The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Rethinking Literacy with Erin Embon
A hard truth sparked this conversation: too many students were reaching middle school unable to read independently at grade level. Erin Embon has spent 34 years across classrooms and leadership roles, and she walks us through how that pattern pushed her to rebuild reading instruction where it matters most. We unpack the data that challenged assumptions, the research that clarified next steps, and the practical moves that helped a district move to structured literacy with measurable momentum.
Erin begins by talking about what she noticed across the middle school setting, and how that influenced her work in the elementary setting. She talks about her "aha" moment and how she took that knowledge to support both teachers and students. From there, Erin explains how she supported teachers during this transition -- all while recognizing the difference between those in lower and upper elementary classrooms. Erin then wraps up by sharing some great advice for those that are starting to tackle the world of literacy in their schools and classrooms.
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Curriculum Associates, an education technology company and the makers of iReady, presents the Extraordinary Educators Podcast. Join host Haley Browning to hear tips, best practices, and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We believe all educators are extraordinary, and we are here to support you. Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators Podcast. Today I'm joined by Erin M. Bahn, and I'm really excited for today's episode because Erin joins us to talk about some trends that she started to notice across her district. She has some incredible expertise ranging from various school settings, and she started to kind of bring these trends that she was noticing from the middle school into her elementary school setting. With that, she was noticing that things were starting to tie back to literacy. Now, because of this, Erin took some deep dives into some data and some research to best support her students and her teachers and ensure that everybody was getting the best education that they could possibly get. So today, Erin joins us to talk all about some of these noticings, some wonderings, and some of the next steps that she started to dive into. With that, we hope you enjoyed today's episode with Erin. Hi, Erin. Welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators Podcast. Hi, Haley. Thank you for having me. Oh, thank you so much for joining us. And Erin, you wrote an incredible blog that we will make sure to put in the show notes for our listeners, but we're going to kind of use that as a jumping off point for our conversation for today. But before we do that, I do want to give you a chance to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about how you got to where you are today. You have so much an incredible experience. So want to make sure we touch on that.
SPEAKER_00:I have been in education for 34 years. So I'm definitely a little seasoned. I started my career as a high school math teacher. And fast forward, I moved into administration about 20 years ago. And I had the opportunity to be a supervisor at the 612 level and then at the K-12 level. Then I was the principal at um middle school for 10 years. And now I am the director of curriculum for elementary education. And I'm my goal is just really getting all of our students to read independently and on a great.
SPEAKER_01:Truly, incredible goal. And with that, that relates to your blog. I know you had written about this literacy transformation that you are seeing across the district, especially looking at your fifth graders. And with that, you started out your blog by talking about kind of a troubling trend that you were noticing that started to pop up. Can you talk a little bit about that trend that you were noticing?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So I was the middle school principal for um for 10 years. And what I noticed year after year was that our students really couldn't read on grade level independently. There was a lot of um, you know, where we're comfortable reading. And unfortunately, you know, that might be nice for a little language arts class, but once you get to the secondary level, you know, independent reading on grade level is is really required for success. So we were seeing across the board that you know our students were struggling, even though you know our NJS scores were okay, but it they didn't really reflect what I was seeing as, you know, here if we asked students to read or write actually independently, they weren't able to do it. And you know, we found that we had about 58% of our students who were um in need of strategic or in intensive intervention. We we really realized that we had to we had to get to work. So that's when we started exploring different types of reading programs, a lot of PD, a lot of really kind of bringing the information to all of our teachers. You know, we had some who were really emotionally attached to balanced literacy and readers writers workshop. And, you know, there there are good things in every program, but we realized that we had about almost two-thirds of our population who, you know, needed needed something else. So that's that's what we did. And we we got busy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you really, you really got busy. Um that's really powerful. The fact that you also took what you knew and were experiencing from middle school and kind of brought it back to your current placement. Um, that shows how much you care about your students. So hats off to you there. Um, I know that you had kind of talked about your your aha moment. What was maybe your wake-up call when looking into these trends that made you say, oh yeah, I do need to dig into this.
SPEAKER_00:So, you know, like like I said, I I felt very vindicated, right? Because I had been seeing it for so long. And when I finally got a chance to kind of touch base with the reading specialist, because as a secondary person, you know, that wasn't something that I would do on a regular basis. Um, they were like, oh, it's bad, you know, it's bad, Aaron. So um, you know, and I I noticed it, but then I really started to do a lot of my own research because, you know, knowledge is power, and I felt like if I needed to ask teachers to really change like philosophically, not just what book they're using, but the the the whole way we approach teaching reading, I I pretty much figured that I better know what I'm talking about. So I read a lot of books, I did a lot of research. Um, I learned, I learned a lot. And I realized that, you know, one-third of our population absolutely needs structured literacy. That's not to say the other two-thirds won't benefit from it, you know. So um I have three kids, and my oldest son, he's he's my one-third, you know, he really he struggled with reading and he was very smart. Um, I remember we got his first NJS scores back. I I was like, what is happening? So I really realized, you know, far too late, obviously, for him, because that kind of lack of reading instruction then carried with him, you know, through, you know, even high school. So anyway, I go off on that story, but it really um kind of grounds my passion for this whole project. And it's it's kind of become uh like a new mission for me after, you know, 30 years in education. It's kind of exciting to have something, something new. So, you know, it did a lot of work on um, you know, what was actually a good resource to help teachers and what types of PD could help teachers and really relied on um the reading specialists and the research. And yeah, we're about three, three years in fully with full implementation of um, you know, we did we did adopt magnetic reading and uh magnetic reading foundation. So, you know, we're definitely heads and shoulders above where we were, still not there yet 100%, but we are definitely moving in the right direction.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, Erin, the fact that you had so much passion and that you continue to have so much passion, that that story just like I was with you the whole time. Um thank you so much for sharing, number one. And number two, it's really inspiring how that passion is carrying over into your day-to-day and how you're bringing that into the work that you're doing with your reading specialists and your teachers and also supporting your students. And I know you had mentioned that you're head and shoulders above where you were, but there's still some learnings going on and adjustments. Um, and so with that, I'm curious when you started diving into kind of these shifts with your teachers, what were you hearing from teachers and what were you noticing across the board? And from there, how were you jumping in to support them?
SPEAKER_00:So, with any kind of new initiative, um, you know, you're gonna have some anchors, you're gonna have some propellers. And I definitely think that in the K to 2 land, they were like grateful, you know, they were so happy that they actually had a structure, a plan. Um, you know, we looked at a couple of different programs, and you know, while we were bringing them, you know, like PD, when we once when we picked the program, we did have some professional development on, you know, like these are the aspects of the the program. But at the same time, we were really doing a lot of PD on on the why, like what is phonemic awareness? What is phonics instruction? How are they different? Why does it matter that we follow these routines? Because the the knowledge base really wasn't there um across the board. You know, we have teachers who run the gamut from brand new to 35 years experience. So we really did have a lot of teachers that didn't have a real strong foundation in structured literacy, um, especially in in K to two. So they were they were very grateful. Um, they loved it. Three to five was a little bit different because, you know, not only did we were we shifting away from leveled texts, that was new, um, novel mentor texts, you know, they their favorite novels that they've been teaching for the past 15 years, you know, that that was a big switch for them. Um, they also we were switching that they really still had to teach kids to learn to read. You know, I feel like um what I noticed, and especially like part of the beauty of being um, you know, starting in high school and now working my way down, I think one of the biggest things that we did wrong, and I think we've not just in my district, but this is across the country. Like, I think everybody teaches like above where they should, right? So I had like third and fourth grade teachers like wanting to really do middle school teaching, you know, where they wanted to just talk about characters and development and all of the comprehension strategies without actually being able to teach comprehension. So, like without language comprehension, we're not summarizing if we can't get the words and the sentences and the um paragraphs to make sense, right? We're not summarizing. Those skills still need to be taught, vocabulary needs to be taught, syntax needs to be taught, um, sentence structure, paragraph structure from the perspective of a reader, not just a writer. So I think we we really missed the boat in uh three, five there. And you know, they wanted to do what the middle school teachers really are supposed to do. Now that we can read, now we can analyze, and now we can dive in. Um that's kind of what I what I saw. And that that was definitely a a big culture shift for grades three to five. And you know, and I I we had some tough conversations. I'm like, if you want to teach middle school, you can go to middle school, you know. But um, so anyway, nobody went to middle school. They all stayed where they were, and slowly they began to see some of the improvement and not so much at their level, but what was coming up. So that that kind of helped to change some of the behavior. Um, and again, like a little, a little compromise on both sides. You know, now we were bringing novels like in as like a read aloud for vocabulary and to have some of those good conversations, but knowing that everybody's not able to read it independently. Um, but that doesn't mean that students who who can't read it independently shouldn't have access to it while they are still learning to read, right? Because you are learning to read. We don't stop teaching reading at the end of grade two. So I think that that was a big um anchor, if you will, um MTSS or tiered intervention. I would say to the teachers, like everybody's got a box, right? And by the time you're done putting all the kids in the boxes, you have like four kids left. And, you know, you started off with 20. So let's start keeping everybody in the same box. And then those other people are just as a support, you know, supplement, not supplant. Just because they get tier two intervention doesn't mean they don't get tier one intervention. It is, it is in addition to that's just it's it's hard. Like teaching reading is hard work, you know, it is rocket science. You know, I didn't make that up.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. You you made some great comments in there that really lead me to believe you have an incredible culture at your school. Um, so just want to call that out and give you the recognition that you deserve. And the fact that you're able to have these maybe more difficult conversations with your teachers and still give them the support and encouragement that they need um really, really says a lot about you and your leadership. So like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, of course, of course. That, you know, it's definitely and come teaching, working with teachers of, you know, high school, middle school, and now elementary, you know, nobody ever comes to work every day and says, I want to do a bad job, right? Right. A lot of the the fear and a lot of the hesitation um is is that they simply just don't know what to do. And you know, I don't think anybody in administration wants to take autonomy away, but you know, you you need a plan.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So like this, you know, the program is a is a starting point, it gets everybody on the same page. And then, you know, from there we you know, we adapt and adjust a little bit each year. So yeah, and that's it remains the same.
SPEAKER_01:So right, right. And that's you know, part of being able to adjust and recognize that each year is a new year and each set of students is a new set of students. Um, and that's yeah, it's very important to kind of take a step back and recognize um each and every year. Now, just to wrap us up, Erin, as I said, you have a ton of experience and you talked all about that. And so I kind of want to tap into that a little bit to uh leave our listeners with a little bit of advice. So for those that are listening, what advice would you have for them that maybe are looking to address some literacy challenges that they may be seeing in their classrooms or maybe principals are noticing in their schools? Maybe where would you recommend that they start?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think you have to start with seeing where you are, right? And sometimes that is a um, you know, that's difficult. Um so that is definitely step number one. Step number two, you have to get your um MTSS program like well organized and developed. Because if everybody everybody who's struggling in the classroom does not have a reading issue, but yet the reading interventionists are getting like, oh, you go to reading intervention. You and it's if it's not a reading issue because you don't know it's a reading issue because you haven't assessed if it's a reading issue. So you really need like clear universal screeners and like clear cut points, if you will, so that you're really servicing the kids who you can service. And if it's another issue outside of reading, then that requires a different intervention, right? So you might want to like have a behavioral intervention plan, not just a reading intervention plan or a math intervention plan. That's number two. Number three, you need a really good resource um to guide you and make sure that it really truly is aligned to science of reading. So that is that is incredibly important because you need you need something to get everybody on the same page because it is a philosophy, it's a philosophy shift. And you also have to keep in mind that a lot of the teachers did not have formal grammar, right? They didn't learn formal grammar. So now we're asking them to help students like take apart a complex sentence so that they can that that helps them with comprehension and they don't even know what a complex sentence is. So like you have to really build your PD program and all of those things are important. So I think that you have to kind of go into it with a a good sense of humor, but a really good plan. And that plan has to be, it has to be fourfold. It has to be PD, it has to be resource, it has to be MTSS, and um, you know, you have to have a leader who who does the research, reads the research.
SPEAKER_01:So Yeah, I hear you. And again, you're doing the research, so great work there. Um and with that, Erin, I do just want to thank you for your time today, and we really appreciate you sharing. Um, and thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Get inspired by following us on social and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum Association and on Instagram at MyReady. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest, or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators at caink.com. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave us a review. Remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators Podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Curriculum Associates believes that with the right supports, all children can reach grade level. We provide evidence-based high-quality instructional materials and world class implementation services to classrooms across the United States. Editing completed by Shane Lowe, social media by Attsidie Hannon, guestbooking and production by Haley Browning. This podcast is Copyrighted Materials and Intellectual Property of Curriculum Associates.