a des, it wasn't a lack of desire to like heal and move forward.

Oftentimes it was like, I literally a lack of.

Uh, sort of linguistic prowess to be able to communicate the thing that happened.

So the feelings became actually sort of quieted.

It was like I was angry, I was mad, I was sad.

And it was like, actually there was so much more that was happening for you, but because we, the system has failed in ensuring that you had
a really expansive vocabulary to communicate what you were feeling and what you were needing, and it is actually interrupting your ability.

To repair relationships, like all of that is real.

So yes, there's like the joyful moments of like, I'm like, I have command of of words and I can, I am like finding humor in every day.

And then also like these really real moments of like, I'm looking to build more meaningful relationships and I don't have the words.

That allow that to go as deep as it deserves to go, and that's the fail.

That's our failure.

That's, to me is also like the real, real social emotional learning happens in rigor.

Yeah.

totally.

And, and so that, idea that you just brought up, especially with a young kid of not knowing how to say that I was embarrassed because somebody made fun of me.

Really, like once they understand what that word means and why that is, that is then upsetting to

Yeah.

Like, I don't know why I was crying.

Like what he said somebody said has said that to me before.

But the way he said it, the place he said it.

me embarrassed and then I felt shame in front of everybody and, and that's different.

And like I've seen kids be able to articulate that and how once they have the vocabulary or the experience to say something, then it's empowering to them to say.

Oh, now I understand why that happened and I can move on from this.

Whereas if they can't articulate It they somehow can't move past the, the interaction as well.

So I love that idea of, of, uh, social emotional happens in the rigor.

I think that's, that's powerful.

really is, and I, I've said this to someone recently where I'm like, I think happiness makes more sense.

And I'm using like a really simple emotion, right?

Or simple.

It's so complex, but I'm using happiness.

A word that, uh, you know, babies know, right?

But it makes more sense when you have word associations with it, right?

Where you're like, you understand joyful and you understand unapologetic and you understand excited and you, right?

Like when we start having this sort of robust vocabulary around feelings, it makes the feeling we are experiencing.

Have a situational context that's very different.

And we, if we don't do explicit vocabulary, which is what I love about word tag, if you don't do explicit vocabulary, we will lose that.

And it's why we have the word gap that we know exists across economic lines.

I. And it's about word exposure, but we can back to our early conversation.

It's what I love about tech, it's what excites me about the, the opportunities in our business at Mrs. Wordsmith is like we are just driving dosage.

We're just creating an opportunity for more exposure and we can do it in a really gamified way that does both things that like honors the principles of the science of reading and real smart pedagogy.

Doesn't try to interrupt the relationship that a student is having with a teacher, but instead builds off of it.

And actually, I hope, my goal always is that like our tools allow for greater connection because they interrupt some of the other stuff that doesn't need to, to take shape.

And, and that, that, that data becomes sort of really viable, you know?

Yeah.

Now you started to say something about ridiculous.

Oh.

Uh.

We could do this all day for, I was gonna say for you, just about ridiculous for classrooms and at home.

Right?

So this is our early reading game.

So this sort of beginning from letter identification to phonemes to sight words.

And these are, as we know this.

And I, but I'll say this, just maybe for the high school principal who's listening, not some of this stuff, right?

When we think about reading, fourth grade is always this moment we talk about, right?

Because prior to fourth grade, we are learning to read.

We just need like the foundational skills to become a good reader after fourth grade.

We're reading to learn, right?

It's when the content gets more complex, you have to have all those foundational reading skills.

No one's teaching you how to read anymore and now you're reading so that you understand the content that you're being exposed to, and that doesn't really happen before fourth grade.

Fourth grade.

There's new content coming at you, but it's really, these are like foundational skill building times.

What we know often happens is if you don't get to that fourth grade reading level with these foundational skills, it becomes really hard to catch up because.

As again, high school principal here, high former high school teacher.

By the time you're.

Uh, by the time you're moving through middle school and high school, no one's stopping to do phonemic awareness.

We're like, we're talking about Mesopotamia, like we've moved on to the Cold War, right?

Like, that just doesn't exist in the, the system design, unfortunately.

And so it just gets harder to catch up and then those kids fall far behind.

So what I wanted to do, and what we've wanted to do is build a video game that really focuses on those early skills, but still feels really gamified, still feels really fun and.

It's like also really mindful.

This is me like, uh, you know, as a dad, that like, I don't want my kids sitting in front of a screen for a really long period of time when they're four and they're five and they're six.

So like, how do I do the thing I I care a lot about, which is like increase dosage and exposure.

I. While also limiting screen time exposure.

So this game ridiculous, is about 10 to 12 minutes of gameplay.

So it's really sort of like you can do all the practicum at home, but it's like 10 to 12 minutes of gameplay moves through.

You know, all the things we know about those early reading skills.

44 phone names, all the way those phone names break down through all the letter identification, 200 sight words, and then just like gives a young person a chance to play with that.

Practice those sounds.

We use speech recognition so a young person can do speech to text and that's an assessment for us.

And then on the back end to our earlier conversation, like what does a parent and then a teacher need to know?

'cause then it gets really easy, right?

I didn't have this as an educator, but we get to break down for you.

Here are these 44 phone names that we know are the foundations to reading.

Here are 200 sight words that we also know are foundations to reading.

And I can tell you if a student is struggling or showing mastery in that, and that is just critically important for you because then you get to know.

Where to focus.

So like as a teacher, I am noticing, I don't know, I have eight kids who are struggling with sh the sh sound.

I can get really smart and like group those kids together in a really smart way, right?

So it's not like, it doesn't mean I've never taught sh before.

That moment doesn't mean there's no other exposure.

This is not like a replacement.

It's just another dosage and a low stakes assessment that gives you more information and then allows you to make instructional decisions that feel really good.

And then as a parent, the same thing, right?

Like most of us as parents, unless you're like, you know, a reading specialist with kids like you no longer remember the phone names, you
are trying to like sound things out with your child and you feel like a total failure 'cause you're like this now, God willing, right?

Like comes naturally to me.

I'm a fluent reader and like chunking these.

These words up into small parts of speech, like feel really impossible.

And so we help also break that down because then there's, you know, on the parent report, you can see the sound of that phone name, you can practice it again.

There's like a little bit of that in there too, where it's like, your kid's struggling with this, here's the actual sound of that phone name.

Here's examples of words that that lives in.

And then you get to also feel like, okay, now I know what to do with this information at home.

I don't feel, um, I don't feel the same barrier.

Yeah.

Which it, it is really easy.

I mean, I was not a reading specialist, but I was a middle school and high school language arts teacher and I did not, I. I didn't have any training on reading.

The last time I thought about how to sound out a word was when my teacher made me do it in like second grade.

You know, like

Yeah.

I haven't, I don't go back to that.

And so it was really challenging for me as a teacher with kids who didn't know how to read to help them, because I didn't know.

I didn't know what I didn't know at that point.

And question for you.

Were you ever a struggling reader?

No.

Like it came easy for you.

You were like, I was good.

I stayed on track.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's this.

like, no problems at all.

So I, I, I also can't emotionally relate to them because, well, I could, because I learned Russian and boy was I, it was it difficult to

Yeah.

language, but in English it was like, no, like we'd talk every day.

Of course we know how to read too,

Yeah.

that's not the case.

I was a special education teacher and one of the best gifts I had in that work besides getting to work with just like awesome smart kids every day was that I became Wilson certified, which is like, I. Basic early phonics, remedial work for older young people.

And in that journey I also had to relearn how to read.

I'm really lucky.

I'm also a young person where reading I. Came natural for me.

I grew up in a home with sub literate parents and, uh, saw sub literacy just around me.

Like, you know, I went to schools that were tough and grew up in an environment that was under invested in and under resourced.

So like the idea of sub literacy wasn't new to me.

The idea of struggling as a reader wasn't new to me, but like the science of how you deal with it was, and so like I was able to have that experience as a teacher and then went into my principalship with this different lens, right?

Because, you know, I was a principal in the South Bronx.

Many of my kids came in, most of my kids actually came in.

This is not hyperbole, reading below grade level.

And so like I have this awareness, I've said this often, like.

I don't care what level a principal is at, like there is, we have failed LE school leaders.

Given that what we talked about earlier, right?

Where 67% of fourth graders are not reading proficiently and 69% of eighth graders are not reading proficiently like we are failing school leaders.

If we're not giving them the training on the, the sort of fundamentals of the science of reading, but also ED technologies and approaches that will help
them do all the things they're charged with, doing like grade level standards and keeping kids on track while also finding ways to increase the dosage.

So that there is new opportunities for exposure to some of the, the foundational skills that unfortunately were missed earlier.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

uh, in closing, my last question is what is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a Transformative leader like you?

Oh, ooh.

What's one thing that they can do this week to be a Transformative leader?

I think this I'm, this is a longer answer than you want, but you're just gonna have to deal.

I think this, I think, and it doesn't have to be a Mrs. Wordsmith product, though.

I would love it if it was.

Yeah.

We have to, we are older than the young people.

We surf

Mm-Hmm.

we have to be okay that their experience is going to look different than ours.

And that that doesn't make the experience we had bad, it just means they're growing up in a different time, in a different context with different ways to have relationships and engage with learning.

And like we have to be okay with that.

So the thing that I actually encourage any leader to do is like, take a beat.

Pause and play a video game, see the world that they're in, and try to see, don't dog it.

Try to see the value of what young people are getting from it today.

Is there a relationship happening in it or is there interdependence at play?

Is there independence at play is like what is happening in the game.

And it can be an education game or it can be a non-education game, but like great leaders will dive into the work.

And the community that they're in.

And I think sometimes we forget that that includes consuming the media they consume.

I think you will just know a little more.

Hmm.

I, I think that's beautiful.

So play a video game and analyze it with the wisdom of experience and age and see, see what the kids are really getting out of it.

I think that's a very cool answer

And don't, do not look at it from the deficit lens of like, this is so different than the pristine experience I had.

Full curiosity, what is it that is captivating hearts and minds today?

What is this new media?

That wasn't part of my experience.

yeah, yeah.

And you know, I, I did that when Fortnite came

Yeah.

I still to this day.

Do not like playing Fortnite.

It's not my jam, but I totally get why kids enjoy it and why they're all about it, and it, makes sense.

Roblox, Minecraft, all those things, like they all, it all makes

It all makes sense.

We've just built a, a Roblox game called Words of Power, which I love and, and actually full.

It's all about social emotional learning vocabulary, but it's the same.

It's like we were playing Roblox and seeing this in action and being like, there's so much here to captivate.

Let's captivate there.

So yeah, play in their worlds.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

Well, uh, how do You want people to get in touch with you or, uh, Mrs. Wordsmith, uh, the company?

You can always visit us@mrswordsmith.com, learn a little bit more about what we're up to, but also our research on the science of reading and game-based learning.

And then of course, anyone is always welcome to reach out to me.

I'm brandon@mrswordsmith.com.

Cool.

Thank you.

so much for being part of Transformative principle today.

This has been a great

Thank you.