“Incrementalism is just not going to serve our purpose unless you want to keep things as they are. And I hate to say this, Susan … some people wouldn't mind leaving things as they are. And we can't do that, and we can't do it incrementally. We've got to really move, like last year.”

“You’ve got to understand how [two programs] fit together and what the purpose is. Giving teachers materials that are literally incoherent and don't fit with each other is not the answer.”

“We need to have a system … using the best knowledge that we have systematically throughout the state, throughout the country, with systems that pick up kids who are at risk and don't let them fail.”

“Theory is an explanation about how things work. …It's a structured framework, a mental framework, that helps us explain, and predict, and understand phenomena.”

“Theoretical models matter because they offer insights into the processes of reading and writing, as well as factors that contribute to the development of reading and writing skills and/or difficulties in development. Teachers' understanding of this will empower them to make decisions about instructional approaches.”

“Lower order skills are necessary for higher order skills—that means skills and knowledge have a series of causal effects. So if you flip it the other way—any challenges…skills—it's going to have a series of impacts on higher order skills.”

“A lot of educators understand that reading and writing are related, but I think as educators, we need to have a really precise understanding about it. We need to have a good mental model about how they're related and why they're related, so that we can use that knowledge to inform our instruction and assessment.”

“If an educator goes to a professional development and learns about something like phoneme awareness…but you don't have a framework in which to attach it, you can sort of go down a rabbit trail on one thing instead of thinking about how it relates to the whole.”

“Neurodiversity means that we have lots of different ways to think, and we each come to the table with different brain structures.”

“Oral language difficulties are a crystal ball into reading comprehension.”

“You, as an educator, can be the one that really makes a difference for that child. It only takes one person to make a huge difference in the life of a child.”

“When I'm thinking out something complex, I'll want to write it out, so that I can see where the holes are in my thinking. It's really this reciprocal relationship between the concepts or the knowledge we have and the language we have to convey that knowledge.”

“As our conceptual knowledge builds, our language ability will build. So there's really a bidirectionality that occurs between background knowledge and language.”

“We’re overlooking the ways in which the typical approach to teaching reading comprehension and writing actually conflict with what cognitive science tells us about how people learn to do those things.”

“We spend much more time trying to teach them to read, but we kind of expect them to just pick up writing. You know, for most kids, it does not happen.”

“No matter how good you are at making inferences, if you don't have the requisite background knowledge, you're not gonna be able to do it.”

“It doesn't work to just ask inexperienced writers to just write down stuff. That is not going to provide the cognitive benefits.”

“Language is connected to thinking. If you can talk and write in a more sophisticated way that reflects that you are thinking in a more sophisticated way.”

“There is no, ‘Let's try this. Let's try that.’ When it's evidence based, you know that it's proven to be effective.”

“It's important that we are aligning our practices to standards and what the students are required to do—but also what they need.”

“If we don't make a conscious effort to utilize evidence-based practices, we are going to be failing our most at-risk populations.”

“All students should have the opportunity for multiple readings of the same text to build comprehension, to build fluency.”

“It's really important to utilize assessments, [to] make sure that my students are getting exactly what they need based on the data that I get from assessments, but also based on the data that I get from regular progress monitoring.”

“This is not something that can be just done at the schoolhouse. It involves the community and all of our community stakeholders.”

“Find a mentor. Someone you trust. Listen to that person, watch that person, ask that person questions. You know, you don't have to figure this out on your own. People want to help you and you have to take that help. It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you want to be better.”

“I want them to be proud of where they came from, always, because that's part of their story. It's always going to be an important part of their story.”

“I have no magic answers. I have some experiences and I have a little bit of wisdom from three decades of time spent in the education field, but I absolutely do not have it all figured out.”

“The reality is that the journey toward wisdom in any career, especially in education, has to be slow and steady.”

“We have to help guide our younger cohorts with our wisdom. But we also have to take pointers from them. They know lots of things that I do not know, things that I never learned how to do. They also were students more recently than I was … they remember what it feels like when this or that happens to you.”

“When you begin to read, you really have to analyze everything in front of you. The letter, the shape of the letter, how it connects to the sound. And proficient readers just look at the whole thing and they grab it—and it's like they heard it. It is almost no difference. I speak; I read; it's a continuous stream of language and I just grab it.”

“We talked about languages being different. They're exercising slightly different muscles of your language system.”

“Science is informed by teachers and children. We're all together. I do not teach children. Teachers don't usually do science. But we have to find ways of connecting with each other.”

“It can be hard to remember that there’s a lot going into my reading today [that] I didn't have all along.”

“I have a fear that too much decoding practice can become ‘Why am I reading?’ We lose the ultimate point of why all of us read, which is to learn and to gain meaning.”

“Kids know when a text is worth their time.”

“We want to put a great book in a kid’s hands and have them get excited about reading and therefore get good at reading. And it really goes the other way. And so it’s once you build that ability to read, then that excitement comes with reading.”

“I firmly believe that no matter how old you are, you still need to learn the same information.”

“In my mind, I use this equation. Knowledge equals motivation, equals active learning, equals resilience, equals success.”

“Creating a literate brain is a team sport. Everyone needs to be involved. The parents, caregivers, teachers—they need to be engaged in an interactive way.”

“Literacy is a civil right. It's also a gift. It's an opportunity to share thoughts, feelings with others that can be revisited and saved.”

“If you learn how to swim, you can swim in a lake, a pool, an ocean, whatever. But that's not the case for comprehension. You can't learn to comprehend and then take that out into different situations for different purposes. You can learn some things that will help you, but in general, it's the topic and purpose that are going to impact how well you understand something.”

“If I was going to define comprehension, it's not a single thing. I mean, that's the problem. We want it to be a single thing, but it depends upon what you're reading and why you're reading it.”

“What comprehension is is the interaction of what you bring into that reading situation and what you already know about it, and your motivation and purpose to comprehend it.”

“There's just not enough mental reserve to be able to build that meaning that quickly. So it helps tremendously that you have some knowledge about it beforehand. That knowledge gives you a place to put information. So when you read about something, it gives you storage for the information. It's kind of like a cubby hole that you put the mail in, in an office.”

“[On dyslexia instruction] It's instruction that we know that all students should have, because that's the instruction that is most aligned to the scientific evidence. But it's instruction that they need with multiple practice opportunities and multiple repetitions.”

“Just because we have this report and we say, ‘All right, this curriculum has all the stuff,’ if you don't teach it, then you're a red flag of your own.”

“Thank you to those folks who have been listening. Thank you to the folks who are curious about learning more, those who have spent years implementing and tweaking and improving literacy outcomes for our country's next generation. I mean, that's huge.”

“It's a movement of improvement, right? We're constantly striving to improve. And don't give up. Share your stories; share your success stories.”

“When was the last time in education anybody heard of de-implementation? All we do is pile one thing on top of another, on top of another…then we wonder why it didn't work.”

“You have to distinguish between an initiative, something that is new, and culture, something that's part of what we do every day and that is embedded. That is more important.”

“The problem is this. If you only look at the results, then you don't know what caused it. Somebody has to look at underlying causes.”

“It's really important for administrators to say, 'Hey, I can deal with some chaos. I can deal with students making mistakes.' That's real learning.”

“For this to work, we need both great teachers and great curricula.”

“The single most important thing NAEP cannot do [is that] it cannot in any definitive way explain why scores are what they are or are rising or falling.”

“When was the last time in education anybody heard of de-implementation? All we do is pile one thing on top of another, on top of another, and then we don't then, then we wonder why it didn't work.”

“If you're not gonna have deep implementation, which requires a level of focus and allocation of time and resources, then don't bother.”

“You have to have a singular focus and, and it's gotta be sustained year after year after year until it becomes part of your culture.”

“You have to distinguish between an initiative, something that is new, and culture, something that's part of what we do every day and that is embedded. That is more important.”

“The problem is this. If you only look at the results, then you don't know what caused it. Somebody has to look at underlying causes.”

“It's really important for administrators to say, 'Hey, I can deal with some chaos. I can deal with students making mistakes.' That's real learning.”

“Leaders tend to forget that you get more out of parents if you collaborate with them, if you're honest.”

“With the level and degree of training, understanding, and privilege that I had, it was still—and still continues to be—an overwhelming battle to get your child the services that they need.”

“My calling is so that children can one day stand on their own without scaffolds, that children will one day reap the benefits that literacy is liberty, that children will one day be able to teach someone else the power that only literacy can bring.”

“Think about how many young kids in school right now we are not reaching and that have that feeling that they're dumb and they can't get it. I had one kid say to me, 'Ms. Stewart, I think there's just a secret code.' And I said to him, 'You are right. There is a secret code. It's called the alphabetic code, and you can learn that easily."

“It was really our teachers who led so much of the charge to say, ‘No, this is what we want. We believe kids should be held to high expectations. We believe they're capable, we believe they deserve it.’”

“I have never met a student that did not want to learn how to read or a family that did not understand the importance of their children knowing how to read.”

“We have to listen to our young people in order to be able to move with that sense of urgency.”

"Liberation is connected to our students being literate… In order for our students to truly be free, we [need to] understand the power that reading has in their future.”

“We have to remember who we are serving and why we are serving them.”

“A lot of times when you’re in a large system and you’re leading a large system, it can become very robotic, like a machine. You do this, you get this, you do this, you get this. But there’s a human aspect that if you have not considered that human aspect, you could very well end up in the same place that you’re trying to move away from.”

“And while it’s a five-year strategic plan, we do have a sense of urgency and I’m sure within that there are gonna be benchmarks and hundred-day plans and smaller plans to make sure that we are actually doubling down again on the things that truly matter, that are gonna lead, outcomes for our students here in the school district.”

“If we’re only in the business of educating some students, then what are we really doing? It’s important to look at the students that are not benefitting and really identifying the things that work for that population of students rather than continuing with practices that aren’t meeting the needs of the students we’re serving.”

“Our mission is to educate educators on the Science of Reading because we believe that if educators have that knowledge, they can transform kids' lives.”

“Little by little you can learn to read, you can do something hard and we can do it together.”

“As a storyteller, I can go on a stage and tell a story and know, ‘Oh, that song made somebody connect to a memory,’ or ‘These two hours, they got to escape whatever is bothering them at home.’ That escapism is special and magical. But with reading buddies you get escapism and then you also get impact.”

“God bless teachers. They're incredible. And we are here to help you continue to be incredible. We're here to give you tools to excite your students and just complement everything that you are doing.”

"Our students are the state's greatest asset, and we need to invest in them with all the energy and knowledge we have to do our best to serve them with urgency, compassion, and high expectations."

"If kids can't read, that really keeps them from accessing other content areas like science, social studies, and being able to engage in story problems in mathematics."

"Being able to read is today's civil right's movement."

"With requirements comes resistance. No matter how great the opportunity is."

“The door's been cracked. It has to happen and it has to happen by having relationships with people. You just can’t walk in and just say, you know, this is the way it needs to be done. It's a slow process.”

“If you're trained in a certain way, you're only exposing yourself to those researchers doing those things and that type of information. And so you don't know other sources of information of other researchers and what else might be going on.”

“Learning the Science of Reading is not a, ‘You get it in one day.’ It's not like that. It's a journey and it takes time to assimilate everything you read and then turning that into a practice and shifting the thinking of millions of people.”

“You get better and better at it the longer you do it. So if we just stay stagnant and are closed-minded to new things that are out there, then we can't grow.”

“As a teacher, a Black woman, who speaks Black English, who knows the language, who is very well versed in structured literacy, if I overlooked this, if that caught me off guard a little bit, then that means that could potentially catch someone else off guard.”

“With language comprehension, and considering in your native language, there may be a word that doesn’t necessarily match up with a language that you are learning in the classroom. So you have to then use your incredible cognitive skills that speak two completely different codes, comprehend what is happening, and then tie that back into, of course, the Rope to become a fluent reader.”

“I consider Black English to be a very complex and complicated language…but I think typically in society it has been viewed very negatively. You can see in the media and in research where people have talked about it and used negative connotations. And I think those beliefs from society have seeped into the classroom.”

“A strength of children that are bidialectal is the similar strength to students that are bilingual—they have an ability to take language that is different from theirs and translate it. That right there is an asset.”

“The languages that we speak and bring from home also are not wrong. They’re simply different. And we’re gonna work together so that we take what we know differently and come together with a common language so that we’re communicating with one another.”

“We have got to give our students access to this code so that they can become literate and run our society one day.”

“We have to help everybody kind of collectively align our voices and help people who wanna find out more about this, find out more about it.”

“If the pieces of the system aren't all working together, then you just don't achieve sustained change.”

“Leaders have a critical function. They communicate to everybody in a state or in an organization what's important. You don't have to tell 'em what to do, but you need to tell 'em what the goal is.”

“Teachers aren't the problem. Teachers are the solution.”

“We simply can't call ourselves a great school district unless we get great results for our most challenged and least resourced students.”

“It's not a new thing to be concerned about the low achievement among low-income students but it's a relatively new thing to do something about it.”

"You can think of literacy as a structure, as something that gets constructed in your mind."