- Hello and welcome.

I am Robin Pizzo Director of education here at WKAR.

I am glad you could join us tonight for this screening and discussion of the film, Right To Read.

Presented by WKAR Public Media.

The Capital Area United Way.

Ingam great Start collaborative and engaging families in early literacy.

As much as we would love to see you all in person we are thankful to have this opportunity to connect online bringing you engaging content while keeping everyone safe.

Before we get started with the discussion I have a few quick housekeeping notes.

Events like this from WKAR are made possible with support from people like you.

Thank you to those that have donated to WKAR.

If you are not a WKAR donor, yet you can do so at the donate to WKAR link on this page or call (517) 884-4700.

For tonight's discussion, please enter your questions for our panelists into the comment box, and I will put them to the panelists as time allows.

Now it is my pleasure to introduce our panel for tonight.

Dr.Patricia Edwards, Professor of language and literature and teacher education at Michigan State University.

Michelle Nicholson great start collaborative, and Dr. Michael Rice State Superintendent.

Thank you all for joining us.

Let's get started.

What were your first impressions of the film?

We'll start with you Dr. Rice.

- I thought the film was powerful.

We certainly have a right to literacy broadly writ in this country, both for parents and for our young people as a, as a rule, whether you think that it's a legal right or moral/ethical right.

It most assuredly is there that we need to do better for our children.

- And Dr.Edwards - I thought it was a fabulous video.

What really impressed me were the voices of the different people that were in the video.

The parents talking about some of their real life struggles and trying to support their children to read, looking at this whole notion of how teachers think, how parents think.

And of course, listening to the people that sometimes don't make the decisions about what happens in schools.

That was a very impressive for me.

- And Michelle.

- Well, many of the same things that both Dr. Rice and Dr. Edwards said, I think another piece that came through to me was concern, concern from parents and from teachers.

But hearing that there's strategies out there and people are trying their hardest to work at giving children a chance to read.

- Very good.

How do you perceive the Read by Grade Three law and its requirements?

Dr. Edwards we'll start with you.

- First of all I think sometimes we can make rules and laws and they sound really good, but getting down to implementing it can be something very different.

Through out the video.

I kept hearing people say that the parent is the child's first and most influential teacher, but we also make an assumption that all parents send their kids to school the same way.

And a lot of parents really don't understand the schooling process and how they can support their children.

And I do think that requiring something it's nothing wrong with saying that every child should learn to read and literacy is a right.

But I do think we have to also look at how children are prepared and how do we support them before they come to school.

Because teachers are given a curriculum and they all assume that if a child is in kindergarten or first grade, that that child is meeting that curriculum standard.

But a lot of times they're not, kids might be developmentally one age and chronologically another age.

So I think laws are fine, but we have to make sure that every child has equitable access to that curriculum.

And if they don't support them - And Michelle - Yeah to piggyback on that I think what supports can we provide to families?

And that we really do need to work on literacy and reading from birth.

It isn't something that starts at kindergarten once you hit the school doors.

So thinking about all of those supports, I saw families in the documentary doing lots of great things reading books, doing nursery rhymes, and just the love of between the parents and the children.

And that interaction was very powerful to see.

And we really need to help foster that prior to the kids coming to school.

- All right Dr.Rice.

- So to the law, there's a flaw in the law and the flaw is retentions.

We ought not to be retaining young people in an effort to improve their literacy.

That doesn't work.

It's not research based.

We are not to be doing it in the state of Michigan to what Professor Edwards and Ms. Nicholson shared.

We should be about literacy from birth on some would argue in the womb on, but certainly from birth at a minimum on.

That we ought to have preschool not for 37,000 children in the state of Michigan but all 64,000 eligible GSRP students ought to receive great start readiness program, preschool.

Number one, number two, we ought to be about doubling down in our professional development on the literacy essentials.

But in addition to the training around the scientific we ought to be about joy and engagement and identity and diversity in the literature that we present to our young people.

We ought to have diverse classroom libraries across the state.

So the children can see themselves and others mirrors and windows in the language of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop former Professor at Ohio State University, so that they can see themselves and others in their literature.

That reading ought to be more than simply rudimentary and a learning of rules and the science around reading.

It ought to be about engagement and joy and excitement and identity and diversity about lifelong learning so that children are inspired to read.

Not that they feel required to read.

We ought to be about parent education and family literacy and community literacy about which Professor Edwards knows far more than I do for that matter, most people.

And we ought to be about community partnerships in literacy so that everywhere children go they ought to be exposed to literacy rocket football, literacy AAU, basketball, literacy little league baseball, literacy, church, mosque synagogue literacy.

Doesn't matter where you turn in your comings and goings at this child.

You ought to bump into literacy because adults are in your ears in a good way, not in a bad way but in a positive way about the power of literacy.

- All right now current indicators suggest nearly 50% of mid Michigan third graders will not be profession in reading this year.

If they were all to test what impact will this have on classrooms in our community if their retention mandate stands.

I'll let you speak to that Dr. Rice.

- So I don't believe that our educators feel strongly supportive of the retention mandate.

I think quite the contrary I think our educators feel for the most part there are exceptions, but for the most part as I do that, retentions are bad law.

They're bad policy.

And I think that they will seek to work with parents to access those good cause exemptions within the law to the extent possible.

So I'm hoping that a minimum number of young people are retained and that there's a minimum impact on classrooms in the fall.

But I think to your point any child who is retained is going to be effected and more likely than not in a long-term way and in a negative way, in a stigmatizing way, to take a child who's five or six, and to say you know what, we're going to do this again because this was such a fun experience.

And you might be able to say to a five or six year old that we're going to redo the grade and make that work in such a fashion that he or she doesn't perceive that to be stigmatizing.

The same is not true for a nine-year-old.

You're not gonna convince that nine-year-old that that's anything other than stigma and anything other than an implicit referendum on his or her capacity to learn not his or her reading proficiency at a moment, but his or her inherent capacity to learn, which is not the case.

But that doesn't mean that that won't be the lesson that many of our third graders who if retained will we'll draw from the experience.

- Yes and what.

- I would like to make a comment in relationship to that is like when we retain children what are we gonna do differently?

So if you retain them and you do and what happened, didn't work year one what's gonna happen year two.

And so that's always been a concern of mine is that if you're gonna retain a child you need to have a different kind of plan, a different kind of structure for what you're gonna do differently in order to engage this child.

- Okay.

And then what ways have you seen remote learning affecting children's reading development?

This is for you, Michelle.

- I think it's a continuum really.

There are certainly children that are gonna be impacted negatively because of the multiple directions they're being pulled.

Their parents were being pulled while trying to hold down a job and support them.

I think that there are some children too, who probably have flourished that being able to be free of some distractions maybe has helped them focus.

I think we're gonna see children all along the continuum in terms of their ability to maintain where they were prior to the pandemic and move forward.

- And Dr. Edwards.

- I think for some children this has not been a good year with COVID 19.

It depends on how things were structured.

In some households, people have desks for their children.

And of course, for those parents who were able to stay at home and at the kinds of jobs they could stay at home those kids are probably gonna get a lot more assistance than parents who have to go to work and they didn't have that kind of structure in their house.

And of course, the fact that, teachers have children, so who's teaching their child while they're teaching somebody else's child.

So it's not just teachers are parents.

And, and so I think for some children this is just not been a good year for them because they have not had the guidance and organizational structure that could help them.

- All right.

I'm gonna look to a few questions from our audience.

Sharon asks, what are the consequences for Michigan, If a majority of students don't take the M step?

I think that might be a good question for you Dr. Rice.

- So this year there are no consequences associated there with, because the US department of education granted our accountability waivers not our assessment waiver.

But our accountability waivers and permitted us to set aside certain accountability requirements including the requirement that 95% of our children test in order for us to access federal funding.

So there are no adverse impacts to the state to local school districts, to local schools.

If children don't test, there are some that argue that the individual child where families don't benefit and are adversely affected because they don't have those test results.

That's not my perspective however.

My perspective is that we have benchmark assessments to determine where children are to help both parents and educators know that.

And then to focus intervention supports for those young people.

So I think this is a year where they're aren't consequences next year it's a different story.

- All right, Nicole asks how can we expect parents to teach kids to read from birth when we still have so many adults or parents that can't read, and we don't provide enough resources for them to learn.

Michelle you wanna take a stab at that one?

- Well I know Robin, we've worked on some projects in the past that were two generation approaches.

And I think those are the kinds of things that can be really successful in helping the parents experience success and improve their literacy skills as well as helping their children.

So I think anything we can do to promote two generation strategies would be the way to go.

- Dr. Edwards - One of the things I would say, I mean, when I first came to Michigan, I worked at a professional development school.

And one of the things that I suggested to teachers is creating a scope and sequence of parent involvement built around the curriculum.

And so if a parent has a child in kindergarten for that year, they are in kindergarten.

Whatever grade their child is in they're in that grade and showing parents how to support their child throughout the year, rather than just having open house and fall in spring conferences.

Because a lot of times parents hear what you say.

They don't know how to implement what you ask.

And so involving parents in meaningful ways, built around the curriculum is a way to help parents understand what their child is doing.

Because a lot of parents, everybody's been to first grade but they might've forgotten what kinds of things are happening in school.

And so teachers need to be informative with showing them rather than telling them, showing them what it is their child is doing and helping them.

- All right.

What are long-term goals you like to see in place for tackling the reading crisis and promoting literacy?

This sorta encapsulates a question from our audiences that asks, if we don't do retention, then what are the solutions?

What do we do?

We'll start with Dr. Edwards - For one thing, we need to figure out where children are and try to support where they are.

A lot of times teachers will make an assumption.

If a child is in a particular grade, that's where that child's skill levels should be.

I said, start, we don't teach.

We have to teach the child and figure out ways to support that particular child.

And of course, kids come in early, they come in emergent and they come in fluid and figuring out where they are and teaching them where they are rather than teaching them where you think they should be.

That's what I think, because it can be very frustrating.

If a teacher sets her standard this way, I'm not saying lower your standards, but we have to teach where the kid is and then bring the kid along.

- All right Dr. Rice.

- So again, preschool for every eligible child instead of 37,000 kids getting GSRP preschool each year 64,000 children getting GSRP preschool each year.

More professional development on the literacy essentials.

More reading for young people more work on joy, engagement, identity diversity.

We had a great diversity and literature conference just a few months ago.

We're going to have a revolving set of literacy conferences around diversity and literature in the coming year.

We've got an equity literacy document.

We have a compendium of great authors of color and their great works, which we put out with the library of Michigan a few months ago our educators need to familiarize themselves with diversity and literature.

In many cases, they are in many cases, they aren't.

And engage our children around those great diverse works.

Parent education, family literacy, community literacy engaging a full community around literacy.

And the only other thing that I would add is, to the two generation approach that both Ms. Nicholson and professor Edwards raised a lot of adults will change their behavior in order to support their children.

They may not have seen a particular need for leaning into literacy when they were coming up.

And now they have a young person it's a different story.

They don't want their young person their child to be where they are when they grow up and they're prepared to change how they do what they do in support of their children.

So it's a real opportunity to work on literacy as both of the other panelists mentioned in two generations or even three or four because we've got parents and we've got grandparents and great grandparents raising children as well.

- And Michelle.

- So I think that there are some good things that are part of this law as well.

And I would love to see some of those things continue in beefed up.

So the funding has been provided for literacy coaches I think, has really been supportive for teachers and continuing to have that now that that has also extended down into preschool would be very helpful, having the individual reading improvement plans for children.

So piggybacking on what Dr Edwards said is looking at where children are at and taking them there and working with them.

So I think, and the training, all of those things as well as back to meaningful engagement for families thinking of the very functional ways that we use literacy.

So in the community, in your kitchen, in the living room and the bathroom, how do you do it throughout your day?

So it isn't one additional thing I'm doing.

It's just part of everything I'm doing.

And helping people see that they're doing some good things already that families are but giving them some additional ideas and strategies.

- So one last question, WKAR took a lot of care in producing this documentary with the funding for Capital Area United Way how impactful do you think this film can be as it airs on broadcast and throughout the mid Michigan region throughout the state of Michigan, for families as well as educators and policy makers and sort of moving the needle on behalf of children and literacy?

Dr. Rice.

- I am gonna refer to Professor Edwards cause I saw her warming up for that (Robin laughs) a few moments ago.

- Yes go ahead.

- One thing I think that it will inform the public cause so often when we talk about education only, I mean everybody in Michigan can learn about what's happening around literacy learning.

And so I think the film will be extremely impactful.

One thing that really caught my attention was the beyond the basics program.

A lot of times, a lot of parents can't help their children but there are other resources that they can use to like the mobile library, engaging people.

So I think it will make everyone in Michigan realize that they might not be in a classroom but they can help in meaningful ways.

I mean, like the mobile library going into rural communities and it will make people feel like literacy, undergirds everything.

And so we want people in our businesses and we wanna make Michigan a better state.

I think everyone will be involved in trying to do that.

Cause all of us have to work together in various capacities to make sure that literacy development happens in our state.

- And you mentioned sharing this when we were talking at the beginning of our connection and tell us a little bit about who you share to and why.

- Well, I shared it with my niece that lives in Duluth, Georgia.

I said, I shared it with the links.

I belong to the links.

I invited my link sisters and my sorority Delta Sigma theta sorority.

I even sent it to my church members.

Because I feel I was so excited about this video.

And so everyone needs to be talking.

And in fact, I always say, we need to value literacy at the same level, we value athletics.

So just as people are saying, ghost gardens or go whatever we need to uplift literacy.

And so everyone should be just as excited about it.

- And Michelle, did you want to add anything you've been sort of someone behind the scenes.

How do you feel about the impact that this film could make?

- It's been a couple of years coming, right?

So it's wonderful to see it come to fruition.

And I hope that it is shared as widely as we're all anticipating and really does draw people's attention and awareness to be important.

And especially starting early.

And as everyone has already said tonight we're looking at this throughout the community.

Reading really opens up the world to everybody and we wanna make sure that everyone has that opportunity as early as possible.

- And Dr. Rice, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to give us some closing comments.

- So we want to be a hundred percent literate state.

And I think the video helps us get there.

I think it indicates as our other two panelists have mentioned that we all have a role in becoming a hundred percent literate state.

It was Frederick Douglas who once said once you learn to read, you'll be forever free.

And no, that was 160 plus years ago though the context was of course, very different.

The theme is very much still similar that reading opens up your entire life to, to a whole range of possibilities in the absence of reading those possibilities, those dreams are really tremendously constrained.

So I think we're all about reading.

We need to be about reading.

We need to be the first state.

That's a hundred percent literate state.

Wouldn't that be an enormous accomplishment not simply from a pedagogical perspective from a social justice perspective, but from an economic perspective as well, because the reality is that illiteracy is such a drag economically as well as from a social justice perspective and from a pedagogical perspective as well.

- Yes well that would be an enormous undertaking but definitely want to pursue.

That is all the time we have for tonight.

Thank you to our panelists for your time and contribution to our conversation.

Right to read airs and mid Michigan on Thursday, June 3rd, 2021 at 9:30 PM on WKAR HD 23.1 and streaming.

We hope you enjoyed this presentation.

Stay safe, everyone.