"What Matters Most for Our Vulnerable Readers and Writers: Authentic and Responsive Teaching in Action”
In this virtual keynote to educators at the 2021 Plum Creek Literacy Conference, Regie discusses what’s most important in teaching readers and how we can ensure success for our most vulnerable readers of all ages—what she calls "up-and-coming-readers”. Through holding high expectations along with an equity-for-all mindset, building trusting and loving relationships, and providing lots of support and choice of texts to read, all students can succeed.
“Relationships and engagement and the right text drive everything”
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Full Transcript:
Regie Routman (00:04):
Welcome. I'm Regie Routman: educator, storyteller, teacher, colleague, family member, and friend. I'm going to be telling you a remarkable story about learning to read in anxious times and putting that story in the context of what's most important in teaching and learning. What is it we most want students to remember and take away from this challenging time? Surely it's not test scores, tedious assignments, or a focus on skills. We want, I believe to support every student to develop a learning story and a literacy identity that dignifies and celebrates each learner's unique strengths, interests, curiosity, and intelligence. At the same time, we also want to focus on the social, emotional nature of learning and ensure we develop trusting relationships between teacher and learner crucially through prioritizing high expectations, meaningful content, and why choice in the text students read and write can bring joy into teaching and learning.
Regie Routman (01:09):
One of my biggest learning lessons has been how much the right text determines the reader, his or her engagement, success, and sense of agency. The story I'm about to tell you brings all of these factors together in a way that has been life altering in the best possible ways. Following this brief introduction, you will now be listening to the audio with an accompany transcript of the keynote I gave to several hundred educators in mid April, 2021 in the midst of a pandemic. Half the attendees were in person, half were virtual with almost all coming from the United States and Canada. The keynote begins here just after I have been introduced by Dylan Teut esteemed colleague and executive director of the Plum Creek Literacy Festival. You will hear me referring to slides and handouts in this talk. These are available to you here. Let's begin.
Regie Routman (02:12):
He had a job as a custodian at a marketplace. He had just lost his job. He was feeling very anxious, lonely, and vulnerable. The relationship with him is he's an extended family member that I saw about twice a year. I really didn't know him that well. I knew that he had some kind of a disability. I knew he had difficulty with reading and writing, because I would send him a birthday card every year and I would print it carefully and not use big words on it. I really didn't know whether he could read it or not. And he asked me that. I said, of course I'll help you. And so that started our twice weekly tutoring, excuse me, that has been going on now for 10 months. And I expect it's going to go on quite a bit longer.
Regie Routman (03:01):
I see him twice a week, every Tuesday and Wednesday at 10:00 AM in the morning, he calls me right on the dot. Well, once I said, yes, I had really signed an invisible contract to teach him. And I had no idea how I was going to teach him. I didn't know anything about his past background. I didn't know what kind of disability he had, but I knew that I had to teach him, that it had to be joyful and that it had to be life changing. And so what made this particularly challenging was not only were we virtual and remote, but all of the learning that has gone on has been using just two phones. He had never touched a computer. Doesn't have a computer, does not have email. He'd never done email, had never texted. So that was pretty limited.
Regie Routman (03:53):
So we had two phones, we had his iPhone and we had my landline. Now I have an iPhone, but I only use it for texting because we have a big hill behind our house and the reception is not good enough. So there it was: phone call and that was it. And so I'm figuring out how. I had no idea how I was going to teach him, but I knew that I would teach him-- my background as a Reading Recovery teacher, as a reading specialist. I'm also certified to teach children with learning disabilities, all the professional learning that I've done over many, many decades. I knew that I would figure out a way to teach him. I just had no idea what it was and I didn't want to lose him. He is very anxious. I didn't want to lose his interest in his attention.
Regie Routman (04:39):
So where we started was... I mailed him about a dozen self-addressed stamped envelopes, some paper and pencils. And that's about it. That was what makes this story really kind of wonderful in a way, because he has learned to read from not being a reader. Um, so I want to tell you how that happened because it was quite exciting. So I used my Reading Recovery training and, I think as we want to do with all of our students, no matter what age they are, just kind of find out what his strengths were, not what he couldn't do, but what he could do. And so we started off... I asked him what he liked to do and found out he had a CD player. He loved music.
Regie Routman (05:31):
He liked rock musicians and he was at that time listening to one of his favorite musicians. And so we started with a book called, Pete Townsend, Who, Who I Am. He had the audio. I went out and bought the book and we just talked about it. We agreed how much he would listen to, how much I would read and then we talked about it. And I found out he was very smart. He has an ironic sense of humor. He listens to the news, he's highly intelligent. And yet all of his life in school, I learned in the course of our discussion, he had been in special ed all his life. He had not graduated high school. I didn't ask him any questions. I didn't give him any tests. It really didn't matter what his level was. I had to teach him and think about this:
Regie Routman (06:25):
It is loving books, not leveling them, that makes the reader. So there's a place for leveling, but not here, not here. And actually, when I asked him what kind of books, he had never read a complete, a whole complete book. What kind of books he thought we should start with? He said, "Picture books." And I thought, this is a highly intelligent person. This is not going to dignify his intelligence. So after we talked about the Pete Townsend book, not reading it, he's listened to it, I'm reading it. We're talking about it, making connections to both of our lives. Then I chose this book by Trevor Noah, Born a Crime, and I got in the audio tape. Same thing, talked about it. Didn't have him read anything. But he chose to abandon that book, which was okay. He kind of lost interest in it.
Regie Routman (07:18):
And at the same time, what I was doing in terms of, again, using my Reading Recovery training, was finding out what I could about him. And I guess the only assessment I really did was this one where I asked him to "write all the words that you can read and write." And this was in July. All the words you can read and write, even with prompting at 53 years old: "mom", "cat", "look", "can", "dad" ,"see", "today", "shop", "rain". Okay that was it. The other thing that we were doing was, I did a check in with him every day and it's just so important. And I think we have to do this. Whether you have one student or 30 students, how are you today? Sometimes the check-in with him would take, would be the entire time that we were meeting because he was very emotionally distraught a lot of the time.
Regie Routman (08:14):
And you can't learn when you're in that state and you know, that social, emotional learning, it's not a separate subject. It is part of everything. It's just part of what we do when we're teaching. We have to be tuned into that social, emotional aspect. And so I would ask him, how are you? And, in the beginning, not so good. And I started writing down in a notebook. Just the words that he was saying. I didn't know why I was writing them down at the time, but it felt important to know what his state of mind was. And then I would send him in an envelope, and this is the only one I'm sharing because I promised Ted I wouldn't embarrass him, and his stories are so personal. So I'm just sharing this one. And I called them stories, but this is what he said early on in one of our .check-ins.
Regie Routman (09:05):
I said, "How are you?" And he was telling me about his cat. He's worried about his cat who's sick. The cat's name is Rosie. And these were his exact words. "I got her from the rescue shelter. She was in the back of the cage and she meowed out at me right away. That's what sold me about her. She was a replacement for my old cat, who I had to put down because of a urinary infection. Dealing with two hardcore things at the same time: my sick cat and being jobless has been terrible for me now and in the past."
Regie Routman (09:37):
So when we would meet and whatever he was dealing with, I realized the way he was putting together with language, it sounded like it was a writer actually. And I started sending these to him. And when I asked him, how did it feel like to see his thoughts in writing? He said, "It's something to see it on a piece of paper, it's weird to see something you feel written down. It gives things a whole different sense of meaning. It's good to see it. It does help me think of myself as a writer."
Regie Routman (10:19):
You have a packet of handouts and not all of the handouts are related to this talk. I wanted you to have a lot of resources. This one is really important. I want to make sure that we talk about this a little bit. I don't think of him as learning disabled when I'm working with him. My guess is I don't know what his disability is. Probably dyslexia. I don't know. I have no idea and it doesn't matter actually. So I think of him as being differently abled, he's very talented. He's very bright. And so what does this mean? In terms of that label, it, we have to be teaching with an equity mindset, equity for all mindset. We have to be opportunity makers.
Regie Routman (11:14):
What I want kids to come away with and what I want Ted to come away with is: He's the hero of this story, not me, that I've created opportunities for him to succeed. And that means using authentic assessments, focused on strengths. And those are authentic assessments: most of them are not tests. They are the writing, they are the speaking. They're what I'm hearing him say, his showing up (we'll talk more about that). Texts that engage him: really, really important, and making sure that he is successful every single time. Otherwise, why would he come back? Making sure there's lots of support and choice, that strategies and skills are embedded in familiar texts. And I'll be talking more about that and lots more shared reading and shared writing and very high expectations for what's possible. What I learned about Ted was expectations for him all his life, at least for literacy, had been so low that he really didn't believe that he could do what he's doing now.
Regie Routman (12:18):
Low expectations on the part of adults are the thing that holds kids back, I think more than anything else. "What the changing face of American social problems shows is that people are the same, pretty much the same, whatever the color of their skin or their background. Give them reasonable opportunities for economic and personal advancement, and they will thrive. Deprive them of those opportunities andd they won't." I believe that. And I think, you know, the inequity that we're dealing with in this country can only be fixed by education. All of this, it has to start there.
Regie Routman (13:02):
This was a tweet that I did in October. One of my biggest challenge. And this is while I was working with Ted, one of my biggest challenges and biggest learnings was how much the right text mattered for the learners' engagement, efforts, stamina, success, and stamina. To find the right text, I had to get to know the learner, his strengths and his interests, not his level or label. So the biggest challenge was, what was I going to use for reading text? So we started with his stories and word work went there as well. Let me show you, so you saw his story and what I told him, because I knew he had to have phonics.
Regie Routman (14:01):
I had no idea what he could do or what he couldn't, but I told them that there were 37 rimes, R I M E S. And that they made up thousands and thousands of words. And if he could learn these, if he could, if he could apply these rimes. So I took these right from his story, like "got", "ot" and "back", it was like, "I got my cat and she was in back." And then, "right." So we were looking at just three rimes: "ot", "at" and "ight". And they came from his story about his cat. And then I had him, this was what he did at home, I had him write these words. At first I was giving the words and then he was creating some. Then he sent it to me in an envelope.
Regie Routman (14:48):
So I could see whether he wrote it correctly. Then I sent it back to him. So eventually he had two folders. One, I labeled stories, one I labeled word work, but here's the thing that I learned, that word work wasn't going to make him a reader. This is really important. Now when you're working with really young kids, I would say kindergarten and first grade, you know, this may not be true, probably is not true. But with older readers they have to be reading and then the phonics work makes sense to them. So I tried a lot of things that, you know, would look great in the lesson plan, but didn't really work so well in practice. So he was one of them: tricky words to learn by heart. Oh, because he could not text. One of the things that was happening. . .
Regie Routman (15:38):
And so it's so important to kind of look for the helpers. Where are they? And that is when I asked him during the time of our working together a couple of months in, "Do you think you're getting better in your reading? And he said, "Yes." And I said, "How do you know?" And he said, "I can read all the texts that my best friend sends me." Well, that was eye opening to me, and then added that his best friend had taught him how to text me and other people with his voice. Now, why hadn't I thought of that, that he didn't need to be able to write. Now he knew he couldn't write very well. And he was embarrassed about that because I asked him to send me a writing sample. And when I asked the second time and he said, "Don't push me.
Regie Routman (16:22):
I'm looking for just the right card to send you." He never did send me a writing sample. He only wanted me to see his strengths. And so I still haven't seen a writing sample. And right now that's not that important. But once, I knew that he could read the text, this is what I thought: I was being quite clever here. Tricky words to learn by heart, words that you can't sound out. And so I was using text messages to teach these words. And this was from a book that I'm going to be telling you about. So one of the words like he was, he could do pretty well with some hard words, but words like "though" and "there", he could not read those.
Regie Routman (16:59):
And so I texted him, you can see this on September 29th. "You read very well this morning. Here's one word from today. You need to learn by heart: "though". Here is "though" in a sentence, "It seems as though you are proud of yourself as a reader." Look at the word carefully, "though". Say it out loud: "though". And then the next day, we meet two days in a row: "there". Here is the learn to heart word from today. "There." "There were only three boats in sight. Now look at "there" carefully, say it out loud, read the sentence again." Now this might look really good in a lesson plan, but he didn't pay any attention to it. He really didn't. So I stopped doing it and realized, you know, came to the realization that it's through the reading that he's going to pick up all these words. There's going to be thousands and thousands of words that he needs to read.
Regie Routman (17:49):
But what was the text that we were going to use? How could I dignify his intelligence? Well, I got lucky in the sense that I get the New York Times, the paper version every day. I was born in New York and I loved the New York Times and they had, and some of you might've seen this in February, they had a photo journalism article called "Father, Soldiers. Son." And it became, it was on Netflix so I'm sure some of you saw it. And I loved the fact that it was current. And so I needed to think about texts in a different way and where he could be successful. And what I loved about this photo journalism article, and I'm not going to read it, but you can see there's pictures on one side and there's the text on the other side, and there's not a whole big page of text.
Regie Routman (18:36):
And so that's how we started. So, I had a neighbor that also gets the New York Times. And so I got that photo journalism piece, about 50 pages, and sent it to him. So he had a copy in front of him. Initially I started reading and had him follow along and that was very powerful, but I had to read very slowly word by word, and then eventually picked up the pace. I would do what, what we call oral cloze: I would stop at a hard word and expect him to fill it in. And because he was so bright and because he was paying attention to the story and the story was perfect for him, it was about somebody overcoming challenges that had had a lot of tragedy, but also a lot of love in his life, that he could relate to all of that.
Regie Routman (19:23):
So oral cloze, where I would be reading a sentence and then I would stop and wait for him to fill in a word. And he had it right in front of him, that worked really well because I wasn't expecting more than what he could do. And he really, really liked this story, but I was doing almost all the reading at that point and I'm thinking, you know what? He's never read a book. Okay. He has to read a book. I want him to have the satisfaction of having read a whole book. And what would that book be? And I thought hard and I'd read a lot. And I thought the perfect book might be this one. And I got a used copy: Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. It's about 120 pages. And if you know, Hemingway, and I know a lot of you do, the language that he uses and what he's known for is not writing in big, complex sentences.
Regie Routman (20:14):
He won the Nobel Prize for literature. So he's a brilliant writer, but I thought it might be something that Ted could tackle. If we read it together, if I read a paragraph and then he read whatever he could. I believe, and I think we have to have this philosophy, if your administrator is working with teachers or teachers working with kids: "Do the best you can, I'll help you with the rest." I really believe that. So, we were working on that book and it took us about two months to finish it. And he was very, very excited when we did finish it. I went out and got him, this is like a collector's copy of The Old Man and the Sea. He was very proud.
Regie Routman (21:05):
In the the interior of it, and you have Hemingway's draft, which we both got a big kick out of, his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He was pretty thrilled to have that. That was kind of our celebration of him being a reader that he had finished his very, very first book. One of the big parts that I want to talk about is when we did our check-ins was where we started. I had to take him the way he was. And some days he was in pretty rough shape. And that's when I started writing down all of his, what we call stories. But I also realized that a lot of us have tough lives and we're experiencing anxiety. And if I had volunteered my time to work with him, he had a contract to show up the same as I had a contract with him to show up.
Regie Routman (22:03):
And one day, when his cat was sick, he called me, I think this was after we were working together. It wasn't very long, maybe maybe six weeks or so. And he called me at the time we were supposed to meet and he said, "I have to cancel today. My cat's sick. I'm taking her to the vet." I was very understanding, even though I had set aside that time. "Oh, sure. I understand." He's had his cat a long time and loves this cat. No problem. "I'll see you tomorrow." The days that we meet, we meet on Tuesday and Wednesday, Wednesday comes at the time he's supposed to call me. He takes the responsibility to call me at 10:00 AM and it's 10 o'clock, and it is 5 after, and 10 after 10. And he hasn't called. And he finally calls at about. . .close to 10:15, and he said, "You know what? I can't make it today either. Cause I'm feeling really anxious."
Regie Routman (23:01):
And I said, "You know what, Ted, I'm feeling anxious too. And I've set aside this time for you, and I need you to show up and we need to work. We need to get to work." And he was kind of taken aback. I told him it was what we call tough love. And then when we finished our sessions, then just a half hour, that's all he could manage, sometimes even that was too long. He turned to me and said, "Hey, that wasn't so bad." Well, what I want to tell you is he never missed another session. He never calls later than 10:00, 10:01. And he said to me, now we're working together 10 months, he said, "Have you noticed that I've never missed a session, that I'm always on time?" That's an evaluation people. The fact that he shows up, that he makes the call, that he values it.
Regie Routman (23:46):
And now when he has to take his cat to the vet, because his cat is old, which is often, he doesn't mess with our appointment. He does that outside of our working time, because that has become a priority for him. Also what he has found in, what we've worked out in his reading is, he would have to read out loud. Obviously we were just working on, with our phones. And so, when we were reading The Old Man and the Sea and he loved that book, he said, "You know, the old man was just like me. He never gave up." And we got into a routine where I had bought the audio book for him. And so it was his job to listen to the chapter or several pages, whatever he could manage, and then try reading some of it on his own, following along with his finger, which was difficult for him because when the audio tape is going at a regular speed, right, and he was kind of just kind of word for word, but repeated reading, repeated listening, the more he did that, the better he got.
Regie Routman (24:57):
The more I was reading, and he was following along, and I began reading at eventually at a normal pace, and he could follow along, that was kind of a big deal when that happened. And also he asked me, was it okay for him to read aloud? He wasn't doing any silent reading. And I said, if that, if you like reading aloud, and he told me that when he reads aloud to himself at home, even though he's the only one there, it makes him feel better to hear his own voice, that he's got good company, and he just prefers it. So he hasn't done much silent reading yet. This is very different. I'm not talking about round robin reading where we're just checking to see, you know, are they sounding out the words correctly?
Regie Routman (25:44):
Are they being fluent? This was actually helping him. And so I shared with him, I had just finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Leadership in Turbulent Times. And she's writing about four U.S. presidents, how they got the country through really difficult times. And one of the things, it was a big part about Lincoln as a reader, which I shared with him. This is what Lincoln actually said, in bold. "When I read aloud", Lincoln later explained, two senses catch the idea: first, I see what I read; second. I hear it, and therefore I remember it better." Well, he loved that. If it was okay for Abe Lincoln to read aloud and it helped him understand it better, well, it was certainly going be okay for Ted. And so he got very good at that.
Regie Routman (26:39):
He surprised me, I didn't know what our next book was going to be. And I had been choosing the books up until then. I had also, I had picked the book, Me Talk Pretty One Day. I thought he would like that by David Sedaris, because he's got a good sense of humor. He likes knowing what's current in the world. He liked that somewhat, but we abandoned it. He didn't love it. He did love The Old Man and the Sea, and right? I didn't know what we were going to follow with The Old Man and the Sea, but the week that we finished it, he called me from Target to tell me that he had just purchased the Obama memoir. I was flabbergasted. He was all excited. "Regie, I just bought the Obama memoir. I was at Target and it was, it was there."
Regie Routman (27:26):
And I just couldn't believe it. I had just finished reading it. It had just come out. It's over 700 pages. It's not like Hemingway. It's very, very complex, a lot of dense print on the page. But here's what went through my mind, which is really important. I think for us as educators, parents, just wanting to live in a positive way in the world. I did not think in my brain, this is too hard for him. What came to me was, "How can I make it possible for him to read this book? What are the simple supports that I need to provide so that he's going to be able to read the book?" So I said to him, "Great." And I meant it. "Let me get you the audio book, which is read by Obama and we'll, we'll go from there." Well, you can imagine the audio book is huge because the book is huge, but he said, "Great."
Regie Routman (28:23):
And so we started the next week with the prologue and we read the prologue together. And then afterwards I said, "What do you think?" And of course he understood it and Obama's an eloquent writer, but it is a really hefty book. I didn't know what he was going to say. And he said, "You know what, I know I could read this with your help, but I think I'll just listen to it. I think I'll just listen to it." And then, and I thought, well, that was a good decision. And here he is taking over, you know on choice, and this is one of the things that has changed me about working with Ted. I always believed that choice was really important. I believe it now more than ever, he has to choose. And I believe our students do as well,
Regie Routman (29:09):
almost all the books that he's reading. I would say, even if you're teaching guided reading and you're looking at your particular level, you're working with first graders. Rather than saying, "This is the book that we're going to read." Maybe you could say, "We could read this book, this book, or this one." And we'll chat a little bit about each book and let them choose. Because when we choose to do something, it's always easier to do it then if somebody has made the choice for us. So then he calls me and here's where he really made a breakthrough. A few days later, he's back at Target, he's all excited. And he says to me, "I just bought a new book and it's going to be our next book. It's not like, "What do you think?" This is the book. This is a brand new book, people.
Regie Routman (29:50):
It's called, "One Life" by Megan Rapinoe and she is a world-class, star soccer player. And when she's talking about one life, she starts...I want to read you the epigraph right at the beginning. "Tell me what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" And that's from Mary Oliver, "A Summer Day". And that is the theme of the whole book and it should be the theme of our lives, right? What do we plan to do with our lives, even in a pandemic? And so this book really touched him and touched me too. And here we were-I did get him the audio tape,-but we were both reading the book from scratch together, and he had chosen it and he was all excited about it.
Regie Routman (30:41):
I said, "How did you know about this book? I'd never heard of her?" Well, he listens to NPR. I didn't know he listened to NPR and he had heard it reviewed. And so he knew who she was. He liked the fact that she was an advocate for all kinds of human rights, that she was working on pay equity for women's soccer players-you won't be surprised to know- are paid less than men's, even though her team had won the world cup, they were still paid less.
Regie Routman (31:12):
And so, when we were reading the book, it really was life-changing for him. I would say for me too, by the way, he reacted to it because he said, "It would be interesting to have a conversation with Megan, from reading the book and the article," which I'm going to show you. "She's nice. She's kind gentle and respectful. I think she would understand what I'm going through." I mean, and isn't that why we read, is why I read literature to help make sense of my life, to become, I don't know, smarter, wiser, more empathetic, all of the, all of the above. And I found myself looking for texts for Ted and helping him think about where are the texts? There are everywhere, there was newspapers there. As I said, when you're watching cable news at night and you see the boxes, you know, where the news host is reading, like. "What I've been showing you, you can read along now,. The more you read the better, your volume, the better you're going to become."
Regie Routman (32:25):
Lots of times, he ignored. He would just show up and he hadn't read, he hadn't practiced. And so we talked about that. You're not going to get better. If you don't practice. You can take a tennis lesson from the best coach in the world, a music lesson from a highly talented musician. And if you don't practice, guess what, you're not going to get better. He did not take that seriously for awhile. And so one day I said to him, "You know how I've been telling you how well you're doing? Because you're doing great as a reader. But I noticed this week, you kind of fell back a little bit and I'm guessing that you're not practicing at home. You're not practicing at all at home. And he said, "Yeah, you know, I've been busy."
Regie Routman (33:15):
And I said, "You know what? I've been busy too. I've been anxious. If you want to become a better reader, you have to read, you have to read and read and read, not just the text, but everything that you can lay your hands on. You need to practice because remember what happened when you listened to the chapter a couple of times, and then you followed along and then you tried reading it. You did much better." He's come to see how repeated reading has really helped and repeated. listening has really helped him. And then when I told him that you're not going to improve your own practice, he called me up the next day, and he never calls me by phone. We're in touch. If I'm concerned about we're in touch, back and forth by text,. He'll send me a picture, he took a walk to the beach and things like that, but he had never just called me out of the blue.
Regie Routman (34:06):
And he called me and he said, this is exactly what he said: "My biggest worry, and you being all firm like you were with me, is that I'm going to lose you as my teacher." It just broke my heart, that he would think that, and it made me realize that when we give that tough love to kids, some of them must feel the same way. One of Ted's greatest assets is he's so in touch with his feelings. And he says exactly what he feels and believes. And so I reaffirmed him that wouldn't happen. And then he told me, "I would be doing a crash course for our next session. You're going to be so impressed," which he did. And then when we met again, he said, "I had to practice really hard because I didn't want to disappoint you." And that broke my heart again.
Regie Routman (34:54):
I said, "You know what? This is not about me. You're disappointing yourself. You're limiting your potential. I'm your cheerleader, I'm your coach. So you're not going to disappoint me." But it did make a difference in the sense that, he did start taking things more seriously. He did figure out the best way for him to practice. I didn't know what it was, but it turned out that it was combination of him listening, just listening to get the whole overall sense of the story. And then following along and then reading it on his own, and reading it on his own before we met was reading it out loud. Well, at the same time, when we were reading the book, this was from March 28th, The Seattle Times, I got all excited because on the very front page of our Seattle Times paper, it said "At White House, Megan Rapinoe Talks of Inequities and Discrimination."
Regie Routman (35:54):
And so I called him up. It's all about pay equity, which is all about dignity, having agency in your lives. So I said, "Go get The Seattle Times, and we're going to read this article together. And I want you to try reading it." Here was another source of text. It's not just books. And because he had a copy of it - I expected him to go out and buy it - but when he had a problem with the word, we underlined it. I said, "Okay, circle that word. We're going to come back to it." And so I did a little word work with that because I could use this newspaper article as a consumable. And so that worked pretty well.
Regie Routman (36:36):
I had him take out a piece of paper again. I can't see what he's doing. He had trouble with the word "inequity", which is an important word. And I said, "Write the word.' He could write "in" and then, okay, 'What do you hear?" He could do that. He couldn't do "quit" in "equity." And so I said, "Okay, go look at the word. What are the two letters? You know, take a picture in your brain, write it, check yourself." I didn't have him send me that, like we were doing in the beginning when we were working on rimes, onsets and rimes because it wasn't worth the time. What I, what I learned, I think my biggest takeaway was, when you find the right text and with the right support, kids will learn to read. Now, it's not quite that simple, but it's not as complicated I think as we have made it.
Regie Routman (37:28):
He is now, we are now in this book, we'll finish this probably in a couple of weeks. And he knows exactly what he wants to read next. He told me that, this book Born a Crime, which we listened to, he said, "You know, we just listened to it. We didn't read it, and Trevor Noah is somebody that he admires and likes and writes with a lot of humor. So that's going to be our next book. But what Megan Rapinoe has been sort of a role model for how he would like to kind of live his life in the sense of having the courage to stand up for injustice. She's an anti-racist. He would like to become an anti-racist, but the books have been fabulous for getting him thinking about how he wants to live his life.
Regie Routman (38:23):
Now he has gone back to work part-time a few days a week as a custodian, and he likes his job, but reading has opened up a whole new world for him. And now I'm trying to figure out how do we get him on a computer? Cause he's scared to death of that. He's been convinced that it is too hard for him is, you know, he'll be overwhelmed. And of course that's true in the beginning, but with the right support side-by-side which we haven't been able to do yet, he'll be able to learn to use a computer. Because I would love to Zoom with him and write with him and do some shared writing and shared reading. And we can't really do that now.
Regie Routman (39:14):
What have I learned with working with him? And I call him and it's my own term, an "up-and-coming reader." I don't think of him as a struggling reader, even as a striving reader. I don't think of him as having disabilities. I think of him as an up-and-coming reader with strengths and interests and intelligence. And so here are the takeaways from that, and again you have that handout. Make it impossible for the student to fail. Really important, if it's too hard for them to do and you can't provide the supports, then find something else, because it actually doesn't matter how good our lesson plan is and how fabulous it looks.
Regie Routman (40:14):
And all of the learning goals that we have on our walls, they look beautiful. If the student's not going to learn, and if he's not gonna learn joyfully, I would say, and feel successful, then it's a big, "So what?" Relationships and engagement and the right checks drive everything. Those of you who know me and my work know relationships are everything. I had to build a trust with Ted. He didn't know me that well, I didn't know him that well. And without that trust, you really can't teach anything. Raising expectations for him, for what might be possible: I really didn't know how I was going to teach him. This is where professional learning and living a life come in. It's not just about good teaching.
Regie Routman (41:04):
It's about making sure that we take time to live our lives as fully as possible-so we can bring in stories to the classroom and possibilities. And then widely expand what counts as a text. You know, that was a big aha for me that a text is, it can be something you see on television and a caption: the bus signs, you know, getting him thinking about a text as beyond a book--though the currency of being a reader is reading books, I believe. And then honoring his choices. This was huge. He made it very clear to me that he was the one that was going to be picking the books. And it should be like that for our kids, most of the time; most of their reading has to be that independent reading where you have that wonderful classroom library, which is culturally relevant,
Regie Routman (41:52):
that respects every student's language and culture with the kids have helped organize it. And then they are choosing the books that they want to read and can read. Look for the helpers was a really big deal to me. Some of you are still, I know in Seattle, we're just opening up now with some in-person learning. So where are the helpers? And it was a big aha moment to me when I realized that I wasn't the only one that could teach him, that the person, his best friend, was able to teach him how to write texts by using his voice and to look for siblings, peers, grandparents, retired people in the community can come and help kids read aloud to them, help provide books to them. The helpers are all around if we look for them.
Regie Routman (42:47):
And then skills within a familiar context, not an exclusive focus on skills in isolation, that's easiest for the learner. And how much time with eyes on text is really important. The quantity of reading matters. And Ted's coming to believe that. What happens with an intriguing book in a student's hands can be magical. Now, I think what happened with him is, I can't tell you exactly how he has learned to read, but it hasn't been the phonics. It hasn't been the scientific part of reading. It has been getting him interested in a story that he can relate to and that can give him hope and agency in his own life-- that has made all the difference for him.
Regie Routman (43:44):
I want to just to say about reading strategies: explicit phonics teaching is necessary, of course. We should not even being debating that. That's why I put it, but it's not enough. What are some of the other things that helped him and actually made it easier for him? This is what worked: saying the beginning of an unknown word, reading on, coming back to it, looking for the parts you know, look at the whole word. This was a big deal for me, ignoring the small errors. You know, how we want kids to get everything right. I found when I interrupted him too much, he lost the flow. So for example, until this week, he was unable to read contractions correctly, ever. And I ignored it because it didn't change the meaning. And then all of a sudden I noticed yesterday, he's reading the contractions.
Regie Routman (44:29):
How did that happen correctly? Because he's reading thousands of words. Now, giving him sufficient wait time, listening to an audio text and following along visually is fabulous. Rereading, engaging texts and affirming efforts and successes. Okay.
Regie Routman (44:51):
I want to tell you where this comes from five important things I learned in 2020. This is during the pandemic. This came from, I was trying to figure out a way to get Ted to write that would engage him and it wouldn't be too much for him. And he told me that, and he knew we'd been talking about that together, he had a friend who said, "Why don't you just write down the five important things that you learned during the pandemic?" It was actually in the year 2020 and he never did it but I, thinking that he would do it, that it would appeal to him...
Regie Routman (45:23):
and when he didn't, I just dropped it. I wrote the one you see on the left as a model for him. He didn't see it. I, but I told him thinking that it would help him get started. Okay. Personally, five important things I learned during this pandemic: loving relationships matter most; cooking and baking feed my soul; walking in nature reduces my anxiety; daily chocolate is a necessity. Yes! And I found out that I wanted to write another book, and so I'm thinking about that, but professionally for you, for us, "What would the five most important things that I learned during this pandemic?" The same? The first one is the same: loving relationships matter most. Ted and I, before he signs off the very last thing he says to me is, "Peace. thank you, I love you." I was not the first person...I don't know that I would have said, I love you to him.
Regie Routman (46:20):
I do. Now I do love him because when someone says that you can't just not say anything. So I say, "Thank you. I love you too." Professionally, the right text determines the reader - that was huge for me. I've always known that, but never had it pointed out in a way that meant it really hit me to create opportunities for learners to succeed. That's our job as educators: to be opportunity makers, look for the helpers. And effective evaluation includes unconventional thinking. Let me just say a little bit about that. I believe this now. I don't know if I believed this last year... I believe we have to love our students as unique being striving to make their way in a complex world.
Regie Routman (47:17):
Love goes beyond caring and bonding to truly seeing, celebrating and building upon each student's unique strengths and interests. With loving support and professional skill they can soar. And so I do believe we have to love our students. I used to think that it was enough to bond with them, that it wasn't possible to fall in love with all of them. And I've changed my mind. I think we have to love them in some way. They have to know that we deeply, deeply care about them. And we need to look, we need to evaluate them in ways that are going to be successful for them.
Regie Routman (48:02):
If I were to give Ted a reading test now on a book, he'd probably fail it, because what would happen is he'd mix up on a couple of words and he'd lose his place. And he'd have a number on his chart somewhere. And he's a failing reader. And actually he's a very, fairly fluent reader. He still needs a fair amount of support, but I'm thinking that in four or five months, he'll be able to read anything. I have no doubt of it. I have no doubt of it because now he's in the habit of reading. He's in the habit of reading. The other thing that tells me he's going to be now a lifetime reader is he has, and I had talked to him and he said, "Nah, I'm not interested in that," about having a bookshelf. Like you see my books, you know, some of my books. Those are the things that I value most in my house, my books.
Regie Routman (48:50):
And he now has, as of about two weeks ago, he sent me a picture. It was just so heartwarming. He wanted me to know that he had created a bookshelf. He now has books, the books that we've read and that he's listened to. And he also has his audio texts there. And that's a really important piece that the audio, I think I had not given enough credit to. Without the audio text to follow along, he would not have been able to become a reader because don't forget all we had was two phones. That was it. And it didn't matter. We were still able to make this work. The other thing is, these check-ins were really, really important. And I think that's a hard thing to do when you're, when you're teaching remotely and you have a lot of students, but we have to do it. Even if they just write something down for themselves, "How are you doing?"
Regie Routman (49:39):
Maybe they're feeling lousy. They don't want to share that, but that social, emotional piece has to be not a separate piece, but integral to everything we're doing. Now, when we first started working together, I think this is important, when I would ask Ted how he was, he'd say, "Well, you know, I'm in my pajamas and I haven't eaten yet. I haven't showered." And I said, "You know what? When I come to a session with you, I'm showered, I'm dressed. I look good. I've combed my hair. It's a matter of self-respect. So you can do that." And since we had that talk, very proud, he sent me a text with a picture and he said, "Hey kiddo, I got dressed and showered for you. Don't I look good." And so, you know, having that self-respect and having that agency in his life is a very big deal.
Regie Routman (50:28):
What I want to leave you with is, is to, is to lead with respect and love, to thank you and congratulate you for getting through this very difficult time in all of our lives as best we can and trying to find joyful moments. I have to tell you that working with Ted has been the most challenging and the most rewarding teaching that I have ever done. And it has been a gift. Honestly, I can get very emotional thinking about it. It has not been...it's been hard in the sense that the planning has taken a lot of my time. I wanted to show you...I've been taking notes. I blocked out his real name, but I want you to see very extensive notes. I have a whole notebook on . . . I'm writing down everything that I'm thinking about.
Regie Routman (51:24):
I'm just going to read you some, some of the things here that I wrote, this was November: "As his success grows, his stamina increases. He's willing to read more than one page. He's taking the lead." I wouldn't remember this if I didn't write it down. So if you're an administrator, you're a teacher, a coach, wherever you're working, take some time, have a notebook. And when you're, when, when you're done with your lesson, just tell your kids, "You know what? I need to write down what happened today. I don't want to lose it." And maybe they have a reflection book too, or have them take out a book, but this is my teacher researcher work . I've noted here, this is November 11th, it says "Success factors for him: high engagement, choice, choice, choice, cheerleading him, commenting on all that he does, skipping occasionally words that he's missed that haven't changed the meaning."
Regie Routman (52:19):
Now this is really interesting. Now that he's reading pretty well, he understands how word work fits in and why it's so important. So now is when we're really hitting the word work hard. It's almost counterintuitive. I never realized that, especially for an older reader, you need to get them reading. They've had a lot of phonics work and, if it had worked in the early grades, they'd be reading, but if you can get them reading first, especially the older kids, any way you can, that's it's gonna make a huge difference. The other thing is too, as much as you can, find ways to make sure that every kid is, every child, every adult, is successful in your life. And to take moments to celebrate what you have done as a teacher, as a parent, as a friend, during these hard times, because we're all doing the best we can and we need to practice self love and self compassion, and to celebrate all the victories and the small moments of triumph.
Regie Routman (53:25):
Thank you for being with me today. I hope that Ted's story, our story together, will inspire you to take all the professional learning that you have and to apply it to the learner. You know, I've said this before: "We're not just teaching, reading, we're teaching readers. We're not just teaching writing, we're teaching writers" We're teaching human beings, and we have to do that with love and grace and patience for ourselves. So thank you, have a good day and it's been great to be with you. Thank you, Dylan.
Dylan Teut (54:16):
Thank you Regie. That was such an inspiring story. And just hearing bits and pieces of it and communicating with you over the last year, it's even more powerful than hearing the full start to, I'm not going to say finish because it sounds like that there is a lot more yet to work through. I do want to ask, since you started working with Ted, have you ever met with him face to face?
Regie Routman (54:46):
No because we haven't, I haven't felt safe to. My husband and I are vaccinated. He just got his first vaccine. No, we have not. It hasn't been possible.
Dylan Teut (54:58):
Do you think that the way you instruct him will change once you can see him face to face?
Regie Routman (55:05):
I think it will change for the writing for sure. Because that has been so challenging. I'd like teach him to write but when we just have two phones and...you know... I think that is... I'm going to spend my face-to-face time with him, convincing him and showing him I'm already working on that, that he will be able to use a computer. I've already said to him, because he doesn't believe it: "If I had never used a computer, I would feel exactly the way you do. And I would need somebody to sit right next to me. I would need somebody to show me." I would use that optimal learning model, which is in page 10 in your handouts. Show him how to do it. We're going to do it together, over and over and over again because he's going to need that shared experience
Regie Routman (55:52):
And then I'm convinced, and the first thing we're going to do is Zoom so that I can share a screen with him, do some writing, take the word like "inequity" and say, "Okay, what are the two letters for, you know, how does it begin?" And then I can see, then I can teach him how to write. I don't know if it's going to affect our reading that much because, it's amazing how well he reads. I don't really know exactly how it happened, but, a lot of it had to do with the relationship. You know, I didn't let him fail. He knew I truly believed in him, that's a great question. I don't know. I'll let you know.
Dylan Teut (56:35):
And one last thing, earlier today, some of us got to hear Grant Snyder present. He has recently put out a book called I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf.
Regie Routman (56:48):
Oh, wow.
Dylan Teut (56:49):
I want to recommend that to you. It's funny. But also, the notion is that, you can tell a lot about a person's identity and who they are by their book shelves. So I'm going to recommend that to you.
Regie Routman (57:02):
Oh please. Well, I want to say something about my bookshelves here, because they're what you can see. These are just the interesting fiction and non-fiction. I have it downstairs in our house, a whole wall of books. That's children's books and professional books. But the books that mean the most to me are on my shelves up here. I have them by author some of them, my bookshelves are... I love my bookshelves and I was so excited, but....Ted has a bookshelf in his house. Now that was just amazing.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
It made me connect that with Grant's presentation earlier, if you didn't hear it earlier today, I believe they'll have a chance to hear it later today. So thank you very much. We'll look forward to visiting with you again soon. Take care. Everybody say bye to Regie.
Regie Routman (58:03):
Thank you for being here and starting my weekend off right.
