Hooked on a Feeling – Creating a Strong K–5 Literacy Culture
Marley Arechiga in Conversation With Misty Sailors, Research Director of Literacy at WestEd
Misty Sailors:
Being so skills-based has led us to believe that all you have to do is teach kids the skill and all will be good, but reading as a practice is so much bigger than that.
Marley Arechiga:
Welcome to Leading Voices, the podcast where WestEd experts break down pressing challenges in education and human development and provide insights you can apply to practice and policy. I’m Marley Arechiga.
In elementary schools, literacy is at a crossroads. Teachers are working to build foundational skills in limited time. Students come to school with very different language backgrounds and experiences. And schools are navigating serious resource constraints. Add in heavy screen time habits and shorter attention spans and it’s easy to see how reading can become mechanical instead of meaningful. On today’s episode, we’re discussing how, in the face of all of these challenges, schools can build a culture where elementary students read, discuss text, and use reading and writing to learn.
Here to talk with us about how leaders can create this kind of school culture is Misty Sailors, research director of literacy at WestEd. Misty has written two books, edited three more, and published over 80 articles on literacy. She also served as lead editor of the Journal of Literacy Research and the eighth edition of one of the longest running books in literacy education research. At WestEd, she works with state and district leaders to improve student literacy outcomes. Welcome to the show, Misty.
Misty Sailors:
Well, Marley, it’s so great to be here. This is a conversation I care very deeply about, and this is really timely, so I’m glad we’re having this conversation.
Marley Arechiga:
Me too. So why don’t we start there? Let’s start with why the conversation is timely. There are lots of competing challenges and priorities. Why look at school literacy culture instead of just reading instruction to improve literacy for elementary students?
Misty Sailors:
Yeah. So Marley, I think the first thing is baseline to be on the same page. Culture is active and built. It’s not just a background condition, especially in schools. It defines what literacy means in a school and who literacy belongs to, how people think about it and what people value about it.
So literacy culture and reading instruction aren’t separate. They’re one and the same, and they shape each other constantly. There’s been a lot of pressure on schools lately. Well, not lately, but that pressure has narrowed how we think about literacy in the field to just a set of technical skills, decoding benchmarks, fluency. Those are necessary parts of reading instruction, but they’re not sufficient.
A school, for example, can have a really great phonics program where kids can decode like crazy and they’re learning easy words and they’re learning to decode complex words. But if that’s all they can do, we’ll end up with kids who can decode words quickly and accurately, but not necessarily understand what they’re reading and more importantly, won’t like to read. So yes, we decode. Yes, we understand, but the act of reading isn’t closed until we do something with it. We argue with it, we investigate with it, and probably most importantly, to participate in the world with each other.
So that’s the space I come from, that school literacy cultures are an important part of how we’re raising children as readers and writers, but also that culture requires that there’s safe spaces where kids can take risks, where their identities as readers and writers are affirmed, where teachers are trusted as professionals, and the whole building shares a vision of what literacy is, what it’s for, and who gets to participate in it.
Marley Arechiga:
What are some strong models you’ve seen of this kind of school literacy culture?
Misty Sailors:
They’re varied because it’s really contextual. It’s really about the vision that schools set. But I think by far, if you could imagine walking into a school, you feel literacy. Literacy is woven in throughout the whole building, not just the literacy block. When you walk into a classroom, you would see a classroom library full of different kinds of books, books on different levels for kids, books on different topics, books that represent the cultural and linguistic diversity of children in the classroom. You would see work of students hanging prominently displaying what they’re studying, what they’re learning, what they can do with reading and writing. And you would see those same kinds of things in the hallway.
That’s not the only thing too, Marley. I don’t know how we got to be where we are, but reading and writing are often taught as separate areas within a literacy block. So we spend 45 minutes on reading and then we spend 30 minutes on writing when in fact reading and writing are parts of the same language system. And that idea that to separate them and teach them to children as if they’re two separate things is really a false dichotomy. We want kids and students who write like readers and who read like writers.
And then the other thing too, that is kind of a pretty good giveaway that you’re in a school with a really strong literacy culture is teachers seem energized. They’re trusted professionally, they’re collaborative with each other, and they’re implementing their curriculum in ways that attend to integrity of the curriculum but not necessarily compliant fidelity.
Marley Arechiga:
Building on that a little bit, how do district leaders build teacher capacity for creating this kind of literacy culture?
Misty Sailors:
So none of these things are easy. I just want to be really clear about that. Some of the strongest school leaders that I’ve seen and worked with don’t treat curriculum as if it’s something static that has to be implemented the way the designers intended it to. There’s something to be said about sticking really closely to it, but treating a curriculum as if anybody can open it and just read out of it is actually not teaching.
Some of the best and strongest principles invest in teacher identity and in teacher agency. Teachers know what they should be doing with kids and they’re giving the professional judgment and leeway to make choices within a curriculum about what they do with kids. It comes from engaging teachers in professional communities, through shared professional reading, instructional risk taking, and having growth oriented feedback in place for teachers.
Marley Arechiga:
So what I’m hearing you say a lot, Misty, is that there has to be room for flexibility, both for leaders and for teachers. It can’t be focused on compliance or really rigid. But testing is one area where teachers and districts feel the pressure. And it’s arguably the most widely used way of measuring reading and writing progress. So what are some practical ways of measuring progress that aren’t so rigid?
Misty Sailors:
We do live in a culture of testing and in some places those tests are pretty high stakes for both teachers and kids. So that pressure is real and it does matter. But when those tests, especially those high stakes tests, are the only measure, it distorts that culture that we’re trying to build around literacy.
So I mean, if you think about motivation and interest of children, that plays a really, really important role in building their reading and writing identities. There are several reading motivation surveys that can be administered. They don’t take long, they’re free and widely available. And those kinds of measures help teachers and school leaders see to what degree students see themselves as readers. Do they read outside of school? What do they like to read? What do they find enjoyable? And those are all really strong predictors of long-term literacy outcomes.
And then I think the other thing that’s really no cost and doesn’t take any extra time, those surveys and those measures are really important, including some of the questions that are asked on the reading assessment of the NAEP. But a lot of this data can be gathered just from observations in classrooms and conversations with people. So just walking around the school, looking to see what you see, looking in classrooms, from a school leader perspective, those are things you do on a regular basis and those are things that tell you a lot about the literacy culture of the school and how we are or are not meeting our vision and our goals for what students believe about literacy and how they’re being raised as literate beings.
Marley Arechiga:
Hearing you talk about NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and also about getting qualitative data through things like classroom observations, has got me thinking about the research behind this kind of literacy culture. When research links positive literacy cultures to better student outcomes, what does that actually look like for students?
Misty Sailors:
One of the biggest points that I want to raise with this is the approach to comprehension. Oftentimes, comprehension is taught as if it were a performance so that you would see teachers checking children’s comprehension at the end of a passage or checking students’ comprehension through a bunch of questions. So that basically shows you that they either understood or they didn’t, but that’s not teaching. And when we think about comprehension as a practice, that is what are the strategies that you’re using when you encounter complex text? How do you know that you’re understanding? And what do you do when you’re not, are important parts of a strong literacy culture.
But I think the other part of this, and this comes from the Reading for Understanding report, study that was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences a few years ago. Reading is really not finished until we do something with what we got out of the text. So we’re either going to take it up and grapple with it ourselves personally, or we’re going to share it with someone, or we’re going to go do something in a real world as a result of that.
That research report is really clear, this kind of active, purposeful engagement that we’re talking about produces really deep comprehension and long-term literacy development. When students feel safe enough to take risks with complex text, both reading it and writing it, that’s a real vulnerable place for readers and writers. So students who feel disengaged or unsupported step away from it and they pull back. And sometimes we misread that as a skills gap like, “Oh, we just need to fill those gaps.” But really, it’s a signal to us that culturally our classroom may not be supporting them in ways that they need to be supported.
Marley Arechiga:
I feel like that kind of vulnerability is often associated with math classrooms where a lot of us have been terrified of asking questions. But it sounds like this is as much of an issue in reading. Students need to feel more comfortable taking risks and asking for help if they need it.
Misty Sailors:
Marley, what you said is exactly 100% right. People often think about creating those kinds of places for kids where there’s a lot of inquiry and a lot of experimentation, math and science tend to be the ones that we go to for that. And I think that’s a result of reading instruction being reduced to very skills-based kinds of ways of thinking about being with kids. And that being so skills-based has led us to believe that all you have to do is teach kids the skill and all will be good, right? But reading as a practice is so much bigger than that.
Marley Arechiga:
What’s the line between strong explicit instruction in phonics and fluency and literacy culture that teaches kids that reading is about understanding and doing things with text?
Misty Sailors:
So we’re not arguing about phonics here. Phonics is an important part of what we do when we’re teaching children and students to be strong and strategic readers. But that body of research that we’re drawing upon right now has really been translated into practice and that’s done so in ways that reduce reading and literacy to its most measurable and technical component so that the message to kids is reading is about getting the words right, passing a test, where in some cases a child in a school that we’re working with told me the other day, reading is about sliding your finger across the page.
So it comes in part from that old false dichotomy of children have to learn to read before they can read to learn. That Reading for Understanding research team, they were really explicit about that false dichotomy. Instruction and reading to learn is as necessary as learning to read and both should happen from the very beginning.
So then as school leaders, one of the questions to ask and make sure that we’re bridging that is that when kids finish their literacy block, that dedicated time in a school day to literacy, do they feel like they’ve been readers and writers during reading instruction? And did reading instruction support them in doing things with texts? Or do those kids feel like they’ve completed a set of tasks that their teachers put forward to them?
Marley Arechiga:
What should leaders prioritize when they want to build this kind of culture, especially if resources are tight?
Misty Sailors:
Yeah. I think one of the top priorities that I would recommend is investing in real, authentic reading materials like books and online materials, and giving students time to read. One of the chief complaints about the way we are approaching reading instruction across the country is that kids are reading snippets and passages, but very little extended text, and even more so not reading authentic texts, texts that look like, Marley, what you and I read on a regular basis, both at work and outside of work. And giving kids access to choose what they want to read and reading over sustained periods of time.
And then I think there’s a second thing that leaders can do also and it costs nothing. It’s free. It’s change the language of literacy in the building and be really careful with how we talk about literacy, both with students but also amongst the adults who frame the culture of the school. So talk about and think about reading as meaningful, something that we do, something that we enjoy doing and not just mechanical.
We’re working in a district north of me and kids told us how much they love when their teachers read aloud to them. And it’s almost a sacred time of day. So that idea of like read to kids, everybody reads, because inside all of that is where we get to model the joy and the purpose of reading in our lives.
Marley Arechiga:
You mentioned it’s important to have authentic texts, the texts that you and I might encounter in the real world. I’ve heard you and your team talk a lot about disciplinary literacy, which gets at this. Could you say a little bit about what that is and the role it plays in this kind of school culture?
Misty Sailors:
Yeah, disciplinary literacy is a really specialized way of thinking about reading and writing in the content areas, reading and writing in science and reading and writing in history because reading and writing in those content areas share some similarities, but they’re also very, those acts of reading and writing are unique to disciplines.
So when we think about building a school culture, we’re not saying that every teacher is a reading teacher. We get in trouble with their science teachers when we say that, but what we could expect from science teachers is that they alone hold the knowledge of how scientists read and write. And our expectation would be and our hope would be that they would fold kids into those reading and writing practices because those reading and writing practices look very different than the way mathematicians engage with reading and writing, and those look very different than the way a literary critic engages.
Marley Arechiga:
We could easily have a similar conversation about building a school culture that supports math or attendance or practically any other aspiration that a school has. How can listeners build a culture for literacy specifically that doesn’t come at the cost of other priorities?
Misty Sailors:
Building a literacy culture, Marley, it’s not a competing priority. It’s an enabling condition for many other priorities that schools have in place. I mean, you think about kids who don’t come to school, part of the problem is they may not be interested in what they’re reading and writing. That idea that literacy is potentially mechanical, the culture sends that message and that’s not interesting to them versus reading and writing for meaningful, real, authentic reasons and purposes that engage kids and get them excited and show them that reading and writing, literacy is power and it allows us to create the kind of world we want and the lived experiences that we want.
So when we’re operating from that really narrow skills only approach, that’s the thing that’s creating the competition. It demands its own isolated blocks and activities. But when we expand how we think about literacy and that literacy is a mechanism towards pleasure and joy in life and learning and knowledge building in life, then we don’t see it as a competing priority, we see it as the means to the end.
Marley Arechiga:
It sounds like you’re not saying, “Oh, go read just books.” It’s about finding the pleasure and joy and reading and writing in your own real world.
Misty Sailors:
Marley, that’s 100% right because if you think about the way literacy has expanded even over the past 20 years, it is about reading books. It is about reading some of the more traditional texts that maybe you and I grew up reading, books and magazines and newspapers, all of that is shifting. The kids who are in school today are reading and writing things outside of school that we couldn’t have even imagined 10 years ago. So that idea that online texts and digital text and audio text and visuals and images that we are bombarded by on a daily basis as people in the society, those are all the kinds of things we think about when we think about that expanded view of reading and writing. And that’s really complex for schools to address.
And I guess the point of this creating a school literacy culture that’s really strong has to be inclusive of all of those things because what children and students bring every day at school is all of those vast experiences with those texts. And if we don’t address those or if we negate them, then we’re not sending the message I think that we hope to send about school, that school is a place that we learn and it’s a place that we’re creative and it’s a place that we build a better world for ourselves and each other. All of those things have to be part of what we think about when we talk about complex texts with kids.
Marley Arechiga:
So much good stuff there to think about, Misty. Before we wrap up the conversation, what’s one practical step that a principal and a district leader can make in the next month or so toward building this kind of culture and maybe without adding a new initiative?
Misty Sailors:
No new initiatives and no money.
Marley Arechiga:
Yes.
Misty Sailors:
This costs no money to anyone and no new initiative. So I guess I want to start with principals and school leaders. And when I say school leaders, reading specialists, literacy specialists, instructional coaches, and school administrators, I’d encourage you to audit your literacy, your school climate by walking through your building with the lens of meaning making and not necessarily implementation fidelity. Ask what literacy feels like here and you’ll find things to start thinking about tomorrow that creates no new initiatives and no new budgets.
I think district leaders play a really important role in setting conditions where school leaders can do things to move towards a stronger literacy culture. And that’s something as simple as changing, just change one message so the next time district leaders are in front of principals, teachers, or families, talk about literacy as identity and meaning making, not just scores and benchmarks. Those are important, but we need to be a little more broad and robust.
Tell a story about what reading has meant to you in your own life and ask other people to do the same. I mean, we tend to start meetings with check-ins. Why not, “What book are you reading?” Or, “What movie did you see that was based on a book?” Or, “What is something on social media that you’re following that the rest of us might want to dig into?” Because culture of schools is really about the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories other people tell about us. So maybe if we were to think about literacy as more than just test scores, but what we value about it and what we hope our children and students come away with, those are things that are entirely within the leader’s reach. They cost no money and they don’t require new initiatives.
Marley Arechiga:
We’ll end on that note, Misty. Thank you again for being on the show.
Misty Sailors:
Marley, it’s an important topic, it’s timely, and I thank you so much for posing it.
Marley Arechiga:
Yes, of course. To our listeners, there are many ways to connect with Misty and her team. You can strengthen your practice at their professional learning institutes. Those are packed with research-backed strategies for literacy and writing instruction and supporting multilingual learners. You can also join research projects or tune into our leading together webinars on language and literacy. Information for all of these are in the show notes. Subscribe to Leading Voices on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora, or iHeart.
This podcast was brought to you by WestEd. WestEd is a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency. We work to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. Special thanks to our audio producer, Sanjay Pardanani, and to Gretchen Wright for her editorial support. Thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll catch you in the next episode.