S8 E8: The plea to preserve deep reading, with Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

A name known throughout the literacy world, Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D., directs UCLA’s Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice. She’s published over 170 scientific articles  and four books focusing on the science of the reading brain. In her conversation with Susan in this episode, she discusses the reading brain in a digital context and delves into some of the tensions of the present moment in literacy instruction: the Science of Reading beyond just phonics, the plea to preserve deep reading, and literacy and screens. She also talks about the topics she’s most focused on and the ones she feels are most pressing in general when it comes to research on the brain and literacy. And she ends with an impassioned message to teachers, expressing her deep respect and gratitude.

Show notes:

• Book: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
• Book: Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century: The Literary Agenda
• Book: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World 
• Listen: Maryanne Wolf on The Ezra Klein Show

Quotes:

“What I would say to any teacher of balanced literacy: Let us bring our best selves and expand our knowledge. We both have things we can learn from each other. ” —Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

“Pass on why you learned to be a teacher. Pass it on to your students. Let’s make that next generation of teachers truly excited about what we can do to release the potential of every child.” —Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.

Episode Content Timestamps*

2:00: Introduction: Who is Maryanne Wolf?
7:00: Cognitive neuroscience and how it relates to early childhood literacy
14:00: Elements kids aged 0-5 need to develop before build the reading circuits in the brain
21:00: Maryanne’s first book, Proust and the Squid
27:00: Maryanne’s third book, Reader Come Home
31:00: The reading brain in the digital age: What screens do to the reading brain
43:00: Maryanne Wolf and the Science of Reading movement
48:00: Discussing presentation with the Teachers College
55:00: Most important topics in the evolving world of reading research
58:00: Maryanne’s message to teachers of deep gratitude and respect 

*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

Reading as we know it, and as we love it, is in the beginning of a set of changes that none of us can fully know or predict, but we must understand what we have.

Speaker 2: 0:48

This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading, the podcast from Amplify, where the science of reading lives. This season of the podcast has been all about knowledge and knowledge building. On this episode, I'm excited to go deep into the science of the reading brain. We'll explore how the human brain developed to read the effects of reading in a digital context and much more. My guest is cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf. She's the director of U UCLA's , center for Dyslexia, diverse Learners and Social Justice, and the author of over 170 publications and books, including Proust in The Squid, the Story and Science of the Reading, brain and Reader Come Home, the Reading Brain in a Digital World. On this episode, Wolf discusses her research and shares what she's focused on next, in the evolving world of reading research, I think you'll learn a lot about the reading brain and much more from this conversation with Dr. Maryanne Wolf. Dr. Maryanne Wolf, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. It's such an honor to have you here.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Thank you. It's a pleasure for me, I have to say this is one of those rainy lugubrious days, and I thought, what do I have to look forward to? Susan <laugh> <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 2:11

Well , that's, that's lovely. Thank you very much for that. Wow. Um, I can't imagine that any of our listeners don't know who you are, but perhaps there's the one or two out there. So I would love if you could give yourself an introduction and tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Well, the technical description is that I am the director of the Center for Dyslexia, diverse Learners and Social Justice in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA . I'm also part of what is called the collaborative between University of California and California State University on Neuroscience, diversity and Learning. So those are my titles, <laugh> , but the real, I guess, person behind the titles or underlying the titles is a mother, a mother of one wonderful, wonderful man. I , I wanna say boy, but I can't. He's a man <laugh> , who is dyslexic and is one of, I think, one of our finest young artists. Of course, that's the mother. And then I'm also the mother of a son who is Dysgraphic, and he's been working at Google and now a different , uh, a startup for startups. So we have two very different sons who have given me a lifelong set of examples of what the educational system is and is not doing to help our diverse learners. So the first thing I would say is that my job is a teacher. My job is to teach teachers. My job is to ensure that everyone understands that literacy is one of the most important and truly amazing inventions. It's a marvel that the species ever created, and it serves as a foundation for releasing the potential of all those who learn to read. So my first real job, other than being the mother, is to be a teacher. To do that, I have to be a researcher, and I have to be an advocate for children around the world. I think Susan, you know, that perhaps my greatest honor was to become an academician , um, a member of what is called the Pontifical Academy of Science. And we are a group of 80 who truly try to tackle the world's most pressing issues that impact the lives of the poor, the disenfranchised , um, refugees. But my particular role is to bring neuroscience and education to how we affect children's lives. So all of that is basically mother, teacher, researcher, child advocate, but underlying all that, <laugh> was a child who so loved to read books that, that became my lens on the world. And I actually, before neuroscience, have two degrees in English literature that really infused my desire to be of service. Hmm . I spent about a year, first in a Peace Corps like setting, and then two years in inner city schools where I came right up against what happens when children do not learn to read in rural Hawaii. It meant they would become, if they did not learn to read almost like the indentured servitude of their parents in inner city schools in the mainland. I just watched how many, especially middle school boys drop out and become a shadow of what they could have become. All of that changed me into the teacher, the researcher, the advocate. Hmm . That's lovely. So how's that

Speaker 2: 6:33

<laugh> ? Well, you know, for our listeners, I'm just gonna do a little behind the scenes. We always do a tech check, and Martin, usually at Martin's, our producer, he usually asks , um, just tell me a little bit about what you had for breakfast or for lunch. And Maryanne Wolf was the first person who actually, instead of answering that question, recited Emily Dickinson. So, congratulations, <laugh> <laugh> ,

Speaker 1: 6:57

Emily Dickinson is so much more interesting than an egg <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 7:03

Oh , this is so true. Well, you know, thank you so much for the work that you do, and I know I'm gonna ask a really, really, really basic question, but I think it's so important to level set us in terms of what we're going to talk about later. But I would love if you could explain what a cognitive neuroscientist is and how in the world the work relates to children and learning to read and write. Because cognitive neuroscientists, it sounds so, I don't know, technical and difficult to understand.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Uh , and it's anything. But , um, if you can imagine, let's say when I, I was in the Harvard Reading Lab years ago for my graduate work, and we didn't have a name, you know, we were called neuropsychologists. We were called educators. And then the field of neuroscience really was beginning at that time, and it brought together multiple fields like linguistics, child development, neurology, neuropsychology, and out of that large, if you will, range of, of different disciplines, a group was determined to study the cognitive processes, like attention, memory, how all of these processes were part of some of the most important cognitive inventions that the species has ever designed. Those are things like numeracy and literacy. And so a cognitive neuroscientist studies how cognitive processes come together to make a circuit or set of circuits. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> for these important inventions. These, and they're cognitive inventions. Reading. And I , you know, this Susan, the first line of my first book for the public posts and the squid was we were never born to read. Right? But the reality is, when you unpack that sentence, well, how did we do it then? If we weren't born to read? Well, we did it because of the brains marvelous design features that allowed us to take cognitive processes and put them together with affective processes, Maori processes, linguistic processes, all of those together and make a circuit. So a cognitive neuroscience is a subset of neuroscience in general that studies how these cognitive inventions pull together what we know about the parts. So the reading brains parts are, you know, for the first five years they're growing independently. But when we learn to read, we put a very important brain design feature together . We are able to take old parts. I, I love this actually for , as I get older, we take old parts and put them together in new ways to form something new. I mean, that is a beautiful design. And that plus neuro, what's called neuronal recycling, where we take some of those parts that were originally used to recognize a face, recognize an object. We take those parts, and this is the work of Sten Lus Juan in Paris. And we take those parts in regions of the brain that were originally, as I said, used for something else, and we recycle them and we use them to recognize letters, numbers, symbols, et cetera. Mm-Hmm . So two principles, being able to take older parts, rearrange them, and make whole new circuits or sets of circuits and neuronal recycling, that's, these are principles that cognitive neuroscientists use to study things like reading. Now I'm gonna end this little passage by saying, what's that got to do with how we teach <laugh> <laugh> ? Why is it important? Well, it's important because if you understand the parts of the reading brain and how they develop, you will have a much better way of ensuring that our parents, between zero and five in our educators, know that they are to be helping develop those parts. They're not connected, they're not connected yet. But each of those parts, like language processes, cognitive processes, social emotional , we are developing a knowledge of what, even between zero and five , we can do better to then have this platform of processes together that we can assess at five and know, ah , this child is terrific in let's say parts one to four, but five is really needs our work. So it helps us figure out what is a profile of a child's characteristics that become the reading brain before reading starts. And that information helps us teach individual children with their individual needs better. Mm-Hmm , <affirmative> . Now , I'll give you one last example. As you know, I study dyslexia. Yeah . I wanna know what a typical brain is, and I wanna know what the brain organization of an individual with dyslexia is. I take that information and I have with my colleagues, and this was all funded by N-I-C-H-D in these terribly hard randomized control treatment studies. I , your audience doesn't wanna hear that, but <laugh> , we take this information, this information, and we say, okay, how do we build the best intervention that will address why the interesting different organizations of individuals with dyslexia are not connecting those parts. So if you know enough of this, you can still do a really good job, but you can do an even better job when you understand the reading brain.

Speaker 2: 13:29

Alright . I have a follow up question on that one, because you said when kids are zero to age five, before we start building the reading circuits, there , there are these elements or these things we need to develop. Can you tell us what those things are?

Speaker 1: 13:43

Oh, absolutely. So one of the most exciting things that I get to do is give one minute and two minute radio interviews, <laugh>, and people say , you have two minutes to change the lives of children <laugh> . So tell us what the parents should do. So what the parents should do is talk to their children, read to their children every single night, make it a ritual of fun and sing. And a lot of people have an unexpected reaction to when I say sing. But what I mean is all of this helps develop the language system. The language system has many parts. I wanna help your listeners by giving them an ignominious acronym, <laugh>. Wow,

Speaker 2: 14:29

That's a big word. <laugh> .

Speaker 1: 14:32

Possum p you , you are developing the pH names of the language, the tiniest use of sounds, and you're developing prosody , which is the melody. I only wish that I could have your listeners know that their children at four months are even before, sometimes as early as six weeks. I have one child who at six weeks, David would go , uh oh . So he would imitate the melody of the sounds. So parents, while you think your child has not a clue to what you're saying, that's only half true. Mm-Hmm . Your child is capturing the melody over time, it , that child is capturing the particular phoning of whatever the first language or second language is. Hmm . So the p is for the phonology, the, the sound system. The o When you're reading your child, of course they don't know what you're saying in the beginning, but they are gradually doing all kinds of things. They are looking at these Mm , these visual patterns. They have no idea what a letter is, but they are learning the conventions of print. Uh, Susan, did you ever read Goodnight Moon?

Speaker 2: 15:53

Oh, yes, yes. And to my children. Yes. Yes,

Speaker 1: 15:57

Absolutely. And now the real question is, did they at some points tell you, mom, you skipped <laugh>?

Speaker 2: 16:03

Oh, yes. 'cause

Speaker 1: 16:04

You had read 100 times in the Great Green Room where it was a telephone and a red balloon and a cow jumping over the moon. And the little mouse, of course, is on different pages, and you have read it 96 times and you skip a page and they mom go back. Well, they are capturing the conventions of print, how it moves in our language or in English left to right in Hebrew, right to left in up the language, up to , I mean, you, you get it. You're getting conventions. You're also getting the idea that those little squiggly things have to do with words. You don't know exactly the connection, but you're making them. So the orthographic element of possum is that you're learning the conventions of a print. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> a book. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . The SS is what's really, really important, stands for semantics and syntax. The kids who have books read to them, have a different brain in the language regions. They are getting the meanings gradually represented of these words. And with the parent who is catching on that they understand or don't understand certain words. There's an interaction between parent and child that's beautiful. It's dialogic, if you will, but they're learning the how words work. And they're learning that words, even though they have not a clue about syntax, they are getting the earliest aspects of grammar. I mean, one of my teachers, two of my teachers were the Chomsky's, Noam and Carol . And, you know, Chomsky said, what child ever learned or heard Wented , of course they did it , or God , they didn't hear that. But what they were doing was capturing syntactic knowledge and applying it cognitively. So when we read to our children, they are getting the rules of how language works. They're getting the meanings. And the last thing is the, you ultimately, as they get to be five and six, they learn the to understand. And that's a cognitive concept. The alphabetic principle that words have sounds, and the sounds have letters that symbolize them. Hmm . And the m most people don't know what a morphine is, but a morphine is the smallest unit of meaning. And lo and behold, our kids have about 20 to 30 morphemes already by the time they're two or three. If their parents are like the ed, the er, the assets , et cetera . Nobody knows that they're giving their children morphemes. But they are every time they read and speak. And the singing part is because singing and music, you would think it helps melody in speech. Well, yes it does. But even more so, it's getting after the rhythm of speech and that rhythm are intervals of time that later have a lot to offer. The brain is learning how to, in fact, have timing mechanisms for language, and that ultimately will help build the child's reading system. We have data in kindergartners who get music every day , versus the ones who get, you know, once a week and pitiful at that. And the ones who get music every day in some just modest form of training in music, they do better in reading.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 19:55

So all these are things that parents can do. But those books, you know, I I didn't even say half of what those books think of the social emotional lessons they get from George and Martha and Frog and Toad , and then later Charlotte's Webb . These are, this is the Moral laboratory Mm-Hmm . That we want our children to have because they have begun through story to leave themselves and think about what the feelings of others are. Has our society ever needed that capacity more than now, Susan?

Speaker 2: 20:33

Isn't that true? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you spoke a little bit about your very first book, Proust in The Squid, and it's really considered a classic. Yeah .

Speaker 1: 20:46

<laugh> , who would think, huh?

Speaker 2: 20:48

That's so cool. For our , for our listeners who aren't familiar with it, can you, well, first of all, I'd love to know why you wrote it, what the motivation was, but also a little bit of what it's about.

Speaker 1: 20:59

So it has a very unusual title. It does first in the Squid, the Story and Science of the Reading Brain. And really it's a metaphor. And in an analogy, it's a metaphor for pros belief that at the heart of reading, we leave the author's wisdom behind to discover our own. So Proust insight into reading is so important for that book and for me, because it was, it was for me, two insights, and I'll come to the squid in a second . Okay . But the two insights from Proust were that one reading is about building this sanctuary of thought, a place for our own best thoughts. Where what the author gives us is like a Petri dish for our own best thinking, our, our hopes. But that requires a reflective contemplative aspect to reading that will come, I'm sure in another part of our interview, to the fact that there's an atrophying of that reflective capacity. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . But when I wrote the book, I had two aspects of Prost in mind. One was this amazing belief that it is the, the foundation or a place where we can go to build from the author to our own novel thought and insights. But the second part of Proust was, he called it the reading is that fertile miracle of communication that takes place in the midst of solitude. Now, just think of that fertile, fertile communication, both in proof in the Squid, but even more obviously in reader. Come home. My last book, I believe that the best thing that we authors can do is give a dialogue, a means for communicating to the reader. And this dialogue is what I hoped all of my, my my , I have, I have several books that are edited, but the three books that I wrote, only two of which are really read. There's a book for Oxford Press that nobody reads . I guess you know what has to do a few things for Oxford Press <laugh> . They , it was for their English professors, and I'm sure their English professors read it. But these other two were really my attempt to communicate a body of beautiful knowledge about reading and alogia for the power of reading and what it does for people who take it for granted. Mm-Hmm . And when I wrote Proston The Squid, it was an alogia for the beauty and the, the miracle that reading can give every person who learns to connect, not just, you know, the decoding kind of brain. You get the information fine. No, no, no. But to think deeply about what we read as a change agent. So Proston the squid took me seven years to write. Wow. I was a mom and I could only, you know, write it night a little bit in the summers. So it took seven years. And I think people look at this and laugh, but I wrote it totally by hand, <laugh>,

Speaker 2: 24:43

That's impressive.

Speaker 1: 24:45

And I did it because I was an old English major for whom the act of writing first before typewriter, before a laptop was, you know, it gave me a certain rhythm of conation , if you will, a rhythm of thought and slowed me down so that I could be sure that it reflected the layers of meaning that I hoped to convey to the reader, to elicit their layers of meaning. So always this reciprocal relationship between what I wanted people to know and love about reading. Mm-Hmm .

Speaker 2: 25:29

That's so lovely. And you know, what I love about Proust and the squid is that you, you really take and develop an understanding of a scientific understanding of reading and writing. Might I say literacy? Yes . But you do it in a context that is accessible and motivating and really beautiful to see it as something that is a lifelong gift as opposed to let's just learn how kids read in a very sort of cold. And, and so if the listeners haven't read that book, it's one you have read because it is just beautiful and lovely. So thank you for that gift to the world.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Thank you. It was, you know, it was a gift to me too , um, at just very one sad note. Um, I was very sick at one point during that time period, and I felt I have given the world my children, I've given the world what I've taught, but nobody but those students ever got what I know. And so the book was my hope to give people what I know and love. And so luckily I recovered. I'm fine. It's, you know , years and years ago. But at that time, I realized what a book does to the author. You know, it gives you an opportunity to feel that no matter what you have, given what you know as best you can to others.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Hmm mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . That's beautiful. And you followed that up then in a similar theme, it's sort of an extension or a continuation with reader come home, which dives into a more modern context. Would you like to talk a little bit more about that? Yes .

Speaker 1: 27:21

So Reader Come home really began in the last chapter of Prost and the Squid <laugh> . And it , there's a kind of a irony and a , a bad joke on me , <laugh> , because here I finished what I considered, you know, the great Alogia for how wonderful reading is. And this was 2000, it was published at the end of 2007. Okay . Beginning of 2008, but I have to turn it in right almost a year before.

Speaker 2: 27:53

Sure.

Speaker 1: 27:54

And I realized that I had been ripped Van Winkle <laugh> , that all all I'm writing is changing right now under our fingertips. So I had to rewrite the beginning and the end so that it would reflect the fact that reading as we know it, and as we love it, is in the beginning of a set of changes that none of us can fully know or predict, but we must understand what we have. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And so I ended up really with the hope that people would not let go of what we had. So to preserve what we had, but Reader come home actually was the third in the series. As I said, Oxford University Press had something that they really wanted for teachers, professors of English literature to understand the reading brain. I wrote that at the Center for Advanced Study Behavioral Sciences at Stanford as a sabbatical. And I was very pleased with it. And then nobody read it. <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 29:08

So this is book number two.

Speaker 1: 29:09

This is number two. It's called Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century. You've never heard of it, Susan,

Speaker 2: 29:14

Right? I have not. I have not. I'm so sorry. I feel terrible.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Has nobody has , you know, Oxford English professors have, it's their literary agenda series . But I'd done all this research for it, and then I thought, and the research is changing and changing and changing, and so I thought I had one more sabbatical like experience at the, what's called Cass bs , the Center for Advanced Study . And I thought, I have to give it to the world. This is becoming one of the most, if you will, pernicious invisible threats to reading as well as one of the great advantages, because it both increases what you can read, but potentially short circuits how you read. Mm . And so reader come home, I thought, we are on the frontier of knowledge. We have a lot of knowledge already that's quite ominous in terms of children reading on the screen all the time. And so I thought, I have to write this as an epistolary book where I am giving my knowledge, but I know the reader, especially the reader of the future, would have more knowledge. Mm-Hmm . So we would have to have a dialogue. So I made it a set of letters that would give the reader at that moment and the reader of the future, a chance to, to argue with me. Thomas Aquinas says , iron sharpens iron. Well, I wanted the iron of the reading brain at that moment in time and my increased understanding of what I call deep reading to be in print and the iron. You can sharpen it, you can change it, but here is what we know and reader beware. And so it became, for me, both an awakening of what was changing in the reading brain if we're on the screen all the time. And what happens is that the reading brain is certainly capable of what I call deep reading. And I'll explain that in one second. But it is tending to hasten and skimm . So the eye movement research shows us that when we're on a screen, often as not, we do an f sample, the first line, sample the middle, and then go down, get the bottom or a Z, and the Z we sample the first part and we zoom downward spot, word spot, word spot, and then go to the bottom and get the point , so to speak. Hmm . Now, for all those of you who know how hard writing is, what you have done to the author is Skip <laugh> , half of the creative work that went into making what Italo Calvino , the great Italian writer said, is the basically calls it most used , the , the perfect word, the most important way to express your thought, and how much time that takes to really try your hardest to get there. Well, when we skimm, we skimm three things that are worrisome to me. One, we don't give attention to details. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and let's say a good mystery like by Joel D Care , we're not gonna get some of the most important details he put in there because you skimmed and haven't gotten them. We, that's, I'm , I'm somewhat facetious, but only somewhat. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because the sequencing of details is necessary to understand the plot. And Ann Mangan and the E Read network in Europe really show us how skimming does in fact, short circuit our ability to get those details and the sequence of the plot. We know that from a search. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . The second thing is related to Elvino . We, we miss beauty. David Brooks actually wrote an essay a few years ago, and it was called, at Some Point Beauty Went Missing in How We Read. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And he was so Right. He hadn't read my book. He actually has read it by now, which is he quoted me once, you know? Yeah . My heart went pounding. <laugh> <laugh> . But the reality is that for those of us who truly see the written word as not just information, but as an attempt to use the text to evoke all kinds of feelings, feelings of understanding the other, perspective taking Mm-Hmm . Understanding beauty and feeling beauty. And the novelist, Marilyn Robinson once wrote that beauty is a part of what makes written language in novels alive. So a lot of times when you skip and skimm, you not only miss details, you miss beauty and you miss the chance to really enter, absorb the print so much that you pass the theologian, John Gen always says this pass over into the perspective of others. That's the second thing that goes missing. The third, you know, if I had to rank them in importance, the third is the most important. And that is when you skimm and word spot and miss details and miss perspective taking , you are not getting a true ability to be critically analytic of the multiple layers possibly there that you are missing by skimming. Mm . So if I had to rank what's most worrisome to me, it's that our public is being anesthetized by the screen to just get the information, you know? Yeah . You're , you're just sort of dulled into get it done, get it done, get it done. So you hasten along and you actually short circuit the reading brain circuitry. You don't give attention to, to what I began with the Prussian idea of the inner sanctuary. You not only don't give time for that, that's the ultimate, but the pen ultimate is critical analysis and empathy. Hmm . And you are shortcircuiting both. Hmm . So deep reading is a set of processes. We, you know, a lot of times people just say comprehension. Well , comprehension is much more than one word. Right. It's analogy. Yeah . It's background knowledge. Yeah . It's empathy perspective, taking inference, induction deduction, critical analysis. And finally, only finally if we get there this Prussian sanctuary. So you can't do all those interactive processes if you're skimming, skimming, skimming. Hmm . You could do some of them and you do get information. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> that's what we both do most of our day. You know, I'm like everybody else, but you will have things go missing the more you skimm and the more the skimming takes over how you read. Hmm . Now that does not mean you can't use deep reading on a screen. Of course you can't. But I ask the reader, in reader come home to ask one question before they read. Why are you reading it? What is your intention here? If it's just a , a really a skimming of the information to just get that under your belt, fine. Use the screen for six hours a day. But those things that are important, I print out Hmm . Those things that really need my scrutiny. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , I absolutely use print, whether it's a book and a lot of books are sent to me to review or, you know, do a blurb for Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And I say to them, send me both. Send me both. I make a quick assessment whether or not I can do this book. Mm-Hmm . And then if it's something that I really know I have to study and give a blurb for, then I have the text. Hmm . Interesting. I will say caveat, there are those who have no time, and yet their intention requires that. And a wonderful Bruce Sunstein is a lawyer in an intellectual rights lawyer, intellectual property rights lawyer in Boston. And he wrote me a beautiful letter about deep reading and how as a lawyer, he has to do so much work on the screen. And he says what he does, he freezes it. Oh , he freezes it. And he says he will study a paragraph like that. So that's as deep as I, I want anybody to go. So there are different things that you can do to establish deep reading regardless of device, and we will have devices we have no idea about. That's why my hope is that reader come home becomes a classic too . Yeah . So it becomes a dialogue with the future readers. You know, 10 years from now when our devices have changed, you know, there'll be so many devices Yeah . That we will use that are different from what we have now. But please preserve the deep reading brain.

Speaker 2: 39:20

We'll be right back for this knowledge focus season of the podcast. We've asked the finalist for last year's Science of Reading star awards to offer some of their thoughts and advice on knowledge building throughout this season. We've been sharing some of their insights. This time we're hearing from Andrea Mason, an academic interventionist from County Line Elementary School in Georgia. Andrea was a finalist for the 2023 Rookie of the Year award, and she shared her advice for young educators.

Speaker 3: 39:53

I think the first thing that I would advise the new teachers to do is to look to other teachers in their building for help and for support. Um, look to your veteran teachers. Look to teachers that you see doing things that you would like to be able to incorporate into your classroom. Ask them if you could come and observe them. Talk to your administrators about giving you an opportunity to have coverage in your classroom so that you could go and observe. I think seeing things in action in other classrooms is a great way to then take that new learning and incorporate it into what you're doing in your classroom.

Speaker 2: 40:32

That was Andrea Mason. An academic interventionist from County Line Elementary School in Georgia. Applications are now open for the third annual Science of Reading Star awards . Find out more information and submit a nomination at amplify.com/soar-star-awards. And now back to our conversation with Dr. Maryanne Wolf. You know what I love about that book reader come home? Is that you actually don't, it's not an either or for you. Right. It's like you need to understand how to interact with text differently. I love that you said you need to understand your purpose for reading. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . But recognizing the fact that we actually have to do both.

Speaker 1: 41:17

We have to do both, and we do both. I did a , I did another podcast like, not like this, but sort of <laugh> , um, not all the Science of Reading, but On Reader Come Home, it was with Ezra Klein last year.

Speaker 2: 41:31

Oh. With Ezra Klein . It's a great podcast. We'll link our listeners in the show notes to that one because it was really, really great.

Speaker 1: 41:38

It was, it was truly one of my favorite podcasts. And it was in part because he did his homework so well, just like you do Susan, but he did a test of himself. Yep . He read one letter on print and one letter on the screen, and he experienced for himself the difference. And so it's not ever either or. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , you can't be because we are in a digital culture, but that means all the more that we must be vigilant. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> .

Speaker 2: 42:15

Hmm . Well, you're , I was gonna say your two books, but now your three books, now that I know you have three <laugh> doesn't

Speaker 1: 42:22

Matter. Now what's gonna read that one?

Speaker 2: 42:23

Oh, we're , but we're gonna link our listeners in the show notes, so that'll see all three. Okay . Um , they're really all about though this complexity of the reading and the writing process. And so I'm wondering how you feel like you fit into this Science of Reading movement.

Speaker 1: 42:40

Well, <laugh> , that's an easy one. I'm in the middle of it, <laugh>, because the neuroscience of reading is one of the many things that, if you will, infuses the science of reading. Now, the real problem is that a lot of people think the science of reading just means phonics. And they have no idea that the science of reading is this evolving body of knowledge that's really historically very long and much, much more than thinking that it says you have to use phonics. Now, I have just finished some very tough talks with people who don't like, or in the past didn't believe phonics was necessary.

Speaker 2: 43:31

Right. <laugh> and

Speaker 1: 43:32

Worse <laugh> . But , um, I think what I want people to understand is that the science of reading involves an entire historical and still evolving body of knowledge. When we talk about science of reading to, let's say some teachers who really have never had to study it, they have the false assumption that it means you have to use phonics. Well, the reality is that that is a part. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> of a series of studies. Reed Lyon was one of the great amazing people at N-I-C-H-D who encouraged people like me, Maureen Lovett, Robin Morris, my colleagues, to say, look, you guys, you've been doing all this. Maybe we could call it bench work on reading. What about your implementation and intervention? Right, right. Yeah . Now, people have to understand that the science of reading includes 20 years of intervention studies by people like us. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And the last thing that the program that I created out of that N-I-C-H-D movement was an expanded version of foundational skills. Foundational skills aren't just decoding and fluency. Underlying fluency are all these things that I said earlier were possum Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And that means that meaning grammar, morphology, all of that understanding orthographic letter patterns, understanding alphabetic knowledge in addition to phonics, but very importantly, connected and integrated. That's what part of our contribution to the science of reading showed us. That if you do just business as usual in an average school day, okay, you're gonna get decent scores. Not nothing to write home about, but decent, you'll probably miss about 30% of your kids Hmm . Are 20 mm-Hmm . <affirmative> certainly you'll miss the kids who are dyslexic, those 10% mm-Hmm mm-Hmm . But you'll miss the next 20% probably. But if you add a phonics, a systematic structured phonics program, you're gonna really make sure many more kids are, are reading well. But if you add what we call multi confidential interventions, and that's a tough word, but people should really learn it, multi-component stands for all the parts of the reading brain. Hmm . Okay . The science of reading is not reducible to phonics, but nor does it ever neglect its systematic integrated use. And the real problem, you know, I always say that everybody, as we make, you know, these various pendulum swings, we always make these huge mistakes. The mistake in balance literacy and the whole language was to ignore the importance of these foundational skills. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , the people who only look at one or two of those foundational skills are not increasing the knowledge of the whole. Hmm . So if I have to make one mistake, it's definitely phonics. No question about it. But why should you, why shouldn't you expand your knowledge here? Yeah. And the people over here, the , you know, to ignore phonics was a huge issue. Huge, huge , huge destructive. What has to happen is that everybody has to expand their knowledge. And if we do a good job, we can really bridge and bring together the expertise of these, all these teachers. Let no teacher feel disenfranchised, let no teacher feel that they have wasted their life because they didn't do X or Y. That's not what science, the emerging, evolving science tells us. We really have to be systematic. Absolutely systematic. We have to be structured, we have to integrate all of these foundational skills with story.

Speaker 2: 47:50

Hmm . Hmm . That's beautiful. Which, you know, the next question I was gonna ask you is Okay, let's talk a little bit about this presentation that you did with, I think Teachers college reunion or something. No . You , you took, you took a little heat for that. Can you talk about why you decided to do it? Maybe it was more than a little bit of a heat, huh?

Speaker 1: 48:08

Uh, yeah. Uh, the , the , uh, and let's put it this way. There was heat that was worried for me. Ah , and then there was heat that was, oh my God, what is a , what do we need to hear about science <laugh> ? So there were two different forms of heat, and I actually feel like it was the best thing that I've been asked to do in a long time. So, teachers college, the President Thomas Bailey and Mary Aaron Worth , and at the time when the first in dictation came was from Lucy Calkins. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Um , there was a lot of controversy, and I remember writing her and saying, I accept this, but I will accept it with the caveat that I don't endorse any program. Mm-Hmm . Including my own Bel program. I don't endorse, when I'm talking science and giving a science presentation, I am only a scientist and child advocate. And so I had to establish that there was no endorsing of, of any program. Any program. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . But there were those who believed that the science of reading first should always be classified as the phonics advocates. Mm-Hmm . So, my job was to really teach the reading brain to people who had never heard about a reading brain circuit, had no sense that it had anything to do with them, them themselves. They were already teaching very well, a good 60% of their kids. They knew, many of them knew they needed more, but some of them felt that the pendulum swing was so wild and so oppositional and aggressive in some places, that they had even more of a zealous adherence to what they thought was the best for their children. And they really thought it was best. And so I wasn't unaware that people felt they were doing the right thing. And my job was to help gradually bring them to a desire to expand their knowledge. And that's what teachers are doing for their children. And that's what we need to do for each other. We need to expand our knowledge of what foundational skills are. We need to expand our knowledge of how to integrate. And I had to step on a lot of toes. One of the toes is cherry picking . A lot of districts are out there saying, okay, we'll do this phonics. And so they throw in Yeah . Something the teachers haven't been trained properly, and so they're cherry picking . Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> little here, little there. That's not structured. And often it's not even sufficiently explicit. So it's certainly not the systematic, the systematicity of how we wanna learn. So this requires a lot of learning, but it's beautiful learning. And once you look at it as something exciting, I quoted Rka , um, be a beginner, always a beginner <laugh> . And I really meant that for them and for me too. My newest work on Ravo is incorporating all of these emphases on social, emotional and asset-based learning. So I'm learning along with everybody. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . That's , that's the nature of what we do. And I get so excited about, you know, the changes in how we understand dyslexia. Dyslexia is heterogeneity. It's not just one kind of impediment or challenge. And it's not, without looking at all the equity issues in a child's educational background, there's so many things that are helping us understand, not just dyslexia, but struggling readers. Whether it's for covid or language impoverishment, our background, our poor teaching, the behaviors are looking like they're dyslexic. Right? Yeah. So what we do in our interventions and in our diagnosis and assessment for dyslexia and in our research, is helpful for everybody. Hmm . And that's what I want the balance literacy teachers to know so that they can do a better job with the kids that they know they weren't able to reach. Hmm . So I want them to feel good about what they are doing for all their children. Hmm . That's lovely. So I really, really ultimately thank that opportunity to give the teachers College Saturday reunion talk. And then I gave a dialogue with Lucy Calkins. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , uh, for her. She has a , these things I don't know much about, but it was called a <inaudible> club . And I really, I , I didn't know a whole lot, but , um, you know, what I said to her and what I would say to any teacher of balanced literacy, let us bring our best selves and expand our knowledge. Hmm . And we both have things that we can learn from each other. Hmm . And it's a bridge, but it has to be a bridge that's explicit, systematic, and structured. And integrated. Yeah. That bridge exists in, its, its early stages right now. Hmm . And I have a lot of hope, but, you know, of course I'm in the science of reading. I've been working on the science of reading since my dissertation at the Harvard Reading Lab on the word review process , you know, oh my God. My whole life <laugh> . So it's kind of a joke that, if any, well, it's not a joke, but I think the real hope for all of us is that science can be for all.

Speaker 2: 54:33

Yeah. And science is for all. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 54:36

It's for all. It's for all.

Speaker 2: 54:38

What , what are you thinking about, speaking of science, the most important topic? If you're thinking about, you know, this evolving world of reading research ,

Speaker 1: 54:48

Um , my group is part of a collaborative, as I said , uh, university of California and California , uh, state university. We really need to get this information into pre-service, into the teaching of new teachers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we're working in the collaborative on a set of modules on dyslexia , uh, and on screening on multilingual learners. Another very, very, very important topic. Multilingual bi dialectical, Julie Washington and, and Sean Robinson . And oh my gosh, there's so, so , I , I , all these names are coming in my head. <laugh> Weaver . I mean, I keep , I keep thinking all these beautiful people who are working on, how do we get this in places where equity is our major issue. We can't let any fourth grader out of our hands Yeah. Without making them fluent comprehenders. And we are, so what do we do? We've gotta make sure our middle school teachers really have more resources that's in pre-service, and that's in professional development. So when I said I'm a mother and a teacher first , um, and then I'm a researcher, and then I'm an advocate , um, and then I'm an old English major <laugh>. I want all of that to come together in our look at rejuvenating the intellectual and emotional and social lives of our teachers. They have been given what society failed to do upon their shoulders. And so they have to write all the ills that society failed, and at the same time be the best of teachers, and to be expected to have all this knowledge and all this training. And a lot of times they're trained on one thing, one year, one next, and that Mm-Hmm . We, we have to do a better job from the start with our pre-service, and we have to give the best professional development. And Susan, that's your job. You're part of that. You are part of that professional development of our teachers. I love that. That's why I agreed to do this.

Speaker 2: 57:13

Thank you. And we are so honored that you agreed to do it, because we know you're very busy <laugh> . Um , and you're working very hard with all your research. And so we're just honored. Before we go, any final words for, for those that are working every day, day in, day out, helping students learn how to read and write,

Speaker 1: 57:34

I will tell you, I give you my deepest debt of gratitude. Um, I began my work as a teacher. I know how hard it is. I actually got colitis, my third year <laugh> .

Speaker 2: 57:49

Oh no.

Speaker 1: 57:50

Yeah, I did. And it's because of all the things that are expected. And that was in an inner city school with 45 seventh and eighth graders in a classroom. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . I'll never forget the pressures that teachers have, and I, I, I ask you is remember, never forget that you are doing a profound service. And it is often just like reading taken for granted and not given the full honor and recognition and respect and admiration for what you do. I, as a reading researcher, salute you. I give you my deepest thanks for what you're doing, and I want you to pass it on. Pass on why you learned to be a teacher. Pass it on to your students. Let's make that next generation of teachers truly excited about what we can do to release the potential of every child. That's your job and my job. And never lose hope. Never lose hope, and never stop learning. <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 59:03

What a great ending. God's

Speaker 1: 59:05

Me God's godspeed . That's my last word in my book and my last word for teachers. Godspeed.

Speaker 2: 59:11

Thank you again, Dr. Maryanne Wolf for joining us. We really appreciate it. It's been such a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 59:16

Thank you, Susan. Truly,

Speaker 2: 59:19

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Maryanne Wolf. She's the director of UCLA's Center for Dyslexia, diverse learners and Social Justice and Professor in residence in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA . She's also the author of over 170 publications and books. We can't include all of them, but check out the show notes for links to some of that amazing work. We'd love to hear your thoughts on Maryanne's work and this conversation. Please add to the conversation in our Facebook discussion group, science of Reading. The Community Science of Reading. The podcast is brought to you by Amplify. For more information on how amplify leverages the science of reading, go to amplify.com/ck a next time on the show, we're joined by Dr. Hagen Huang for a wide ranging conversation. Filled with useful takeaways.

Speaker 4: 1:00:14

Knowledge building cannot wait . As you can see, the reciprocal, the bi direction relation between knowledge and reading starts from the beginning of schooling

Speaker 2: 1:00:27

That's coming up next time. Don't miss that. Or any other upcoming episodes by subscribing to Science of Reading the podcast, wherever you find your podcast. And while you're there, please consider giving us a rating and leaving us a review. Thank you again for listening.