Sold a Story

I found this by happenstance when I saw an article about Steubenville’s success in a newspaper I couldn’t access. Knowing of the town via the Catholic university there, I was intrigued and thought, there must be a podcast about this. And this is it! I’m a behavior analyst and although I don’t teach reading, direct instruction is a behavioral pedagogy which we learned in our pedagogy class in grad school. My husband and his entire family is dyslexic. My son who is in second grade, has lots of difficulty with reading and writing. He goes to catholic school, which uses lots of phonics based instruction. I was actually upset they didn’t use leveled readers when he started there because that’s what I had known the public schools used when I worked in them. I now know why they don’t use them. However some teachers there have worked in public school and do inadvertently use cuing methods. I was wondering why he kept looking at the picture! He enjoyed listening to this podcast with me. I’m looking into getting certified in Orton Gillingham. My cousin is in college for her teaching degree at a state university in MA and she sent me a pic of the first chapter in her teaching reading to ELs text…. It said look at the picture. Ugh! Still lots of work to do. Thank you for all your hard work detailing this national tragedy.

Wow, I have never left a review for any podcast, ever. I scoured the internet for a place to thank you!! By the 6th episode I was in tears. Having 2 struggling readers this podcast put everything into place. Our kids have had incredible teachers who have loved and supported them but it just wasn’t working! Both of our kids have IEP’s. I was going through old paperwork last week noticing that in K/1st our kids were “on level” but by 2nd 3rd grade were so far behind I would lay awake at night worrying. For our daughter reading finally clicked around the end of 5th grade. Our son is still struggling. We are doing dyslexia tutoring and it finally seems to be helping. THANK you for this work. Our massive district (Indianapolis Public Schools) changed the reading curriculum last year. Hoping other children won’t have the same struggles moving forward.

The teachers trusted authority without question. Those that wanted change eventually quit because there was/is no support from the decision makers. Critical thinking skills and intuition need support, autonomy, and choice. Every person deserves this. I wonder how many adults are relying on images for information these days….

I had two different friends share this podcast with me. I took my children out of public school and began educating them at home several years ago. My oldest told me he was not really taught letter sounds… fast forward to today- all of my children are readers today. So eye opening…